Wraiths

A wraith is the ghost of a person on the verge of death. According to lore the wraith appears as an exact likeness of it's human counterpart and commonly reveals itself to the friends and family of the person who is about to die.

If a person is unfortunate enough to see his or her own wraith, it is regarded as foretelling his or her own death within a fortnight. The tradition appears to have developed from the ancient belief that a person's soul is a precise duplicate of their physical form and that it escapes the body when death is imminent.

The most famous example happened to the poet Shelley who saw his own wraith as he was about to step on a boat which was to take him across the Bay of Spezia in Italy to the town of Livorno for a meeting with his old friend, Leigh Hunt. A storm hit the boat on the return journey and Shelley drowned, fulfilling the tradition of the wraith.