But it is through the sense of touch that the worst form of haunting comes. Seeing a supernatural visitant is terrible, hearing him is direful, smelling him is loathsome, but having him touch you is the climax of horror. This element comes in much in recent stories. The earlier ghosts seemed to be more reserved, to know their spectral place better, were not so ready to presume on unwelcome familiarities as those in later fiction, but spooks have doubtless followed the fashion of mortals in this easy, relaxed age and have become a shade too free in their manners. Of course, one remembers the crushing specter in Otranto castle that flattened the hapless youth out so effectually, and there are other instances less striking. But as a general thing the Gothic ghost was content to stand at a distance and hurl curses. Fortunately for our ancestors’ nerves, he did not incline much to the laying on of hands. Modern ghosts, however, have not been taught to restrain their impulses and they venture on liberties that Radcliffian romance would have disapproved of.
The Damned Thing gives an example of muscular supernaturalism, for the mysterious being kills a dog in a stiff fight, then later slays the master after a terrible struggle in which the man is disfigured beyond words to describe. O’Brien shows a terrible being of abnormal power that is tied only after a tremendous effort, and which fights violently to free itself. And the Thing in the upper berth had an awesome strength.
It was something ghostly, horrible, beyond words, and it moved in my grasp. It was like the body of a man long dead and yet it moved, and had the strength of ten men living, but I gripped it with all my might, the slippery, oozy, horrible thing. I wrestled with the dead thing; it thrust itself upon me and nearly broke my arms; it wound its corpselike arms around my neck, the living death, and overpowered me, so that at the last I cried aloud and fell and left my hold.
As I fell the thing sprang across me and seemed to throw itself upon the captain. When I last saw him on his feet his face was white and his lips set. It seemed to me that he struck a violent blow at the dead being, and then, he, too, fell forward on his face.
The ghostly touch is frequently described, not only in fiction but in reports of the Psychical Society as well, as being of supernatural chill or of burning heat. Afterwards[111] brings in the icy touch of the spirit hand. In certain cases the ghost touch leaves a burn or mark that never goes away.
Yet the touch of horror is not the only one introduced in fiction of the supernatural. There are tender and loving touches as well, expressing yearning love and a longing to communicate with the living. What could be more beautiful than the incident in They? “I felt my relaxed hand taken and turned softly between the soft hands of a child. The little brushing kiss fell in the center of my palm—as gift on which the fingers were once expected to close—a fragment of a mute code devised very long ago.” And in a similar story,[112] the woman says, “I will swear to my dying day that two little hands stole and rested—for a moment only—in mine!” Wilkie Collins speaks of his story, The Ghost’s Touch, as follows:
The course of this narrative leads the reader on new and strange ground. It describes the return of a disembodied spirit to earth—not occurring in the obscurity of midnight but in the searching light of day; neither seen as a vision nor heard as a voice—revealing itself to mortal knowledge through the sense that is least easily self-deceived, the sense that feels.
The widow feels the clasp of her husband’s hands, not only psychically but physically, and when she asks for a further sign, the ghost kisses her unmistakably on the lips. Another widow[113] feels her hand clasped by the hand of her husband who has mysteriously disappeared after having presumably absconded with trust funds—and knows that he is dead and seeking to give her some message. His hand gently leads her to the edge of the cliff where he has fallen over and been killed, so that she may know the truth. The lover in Poe’s Eleonora feels a “spiritual kiss” from the lips of his beloved. The ghost touch is an impressive motif of strength in recent fiction and marks an advance over the earlier forms, showing an access of imaginative power and psychological analysis.
Another point of contrast between the modern and the older ghosts is in the greater freedom enjoyed by those of to-day. The ghosts of our ancestors were weak and helpless creatures in the main and the Gothic specter was tyrannized over to such an extent that he hardly dared call his shade his own. The spook of to-day has acquired a latchkey and asserted his independence. He may have a local habitation but he isn’t obliged to stay there. Now-a-days even the spectral women are setting up to be feminists and have privileges that would have caused the Gothic wraiths to swoon with horror. Ghosts are not so sensitive to the barometer now as they used to be, nor do they have such an active influence over the weather as did the Gothic phantoms. They do not need a tempest for their materialization nor a supernatural play of lightning for their wild threats, and comparatively few storms occur in later fiction. Yet there is certainly no lessening of the ghostly thrill in consequence.