But first on earth, as Vampyre sent, Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent; Then ghastly haunt thy native place, And suck the blood of all thy race;

—Byron, The Giaour

In the general belief, however, there was but one land of shades for all alike. The spirits, in form and feature, as they had been in life, wended their way through dark forests to the villages of the dead, subsisting on bark and rotten wood. On arriving, they sat all day in the crouching position of the sick, and, when night came, hunted the shades of animals, with the shades of bows and arrows, among the shades of trees and rocks; for all things, animate and inanimate, were alike immortal, and all passed together to the gloomy country of the dead.

—Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

—William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun