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The popular and general conception of the ghost's locomotion has it that he (sic) floats along and that there are no visible lower extremeties; for that matter, there is no clear delineation of most parts of the body.
Freud (1909) felt that ghosts in dreams represented the parents. “Robbers, burglars and ghosts, of whom some people feel frightened before going to bed, and who sometimes pursue their victims after they are asleep, all originate from one and the same class of infantile reminiscence. They are the nocturnal visitors who rouse children and take them up to prevent their wetting their beds, or who lift the bedclothes to make sure where they have put their hands in their sleep. Analyses of some of these anxiety dreams have made it possible for me to identify these nocturnal visitors more precisely. In every case the robbers stood for the sleeper's father, whereas the ghosts corresponded to female figures in white night-gowns” (p. 104). One might add that the night feeding brings parents to the bedroom or perhaps the child's own crying does so. Other contributions to children's concepts of ghosts are rather limited and in the main not contributory to this communication (Hawkey, M. Lawry 1947; Bose, U. 1948).
If one watches the growing child's viewing of others, one sees that it is generally fixated on the face. , in describing the infant's early perception of others, especially in relation to the smiling response, wrote: “Beginning with the second month of life, the human face becomes a privileged visual percept preferred to all other ‘things’ of the infant's environment” (p. 86). It isn't until much later in development that the child's perception encompasses other parts of the body. It is certainly not until a much later stage that the child becomes, aware of the lower extremeties and their role in locomotion. This awareness may be coeval with