Ancient, or at least pre-modern, apparition cases?

Do you believe in ghosts? Some ancient philosophers did.

by "Gravedigger"

Pliny the Younger (61–112 AD), a lawyer, author and magistrate of Ancient Rome, had also given accounts of ghosts in his letters:

“What particularly inclines me to give credit to their existence is a story which I heard of Curtius Rufus. When he was in low circumstances, and unknown in the world, he attended the newly made governor of Africa into that province. One afternoon as he was walking in the public portico he was extremely daunted with the figure of a woman which appeared to him, of a size and beauty more than human. She told him she was the tutelar Genius that presided over Africa, and was come to inform him of the future events of his life: that he should go back to Rome, where he should hold office, and return to that province invested with the proconsular dignity, and there should die. Every circumstance of this prophecy was actually accomplished…”

I don't know if we should consider place-spirits (genius loci) as ghosts...

Pliny the Younger, in his letters, also went on to give one of the earliest accounts of a haunted house that involved Athenodorus Cananites (74 BC – 7 AD):

“It happened that Athenodorus, the philosopher, came to Athens at this time, and reading the bill [of the house] ascertained the price. The extraordinary cheapness raised his suspicion; nevertheless, when he heard the whole story, he was so far from being discouraged, that he was more strongly inclined to hire it, and, in short, actually did so. When it grew towards evening, he ordered a couch to be prepared for him in the fore part of the house, and after calling for a light, together with his pen and tablets, he directed all his people to retire within. But that his mind might not, for want of employment, be open to the vain terrors of imaginary noises and apparitions, he applied himself to writing with all his faculties. The first part of the night passed with usual silence. Then began the clanking of iron fetters; however, he neither lifted up his eyes, nor laid down his pen, but closed his ears by concentrating his attention. The noise increased and advanced nearer, till it seemed at the door, and at last in the chamber. He looked round and saw the apparition exactly as it had been described to him: it stood before him, beckoning with the finger. Athenodorus made a sign with his hand that it should wait a little, and bent again to his writing, but the ghost rattling its chains over his head as he wrote, he looked round and saw it beckoning as before. Upon this he immediately took up his lamp and followed it. The ghost slowly stalked along, as if encumbered with its chains; and having turned into the courtyard of the house, suddenly vanished. Athenodorus being thus deserted, marked the spot with a handful of grass and leaves. The next day he went to the magistrates, and advised them to order that spot to be dug up. There they found bones commingled and intertwined with chains; for the body had mouldered away by long lying in the ground, leaving them bare, and corroded by the fetters. The bones were collected, and buried at the public expense; and after the ghost was thus duly laid the house was haunted no more.”

This recalls the drop in case of mediumship in Iceland, where the restless spirit wants its leg bone...