Excerpt from Stranger Than Fiction Being Tales From the Byways of Ghosts and Folk-Lore
"Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us passed the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too."
If we may judge by the assertion contained in the above quatrain, Omar Khayyam was no believer in ghosts. In which respect the Persian poet must have differed from the general opinion of his times. For until a very few centuries ago, it was only a small minority of those who considered themselves wise above their fellows, who ventured to deny the possibility of the spirit's return to earth. Even amongst the Romans during the Antonine Age (A.D. 98-180), when scepticism on religious matters had become almost universal among the learned, and the worship of the gods had sunk to mere outward observance of ceremony, Gibbon says, "I do not pretend to assert that in this irreligious age, the natural terrors of superstitions, dreams, omens, apparitions, &c., had lost their efficacy."
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