After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Woman Who Had Sex With Ghosts

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Ida Craddock is a name that should be much, much better known. She was a maverick sex educator who fought violent censorship in turn of the century America. She also loudly announced to the world that she was married to a ghost and that their sex life was great, thank you very much.Dr Kate Lister tells this story taken from her new book Flick: The Story of Female Pleasure, available everywhere.Edited by Hannah Feodorov. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's 1902 in a New York City courthouse. Wearing a black woolen dress, 45-year-old Ida-cradic is standing trial for writing obscene material. Onlookers ogle her as Ida, an unmarried woman proudly claims to have had active and fulfilling sex with a ghost. Yep, this is the history of Ida Craddock. A woman who had sex with a paranormal lover and was arrested time after time for her publications.

It's also the story of her bitter enemy, Anthony Comstock, a grown man who impersonated a 17-year-old girl who eventually chased Ida to her tragic grave. From the paranormal marriage bed, this is After Dark. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony. And I'm Kate. And we are here today to talk about the one and only Kate's brand new book,

Flick, History of Female Pleasure, which is on your shelves right now. How are you feeling? Mixed, I think is fair. Mostly excited. Yeah, it's an exciting time. You did a book. I did a book.

Who knew? Just don't read it and don't tell me what you think about it. No, God, no. Buy it, but just put it on your shelf somewhere. Send Instagram pictures of it. That's how we do books nowadays. This is part of Kate's book, part of Flick, one of the histories that you will encounter in there.

And it is brilliantly bonkers. If you've listened to Betwixt, you'll know that this fits right into your historical sweet spot where you are, this is your research safe space and you are, you are an expert at it. What, and we're going to have a lot of fun with certain aspects of this because some of it is a little out there. Let's be perfectly honest. But we want to give you a warning up front that this also does end with death by suicide. And there is a tragic ending to this. And again, it's one of the reasons why I think this book and this part of your book is so valuable because it takes a history that you think is going one way and then it just turns a corner

and you find yourself confronted with the history of something so much bigger than you thought you were dealing with, which is, again, just one of the reasons why Flick is so important, why people need to rush out and buy it and learn a little bit more about Ida Craddock, who we're going to talk about today. There's a goody and a baddie. we have a woman named Ida Craddock and we have a man named Anthony no because they're American

so he's Anthony Anthony Comstock so I'm Anthony he's Anthony he's Anthony spelled the same way though and Anthony is this is this get the it's very easy to make light of this topic

right because it's just like there's going to be a lot of sex there's going to be talk about ghost or religious sexual experiences or however we want to define it and at the end of it we have quite a tragic story. So let's talk about first of all

idocratic and who she is and why she is included in Flick. Yeah so that's a name that I imagine nobody's going to have heard of. Nobody, no no so few people have heard of this woman. I doubt anybody who's watching or listening will have heard of it maybe one or two people. But she is somebody

that is long overdue a movie, a TV series, books. So she's 19th century. She's born 1957 in Philadelphia. And so she's brought up in everything Victorian and in that environment and in that very puritanical and repressive regime. And she just takes it upon herself to be a sex educator. She takes it upon herself that she is going to get the word out there to all young men

and women about sex. And she's going to tell them the mechanics of it. She's going to tell them how it can be pleasurable. She's going to advocate for women getting as much sexual pleasure as men do. And she does this in very, very thorough terms. Like she doesn't pull a punches at all. And she's literally on this one woman crusade to educate the world and particularly women about sex. And what's interesting about this is that to a certain extent, it's so difficult.

