Oh What A Time... - #91 Ghost Stories (Part 1)

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

This week we’re looking at horror throughout literature. Come with us as we meet the undead of Ancient Greece, Werewolves and the absolutely terrifying Wendigo.And are we in the golden age of the peeler? Would stone-age man have struggled to peel all the potatoes and carrots for Christmas dinner using flint? I mean, who knows. But if you’ve got anything to add on this or anything else, hit us up on: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wandery Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wandery Plus in the Wandery app or on Apple Podcasts. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history podcast that asks how annoying must life have been in a pre-peeler age? I love a raw carrot but I never ever eat a carrot with skin on. Okay. Absolutely no chance. I think I've got a controversial opinion on this. Oh yeah. I don't think there was ever a pre-peeler age. Well you're the knife. Because if you've got stone tools. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But listen, listen, listen.

Our peeler of choice looks like a pencil sharpener and you put the carrot in. Every time I use it, I think to myself, this is the best era to live. I'm with you, Elonis. I think there is a distinct difference between what we have in kitchens now. The idea of Skull trying to peel a carrot with a piece of flint. I think you'd notice the difference, wouldn't you? Imagine the stress of Christmas dinner when all you've got is a piece of flint. My flint is blunt and the turkey hasn't bloody defrosted. I'm trying to knock up a stew in the Stone Age. It's taken me three days.

My grandmother used to sharpen pencils with a knife. Will Barron Oh. Will Barron Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My mum still does that. Will Barron Yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks very old school. And it's never sharp. Will Barron No. Will Barron But it gives you a quite thick line if you're

drawing with a pencil. Will Barron And quite a sort of erratic nib as well. The end has got sort of quite hard, wide sides. It's very weird to look at. It's not a round shape at the end. Obviously Leonardo da Vinci didn't have pencil sharpeners, did he? Yeah. So it's amazing that his drawings were that good.

My drawings are shit with a knife sharpened pencil. It makes you think, what a genius. He could do hands with one of those crap pencils. Come on. Or does it prove that he wasn't actually a genius? If you're doing all that penciling, invent the pencil sharpener. You're meant to be a genius. Why are you waiting another thousand years? Why was he faffing around trying to invent the helicopter when there was a much bigger,

more relevant to him problem at hand? When you're spending four hours a day sharpening your pencils. I can tell you the best pencil sharpener around, and I hope you'll agree, is the one in primary school was clipped to a desk and had a turning wheel, like a crankshaft. Remember that? But too quick. You could get it to perfect. You could get your nib to perfect in about half a second.

Anything over a second, you'd absolutely ruined your pencil. So it was almost industrial, wasn't it? You're down to your fingers after two turns. When you're sharpening you see the lead flying out, you're like, I've gone too deep. When it came to abandoning your pencils on that, El, were you like me, I was the kid who just kept sharpening and sharpening until my pencil was tiny and I was still trying to use it at that point. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I wouldn't get...

Other kids would do, you know, half the length of the pencil. They need a new pencil. Not me. I have my little nub. Oh no, no. Right down to the bottom. Yeah. I find it a real badge of honour to have a tiny pencil.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. From a sustainability perspective, even in the early 90s when I was at primary school, as a real badge of honour. I'd like to introduce the worst type of pencil now. We've done the best pencil sharpener. The worst type is the clicky one with the very tiny bit of lead that comes out, which snaps as soon as it hits the paper.

What is that? The clicky pencil was solving a problem that never existed. No. Pencils were fine. And it's removing the great joy of pencil use, which is sharp, Nick. I think I've got a worst pencil for you. Do you remember the ones that was like a series of little pencil tips? You might get eight of them.

Or four. You push them out and then put the next one at the top to push through. Yeah. So you have like eight different pencil tips that you would push through sequentially. Rob McClendon Pencils were fine. Solving a problem that did not exist. Will Barron My children have that pencil tip one, Chris, and you'll know this. If you lose any of the pencil tips, it's no longer long enough to mean that the final pencil comes out the end of the shaft. The whole thing is a nightmare.

