After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Ghost Fetishes: From Ancient World to Victorians

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

What is spectrophilia? Well, it's a fetish for ghosts (as well as mirrors), so being turned on by anything lurking in the non-physical realm. What are the historic origins of this fetish and phenomenon? And what real life stories can be told of it?Maddy and Anthony talked with Kate Lister, wonderful host of our sister podcast Betwixt the Sheets.This podcast was edited by Siobhan Dale and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up now for your 14-day free trial http://access.historyhit.com/checkout/subscribe/purchase?code=afterdark&plan=monthly

Hello and welcome to After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal, the podcast that takes you through the shadier alleyways of history. Our guest today is none other than Dr. Kate Lister. Kate is the host of Betwixt the Sheets, another brilliant history hit podcast all about sex, society and scandal. And we talked to Kate about the surprisingly long history of sexual attraction to, yes, this is, you're hearing this correctly, ghosts and in some cases, mirrors. Very interesting stuff. We are going to be talking about Lilith. We're going to be talking about the Gothic 18th century. And we're even going to be talking about, brace yourself, Jesus's foreskin. And we're even going to be talking about Brace Yourself, Jesus's Foreskin. Listeners to Kate's podcast will know, of course, that she starts off with a warning to listeners,

and we need to do the same here at After Dark. So this is going to be an adult conversation between adults talking about adult things. And you should be an adult too, if you're listening. With that said, enjoy. Enjoy. So welcome everybody to this week's episode of After Dark, and we are delighted to have the brilliant Dr. Kate Lister, our neighbour from Betwixt the Sheets on the History Hit Network with us for this episode. And we are talking about something that I never thought I would ever utter in my entire life. And that is spectrophilia. So Kate, first of all, hello and welcome. Hello.

It's brilliant to have you on. And when we saw this topic come through, we went, I'm sorry, what does this mean? What is this? So tell us a little bit about what spectrophilia means, if you haven't heard the term before. It's a strange term. It's an even stranger phenomenon. So spectrophilia is sexual attraction to ghosts or spirits or some kind of sexual interaction with ghosts and spirits. It can also mean sexual attraction to mirrors. So you have to be very careful how you're using it in conversation because two very, very different things there. And tell me this, in terms of the mirrors,

is it a sexual attraction to the mirrors or a sexual attraction to what's being reflected in the mirrors? That is a very good question. I don't think that it is the mirror itself so much yeah as like the idea that you're being reflected in it that it is the image that you are looking at it i don't think there's anybody out there like running around in oxfams just trying to sexually assault mirrors but i could be wrong okay you never know you never know. You never know. You should never, ever dismiss just how bizarre people's kinks can actually be.

No, I think that it is the being turned on by mirrors, but also, like, you know, it sounds mad, but there are kind of much more mild versions of it, of, you know, people like watching themselves having sex in a mirror. You've picked someone up on Tinder, you've gone there and they've got mirrors on the ceiling and that's that.

Oh, right, that's your thing. Okay. I don't have mirrors on the ceiling, but I do have a gold flake ceiling. Is that, that doesn't qualify, does it? That's very bougie. That is very decadent. It is. It is a little bit decadent. You mentioned before that this is duly referred to as a phenomenon and a fetish. Tell us a little bit about that. Is there a conflict there? Is there a crossover? I think it's because we're trying to find words to define a whole broad range of things. So the fetish itself, that is that when you're actually turned on by something. So you're turned on by the idea of ghosts and spirits. I'm not entirely sure how that manifests itself. I've not spent a lot of time in the spectrophilia community to really get to grips with this. And we should probably have someone with spectrophilia on to describe it.

But that's when ghosts and ghoulies and things like that, they turn you on. And again, it sounds bonkers, but I don't think you have to look too far into it to sort of get a handle on it. I mean, vampires are quite sexy. That's a whole thing, right? That's like a kind of a mild mild more socially acceptable version of spectrophilia like when people find monsters goblins ghoulies ghosts quite erotic and then there's spectrophilia where you're not actually seeking it out you're not turned on by it but you've had some kind of sexual encounter normally with a ghost or a spirit we used to say paranormal entity because i'm not sure that people really know what it is quite that's going on here i I think it's so interesting that there's so many different sort of interpretations of this. And I

think what is maybe real to someone else, maybe not real to another person. It's that thing of sort of personal experience being the evidence and trumping other things. It's interesting. And I think as well, we're going to get into the history of this, because I think there's really obvious origins, I would say, of some of these ideas in the Gothic at the end of this because I think there's really obvious origins I would say of some of these ideas in the gothic at the end of the 18th century into the 19th century and these sort of breaking down of boundaries between the living and the dead in sexual encounters you know I'm thinking about I don't know whether it actually happened but the famous anecdote about Mary Shelley having sex with Percy on her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave and whilst that's not having sex with a spirit or a ghoul there's something there about the thinning of the veil

