Research source

I am still near, Watching the smiles I prized on earth, Your converse mild, your blameless mirth.[64

Date of account: Late nineteenth-century compilation
Source: The Ghost World
Reference: The Ghost World · selected passage 231
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Frazer shows in his interesting paper on the 'Primitive Ghost,' our ancestors knew how to outwit the ghost in its endeavour to find its way back to the house it left at death

Published source text

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Source passage

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But, as Mr. Frazer shows in his interesting paper on the 'Primitive Ghost,' our ancestors knew how to outwit the ghost in its endeavour to find its way back to the house it left at death. Thus the practice of closing the eyes of the dead, he suggests, originated in 'blindfolding the dead that he might not see the way by which he was carried to his last home. At the grave, where he was to rest for ever, there was no motive for concealment; hence the Romans, and apparently the Siamese, opened the eyes of the dead man at the funeral pyre. And the idea that if the eyes of the dead be not closed, his ghost will return to fetch away another of the household, still exists in Germany, Bohemia, and England.' With the same object the coffin was carried out of the house by a hole purposely made in the wall, which was stopped up as soon as the body had passed through, so that, when the ghost strolled back from the grave, he found there was no thoroughfare--a device shared equally by Greenlanders, Hottentots, Bechuanas, Samoieds, Ojibways, Algonquins, Laosians, Hindoos, Tibetans, Siamese, Chinese, and Fijians. These 'doors of the dead' are still to be seen in a village near Amsterdam, and they were common in some towns of Central Italy.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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