don't even know how to put it together. I don't know how he wrote, not the whole book, but a portion of the book on this. There's also a portion of her that's giving this sexual education. Yeah. She's talking to these young people or she's communicating to these young people about sex education. But there's also a theory that, to whatever extent,

barring any supernatural inference for now, that she's a virgin. Well, this is, it's up for debates. Okay. Right? So there are a few idocratic biographers. There are not many. and the jury is kind of out on this one of did she actually have sex? Now if Ida was here, she'd tell you that she had a really enthusiastic sex life

and then we'd have a very strange conversation. We will have that conversation in the next few minutes, yeah. But actual earthly human people that she might have had sex with. So one of her earliest biographers, a guy called Theodore Schroeder, he theorized that she had sex with two human on this earth people. One of them was a guy that she was living with when she was in a 20s called Euclid Frink, best name ever

and the other one was a sort of a spiritual pastor guy called, what was it called? Westbrook, I think his name was. And he theorises that these are the two people that she had sex with, but we don't have, Ida wrote voluminous diaries and lots of letters, but at no point just to say, I definitely had sex with these people. And do you think it matters, bearing it mind

in terms of our conversation? Yeah, it does, because Ida, herself in a bind, by the time she starts writing this, there's so much literature on sex, she's got to confront this, this strange position that she's in. Because if she says, I've never had sex with anybody, then immediately she's going to lose all authority because who, why are you even talking about this then? Why are you talking? You were a single woman in the 30s who'd never have sex.

Why are you talking about this at all, right? But if she fesses up to the fact that she had sex outside of marriage, then she's going to be dismissed as a fallen woman, that this is just pornographic. This is just smut. So she's really in a bind about how am I going to convince people that I have the authority to talk about this when I'm not a married woman? Let's rewind a little bit then and get to, we'll leave it on a little bit of a clip because there's twists and turns that you may not see coming in this particular history. How does she get to a point where she is one of the foremost sex educators of her day? Like what's her background?

Is she coming from a very liberal family who are sex education? with themselves. No, she is born in Philadelphia to a family of Quakers. So she's born. And one of the most interesting relationships throughout our life was with her mother, who seems to be very controlling. She never lets Ida go very far. She seems to restrict most of her early life and her activities.

And Ida keeps going back to live with her, even though she doesn't really want to. And there's this real religious fervour going on there. Her dad died when she was like two months old of tuberculosis. So it's just her and her mother. And then she has some older stepbrothers. sisters. She's super bright. She's really, really clever. She trained as a stenographer. Wait, what's that? The person in court who's doing their...

Ah, okay, yes, yes, yes. Typing. Very important. She applied to be the first woman undergraduate. I think it was the University of Philadelphia, and she was rejected purely because she was a woman. She wanted to go and study. So she applied to, even though she kind of knew she wasn't going to be accepted because... I think she thought she was going to be accepted. I think she was the first one. She was quite determined. But they said, no. No, because she was basically blocked. She had all of the credentials. She should have gone.

So that cut her off from doing what she viewed as like serious science. Like she was concerned she was never going to be taken seriously because now she didn't have the degree. But for a while, she's making a live in teaching stenography classes. She even published a book, how to be a stenographer. Not that title, but that's kind of kind of what she's doing. And then she makes this interesting left turn in her life. So she's always been interested in the occult.

And at this particular point, this is like 1880s, 1890s America. Occult stuff is really taken off. Spiritualism and interest in exotic, what they saw as exotic religions and other gods and things like tantric teachings are beginning to emerge and yoga became a thing. And so she is right in the middle of that, like automatic writing, seances, all of this stuff.

So she starts to get a real fascination with this. So she believes in this. She's fallen into that. She believes in everything. It's kind of strange like reading through the books because she doesn't pick a lane. She's into everything. All of it.

Like she wants to do automatic writing. You know, when you let the spirits speak through you and guide your hand and do writing. She does seances. She does like trying to contact the dead. She does. Like you name it and she is doing it.

She isn't. And when you read back through a text, you are looking at going, think you should pick Elaine either. Yeah, too much either. There's too much. Like she's doing everything. She's kind of picking bits from here and picking bits from there.

But she's so interested in it. And at this particular point, there's all kinds of societies that are emerging. There is one called the Theosophical, T-H-E-O, Theosophical Society that's dedicated to, like, psychical research and try to apply science to the occults and things like that. So she's right in there at this particular point, experimenting with everything. It's fascinating because you talked. talked earlier about this kind of more methodical mind frame that she has applying to university. Being a stenographer now that I know what it is, it's kind of methodical thing to do. Like you have to be very precise.

