Philinnion

Also called: Philinnion and Machates, the Bride of Amphipolis

Folklore and mythUndeadVariesAncient world

Philinnion is the best-preserved walking-corpse story from classical antiquity. Recorded by Hadrian's freedman Phlegon, it tells of a dead bride who rises physically from her family vault to spend three nights with a house guest. When she is discovered she collapses as a corpse, and the city, on a seer's advice, burns the body beyond its borders and purifies itself. The empty tomb and the civic cremation show that Greeks imagined the returning dead as bodies, and dealt with them accordingly.1

⚔️ Battle it

First recorded

150

Phlegon of Tralles, Book of Marvels, 2nd century AD; the story is set in the reign of Philip II of Macedon

Origin

Ancient Greek

Greece

What causes it

Never explained

She says only that her visit was permitted by divine will.

How you become one

A young woman of Amphipolis who died about six months after her wedding.

How it moves

Varies

Leaves her tomb at night in bodily form, eats, drinks and sleeps with a guest in her parents' house, and is gone by day.

Intelligence

Clever

Weak spots

being seen by her parents, at which she dies a second time
burning the body outside the city boundary
sacrifices to Hermes Chthonios and the Eumenides and purification of the temples