between the worlds when it comes to sex I think which is yeah so interesting I can't know if it was Freud who said it it probably was pointed out how close sex and death are linked in the human consciousness when someone says that to you you just just think, well, that sounds bonkers. How the hell could death be an aphrodisiac? But it is an aphrodisiac. In many ways, it's the most powerful aphrodisiac. There is nothing like impending doom to make you reassess who you fancy shagging, quite frankly. So like, you know, when there's times of war or like times of national disaster, sex is very much in the mix, isn it so i can't properly defend mary shelly from her little kook there apparently losing her virginity on her mother's tombstone that's out there but did they find that horny or is this just a convenient place to actually have sex i don't know the answer to

that the earlier iterations of this could be traced back as far as Lilith, I guess. Like these references, allusions to kind of otherworldly, demonic crossover with sexual acts have been around for an awfully long time. So do you see some of that trope in the Lilith stories? Lilith is a fascinating character. She sort of stalks even the oldest manuscripts that we've got. She crops up in Babylonian mythology and Sumatran mythology and Jewish mythology and she's always quite naughty like depending on who you're talking to but by the time you get to the Jewish mythology she is very much taking on this appearance of someone

that has sex with men and kind of drains them of their energy she's become this sort of succubus, naughty demon scallywag of a creature. And that is very, very old, that trope of demons having sex with humans. Like when you say that, you know, it's ghosts or people have sex with ghosts, that sounds mad. But if you kind of reframe that and go people have sex with demons, that's a really common trope. It's still quite present in horror movies. It's quite present in gothic stories. If it's not a demon, it's a vampire. This idea that you're having sex with this, you know, demonic other force, that's really, really old. And that crops up in all kinds of mythologies all around the world. There's something there about sex being not exactly transactional, but exhaustive in some

way that it's a draining act. Dep the sex maddie and here we are well absolutely but thinking about you know you mentioned vampires earlier kate and thinking about dracula going to his victims at night and appearing to them in whatever form to have some kind of sexual encounter with them and that there's something there yeah about sort of it being i guess predatory as well and you, thinking about issues of consent and obviously the story of Dracula, but this idea more generally, it's a little bit complex here,

this idea of consent and spectrophilia. You've got two things going on, really. One, you've got this issue of consent, which it's all nicely done away with in these kinds of stories, because normally they're in a hypnotic state or they couldn't possibly resist or they've been seduced by the demon, or there's some otherworldly force that's compelled you to have sex with this demon. So the issue of consent is kind of quite nicely

taken out of the equation. And I imagine that that is in some ways what makes these stories even more appealing, is the idea that you could be seduced, have the best sex of your life, but it wasn't even your fault. It wasn't something you wanted to do, obviously. But then that idea of draining, that is a really interesting one as far as sex and spirits go. This idea of the succubus that links to Lilith, the idea that there is this demonic, normally a female demon that is going to suck the life force out of men by having sex with them. That's really old as well. And yeah, it is the idea, it's almost like a sexual enslavement. You give up to this highly erotically charged power and it's going to drain you of absolutely everything you've got

and then some. It's interesting that you talk about the succubus and if I'm gendering this correctly, succubus is female and incubus is male, right? I always get them mixed up. I think that that's right. Yeah. My education system was through Catholic schools in growing up in Ireland. Oh, you'd know all about it. I would. And actually, it reminded me of one of the things we had somehow come across. Don't ask me who taught us this. I don't know, but maybe they should be investigated. Go on. There was this story of kind of female mysticism, which is, you know, pretty common in history. I had to kind of look this up when I knew we were doing this episode. And it was

Agnes Blambican, I think I'm saying that surname correctly, a 13th, 14th century female mystic, Christian mystic. Now, her revelations were published in 1731, which is kind of familiar territory for Maddy and I, kind of 18th century. So that's interesting, first of all, that it took that long for them to come out. But they were all destroyed, bar two copies. One was then destroyed in 1870. So this legacy, Agnes's legacy is going on quite a long time, but the other survives. And in that, we find out that by the time she turned like 10 or 11, Agnes was craving the meat of Christ. And so when we're talking about these kind of male incubus figures, Agnes is having these cravings around 10 or 11. So there's this eroticism coming in there too. She got herself a bit of a reputation for being obscene

in her own lifetime back in the 13th and 14th. And she had this apparently, and you can tell me more about this potentially, she had this particular phenomenon slash fetish where she would taste the sweet foreskin of Christ. Yes. I mean, it's a bold move, isn't it, on Agnes's part, that one. What she said was that she was in a religious sort of state. She'd worked herself up into this kind of like, almost like a religious ecstasy. And that when that happened, she became aware of Christ's foreskin in her mouth.