You have to be on it. And it does remind me to a certain extent of some of the conversations around Arthur Conan Doyle, for instance, who's like trying to find the balance a little bit later on between science and this belief system. Where this story goes next is slightly unbelievable, but has a little bit. a remarkable history and we will come to that unbelievable remarkable history right after this break. So we talked about this idea that she has cultivated this position in society for herself where she is a sexpert. Yeah. Yeah. And she has to be having sex in order to be a sex expert. Well, she has to have some experience of it. Otherwise, like what are you even talking about strange lady from Philadelphia? Now that sounds weird if you're out there. Yeah. And because,

Because we're not necessarily giving up the names of real human on earth people. Tell us what she decides to tell people she's doing. Okay, right. So if Ida was here, this is the point of the conversation where you go, oh. Who did Freddie book for the podcast? Oh, right. Okay, Ida. And it's right.

So everyone let's just reserve judgment for this. I'll tell you what she was doing. So in the late 1890s this is, she starts writing about a husband that she's got. that's called Sof. Fair enough. Right. S-O-P-H-S-O-P-H-Soph. I think that's Greek for, like, leader or something,

or something like that. It's a Greek word. Oh, how funny. And the thing is that Sof's not alive. Grant. No, that's the first thing you need to know about Sof. Sof is the spirit of a childhood friend of Idas who used to come and visit her when she was a child,

a friend of her mothers, who is now coming to visit her from the spirit world. and they got married in the spirit realm. This is her husband and they have a lot of sex and she writes about having sex with the spirit. Just stop you right there. Dr. Kate Lister with the old PhD

and we're going to walk through some of those individual moments as you just mentioned. So Sof is someone she was acquainted with in real life because was the son of her mother's friend? It was the spirit of her mother's friend, someone that used to visit her when she was a child. Oh, wait, an adult man.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's there. Therapists at the ready. Every, everyone's like, oh, hold on. Right, that's happening.

Now he's dead. Yes. Yes. Was once real, now dead. She entered into some kind of spirit realm. Yes. They got married in the astral plane. Well, yeah.

And it's really expensive to get married there. It's a hell of a destination. Yeah, it's a destination wedding. It is. It is. It was just great for the old. The Hindus. But that's why.

there were no witnesses. Like, she can't produce a witness. It's not her fault. It's not her fault at all. Went to the Astral plane. It's the Vegas of its day. You were invited. You didn't bother to come.

Just call their parents. Anyway, so she's now married to Sof on the astral plane. And how does this? I presume, look, look, no words. There are no words. Nearly three years. And I'm like, It's flummoxed.

People clearly must go. Does she need to be in an institution? And that was her mother. Her mother tried to have her institutionalised several times. Like at one point Ida is moving around the country, relying on patrons and people that support it. Interestingly, a really big patron of hers was WT Stead. Oh, the newspaper man.

The newspaper guy from Britain and she even came over to Britain and stayed with him and his wife for a while until his wife found out that she was married to a ghost and it was all a bit weird. No, fair enough. And then there were questions asked. But her mother is literally chasing around America with a butterfly net, trying desperately to have a institutionalized because she's so horrified by what Ida is doing and saying. But yeah, so she's really scared that she's going to be institutionalized. But she keeps doing it.

She keeps talking about her husband and about the kind of sex that they're having. And look, and I've bought with me. Go on. So this is one of the books of Ida's writing. So when I tell you that she's talking. So this is what she's written herself. What she's writing. This is her diary.

Um, so if you could just, there's an entry there Sunday, June the second, 19, uh, 1894. Oh, if you could just. I have it here. Do you have that there? If you could just read that. I haven't read this before, but I'm going to do it now. Okay. Am I going to be embarrassed?

Are you going to, is this is the, okay. Okay. I don't present a sex history podcast and this is why. Okay. Last night, my husband and I united fine. I lying. Oh, okay, we're off already. I lying on my face.