Rob McClendon Do you reckon when Leonardo da Vinci was planning a new piece of art, he'd do what I used to do before school in September, before going back to school, and go down to like WH Smiths and think, oh, I'm going to buy myself a load of new pens for this big new painting. That'll really inspire me. I'm going to buy a new pencil case and a load of good new pens. And then I'll be ready to do a really, really good one. Do you know what, guys?

Before we head into today's subject, we had an email which is about a listener who listens to this show with their children. And they've given us a brilliant idea for a future episode. Shall I just give you this email before we get into today's show? I think this is such a good shout for a subject. The email says, hello, you fabulous chaps. Thank you for your wonderful podcast. I really enjoy as a Wondry listener. And I've even convinced my girls ages 11 and 13 to listen along during school commutes, which is no mean feat as most things I suggest are quickly shut down.

Oh, wow. Okay. Hello, girls. Hello. Hi, everyone. We all learn so much from your chats and it brings more to our family meal times as we talk about it all together. Oh. Nice. Oh. I only wish this medium would have been around 40 years ago when I was their age,

maybe I would have done better at school. We particularly love listening as we move from Oxfordshire to Carmarthenshire. There you go, well. Okay. 2021. Living in, do you know where this is? Geli Aeir Llandeilo.

Geli Aeir Llandeilo. Gellir, ni a Llandeilo. There you go. She's actually written in brackets. Ellis will pronounce these beautifully as I'm corrected after four years still. Yes, Gellir in Llandeilo. As I always say, whenever Llandeilo comes up on the podcast, first place out of piss up. Is it really her? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Llandeilo rugby club. Is there a blue plaque there?

There should be. There should be to mark just how sick I was because that's what always happened. The blue plaque on the floor for where you vomited, yeah. The exact place behind the bins where you were sick. They say we now run a dog-friendly holiday cottage which are all named after the three local castles. Do you know the three local castles, Al? Let's a little history test for you. That would be Dynefur Castle, Castell Caracenen. Yes. And, oh my god, what's the third one? Dynefwr Castle, Castell Caracenen. Yes.

And, oh my God, what's the third one? I can try and pronounce it from just reading it and it'll be completely wrong. Give me a clue, what's the first letter of it? D. D. D-R. Why?

Just sling, just sling. Just sling, there you are. Yes! Not all castles we enjoy the drink of. Come on! I would say though, on Mastermind, Driswain, there you are. Yeah! All castles we enjoy. All castles we enjoy the most. Can I? I would say though, on Mastermind, you can't say give me a clue and then Magnus is going giving the first letter. No, but I would be revising one line before Mastermind.

Drisling, of course. Drisling, Drisling, Drisling. Of course, of course, of course, of course. So these are all castles we enjoy visiting weekly. They're brilliant. Carrick Cannon in particular is lovely. So we realised, says our emailer here, that we hadn't heard you chat about castles and we'd love to know more about them.

Not just the ones close to us. Wales is plenty but we enjoyed Goodrich and looking forward to seeing Haver in the summer. We also wonder, this is what I thought was really interesting, we also wonder why some castles are left to ruin and others have been selected to be turned into tourism attractions. Was it simply there was more to save and work with or was there another reason? St Stephen is such a wonderful castle and I walk there often with its own beach and views. How is this still a ruin? St Stephen is a cracker and you can see it from the train, yes, lovely.

Is it really? But that is an interesting question. Why do some castles fall into complete disrepair? Why are some kept alive for people to visit? What is the story of these castles? So they've basically suggested, many thanks in advance, if you choose to delve deeper into this subject. So thank you very much. That's from Josie Agate and her children. But that is a fantastic suggestion. Different castles, why have they fallen to ruin? What are the stories of these castles? I can't wait to do castles. Yeah. Castles are what got me into history when I was very little.