I think I tweeted about this a while ago. And then immediately everyone goes, he didn't have a foreskin, he was Jewish. Like, that's what we're going to fact check this particular story that is the bottom line in this story kate yeah exactly that's the bit where it all falls apart but the issue of christ foreskin is actually a really interesting and controversial one in christian law because christ was jewish so he would have been circumcised the question is is what happens to the foreskin after he's been circumcised and it

became like a holy relic there at one point there was something like 14 all different foreskins doing the rounds of different churches of europe or at the same time so she's not completely bonkers for focusing in on this because it was a religious relic she said that she could feel it and taste it in her mouth which is wow isn isn't it? It's like, imagine Agnes just telling you this particular story. But she was absolutely convinced by it, and she had a reputation for being mad, but also being a mystic. She also, as crazy as that sounds, I don't want to say that didn't happen. Maybe it did. I want to do Agnes down. But she wasn't on her own because there's lots of accounts of nuns and mystics

recounting these very erotically charged meetings with Christ, who is their husband, by the way. Don't forget that. They've married the big J, haven't they? And they kind of describe these very erotically charged encounters with him. Agnes has kind of gone down in history because hers is the most graphic, I think. Like, she really stood out. She didn't just say that, you know, Christ came to me and he touched me and he loved me and he entered my body she went the

full he put his foreskin in my mouth the bit that we never quite get the details on is is it still attached to jesus's penis agnes or is this like a free floating foreskin that is happening i don't know the answer i don't know what's worse She didn't give us all the revelations. Well, the thing I suppose, like with someone like Agnes is, I suppose it's worth pointing out that she didn't actually write this herself. She dictated this to somebody else.

So there's also that. We have this account and in it she kind of describes a sort of climax, I suppose, where she has this burning sensation and it's just like, it's not external, it's internal and all of this is happening and it doesn't sound like

it's acid reflux to be fair to her but it's like she's very much consumed being kissed by the Lamb of God I mean historians we do do that from time to time

we try and go oh no I think you're just misreading this she's just very good friends with the Lamb of God or whatever it is that you said but it's definitely sex

it's definitely erotically charged and she is describing it sounds very much like an orgasm this heat burning thing that comes up from inside this is an erotically charged experience and it's very difficult something that's this old and it's been translated and re-translated and it wasn't in her words someone else dictated it of exactly what's going on here but i always feel that i kind of believe that this thing happened to her i don't genuinely believe that it was the free

floating foreskin of our lord and savior you don't i have questions but i believe that this thing happened to her. I don't genuinely believe that it was the free-floating foreskin of our Lord and Saviour. You don't? I have questions. But I believe that something happened to her, that she believed she experienced this, because it's so bat-crap crazy to come out with that in the 14th century. Like, why would you, unless that really happened to you,

if you were absolutely convinced? I at least believe that. I don't think she was just making stuff up. I think she really did experience this. Catherine of Aragon and Berlin. Thank you. And this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII, who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. so we've got you know women experiencing this phenomenon as a sort of worshipful act in some way it's linked into their own spiritual belief their own sort of spiritual realm that they occupy but then at the other end of the spectrum we've got women in other mythologies other folklore who are the spirits themselves and they're vengeful they're not

worshipful so i'm thinking about the 16th century hispanic law around the lorona the crying woman so can you tell us a little bit about that, Kate? That's a very different vibe. Well, you get that kind of vengeful creature monster cropping up. So yeah, there's a spectral creature in Javanese mythology, and I'm going to pronounce this hideously wrong. Correct me on my awful pronunciation, but it's spelled W-E-W-E. So wee-wee and then G-O-M-B-E-L. Wee-wee Gumbel. And she is a ghost in Javanese folklore who married the man of her life. She absolutely loved him, but she couldn't have children.

And then the guy became really resentful and started shagging someone else. And then wee-wee Gumbel caught him in bed with another woman and was so enraged she murdered him. But then the villagers were so shocked by what she'd done. They chased her, they cornered her, and then she took her own life rather than face the justice. And it's said that she still stalks the land, but she's not looking for men. She's looking for children. And in pictures of her, she has these massive, like, long pendulous breasts that are actually like snakes that go right down to the floor. And she, like, wraps them around her neck like a feather boa.

