The Lemuralia or Lemuria was an annual event in the religion of ancient Rome, during which the Romans performed rites to exorcise any malevolent and fearful ghosts of the restless dead from their homes.
Lemuria's name and origin myth, according to Ovid, derives from a supposed Remuria[2] instituted by Romulus to appease the angry spirit of his murdered twin, Remus.
[4] Toynbee defines lemures as ordinary di Manes, made harmful and spiteful to the living because "kinless and neglected" in death and after it, having no rites or memorial, free to leave their dead body but unable to enter the underworld or afterlife.
[5][6] Dolansky believes that the Lemuralia was meant to help those family members who had died in circumstances that prevented or delayed their admission to the afterlife; those who had died "before their time," in their childhood or youth, through disease, war, assault or misadventure, or in circumstances that prevented their being given proper burial or funeral rites.
He chants "I send these; with these beans I redeem me and mine" (Haec ego mitto; his redimo meque meosque fabis) nine times; then the rest of the household clashes bronze pots while repeating, "Ghosts of my fathers and ancestors, be gone!"