In fact, our family holidays were based around towns that had a good castle up until about 1991. Really? Because I was castle obsessed when I was a little kid. Wales has more castles per square mile than any other country in Europe. What is it? What's the castle per square mile rate? It's got to be like 0.1. There's a castle every 12 square miles in Wales. What? That's insane. That's insane.

So I was born in Halford West. There's a great normal castle in Halford West. Then there's Pembroke, Pembroke Castle, which is 12 miles away. There's one in Carmarthen, when I moved to Carmar. The Cymarthen Castle is not great, I must admit. Like, cards on the table, it's not a good one. But then in Cymarthenshire, you've got, as she said, Danefwr and Caracannin and Llansteffan and Dristloon Castle. There's some absolute belters. Canarfon Castle, where the Investiture Prince Charles happened in 1969, is unreal. And Boon Marys is very nice up in North Wales as well. Harlech Castle is great.

I do have memories as a kid of going to places and being told it was going to be a castle. We're going to see a castle and you get there and there's like barely any wall there. Yeah, that's- And your parents are pointing at it going, this is the castle, and you're going as an eight-year-old. That's not a castle.

That's the Carmarthen Castle experience, if I'm honest. That's a garden wall. What happened to the moat? Why have moats gone out? Why have not all houses got moats? They were big for a while, weren't they, moats? Huge. People loved moats.

They should still be around. They like… Bring back the moats. They actually bothers me. You know, outside the Tower of London, they've just drained that moat. Fill it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know what? I've not been to the Tower of London since about 1990. And I should definitely go again, because I reckon- You committed that horrible, horrible crime when you were locked up there for six months. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awful. Worst period of my life. And ravens are massive.

Yeah. Too big. Horrible things. And what's the thing? They have to be in the Tower of London because if they fly, the kingdom will fall. If they leave, there's no ravens in the Tower of London. Isn't that the old thing they stick to? So you've got these massive ravens knocking about. It's like the old oak in Carmarthen. If the old oak of Carmarthen should fall, which apparently Merlin, the wizard, used to sit under, Carmarthen would be flooded.

Oh wow. And then Carmarthen Council knocked it down and built around about there. And was Carmarthen then flooded? Carmarthen was flooded. Was it? Oh my gosh. Is that true? Yeah.

Carmarthen, I think, not immediately, but it was... No. It was... Hang on, I'm going to have to look this up. That's fantastic. Because there's a bit... You don't mean just flooded with complaints? There literally was.

Why have you knocked down our tree? Because there's a little bit of the old oak left Merlin's Oak. That's amazing. Because there's old oak roundabout. Yeah, yeah. So there's now apparently a replacement tree there. But Merlin's Oak was associated with the legend of Merlin and it was said that, Should Merlin's Oak shall tumble down,

then shall fall, Cmarthen Town. And they knocked it down to build a roundabout. And yes, Cmarthen Town were relegated from the Cymru Prep. How did they push that through? That's so heartless. That's history. That's folklore. That's everything.

It was, yeah, I think it had died by that point. Oh, okay. Okay, fine. Fine. Okay, fair, fair, fair. I'll let them off. Hang on, let's have a look. In the early 19th century, a local man appears to have poisoned the tree.

Oh my gosh. It is reported that the poisoning was done by a nearby shopkeeper who objected to the age-old tradition of people gathering under it, spreading band branches on days and nights, and the oak is believed to have died in 1856. Yeah, because there's a little bit of it in St Peter's Hall. Because of the prophecy relating the tree's destiny to the fate of the town, the council members refused to consider cutting the dead tree. Then, as traffic levels rose, the space around the tree was converted into a traffic island. Also, what's so funny about it as a traffic island, or around about whatever you call it, is the opposite.

