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Ghostly haircuts

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Not only Pliny the younger believed in ghosts and in other paranormal phenomena, but he had them inside his own home. Here it is what one of his friends tells us:
“ I believe in this story and this time I can assure everybody that every part of it is true. I have a quite cultured freeman, who had an younger brother who slept with him. This man had the impression to see a person who, sitting on his bed, was nearing a razor to his head and straight shaved the top of his cranium. At day light they found him with the top of his head sheared and the hairs on the floor.
Some time elapsed and again another fact validated the previous one. A boy slept in the “pedagogium”: Two men in white tunics entered through the windows (so he tells us) and, while he was laying in his bed, they sheared his hairs. Then they came back to where they had come. For some time nothing new happened apart that if Domitianus, under whom these fact happened, hadn’t died, I would have been indicted. In fact a denounce against me, given to him by Caro, was found in his drawer. From this we can surmise that, as it is the custom for culprits to let their hair grow long, the shaving of my servant’s hairs was a sign that I had a lucky escape.


Bibliografia
E. NARDI, Case “infestate da spiriti” e diritto romano e moderno, Milano 1960 pp. 93-99
PLINIO IL GIOVANE, 7. 27. § 12 - 16