Greek mythology

The Greeks believed that when you die you enter the underworld. Most Greeks believed that everybody had a spirit, which lived on after your body died, and they thought of this spirit as being rather like our ghosts, sort of transparent, but looking like the living person otherwise. They thought that you had to do certain ceremonies when somebody died, in order to let their spirit go to the land of the dead. If you do not perform these ceremonies, their spirit would continue to hang around the land of the living. People had to be buried that was the most important thing. The land of the dead is a dark, damp, and cold. All the people who died went there even if you were a king or a peasant. Hades ruled over the land of the dead. (http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Underworld.html) (http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/deathafterlife/)