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In this paper I have described five kinds of posttraumatic imagery along with the types of hauntings and houndings which emanate from these vivid memories. The inquiry I have made is meant as a very preliminary effort. Certainly, if psychiatry and psychoanalysis become interested in these weird phenomena, more controlled studies, more specific research protocols, and more direct field work will be needed before we will be able fully to understand the "ununderstandable."
That spooky Sunday afternoon radio show which I used to adore (I can't begin to remember its name) provided a full explanation at the end of each episode. At the conclusion of this essay, I regret that I cannot give a correspondingly full naturalistic explanation for all the supernatural phenomena that psychic trauma sufferers have related to me. So instead, I will conclude with the beginnings of another ghost story. This tale is a true one. Its setting is exotic—much like that Sunday afternoon radio program I loved, as a matter of fact—and its wording is a bit slangy. But what comes through from this ghost story is a horror, to me far more hair-raising than any of the "Cujos," the "Omens" or the "Halloweens" that my young patients feel impelled to tell me about. I think that from what I have presented, it will be obvious what Margot M. endured in her last year of living in Rabat. I am confident that everyone can pick up the supernatural significances which her traumatically heightened perceptions brought to this grisly scene. Margot told me her "story" in a session 6 months after the traumatic occurrence she relates.