Why do ghosts always appear wrapped in a white shroud? It is such an old image that we rarely stop to ask where it comes from.
In the Middle Ages, the dead were depicted wrapped in a shroud. The Lisle Psalter contains an early example of that image in The Three Living and The Three Dead.
For centuries in Europe, the dead were buried wrapped in a white shroud. Consequently, in England from the 15th to the 18th centuries, it was asserted that ghosts appeared this way, wrapped in cloth.
Already in the sixteenth century there were thieves who draped themselves in a sheet to pose as spirits and scare people.
According to a historical explanation, in the 19th century theater helped popularize the image of ghosts in white shrouds. The final step arrived in the early 20th century. On Halloween, American children improvised costumes from sheets with holes cut for the eyes.
Sources
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Shane McCorristine. 2024. “Comment: Why ghosts wear clothes or white sheets”, Newcastle University Press Office. URL: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2024/10/commentghosts/ (reposted from The Conversation).
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Jean-Claude Schmitt. 1999. Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society. The University of Chicago Press.
