One feature that often surfaces today is the truly ancient idea that ghosts return to the spot where once they lived, or where they had come to a premature end. They still are, it seems, unhappy or unable to rest, tied somehow to the ‘scene of the crime’ in an effort to assuage malaise or seek closure on injustice. This broad ‘explanation’ recurs so regularly in such widely differing contexts that it could be seen as a central component of the whole modern ghost tradition. What fascinates me is the overlap with the ancient Babylonian view at the beginning of it all.
