In ancient Babylonia, seeing a ghost could be downright deadly. Dating to around the first millennium BC, ancient Mesopotamian texts on clay tablets went into great detail about illnesses and misfortunes stemming from the “Hand of Ghost.”Hand of Ghost seems to refer to both the illness and the method by which it was given.
The story goes that a widow called Mrs. Murphy, her son and five daughters, all lived together in a house near Cooneen, County Fermanagh in the early part of the 20th Century.
The family became plagued by a poltergeist shortly after Mrs Murphy's husband died in a freak accident. Paranormal events started to occur in the house, it began with the occasional knocking of the front door and when any member of the family would go to answer the door there would be nobody there. The noises then became more frequent with knocking on all the doors and windows. Above the house was a room used as storage for hay. This room was only accessible by a stone staircase adjoined to the farmhouse and in the room heavy footsteps were often heard yet every time someone went to investigate there was nobody in the room.
A faceless ghost, is a Japanese legendary creature. They are sometimes mistakenly referred to as a mujina, an old Japanese word for a badger or raccoon dog. Although the mujina can assume the form of the other, noppera-bō are usually disguised as humans. Such creatures were thought to sometimes transform themselves into noppera-bō in order to frighten humans.Lafcadio Hearn used the animals' name as the title of his story about faceless monsters, probably resulting in the misused terminology.
Noppera-bō are known primarily for frightening humans, but are usually otherwise harmless. They appear at first as ordinary human beings, sometimes impersonating someone familiar to the victim, before causing their features to disappear, leaving a blank, smooth sheet of skin where their face should be.
Pliny the Younger was a Roman senator, born the son of a knight in AD 62. He lived through the reign of the tyrannical Nero, was taught by some of the most brilliant minds in ancient Rome, and left behind a ghost story among his many writings.
In the first part of the story, he tells a tale of Curtius Rufus, an attendant to a Roman governor in Africa. One night, Curtius was out walking, and the ghostly visage of a beautiful woman appeared to him, telling him that she was a powerful spirit that watched over all of Africa. She told him of his future, revealing that he was to return to Rome, become elevated to a lofty position, and ultimately die on Roman soil.
