That good night: gift or punishment?

[davem]

Originally Posted by obloquy

The Ringwraiths were not houseless fear. They could still interact with physical objects, and their physical garments still found a surface to drape over, so there's no reason to believe they were truly immaterial. I think they simply had badly perverted hroar made invisible by the same magic that allowed The One Ring to confer invisibility.

Except Tolkien calls them Ringwraiths, & a wraith is defined by Dictionary.com as:

1:An apparition of a living person that appears as a portent just before that person's death.
2:The ghost of a dead person.
3:Something shadowy and insubstantial.

Definition 3 is the problem. Tolkien knew very well what the word wraith meant. As to their ability to impact the physical, that is a problem, but not beyond another, 'magical' explanation.