Looking for LTR with a guy who is sexy, handsome, athletic, and dead

A loyal reader sent me an email yesterday that said, "Dude.  You think it's weird that there are people who want to get hot & heavy with Bigfoot.  Check this out."

The reference, of course, was last week's post about Bigfoot erotica, which, tolerant guy though I am, left me feeling a little incredulous.  So as you might imagine, I could barely wait to click on the link, which brought me to an article by Paul Seaburn over at Mysterious Universe...

... about a woman who is trying to have a baby with a ghost.

I am not making this up, although she clearly is.  I mean, no one would be happier than me to find out we get to have sex in the afterlife, but realistically speaking it seems pretty unlikely.  If there's an afterlife at all, and at the moment I'm even a little dubious about that.

The woman's name is Amethyst Realm (I'm still not making this up), and she lives in Bristol, England.  Last year she apparently gave up trying to hook up with flesh-and-blood guys, and put an ad on OKCupid, specifying her preference for a lover as "deceased."  At least that's what I'm assuming she did, because last year she claims she had sex with twenty different ghostly men.

The first time kind of caught her by surprise.  After ditching her previous (live) boyfriend for being away too much, Amethyst Realm decided to go for a long walk.  "One day, while I was walking through the bush, enjoying nature, I suddenly felt this incredible energy," she says.  "I knew a lover had arrived."

What happened then is what any of us would do, provided we had a screw loose; she got naked right there in the underbrush and did the horizontal tango with her invisible friend.  She had repeated hookups with this particular ghost -- and then did some comparison shopping.  I guess there's no chance of catching an STD from a ghost since they're already dead, so if spectral sex rings her bell, more power to her.

But then she decided it was so good that she had to take the next step -- namely, getting pregnant.

"It’s pretty serious," Amethyst Realm says.  "In fact, we’ve even been thinking about having a ghost baby.  I know that sounds crazy but I’ve been looking into it and I don’t think it’s totally out of the question."

It should be a relief, I guess, that at least she knows it sounds crazy.

This does bring up some questions, however.

1. Is the baby going to be half dead?  If so, which half?
2. What happens if Amethyst Realm and her lover argue after the baby's born, and he wants split custody?
3. Would it work the other way -- for a live guy to impregnate a female ghost?
4. If you can get pregnant from ghostly sex, why didn't she get pregnant any of the other dozens of times she did it?  Did she make her lover stop at the Rite-Aid and pick up some condoms beforehand?  If so, you have to wonder what the counter clerk thought about selling birth control to a ghost.  Although honestly, I guess it's no more awkward than selling it to embarrassed teenage boys.
5. Why am I spending my time wondering about all of this?

Of course, it bears mention that the idea isn't new.  The tradition of incubi and succubi goes back to the Middle Ages -- the former are male demons who take advantage of sleeping women (the name comes from the Latin verb incubare, "to lie on top of"), and the latter female demons who do the same to sleeping men (from succubare, "to lie underneath").  (Being visited by a succubus was one explanation given to young male adults getting wet dreams, when the actual explanation is that young male adults are so perpetually horny that they can go from zero to orgasm in ten seconds flat even when they are technically unconscious.)

Incubus by Charles Walker (1870) [Image is in the Public Domain]

So Amethyst Realm didn't come up with the concept, but there's no doubt that she's enjoying it.  Which, I suppose, puts it into the "If It Makes You Happy" department.

However, I hope this is the last time I get sent a link about people having paranormal sexual experiences.  I guess chacun à son goût and all that sorta stuff, but myself, I prefer that my lovers are (1) human, and (2) alive.  If that makes me narrow-minded, I guess that's the way it is.

Oh, one more thing.  Amethyst Realm might want to consider adopting a different name if she's serious about finding a nice ghost to settle down with, because her current one sounds like one of the worlds from Super Mario Brothers.  If I was a ghost looking for a LTR, I don't think I could take someone named "Amethyst Realm" seriously, however determined she was to get into my, um, shroud.

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I picked this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation because of the devastating, and record-breaking, fires currently sweeping across the American west.  Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers is one of the most cogent arguments I've ever seen for the reality of climate change and what it might ultimately mean for the long-term habitability of planet Earth.  Flannery analyzes all the evidence available, building what would be an airtight case -- if it weren't for the fact that the economic implications have mobilized the corporate world to mount a disinformation campaign that, so far, seems to be working.  It's an eye-opening -- and essential -- read.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Incubi, hoaxes, and limelight

A long-time reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link yesterday to a story from Wales, in which we find out about a family who is allegedly being terrorized by demons and poltergeists.

