The grave's a fine and private place...

This morning we have a story in from the lovely country of Thailand, where a woman from Phuket wants someone to get rid of ghosts who insist on having sex in her house.

46-year-old Onanong Waltham made a public appeal for help at the Phuket Press Club last week.  Accompanied by her housemate, Sujitraporn Tephabutra, Ms. Waltham told the story of what she's been enduring from her horny spectral neighbors.

"I keep hearing moaning sounds in my house.  It sounds like people making love," she said.  "Also, late at night, my phone rings and I answer it, but all I hear is a man’s voice saying he wants to make love to me. When I call back the number, I get some guy in Rayong province."

Understandably perturbed by all of this, Ms. Waltham filed a complaint with the Chalong Police.  "They came to my house and even heard the same noises, but they couldn’t find where the sounds were coming from.  I don't know what to do."

Not knowing what to do didn't stop her from seeking out help from local woo-woos, however.  "I have even seen a mor doo [a local soothsayer] and a spirit medium for advice, but nothing seems to have helped. I now think that someone is using black magic on me," she said.  "If anyone thinks they can make the noises stop, please contact the Press Club at 076-244 047 or email phuketreporter@gmail.com."

Well, I must say that I've heard a lot of weird stories, but this is a new one.  While I've heard many claims of ghostly voices, and even listened to a few recordings alleged to be spectral speech (for the record, none of which convinced me), I've never heard of anyone complaining of ghosts making sex noises.  So I decided to Google "ghosts having sex" to see if I could find any other instances of phantoms fooling around.

This may have been a mistake.

Of course there are other instances of this.  Lots of them.  You'd think, after years of writing this blog, that I'd have figured out that if you come up with a ridiculous idea, so ridiculous that you think, "No one could possibly believe this," there will not only be people who believe it fervently, there will be a Facebook page devoted to it.  There will be a Wikipedia page on the topic.  There will be an entirely serious article by a "spiritual intuitive" that explores the question of why ghosts still, apparently, need to get off every once in a while.  There will be an interview with an Ohio woman who claims that not only has she seen ghosts having sex, she has the photographs to prove it.  There will be a pop star who will one-up that by saying that she has actually had sex with a ghost herself.  ("I don't know his name," she said.)  There will be a how-to page if you'd like to find out how to summon a ghost to have sex with.

All of this leaves me wanting to weep softly and bang my head on my desk.

I mean, really.  There's nothing whatsoever wrong with enjoying a nice roll in the hay.  I'm hardly a prude, or anything.  And if you believe in the afterlife, well, I guess there's also nothing wrong with some speculation regarding whether that particular part of life will continue once you've shuffled off this mortal coil.  But I have the feeling that for some of these folks, this speculation has crossed the line from idle curiosity to a mild mental illness.

The 17th century English poet Andrew Marvell wrote a lovely poem called "To His Coy Mistress," which was summed up by a friend of mine as (pardon the obscenity) "Life's short, let's fuck."  (It really is a beautiful poem, despite its being one long plea for a hot hook-up.)  In it, he penned the lines, "The grave's a fine and private place/ But none, I think, do there embrace."  I guess Marvell might have reconsidered his position had he met some of the people involved in the links I posted above.  If you're horny, maybe there's no rush.

Maybe there's a lot of time.  Maybe an eternity.

Or maybe these people are just loons.  I know that's my vote.

Crazy clinics, sexy psychics, and frisky ghosts

Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, we're keeping our eyes on three developing stories.

First, from Whanganui, New Zealand, we have word that a clinic at a local hospital has been closed because it has been connected with witchcraft and wizardry.  [Source]

This summer, Whanganui Hospital started a "natural therapy clinic" where doctors and practitioners of "alternative medicine" would treat sick people not with nasty old medicines, but with such dubious practices as "energy cleansing" and "color therapy."  And if the bad example of the Christian Scientists wasn't sufficient to demonstrate its efficacy, the clinic also offered "Christian prayer" as a healing modality.

The story got even weirder when one of the senior doctors involved in the project made a public statement that he was "affiliated with the Whanganui School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."  Hospital chief executive Julie Patterson said that this statement was "confusing to the public" and resulted in the clinic being closed. 

