A wraith is the spectral appearance of someone still alive, usually considered to be a sign of that person’s imminent death.[1] To see one’s own wraith, known as a fetch
Apparition in the form of a double of a living person, often a portent of death., is regarded as a sure sign of death.[2] The tradition appears to have developed from the idea that a person’s soul is an exact copy of that person’s physical form, and it leaves the body when death is imminent.[3]
It was once widely believed that, usually on St Mark’s EveDay before the Feast Day of St Mark, 25 April, when watchers could see the wraiths of those destined to die during the year. but sometimes at All Souls or Midsummer Night, anyone who watched in the church porch
Vestibule before the main entrance to a Christian church, less sacred than the church proper. from midnight until one o’clock would see the wraiths of those destined to die that year entering the church, usually in the order of their deaths.[2]
Perhaps the best-known example of a wraith is that of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), who reportedly saw his own wraith as he was boarding a boat to take him across the Bay of Spezia in Italy to meet Leigh Hunt and Byron, to make arrangements for a new journal, The Liberal. The boat was hit by a storm on the return trip, and Shelley was drowned.[3][4]
