Nightmare-Touch 237 



Now I venture to state boldly that the common 

 fear of ghosts is the fear of being touched by 

 ghosts, or, in other words, that the imagined 

 Supernatural is dreaded mainly because of its im- 

 agined power to touch. Only to touch, remem- 

 ber ! not to wound or to kill. 



But this dread of the touch would itself be 

 the result of experience, chiefly, I think, of 

 prenatal experience stored up in the individual 

 by inheritance, like the child's fear of darkness. 

 And who can ever have had the sensation of 

 being touched by ghosts? The answer is 

 simple: Everybody who has been seized by 

 phantoms in a dream. 



Elements of primeval fears fears older than 

 humanity doubtless enter into the child-terror 

 of darkness. But the more definite fear of ghosts 

 may very possibly be composed with inherited 

 results of dream-pain, ancestral experience of 

 nightmare. And the intuitive terror of super- 

 natural touch can thus be evolutionally ex- 

 plained. 



Let me now try to illustrate my theory by 

 relating some typical experiences. 



