The Original Ghost Stories: The Ekimmu of Ancient Sumer

Did you know that ghost stories predated 4000 BC? Legends of the ekimmu, or evil phantoms, circulated among the farming villages of the ancient Sumarians as they developed what may have been the world's first civilized society.

It is thought that these early people migrated from the East, either India or Iran. They settled in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now southern Iraq. They invented the wheel and developed a written language, Sumerian cuneiform. Using this early form of writing, they recorded their spiritual beliefs for posterity on clay tablets.

The Sumarians had no heaven in their religion. All departed souls went to the Underworld.

Ekimmus were evil ghosts who was denied entrance to the Underworld and were doomed to wander the earth for eternity. They were referred to as evil gusts of wind.

Ekimmu is translated as "that which is snatched away". A deceased person could become an ekimmu by:

* dying a violent death, such as being murdered, starved to death, drowning or killed in battle

* dying in an untimely manner, such as when pregnant, or before love had been fulfilled

* dying from exposure, as on the desert, and being left unburied

* lacking the proper funeral rites at the graveside

* dying without any surviving family, or anyone to care about them

Ekimmus were hostile to the living. They were believed to be able to cause disease and to inspire criminal behavior. They could suck the breath out of children and those who were sleeping.

They could attach themselves to a living person, whether or not they had known them in life, and they were difficult to exorcise. Sometimes they could be appeased by a holding a sumptuous funeral meal.

The banshees of Ireland may be legendary descendants of the ekimmus who were said to howl in the night outside a home where someone would soon die.

They have also been compared to psychic vampires. Although they did not suck blood, the ekimmus were said to be able to draw the life force from plants, animals and humans by tapping into their auras.

The belief in ekimmus was later shared by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Inuit and Eskimo tribes.

Today, when belief in the ekimmus survives, they are said to be found among the homeless, living in sewers or steam tunnels or dwelling in abandoned buildings in decaying city cores.

In contemporary society, those who believe in ghosts and evil spirits are often ridiculed by the suave and sophisticated. However, ponder this: any abstraction which has persisted for more than 4,000 years in the minds of humans, even though actual proof of its existence is lacking, probably possesses some basis in fact. Wouldn't you agree?

"From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggetty beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us."
Scottish prayer