Preschool Children's Conception of Ghosts

This investigation attempts to clarify 3- and 4-year-old children's perceptions of ghosts and their relation to the hypothesis of the “floating ghost” as an early infantile remembrance. It appears to confirm the notion that young children's representation of ghosts results from an admixture of learned conscious ideas regarding ghosts and an ill-defined part which is based upon primitive unconscious ideas about the unknown stranger and the mysterious images of earlier nightly visits from mother and father.