But first
the ghost of Elpenor, my companion, came toward me.
He’d not been buried under the wide ways of earth,
not yet, we’d left his body in Circe’s house,
unwept, unburied – this other labor pressed us.
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 11, lines 56-60. The first ghost to approach Odysseus in the underworld is that of Elpenor, the crew member who died before Odysseus departed Circe’s island. We learn that Elpenor was not accorded the honor of a proper buriel, something very important in the eyes of both mortals and gods.