It's very much the enemy of the tree. It's the most horrific thing to replace it with is concrete and cars. I find it hilarious. It took higher traffic levels to convert Carmarthen Council from feudalism. So, the last fragment of the tree was removed in 1978 and there were very bad, bad floods in 1987. People were like, yeah, what did we say? It only took nine years. Doesn't take a genius to work out. It was planted in 1659 or 1660.

Fair play. I mean, we've been there for a long time. But yeah, Merlin, the magician, good mates with King Arthur. Yeah, come on then, boy. I've got an episode idea. Trees. There must be some really famous great trees with a great story attached to them.

Yeah, and some of them are thousands of years old. Yeah, that's a good subject. I'm sure I've seen in America, there's like a freeway that goes through a tree. Really? Yeah, because it's one of those massive, maybe that's an AI thing I saw on Facebook, but I believed. That doesn't feel real. Really? What, through the hole where the owl sits? Where does it go?

Yeah. God, I hope this isn't an AI thing. That can't be right, can it? A motorway that goes through a tree. Hang on. I need to Google this. I really, I want you to know that I really hope this isn't real. Have you found it? Oh dear. I mean, it doesn't look great. Describe it to us.

Highway going through a tree. No, shit. That doesn't feel real. Come on. Are you sure this isn't a dream you had? Hang on. No, no, no, no, there's the... No, it's more of a sort of footpath really than a motorway.

Is it going through the tree? Oh god. Okay, well, do you know what? That's a pity, isn't it? In the spirit of full disclosure, because I want everyone to know that I am fallible, let's leave that in, even though I am hugely, hugely embarrassed. Of course we're leaving that in. Oh, there are drive-through trees in California. How can you?

Unfortunately, you've lost all credibility to make a statement about it. Well yeah, and I've got this from a website called amusingplanet.com. There's a man panicking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no. Because if you, if you, like I, am a user of amusingplanet.com, you will know that there are drive-through trees in California. Well, there we go. Thank you, Josie Agger, as we say, for that suggestion of castles. Thank you, Chris Skull, for that suggestion of trees. I think both of those will work

perfectly as subjects in the future. If any of you other listeners have ideas for subjects you'd like us to cover, anything you want to get off your chest, any kind of, you know, any mistakes we may have made along the way. Don't talk about the tree. I'm referring to the tree again, yes. The motorway through the tree tree you can get in contact about any of that stuff and here's how All right, you horrible look Here's how you can stay in touch with the show You can email us at hello at oh what a time dot com and You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh what a time, Pud. Now clear off.

Well this week we're talking about horror in literature. This is going to be a great episode. In part three I'll be talking about the Windigo. Oh it's scary. And later I will be talking about werewolves in literature. It's genuinely fascinating. But I'm going to start off by talking about ghosts in literature. Now I had the idea for this topic or this episode because I read Dickens's ghost stories just before

Christmas. A Christmas carol, obviously, the most famous one. And what I found was, I didn't find them particularly scary, I found them interesting and curious that that is what was considered scary at the time, if you know what I mean. Whereas something like Black Mirror, the TV show, I found genuinely unsettling to the point that I actually couldn't watch it. There are some episodes I found so unsettling after half an hour I would have to turn it off. Give me an example of one of those episodes. What sort of things were you finding unsettling? Well there's the one where people get reviewed. Do you remember that one? Yes. Terrifying.

Yeah. Yeah. And I just thought... And basically true, in an Uber that is actually what happens. Yes. Is it everyone the character interacts with gives you a review after that interaction? Is that basically what it is? Yeah. Horrendous. It's so believable because you think to yourself, in five years time, this could be us. Yeah. No, I do not, I do not what you mean though. Those sort of things which relate to modern human experience, I find unsettling.

