Sura[30] the younger Pliny gives us what may be taken as
a prototype of all later haunted-house stories. At one time in Athens
there was a roomy old house where nobody could be induced to live. In
the dead of night the sound of clanking chains would be heard, distant
at first, proceeding doubtless from the garden behind or the inner court
of the house, then gradually drawing nearer and nearer, till at last
there appeared the figure of an old man with a long beard, thin and
emaciated, with chains on his hands and feet. The house was finally
abandoned, and advertised to be let or sold at an absurdly low price.
The philosopher Athenodorus read the notice on his arrival in Athens,
but the smallness of the sum asked aroused his suspicions. However, as
soon as he heard the story he took the house. He had his bed placed in
the front court, close to the main door, dismissed his slaves, and
prepared to pass the night there, reading and writing, in order to
prevent his thoughts from wandering to the ghost. He worked on for some
time without anything happening; but at last the clanking of chains was
heard in the distance. Athenodorus did not raise his eyes or stop his
work, but kept his attention fixed and listened. The sounds gradually
drew nearer, and finally entered the room where he was sitting. Then he
turned round and saw the apparition. It beckoned him to follow, but he
signed to it to wait and went on with his work. Not till it came and
clanked its chains over his very head would he take up a lamp and follow
it. The figure moved slowly forward, seemingly weighed down with its
heavy chains, until it reached an open space in the courtyard. There it
vanished. Athenodorus marked the spot with leaves and grass, and on the
next day the ground was dug up in the presence of a magistrate, when the
skeleton of a man with some rusty chains was discovered. The remains
were buried with all ceremony, and the apparition was no more seen.

Lucian tells the same story in the _Philopseudus_, with some ridiculous
additions, thoroughly in keeping with the surroundings.

An almost exactly similar story has been preserved by Robert Wodrow, the
indefatigable collector, in a notebook which he appears to have intended
to be the foundation of a scientific collection of marvellous tales.
Wodrow died early in the eighteenth century. Gilbert Rule, the founder
and first Principal of Edinburgh University, once reached a desolate inn
in a lonely spot on