“Now I want you to consider whether the following story, which I shall tell you just as I heard it, is not even more terrifying and no less wonderful than the other,” so starts Pliny the Younger’s letter to his friend, Licinius Sura during the early second century CE. Though we’re going back nearly two thousand years already, there are arguably older ghost stories —   Titus Maccius Plautus wrote his comic play, Mostellaria (The Haunted House / The Ghost) in around 200 BCE. The conceit of the play relied on audiences already familiar with ghost stories. Even older, we find the Egyptian Khonsemhab and the Ghost in the Ramesside period (roughly 12th–11th century BCE).

But I want to stick with Pliny the Younger because I think there’s an important          nuance to his story. “There stood at Athens a spacious and roomy house […] In the silence of the night the clank of iron and, […] the rattle of chains were heard, the sound coming first from a distance and afterwards quite close at hand. Then appeared the ghostly form of an old man.” The noises and apparition terrorized the occupants of the house who eventually fled. Some time later, Athenodorus the philosopher arrives in Athens and checks out the scene. Not only does he witness the ghost, but he follows it to a spot in the courtyard where it disappears — the same behavior night after night. Athenodorus has the spot excavated and — wouldn’t you know it? There was a body of a man in chains hastily buried there. They removed the chains, reburied the remains and the haunting ceased. This is more than a ghost story, though — Pliny is relaying it as fact. It’s a story he’s relaying, yes, but this very grounded Roman magistrate, statesman, and writer posits it as true.

If this ancient paranormal investigation sounds familiar, it’s probably because the trope of the ghost leading the living to their unhallowed burial underpins so many ghost stories — fictional stories, yes, but it’s also the basis of true paranormal investigations. Heck, I’ve used the trope here plenty of times. It’s a story we return to time and time again because it’s effective, it rings true.

Remember that Egyptian story about Khonsemhab I mentioned a moment ago? Want to guess what it’s about? Unlike Pliny, there’s no indication it’s true or not, but it moves the needle back quite a ways when it comes to a body denied proper burial. For centuries, it seems, we keep returning to these ghost stories…

Pliny returned to the ghost by writing it down.

Where in Athens this house existed is lost to history. The house itself, the courtyard – these, too, have almost certainly disappeared or been transformed into, who knows, a parking lot? A tourist shop? Pliny and Athenodorus have been dead for nearly two thousand years, but tonight we resurrected this story from the early days of western civilization. The world has changed utterly and completely, but we keep returning to these stories of ghosts. Mostellaria returns, Khonsemhab returns. The tropes return.

For the last nine Octobers I’ve done my best to do exactly that – returning to the old stories, to the cemeteries, to the legends. Returning to personal stories of loved ones reaching across the veil and things somebody swears happened to their cousin’s roommate. Returning to some of the same tropes Pliny wrote down two thousand years ago, using a ghost to comedic effect like Plautus because you know what it’s like to be scared by that which we can’t explain and sometimes it’s gentler to laugh than cry.

And so, again, we return to 31 Ghosts.

I really want to call this year “31 Ghosts X” but having lived through the late 90’s/early aughts when practically every name had to be X-treme or Xcelerate, calling it “31 Ghosts X” sounds like some sort of millennial energy drink – “spooky, but potent!”

Though, I feel like I’ve earned the right to my silly “31 Ghosts X” moniker this year. Ten years of returning every October to summon the spirits for stories that unearth the nature of the living as well as the dead. Looking back at what we have all been through over the last ten years, none of us would claim to be the same person we were when I thought writing a ghost story for every day this month would be a fun idea. I mean, 2020 itself lasted at least thirteen years, right?

But returning isn’t the same as repetition. In our digital world, we return to Pliny very differently than when Licinius Sura opened that proverbial envelope. And I return to the tenth year of 31 Ghosts a very different person than that guy who wanted to see if he could rise to his own challenge.

Welcome back for another round of spooky stories. We’ll inevitably tread on some familiar (if unhallowed) ground, but it’s a new year – I’m a new me, and you’re a new you. Let’s see what these ghosts can tell us this year!