Yes. And the changing nature of life. Whereas a wailing bloke in a sheet, rattling some chains, fine. Not bothered. My Uber rating, by the way, 4.77. That's fine. That's pretty good. Now, ghosts have been very central to horror writing, or actually any literature that was designed to scare, to the extent that ghosts, it's not, they don't just crop up in ghost stories or in horror stories or literature

that's designed to put the spokes up into people. You've got ghosts in comedy shows, you've got ghosts in children's entertainment. There are famous sort of light-hearted ghosts, Slimer and Ghostbusters, Casper the Friendly Ghost. There's even ghosts in Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigoar. And funny ghosts were familiar to the ancient Greeks as well. But when they first added the

ghost to European literature, comedy, I mean that was the last thing that the Greeks had in mind. So the play Riteskulis is often credited with developing the ghosts as a character in drama. And he added them to several of his plays including Prometheus, Bound, the Persians and Emenides, or the Furies. The last one was part of a trilogy of plays, the Oresteia, which is all about a series of murders involving King Agamemnon and his family. Now the ghost in question in the Oresteia plays is Clitimnestra, who's been murdered by her son in revenge for her murder of Agamemnon, which sounds really light-hearted and fun, doesn't it? Bearing in mind I can't handle Black Mirror. I'm not sure I'll really want to go and see

that live on a date night. Which was an act which was itself revenge for the death of a daughter as a sacrifice to the gods. So it was very, very murdery, Oresteia. But it's murdery in sort of soap opera style, but it was perfect for the stage, right? So in her ghost form, Plitumnestra appears in the underworld, appearing to the Furies, who were three hideous characters who live there, and that she appeals him to wake up and go off to haunt the murdering son, Orestes.

Now, according to legend, this scene, which is full of wailing and screaming and other ghostly noises, was so scary that on the opening night, this is unbelievable right, in 458 BC, one member of the audience in Athens keeled over and died from fright. How did the gig go? Oh, we killed. Can you imagine that? A live ghost story. You go to the theatre. You go to your local arts centre on a Friday night to see a ghost story and it's so scary, it scares you to

death. That it creates another ghost. Yeah. The ghost of an audience member. Yeah, you've got to haunt your local arts centre for the rest of time. You're haunting Theatre Havren Newtown. But I'm very interested though, this is an idea for a topic. Audience interactions to art, or audience reactions I should say, because I remember studying at school Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring,

when that was performed for the first time the opening night, the audience started fighting, because some people liked it and others didn't. Wow. Imagine fighting over classical music. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was once doing a Weekender Comedia where a fight broke out in the back row. Well, because people liked your comedy so much.

I like it more than you. People just fighting to get to the fire escapes to get out any exit. I'm more of a Tom Crane fan than you are. Yeah, exactly. That's what it was. I can't believe we've got this far into the ghost section without asking you the question, El. Have you ever seen a ghost? I haven't seen a ghost. The reason I wanted to do ghosts was I listened to Danny Robbins's and Canny on the way to Cornwall because we were together in Cornwall over New Year.

And I went into the podcast as a cynic, and after the second episode, I was like, ghosts exist and we're surrounded by them, and there are probably ghosts in this car. And I'm probably a ghost because ghosts exist. And I would hate for my house to be haunted by poltergeist because that does happen. You pulled over into a lay bar,

you turn around to your kids in the back seat and say kids and they'll need to tell you something ghosts exist. Okay. It's important you know that and you never know when they're going to kind of turn up and they can grab your stuff and hurt you. Life is terrifying and ghosts exist. Anyway, I see a golden arch is anyone fancy McDonald's? Anyway, I see a golden arch is anyone fancy a McDonald's? That'll be full of ghosts. People who eat themselves to death. Now Aeschylus, he pioneered the principle of ghosts as characters in literature, and

it was a dual purpose. First, to provide some kind of narrative progression on stage. Second, to instil a sense of fear or fright in the watching audience. So they fed on the audience's belief that ghosts are scary. So, Ischglis was a tragedian. He was writing in the classical mode of tragedy. So he was writing plays that, as Aristotle put it, they were a dramatic imitation of a serious action