The bare bones of the story, which won't take long to tell because it pretty closely resembles most such claims, is that Keiron and Tracey Fry of New Tredegar, near Caerphilly, Wales, have been visited by spirits who are making their lives miserable.  Jon Dean, author of an article about the haunting that appeared in Wales Online last week, writes:

Keiron and Tracey Fry say they have been terrorised by the poltergeist every night for months, in scenes reminiscent of supernatural chiller Paranormal Activity. 

Mum Tracey, 46, even thinks she is beaten up in the night by the 'incubus demon' - leaving her covered with bruises in the morning. 

An incubus is a demon in male form who, according to mythological and legendary traditions, targets sleeping people, especially women...

The family got in a specialist to "cleanse" the house and brought a vicar in to bless their home. 

The phantom, which has also been menacing the couple's three children, was summoned by a using a Ouija board in the house, they say. 

Dad-of-three Keiron says he took a pic of the ghost in his sons' bedroom which he says shows a small child in a white gown with a blue face and a tail.

Without further ado, here is Fry's photograph of the alleged ghost:

 So the family decided to take action:

The family, who moved into their house in July 2013, called in an investigator to tackle the spook. 

Ghostbuster Robert Amour, 43, arrived at the house with a bible and crucifix. 

He banned the petrified family from going upstairs after he shouted to them that he could "feel the evilness in the room." 

After 20 minutes the psychic returned to the frightened family - claiming he had slain two small demons.

Which is pretty hardcore.  Of course, we have the usual problem; the whole story relies on anecdote and flimsy photographic evidence.  So I'm very much inclined to disbelieve it, even if (I will admit up front) I have no proof that they aren't being haunted by a violent ghost that looks suspiciously like a knotted-up bedsheet.

The incident got me to thinking about hoaxes in general, and what is so appealing about them. Because whatever the Frys' claim turns out to be, it is a sorry truth that hoaxes are extremely common in the woo-woo world.  It seems like every other day people get caught out faking bigfoot photographs and tracks, using Photoshop to create realistic-looking UFO photos, and employing stage magic to convince people that psychic phenomena are real.  The whole thing pisses me off, because the human propensity for fakery makes it even harder for we skeptics to discern whether there's anything to all of the paranormal claims out there.  To paraphrase Michio Kaku (who was speaking about UFOs) -- if even 1% of the claims of supernatural goings-on are legitimate, it's still worth investigating, and hoaxes do nothing but muddy the waters.

So the hoaxers certainly aren't even doing the true believers any favors.  But it did get me wondering why people create hoaxes in the first place, because it's something I honestly can't imagine doing.

I know that part of the motivation is money, especially for the mediums and faith healers and so on, who are charging big bucks for people to participate in their nonsense.  But there is a lot of fakery that doesn't explicitly involve the money motive -- think of all of the UFO and cryptid sightings and reports of ghosts that turn out to be completely made up, and just result in one or two newspaper articles or television interviews before they die out as quickly as they started.

What on earth can motivate people to do this?

I expect the answer lies in the "fifteen minutes of fame" phenomena -- the drive that some people experience to get their names in the newspapers somehow.  As a person who is at the "very introverted" end of the spectrum, this is hard for me to imagine.  It's difficult enough for me to be the center of attention for things I've actually accomplished; the idea of manufacturing a lie, knowing I could be found out and humiliated as a liar, for the sole reason of getting interviewed on television -- well, it just strikes me as bizarre.

But I honestly can't think of any other reason that someone would do such a thing.  It's unlikely that most of these incidents generate much in the way of income, so the only other possible motivator must be fame.

Which brings us back to the Frys.  Again, I can't prove their claim is a hoax, but even the fact that that they mentioned that their experiences were "reminiscent of supernatural thriller Paranormal Activity" -- and the article ended with the movie trailer -- makes my Suspicion Alarm start ringing.  And if their claim does turn out to be cut from whole cloth, can you imagine what the repercussions will be?  They've been in the newspapers and online, with photographs (including their children, for pete's sake).  They'd be laughingstocks.

If that were me, I'd want to crawl in a hole.  Permanently.

So that's today's contribution from the I Really Don't Understand Humanity department.  I'm far from perfect, but a long habit of honesty combined with a hatred of being embarrassed render this sort of thing a sin I'm hardly even capable of comprehending.  So I wish the Frys the best of luck dealing with their two-foot-tall abusive pillowcase incubus.  If they are telling the truth, that's gotta suck.

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."