After a while, he began to man. at the clitoris. Oh, I'm going to have to say clitoris. I've said it already. Telling me not to fear, but to allow the excitement to develop there that it was under law. Okay, we'll love to break that down a second. And that as soon as the orgasm began, he would present at the vagina. I was rather fearful, but I ask God not to let it come if it were wrong. Right. That's the kind of things that she's writing about and she writes in great detail about the kind of sex that they're having, what position they're in, what kind of orgasm she's having. Sometimes she doesn't have a particularly strong orgasm and she gets upset about it. And it goes on and on and on. So when I say that

she's talking about sex, I don't mean in like gentle allusions too. I mean quite graphically talking about this heavenly spirit that is shagging her from behind. And is she publish it? I mean, it's a diary entry, right? But it does. Does this get out into the world? Oh, yeah, yeah. How? Yeah, so she publish it. So these are her diaries that she keeps.

And by the way, she keeps them for seven years. So if this is a hoax or if she's making it up, she's committed to it. So we can have a chat about what on earth is going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At this particular, what do we think it's going on? But she publishes something called heavenly bridegrooms. Heavenly bridegreens in the 1890s. I forget the exact date.

And it opens with the words. It has been my high privilege to have some practical experience as the earthly wife of an angel from the unseen world. Crazy. So she, is she crazy? I don't know. So she publishes this book, Heavenly Bridegrooms, and she gives numerous examples of other people throughout history and folklore and in religious texts who also have had sex with gods and angels. Ah, now, see, that's a thing, right? this is not, I know I treated you all to a beautiful song just there,

but actually there is a history of this. There really is. She is not the first person. She is not the first person. She even cites the Virgin Mary. Yeah, well, sure, what else is that? Like there's an angel coming down, she ends up pregnant. And then she gives you lots of Greek examples of people having sex with gods.

And I think at the time there's actually, there was an Egyptologist, a woman Egyptologist who was claiming she was having sex with the Pharaoh. So it's, I mean, now if you said that, I think that they might call the men in white coats. So they did try to do that at the night at the time. But this is within a context of people really do believe in spiritualism. They believe in mediumship. They are going to out at night to try and contact the dead with Ouija boards and seances. She's just taking it the next step further.

She's telling you that she's having sex with an angel. And it's not even confined to angels. It is in Ida's case because she's a monogamous spiritual, sexy person. Yes. But the history will often have you learn about. teenage girls or girls in the rarely 20s who are having sex with Jesus. Yes.

So there is a tradition here of religious sexual experiences that women are having. Although it's not exactly that in the same religious sense, it does feed into that. Some of the same language is there, right? It's the same language.

There is a really rich history of this, particularly with young women who, I mean, there was, I forget, I think it's like 15th century, Agnes Blambachin, who was an Austrian mystic, who had a, static visions about having Christ's foreskin in her mouth.

It really like describes how it tastes and the texture and it's really erotic. The stuff that is writing. But again, it's deeply spiritual. Ida is sort of like the next one along from that because she's definitely writing about having sex with an angel. This isn't like the angel entered my body and I had an ecstatic experience. Yes. Yes. This is, he rubbed my clitoris. Yes.

She's really really going for it. It's like a development of. of what that is in the 1600s or 15-hundreds or 15-hundreds. Yeah, like there's a whole school of scholarship devoted to the erotic writings of mystics where they try and understand, like, is this an actual sexual thing? Or is it just the fervor of religious passion that's gripped them? Either it's definitely sex. It's definitely sex.

