A childhood belief about ghosts

When I was very small, my parents had cable, and I turned on the T. V. one time just to catch the part in Poltergeist where Carrie-Anne reaches up to the T. V. and she is grabbed and pulled into the aternate universe. My mother saw what I was watching, and she ran to turn off the T. V. I asked her "Mommy, what was that hand doing?" and she said, "it was a friendly ghost wanting to say hello!" Until I was in college, I thought Poltergeist was a movie about friendly ghosts!