I'm not sure I see what is "confusing" here, unless it's why any hospital with a sane governing board would think it was a good idea to host a clinic whose treatment protocols rely solely on the placebo effect.  The contention that the oversight of the hospital might be a little questionable was given ample support by Clive Solomon, general surgeon and member of Whanganui District Health Board, who said, "When a hospital gives credibility to something like color therapy, that becomes a problem," but then followed it up by saying that he was "not anti these holistic treatments at all."

The whole thing makes me wonder if now we might know where this clip was filmed.  (Just watch it, you won't regret it.)

It also makes me determined not to get sick if I ever visit Whanganui.


A different kind of therapy is the bailiwick of "Sallie," who bills herself as the "world's only sex psychic."  [Source]

Sallie was interviewed on Buzzfeed, where she describes her epiphany that if psychic stuff sells, and sex sells, then psychic sex would sell even better:

This whole thing started because I had medical bills and needed an alternative way of making money. The first two things that came to mind were phone psychic and phone sex. So, I enrolled in a psychic class where I learned about auras and mediumship and communicating with past lives. After the course I started working a mainstream psychic line doing regular readings for $1.88 a minute. And then at night, I also started doing phone sex for the same cost. It wasn’t long before I combined the two.

It's a little hard to imagine anyone considering career options and narrowing it down to those two in the first round.  Be that as it may, Sallie found herself uniquely qualified, because of her sensitivity to "sexual energy" and her ability to beam said energy to her clients' "chakras:"

 I start each sex psychic reading reading by grounding the space and tuning my chakras (a "chakra" is a place in the body that collects energy). I’ll have my eyes closed with a notebook sitting next to me so I can jot down the images and fragments that come from the spirit realm...  I also offer psychic persuasion, which means I send psychic energy to the person you sexually desire...  I (send) sexual energy and energy to the heart chakra.

Which I guess would be easier than having to come up with a good pick-up line.

The funny thing is if you go to Sallie's website, you very quickly get the impression that she's a little disdainful of traditional psychic readers.  "A sex psychic reading," she says on her home page, "is to other psychic readings as free speech is to censorship."  Which brings up something that I'd never considered, which is rivalries and feuds between woo-woos.  I'd always sort of had the impression that all varieties of woo-woo pretty much got along.  It never occurred to me that one woo-woo might be scornful of another woo-woo's approach to magic.  I see now that I was being simpleminded, although I am reminded of the South African saying, "There are forty kinds of lunacy, but only one kind of good sense."

In any case, Sallie now makes it clear that her days of phone sex are over.  She has now clearly identified as a sex psychic only, and any people who are just looking to get off are directed to "Niteflirt," a phone sex line.  "Sallie's Sexual Emergency Hotline," should you need to talk to her immediately, will cost you $3.88 per minute.  Which I suppose is pretty cheap, considering how expensive a chakra tune-up is these days.


Of course, there's no possibility of playing the sex angle for money in pop singer Ke$ha's recent claim that her new song "Supernatural" was inspired by her having sex with a ghost.  [Source]

"I had a couple of experiences with the supernatural," the singer recently told Ryan Seacrest in an interview.  "I don't know his name! He was a ghost.  I'm very open to it."

Notwithstanding that this isn't what most people mean by getting in touch with the spirit world, psychic Eric Olsen of America's Most Haunted says this claim is not unprecedented.

"There is a tradition of entities known as 'succubus' and 'incubus,' which are malevolent spirits and their whole modus operandi is to seduce human victims and, in the process of consummating, steal or possess the victim's soul," Olsen told reporters for The Huffington Post, but cautioned that "There is a question as to what kind of visitation you can have while you're asleep."  Ke$ha's amorous ghost friend, Olsen said, might have just been a vivid dream.  "Unless you can observe them, you can't really differentiate between a vivid dream and an actual encounter."

Right-o.  Because that's a scientifically credible protocol.

Of course, that the whole thing is a publicity stunt would be immediately obvious to anyone with more than twelve working brain cells.  But on the off chance that Ke$ha is really disturbed by having these, um, close encounters, maybe she should give Sallie the Sex Psychic a call.  Especially given that now she can't check into Whanganui Hospital for an "energy cleansing."