that evokes pity and fear. So for example, the disintegration of the royal household, which leads to vengeance and then resolution. And that creates the emotions of pity and fear. So fear was absolutely central to his plays and ghosts serve to heighten the sense of fear, both in the characters and in the audience. So typically, or usually,

ghosts were raised from the underworld. So in the Persians, for example, Aeschylus has the queen and chorus in tone in such a way to raise the spirit of the longians, for example, Aeschylus has the Queen and Chorus in tone in such a way as to raise the spirit of the long dead King Darius, which, got to be honest, not having a go at the Greeks doesn't sound like a King's name. And then King Darius proceeds to scold his son. Xerxes proceeds to fail us during his attempted invasion of Greece. God, you wouldn't need that, would you?

So his dead dad was summoned up. Yeah, yeah. And then he scolds him for failures during his attempted invasion of Greece. Can you imagine that? Your dad's died. Someone's brought him back to life. And he's like, well, I thought you fucked that, I thought you fucked that bottle up, son. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Don't worry. I was watching you and I was very, very upset. Oh yeah? Well I don't know, I was just there to big army and... Yeah, yeah, not good enough. I thought tactically and strategically you left a lot to be desired.

Anyway, I'm back off to the underworld. Bye now, bye now. All the best, take care, God bless, ta-da. Bye dad! I think we... let's call this a line in the sand, dad. I think this is the proper goodbye now, I think. Okay? I think we're good. Proper ending. That's it with the feedback now. Thanks. I'd rather fight my own battles actually, Dad, without thinking that you're criticizing me from the underworld anyway. Bye. Love you. Now, this was a very common trope in Greek drama. Iskandis himself recycled it a few times. There's a play he wrote that is now lost, sadly, apart from a handful of

fragments, a play called Ghost Razors. But also a lot of Greek pots, like the vases, were painted with scenes of choruses intoning to raise spirits of the dead in ghost form. Will Barron Ghost Razors sounds like something Gillette would launch. It's a type of razor, which is so light you can barely feel it. It's like a ghost across your face. I imagine in the advert, it's sort of like, you know, spooky hand grabbing it and it's just, oh wow. You should go into marketing. That is good stuff. And if Gillette or Wilkinson sword used that, we will know exactly where it came from. The best a ghost can get.

So in the Odyssey, Odysseus regales with a story of how he ventures to the edge of the underworld to consult with a long dead seer and prophet. Will I ever get home? He wants to ask. But Odysseus explains there's a complicated ritual, that it's an act of witchcraft not undertaken lightly and that sort of, you know, encountering the underworld is fraught with danger. Free Simmons not only the spirit he wants to engage with but several others too, including

comrades fallen during the Trojan War, even some of his own heroes. Can you imagine that? You're trying to find out if you'll ever get home. You're on the edge of the underworld. You raise ghosts, some ghosts you don't want, including your own heroes. John Charles. Oh, I enjoyed my time at Juventus and it is a regret of mine that I never played for Swansea actually. I signed school by forms but then Leeds picked me up at the age of about 15. Ooooooo. You'd never want to leave the edge of the underworld, Ellis, if John Charles were there. Do you regret not having more caps for your country?

Well, it was difficult to travel to the Wii games in those days, and obviously I was living in Italy. Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo that you were previously a human, why suddenly when you're a ghost you feel the need to say something you've never said in your life? I'm not sure who invented that. The other thing about ghosts, when you become a ghost, your image is from what part of your life? Is it what you look like at the end? Or do they pick you in your prime? Do you get to decide? My acne-ridden teen years. No, I've thought about that. You never see a ghost in like a shell suit. Yeah, yeah. There's never 80 a ghost in like a shell suit. Yeah, yeah. There's never 80s ghosts. They're always Victorian. A pair of high tops.