And it's said that, like, she hides children under these massive pendulous breasts. And she like wraps them around her neck like a feather boa. And it said that like she hides children under these massive pendulous breasts. And there are different accounts. In some, she takes the children away to be really nice to them. She takes the children away from bad parents. And then in other versions, she's like kind of like your typical buggy man nasty.

She's going to be horrible to you. But apparently even today in Java, they'll say, you know, you've got to get home quickly. Otherwise, wee wee gumball will come and get you to the kids. I mean, if you did have pendulous breasts, what else would you've got to get home quickly. Otherwise, we will come and get you to the kids. I mean, if you did have pendulous breasts, what else would you put under them? Except children that you could just at least she's being practical.

But it also says something about womanhood, motherhood, expectations, conversations around failure to produce heirs, all that kind of thing. And it's kind of insidious in that sense, right? The message is sending. It's kind of insidious in that sense, right? The message of sending. You get female ghosts, they tend to be heartbroken, or at least the trope of the heartbroken female ghost seems to be much more common. I can't think of any heartbroken male ghost.

Men ghosts seem to sort of wander around being pissed off at stuff and wanting vengeance for this, that, and the other. Whereas I can think of loads of ghosts off the top of my head that are just like, oh, it's supposed to be haunted by a woman who killed herself because you know a husband ditched her and all of this stuff so yeah i think that they are quite gendered i would like just a woman ghost who's just pissed off yeah she's like a menopausal ghost who's just i'm just gonna wreak a terrible curse on everybody she's like i forgot to put the washing out now i'm really annoyed you're getting perfect yeah zero motivation at all other than just yeah nothing got to do with men either I forgot to put the washing out. Now I'm really annoyed. You're getting haunted. Perfect.

Yeah, zero motivation at all, other than just... Yeah, nothing got to do with men either. We're talking about these things in kind of very past tense as part of our kind of our parlance. But there are more kind of contemporary examples, right? There are things in film and TV that would qualify as spectrophilic. I mean, it must happen all the time. I don't even know what you do if you have this kind of experience. I suppose most of the time you just don't tell anybody. But on the few occasions that anyone does tell anyone and the stories end

up in the press, the press love it. Of like, you know, woman had sex with ghost 10 times a night, or woman married her ghost lover. And you even get some famous people talk about that they have actually had an erotic encounter with a ghost lucy lou said that she did ann nicole smith said that she'd had amazing sex with a ghost i think even dan akroyd he didn't have sex with the ghost but he said that he was cuddled spooned by a ghost oh but she's kind of sweet yeah it's a pg version yeah right it was just oh give us a cuddle but that has quite a long history as well. What is happening there?

I am not entirely sure. Because unless Lucy Liu is going to chip in and explain to us what happened, because when I read these stories, it does tend to be that they wake up in the middle of the night and somebody's having sex with them, this unseen force. And that, for me, is the first red flag. You're having

a wet dream like that's what this is you know like we've all had those dreams where you wake up orgasming i hope that's not just me right it speaks to sleep paralysis as well right and that kind of yes again that boundary between not life and death this time but sleeping and wakefulness and you know we are we are the after dark podcast we like to think about the night time you know when we were looking up spectrophilia and in sort of preparation for this conversation i kept thinking about henry fusely's famous painting the nightmare you know the woman who's obviously in some kind of erotic state asleep and there's the i guess it's an incubus it's a sort of male gendered gobliny thing like a sort of a squat goblin thing yeah that's sat on

her chest and you know that again that fits with this idea of the gothic you know i think it's painted in 1780 1781 and it's this idea of yeah the sort of moment before wakefulness as being somehow erotically charged i think is tied to the gothic and you see it in films in the 20th century like ghost for example yeah the great masterpiece that is ghost i can't remember have they did they have sex the ghost or sex with the pottery lady i mean do they have sex once he's died i mean they're in love with each other he's hanging around and they definitely cuddle the pottery thing is quite erotically charged isn't it it's quite a phallic thing you know the ham i think he's still alive in that scene he is still alive he's alive okay that's not quite as weird oh i thought he was dead in

that one oh i don't know yeah yeah like not only is sleep often eroticized but hypnosis especially when you get to the 19th century that was you get that turning up in all kinds of like petty dreadfuls and little sci-fi things like dracula you were saying were saying, he was really good at that, hypnotize these women. And then, oh my God, my clothes are falling off. Just can't help myself. And again, it's very, very eroticized. But I'm endlessly fascinated by sleep and what happens in our sleep.

