as small as a world and as large as alone

10:51pm July 30, 2014

chasing-yesterdays:

The Early-Modern Ghost:

Have you ever wondered where our trope of the spooky ghost in the long white sheet comes from? Believe it or not, the white-sheeted ghost actually hearkens back to western burial practices of centuries ago, when corpses were wrapped in shrouds prior to burial.

In the 16th- and 17th-century woodcuts above, the ghosts are imagined as still wearing their shrouds loosely around their bodies, but gathered closely at the top of their heads in a tidy ruffled knot of material. This gives us an idea of how actual shrouds would have been secured around corpses in the early modern era.

Sources: The Golden World; Being Bess

Photo sources:

1) King James, the Mar­quess of Hamil­ton, and George Eglisham, James’s physi­cian, are con­fronted by the Duke of Buckingham. From Strange Appari­tions, or the Ghost of King James, 1642.

2) From The Iust Reward of Rebels, 1642, fea­tur­ing the ghost of Jack Straw.

3) From The Earle of Strafford’s Ghost, 1644.

4) From John Dickenson’s Greene in conceipt: New raised from his grave to write the Tragic History of Valeria of London (1598).

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