Nightmare-Touch
I
WHAT is the fear of ghosts among those who believe in ghosts?
All fear is the result of experience,—experience of the individual or of the race,—experience either of the present life or of lives forgotten. Even the fear of the unknown can have no other origin. And the fear of ghosts must be a product of past pain.
Probably the fear of ghosts, as well as the belief in them, had its beginning in dreams. It is a peculiar fear. No other fear is so intense; yet none is so vague. Feelings thus voluminous and dim are super-individual mostly,—feelings inherited,—feelings made within us by the experience of the dead.
What experience?
Nowhere do I remember reading a plain statement of the reason why ghosts are feared. Ask any ten intelligent persons of your acquaintance, who remember having once been afraid of ghosts, to tell you exactly why they were afraid,—to define the fancy behind the fear;—and I doubt whether even one will be able to answer the question. The literature of folk-lore—oral and written—throws no clear light upon the subject. We find, indeed, various legends of men torn asunder by phantoms; but such gross imaginings could not explain the peculiar quality of ghostly fear. It is not a fear of bodily violence. It is not even a reasoning fear,—not a fear that can readily explain itself,—which would not be the case if it were founded upon definite ideas of physical danger. Furthermore, although primitive ghosts may have been imagined as capable of tearing and devouring, the common idea of a ghost is certainly that of a being intangible and imponderable.[118]
[118] ] I may remark here that in many old Japanese legends and ballads, ghosts are represented as having power to pull off people's heads. But so far as the origin of the fear of ghosts is concerned, such stories explain nothing,—since the experiences that evolved the fear must have been real, not imaginary, experiences.
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 imagined power to touch. Only to touch, remember!—not to wound or to kill.