Images

Upon death, ancient Greek culture called for placing a coin, or obol, in the mouth of the deceased to pay Charon for rowing him/her across the River Styx to the afterlife.

The ruins of Bhangarh Fort in Rajasthan, thought to be inhabited by ghosts.

Lamia, oil on canvas by John William Waterhouse, 1909, based on the Keats poem Lamia from 1820. Lamia was an ancient Greek precursor to vampires. Private collection.

A middle Corinthian Pyxis (cosmetic box) that shows friezes of lions, sirens, sphinxes and birds. At the rim there are female heads protruding. Circa 600-575 BCE, attributed to the Honolulu Painter. British Museum, London, GR 1873.10-12.1...

Bronze statue of Hadrian, found at the Camp of the Sixth Roman Legion in Tel Shalem (Israel). It was found by chance by an American tourist in 1975 while searching for ancient coins with a metal detector. Tel Shalem was once occupied by a...

The Hungry Ghost festival continues to be celebrated in China on the fifteenth night of the seventh month, when it is thought that the dead can cross over into the land of the living because the veil that separates the two worlds is thinnest...

Roman gold and saphire ring, second half of the 2nd century CE. The ring has a garnet centre stone. From an unidentified marble sarcophagus in Rome. (Palazzo Massimo, Rome)

A reproduction of the sarcophagus lid of the Maya ruler of Palenque, King Pakal the Great, also known as K'inich Janaab' Pacal (23 March 603 CE - 31 March 683 CE). In this detail the king is falling into the terrible jaws of the Maya underworld...

A gold and garnet ring from Agrigento, Sicily, 3rd century BCE. (Archaeological Museum of Agrigento).

A gold Mycenaean brooch in the form of an octopus, Mycenae, mid 2nd millenium BCE. (Archaeological Museum, Mycenae)