Lafcadio Hearn: He Touches A Ghost

He Touches A Ghost
There are good guys and bad guys in the world. People love to stay with a kind person since kind people are sincere and care about others. But people are not willing to be close to bad guys because they always bully others. Similarly, there are good ghosts and bad ghosts. People don’t hate good ghosts because they don’t hurt people. They are willing to know and stay with good ghosts. On the contrary, evil ghosts are scary. Those vile ghosts’ presence always means misfortune since they often hurt others without thoughts (thinking) and make others’ lives suffer. Lafcadio Hearn in “Nightmare-Touch” states that being touched by ghost is the common fear of people. However, a ghost’s touch is not the common fear of people. What
However, sometimes they want to touch a good ghost. In the story, Yang knows that Locket is a ghost before seeing her. When Yang sees Locket, he is attracted by the ghost’s beauty. They talk a lot and Yang is interested in her. Locket is not horrible to Yang because she doesn’t want to hurt him at all. When Yang wants to have sexual relationship with Locket, Locket refuses and tells him “If we were to make love it would be an inauspicious union. It would only bring you an early death, and I could not bear to cause you harm” (Pu 281). If Locket is an evil, she won’t care whether Yang would get hurt or not and probably will torture Yang with different kinds of methods due to an evil ghost’s nature. The young man still touches Locket’s body: “Yang took her feet in his hands and caressed them” (Pu 282). Instead of feeling scary, Yang is eager to touch Locket. And they spend the whole night together chatting, reading, and playing instrument. If being touched were the common fear of ghosts, Yang would not touch Locket and stay with her for the whole night. All for these explains that good ghosts are not threatening. They are just like kind people. Therefore, it’s not fearful to be touched by good