# Quote — Irving Finkel, The First Ghosts

> ... I have still never seen a ghost for myself, even in the shadier vaults of the British Museum, where the ancient dead can lie peacefully, and many of the living have witnessed strange things. Sometimes I have crouched immobile in the evening darkness at the top level of our Victorian Arched Room library, like a wildlife photographer at a waterhole, waiting in silence for a spectral figure who has, they say, more than once been observed. For me, though, no shady visitor.

- Author: [Irving Finkel](https://www.leafyquotes.com/irving-finkel.md)
- Book: [The First Ghosts](https://www.leafyquotes.com/irving-finkel/the-first-ghosts.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Irving_Finkel#The_First_Ghosts_(2021)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/irving-finkel/the-first-ghosts/i-have-still

## More from this book

> In contrast to mourning and burial, it is the deep-seated conception that some part of a person does not vanish forever that separates us absolutely from the whole animal kingdom. No gorilla or bald-headed eagle ever had an inkling of their inner self finishing up somewhere once the proud body had collapsed into chemicals. It is only the early human mind that grew to strive against the prospect of the final annihilation of self, a hallmark rebellion that became hard-wired into, and always an essential element of, human nature. It is the incalculable antiquity of the first stirrings towards post-mortem existence that explains the enduring and universal belief in ghosts. Ghosts have waited in the wings from the beginning and have fluttered persistently as part of human cultural, religious or philosophical baggage ever since. Practically speaking, as a result, they are inexpungible.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/irving-finkel/the-first-ghosts/in-contrast-to-mourning.md)