Grim Reaper (folklore)

The Grim Reaper is one of the many personified versions of Death, the being was heavily used during the medieval period and came to symbolise death as well as a fear of the unknown: today the Grim Reaper remains the most recognised death-deity of all time, although the entity is not a true deity - rather it is a symbolic creature.

History
The concept of Death as a personified being is timeless, being as old as humanity itself but the grim figure of a hooded skeleton carrying a scythe was not very evident until the medieval period - during a time where morality was seen as pivotal to society and fear of the unknown was high it was perhaps unsurprising that life's greatest mystery (death) would come to be vied in the medieval mind as frightening and ever-present: the ghostly phantom of Death became known in time as the Grim Reaper and although a neutral force was as feared in the past as it is today.

The Grim Reaper was seen as a collector of souls, the messenger of the dead and most important of all the guide that came to all mortals - it was not the Grim Reaper's place to judge souls, nor was it the entity's role to aid or hinder mortal affairs: put simply the Grim Reaper's task was to appear to the dying and guide them to their final destination where they would be judged accordingly by higher powers.

Although the Grim Reaper normally comes to those already dying it has been noted that on rare occassions the Grum Reaper has the power to kill someone, though the entity rarely (if ever) does this out of malice - due to the Grim Reaper appearing in a vaguely human form there are many tales in which the entity can be tricked or bribed into freeing a person (which is where the phrase "cheating death" likely came from).

For the most part however the Grim Reaper was seen as unable to be reasoned with and an inevitable part of being human - in biblical terms the Grim Reaper is considered one of the four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse and although an essential part of current existence shall ultimately be cast into the fiery lake alongside the minions of Satan, granting humanity true immortality as a result.

Danse Macabre
The "Dance Of Death" or "Danse Macabre" was a medieval allerogy on how death unites all people, regardless of age or social status - it was shown as a gruesome spectacle in which the Grim Reaper summons a host of dead spirits to dance along their graves: popular figures in this dance were a pope, emperor, king, youngster and laborer - chosen to remind the audience of the time that death was a truly universal concept and no man (or woman) was safe from its embrace, it was also used by the religious medieval people to highlight the foolishness of people who valued earthly possessions.

This medieval scene was also paralleled in a French superstition that stated that the Grim Reaper would rise every Halloween at a cemetery on the witching hour (midnight) - once there the entity would play a fiddle and summon the skeletons or ghosts of all the dead to dance until the rising sun forced them to retreat back to the grave: this legend was the inspiration for a musical piece also known as the "Danse Macabre".

In Popular Culture
The Grim Reaper is a stock character in popular culture - appearing in countless media ranging from television and radio to comic books and novels.