ABSTRACT
This chapter examines ghost-related events in urban spaces, considering how authors used the urban setting to induce feelings of dread and anxiety both within the characters in the story and within the audience outside the story’s setting. Stories of hauntings from Plautus, Pliny, and Phlegon of Tralles, in addition to tales of haunted baths and hippodromes, indicate that urban settings used the few marginal areas available (such as courtyards) to evoke a sense of foreboding. Thus, although hauntings occurred in cities less frequently than in the suburbs or countryside, they still indicate a preference for the “liminal.”
