William Crookes (1832-1919) was a physicist, chemist and member of the Royal Society (which is the oldest national science institution in the world) who contributed a great deal to science. Crookes is credited with the discovery of Thallium, being the first to identify helium, inventing sunglasses as well as other contributions to chemistry and physics such as vacuum tubes and the Spinthariscope (i.e. device used to study nuclear radioactivity) (Gay, 1996). Crookes was also t

While reading Christopher Moreman’s Beyond the Threshold: Afterlife Beliefs and Experiences in World Religions I stumbled across the mention of “the earliest haunted house story in Greek or Roman Literature”.1 The story Moreman is referencing is a play entitled Mostellaria which was written between 200-194 B.C.E. This of course makes this haunted house story over 2,000 years old. As Moreman only briefly mentions the earliest haunted house story I had to check his reference se