Case file · Haunting
The phantom battle heard nightly at Marathon
Pausanias (1.32.4), around AD 160, wrote that every night at Marathon one could hear horses neighing and men fighting, 650 years after the battle.
160 CE · 38.13, 23.97 · status: legend
The account
He added that those who went deliberately to watch came to harm, while anyone who heard it by chance was not troubled by the spirits. The locals worshipped the dead of Marathon as heroes. It is one of the earliest recorded examples of a 'replay' haunting of a battlefield.
The sceptical view
Pausanias reports local belief, not his own experience; wind over the marsh and the burial mounds may have fed the tradition.