With a massive brick mobile phone. One of those batteries you had to carry. Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo that you died in. And I will somehow die. I'll die either naked or just in my pants. It'll be one of the two. I'll die in Izzy's dressing gown. Refusing to enter a room to haunt it. I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. No, I'm not. Because the dressing gown is too short. Right. What if you died in Izzy's dressing gown? You forgot to put the bins out. You run out, you put the bins out and there's a steamroller coming down the street, crosses you completely flat. Is your ghost you really flat, but you're in Izzy's dressing gown? Yeah. And when you enter a room do you come under the door through the letterbox, is that what it is?

Do you reckon there's any outfit so disgusting that whoever is in charge of the underworld's like, well I can't have you being a ghost dresser that. Yeah. So he conjures up his own heroes. He's tempted to call them temporarily to life, but is warned that more terrible creatures await him if he goes too far, and in terror, Odysseus runs away. So in performance, it was very frightening to the ancient Greeks, and Aeschylus knew this. So his play Ghost Raisers dramatised these scenes and apparently included all of his best techniques for horrifying his audience like you were turning up knowing you were gonna be scared. And the ghost raisers were themselves very true to life

because in ancient Greece a specialist called a psychogogoi had the ability to raise the spirits of the dead through a mixture of ritual including animal sacrifice and necromantic prayers and in tone dedication using a mixture of ghost language i.e. high-pitched squeaks and low-pitched drones. So that's how he used to talk to ghosts in ancient Greece. Now, we're obviously, we're all not being a little bit skeptical. Well, the Romans are partially to thank for that instinct, because they also did believe in ghosts. But the idea of necromancy, so sort of talking to the dead and ghost raising was to the Romans a bit far-fetched.

So in Roman literature, ghosts became truly terrifying. So the poet Lucan, right in the first century AD, but he had the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great in his view, has a scene where Pompey's son, Sextus, consults a witch about the future. She tells him that she'll need a fresh corpse, which the young man brings from the battlefield.

And after a Greek-style incantation, the corpse is reanimated. And Sextus asks him his question. He says, what will be my fate? Ah, the ghost says, there's a nice place reserved for you and your father in the underworld where you will be joining me very soon. I'm obviously terrified. So as the ancient Romans put it, and I think I agree,

it's best not to ask questions of ghosts in case the answers they give you are too scary. Have you ever seen a ghost, Tom? Yeah, I think we've talked about this very briefly. When I was in secondary university, I walked up the stairs to my bedroom and like a white figure sort of walked past me, but I was smoking a lot of weed at that time. So I think the two may not be entirely unrelated. I've stopped doing that now, probably for the best. I haven't seen a ghost since. Alright that's it for this week. If you want part two right now, and if you want a load of bonus episodes, our bonus episode

collection is humongous and great whopping. This month we've done a review of Spycatcher by Peter Wright, that was my choice, and El, in previous months you've selected some great books to review. Yes, I did Beyond the Wall, East Germany, 1940, 1990 by Katja Heuer. That was fascinating, that was about a life in East Germany before the wall fell. Yeah, very, very good. And I talked so glowingly about that book and ended up talking so glowingly about East Germany on the radio show I do with John because of BBC Balance John did have to offer another side to the East German experience

He had to criticize East Germany for balance But it's a very very interesting book and we've got other great bonus podcasts planned as well So I'm reading lots of history books at the moment, looking forward to doing that. And I recently did, yeah, I recently did one on Life in the Royal Navy in the 18th century, which is a really fun episode as well. Basically, I think loads of our subscriber episodes have been some of our favorites.

We've absolutely loved them. We love doing all the shows, but there's some special episodes there as well, if you wanna sign up and there's so many to listen through if you're not a subscriber yet. How do you do that? How do you do it, Skull?

You can do it via another slice and wondery plus. You can get the options at owattertime.com and if you sign up you can actually get part two right now. Very exciting. If you don't want to do that, we'll just see you tomorrow. Bye! The Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. And before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.