Because like I do crazy shit in my sleep. I am one of those people that does weird, weird stuff. You wake up like half a mile down the road, do you, Kate? Yeah, I do. Okay, so things that I've done in my sleep. So I've phoned people in my sleep. Wow. Yeah, like imagine how scary that is,

getting a phone call at five in the morning from me burbling absolutely crap about like, you know, we need to get to the canal. The squirrels have manned the controls and then I'll wake up. I wake up on the phone and like realize what I'm doing and then have to like try and talk to this person who thinks I'm having some kind of episode. When I go back and stay with my mum and my dad, I'm sharing way too much now.

My mum puts bells on the bedroom door so when I break out, she can hear me doing it. This is amazing. That's so dramatic as well. I love it. It was a bell her. Yeah, we'll just put bells on her like she's a leper. I wreck things as well which is kind of sad like i woke up in my old flat which was a ground floor flat and i'd thrown all of my books out the window or at least somebody had like that could be a point to go i might have been a ghost it probably was me though being asleep that could be a ghost except i'm destructive so it was me except i would put money on me doing it actually you know that's a really interesting

point it's a really interesting point for after Dark generally and for Twix the Sheets, because I'm sure you've probably covered this already, Kate, but the vulnerability of sleep. Yeah, it's horrible. It's like going to sleep and not knowing what I'm actually going to do. There's this other Kate that wakes up in the middle of the night and goes, right, let's phone people and wreck shit. And like, and I've got no control over it. I have to put...

I mean, it can be really bad. There's a stand-up comic, and I can't remember the name for the life of me, and he does a whole thing about how bad his sleepwalking was that he actually jumped out of the hotel window asleep and broke his legs. Oh, my gosh. So I've never been that bad.

But it's strange that you've got no control over it and you have to do things like, I can never go to sleep in a hotel naked because I want sleepwalked out of a hotel room and I was completely nude and I locked myself out I mean that is a nightmare that are that's people's nightmares it is and you literally become awake and you're like I am now in the hotel room and I've got no clothes on at all this is awful luckily there was somebody in the room that I could knock and say please let me back in I've wandered out the room I am normal i am normal i'm naked but

i'm normal please please see me again there's kind of two levels right there's the physical stuff that people are doing unawares but there's also then what your mind is capable of doing or what it wants to do even if you never roam or do anything physically but what you are the worlds you are creating for yourself as you sleep exactly and they can be like i mean i probably don't do the silly things that i did but like dreams can be so vivid like you must have done a thing like where you wake up and you think you're inside the dream and it takes you a while to to reorientate yourself and be like oh okay okay i'm i'm dreaming i've never had sleep paralysis but i've spoken to people doing that sounds terrifying oh yeah it doesn't surprise me in

the least that people believed in possessions and devils and you know that there's this thing sat on you and that you can't move and that your brain does all kinds of crazy stuff and it's weird because you think that you're in control of your own brain but when stuff like that happens no you're not there's like a whole other bit that's just gonna kick in going to do whatever it likes. And that is quite scary. Maybe that's why sleep is eroticized, isn't it? Is this space of you're not fully in control of yourself. Where do things like astral projection fit into this then? So we've got this idea of your subconscious giving you scenarios, making you do things physically, but astral projection is something quite different

it's something that you're tapping into consciously and it's i guess maybe a way of having sexual encounters with in the spirit world on purpose the astral projection is fascinating because it's really difficult to quantify scientifically isn't it like i could sit here right now and be like oh my god i've left my body i'm having an out-of-body experience and you've got no way of knowing if that is actually true but your brain can do incredibly weird things like you could call it astral projection but I've also heard like people are really into yoga and tantra and they talk about like you know kundalinialini energy, like going through their body, that they're having out of body experiences because of that. And again, it's your brain

doing all kinds of mad stuff. I think that if you focus enough, you can take yourself to, to other spaces, to, to other, you know, I don't want to say other realms because I don't believe in other realms, but I certainly think that you can convince yourself that you have. Yeah. Other states of consciousness. Yeah. I mean, if only I had that level of concentration, which I absolutely don't. I do not have that level of concentration. No, it's not something I've been gifted with. Well, listen, Kate, I will never pass by a mirror in the same way again. Me looking in a mirror changed forever. How brilliant to have a little After Dark But Fix The Sheets crossover. Thank you so much

for joining us. Oh, it's my pleasure. If you enjoyed what you heard here today, then obviously follow Betwixt the Sheets on History Hit and find us too, After Dark, follow us and we shall have more spooky, creepy, but fun histories on both platforms. Thank you. on both platforms. Thank you. Well, thank you for listening to this episode of After Dark. Please follow this show wherever you get your podcasts.

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