The first horror stories written nearly 2000 years ago
Around the year 100, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger) wrote a letter to his friend Lucius Licinius Sura to ask him if he believed in the existence of ghosts or if those visions could simply be tricks of the mind provoked by fear.
Pliny did not have a clear answer and decided to share with him three events that had come to his attention to learn his opinion on those phenomena.
In the letter, he recounted three unsettling stories: that of a figure who announced the fate of Curtius Rufus, that of a house in Athens where a chained presence terrorized its inhabitants, and that of strange events that occurred in his own residence.
Although they were written almost two thousand years ago within a conversation between two friends, these accounts retain all the elements of ancient horror tales: unsettling silences, impossible-to-explain presences, and events that left open the doubt between the supernatural and the unknown.
Stories of shadows and apparitions described nearly two millennia ago
The spirit that announced the fate of Curtius Rufus
Curtius Rufus was still a young Roman looking to make his way into imperial society when he had an encounter that would remain forever linked to his name.
During a trip through Africa, while he was in a remote place, a woman appeared before him. Her presence was impossible to ignore.
She did not seem like an ordinary traveler or someone who had arrived there by chance. There was something supernatural about that figure approaching in the midst of the solitude.
Curtius stood motionless as the woman walked toward him.
Then she uttered words that seemed to lack meaning: "Someday you will reach a high position within the Roman Empire, you will be governor of Africa, and upon returning to these lands, you will meet your death."
After delivering the warning, the woman disappeared.
For years, those words stayed with Curtius like a memory difficult to forget. However, time began to turn that prediction into reality.
His political career advanced, he received important posts, and finally, he came to govern Africa, exactly as had been announced.
When he returned to the province where he had experienced that encounter, his life began to fade.
Shortly after, he fell ill and died there, fulfilling the darkest part of that warning uttered many years before.
The house in Athens and the chained old man
In the other story told by Pliny appears an old house in Athens marked by a phenomenon that terrorized all those who dared to stay inside.
During the night, when silence covered the rooms, sounds impossible to ignore would begin to be heard: slow footsteps and the metallic noise of chains dragging across the floor that seemed to roam the hallways of the dwelling.
The inhabitants of the house lived in terror, but no one could discover the source of those sounds.
Each night the same invisible presence returned, filling the place with fear and forcing those who lived there to abandon their rooms.
Some time later, the philosopher Athenodorus arrived at the dwelling and decided to spend the night.
Unlike others, he did not flee at the first sounds. He remained awake, hoping to discover what was hidden behind that strange phenomenon.
When the chains began to rattle, a figure appeared before him: an old man with an exhausted appearance, covered in shadows, and with chains attached to his body.
The figure signaled for him to follow to a specific spot in the garden and then disappeared.
At dawn, Athenodorus marked the indicated spot and ordered an excavation there.
To everyone's amazement, they found human remains buried with chains next to them.
After receiving a proper burial, the events ceased and the house finally regained its tranquility.
The strange events in Pliny's house
The third story was related to Pliny's own residence and events that had disturbed those who lived there.
In the house, events began to occur that were difficult to explain.
During the night, noises of unknown origin, movements inside the rooms, and signs that someone seemed to be traversing the empty spaces when all the inhabitants were asleep were heard.
The tranquility of the home began to disappear bit by bit.
The sounds appeared when least expected and created the sensation that an invisible presence remained inside the dwelling.
The inhabitants of the house tried to find an explanation, but each new episode increased the uncertainty.
It was not a simple isolated noise, but a succession of events that turned the nights into moments of worry and vigilance.
For Pliny, those events were part of the mysteries that surrounded human existence.
By including these three stories in his letters, he left written some of the first ghost stories of Ancient Rome, where the boundaries between the world of the living and that of the dead seemed much closer.