Because she is so adept at her sexiness and she has gotten to a position where she's like, actually, I'm really good at this being married thing. What I'm going to do now is be doctor. Orna. Do you know Dr. Orna? Do you ever watch that? Oh my God. You need to watch this. It's on BBC I player. This is not sponsored and it is what's it called? Couples Therapy and it is. Oh, I think I do know this. Is she the lady that sits there? Is she the lady that goes, mm. Yes. And I would do. How does that sound for you? Yeah. Oh, I do know that one. Oh, I do know that one. I do know that one. I just watch it. I just watch it. I just, I'm there. I'm in. I love Dr. Orna. She's incredible. I do know who that is. She's so, so good. But Ida does a version of couples therapy for herself. Well, yes, she does. So she's very, very happy with her sex life, with Sof, the Angels,

but she decides that she wants to educate other people about this as well. And this is at a time when the issue of sex education has really come into the fore, especially within early feminist movements. It's very much linked to what would become the suffragette movement as people, not just women, but educators are beginning to realize

that the liberation of women is going to be dependent on being, able to control when you have babies. That being a mother and being a mother young and having repeated births. Like you've read historical documents and so have I of like huge families with massive numbers. Like sometimes 30 children. Like I mean that's extreme but those cases do exist. Like women are having a baby every single year of their fertile life and it just exhausts them.

It physically wrecks them. But also they can't do anything else but have babies. You can't go off and get a career if you've got 22 kids to look after. So people become aware that sex ed is actually really important. So birth control is in its infancy, but they can teach things like the pull-out method, withdrawal. They can teach things like when you might be fertile. They can teach you the mechanics of sex, things like that. And it becomes linked to the idea of female social emancipation for quite obvious reasons.

Control your reproductive cycle. You can control your life in a much more meaningful way. But part of that is also trying to teach. what sex is because this is a time when sex ed doesn't exist like where are people learning about sex from their mates ask your mother that seems to have been a very common place but the information people are getting is limited to say the least so we have young people going into marriage not knowing what on earth to expect not having particularly with the women because there's this idea that you should be pure and innocent and virginal so they just tell them nothing and there's there's a few

instance, sex surveys that are done in America very, very early on in the 20th century, they talk about them in Flick. And one of them is where did, they ask the question, where did you learn about sex? And it's from all kinds of places. It's like from friends, from mothers, from people at school, nowhere reliable,

nowhere that actually is going to give you the information. So Ida becomes part of this mission to get sex ed out there. That's actually incredible. It is incredible that she did it. And she's a woman doing it. And what they're up against, Because it's not the case that these people, these men and women,

but predominantly women, came out and went, you know what, we need to educate people about sex. And the authorities went, excellent idea. Yeah. What a fuck, we'll help you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We will fund this for you. What they come up against is state censor attacks,

accusations of being perverted and degenerates, and that they're going to close them down and attack them. This is where we're going to get onto Anthony Comstock. But the hostility that they're going to face for trying to get this stuff out is considerable. And it's a real fight to do it. You mentioned Anthony Comstock there, and I have a picture of him in front of me here. He is a hefty gentleman with a bald head. Remember when men used to be bald?

That doesn't happen now. I do remember when men used to be bold. No, not really. But anyway, here he is bald. He's also got, I don't know what age he is, he looks like people always looked older in those days. So I'm going to say he looks like he's in his mid-50s and you're going to tell me he's 35. But he looks about he's in his mid-50s. He's got a very healthy.

healthy beard kind of lamb choppy shape beer thing and mustache going on. He's got his white tie on his suit. And, you know, he takes up space. He is a consummate 19th century gentleman. Tell us a little bit about him. He's a unit, isn't he? He is a unit. So Anthony Comstock is a man who, so he is 10 years older than Ida.

He was born in 1847. So I have to remember like both of them lived through the American Civil War. and the fracture that that bought to the land and the culture. So he served in the civil war and he was horrified by the amount of sex that he saw whilst serving that the soldiers were indulging and obviously there were women who were willing to cater to it. He was just horrified.

He becomes part of this movement, this anti-vice movement. So as you've got people going, hang on, I think sex ed should be a thing, you also have a very strong reaction to that, as you always do with these kind of issues. So the society for the suppression of vice, these kind of groups start rising. Anthony Comstock is their self-appointed leader. He is hell-bent on ridding the world as he sees it of smut and degeneracy and certainly of pornography. And he manages to pressure the government, the American government, and he does it through the post office.

They're called Comstock laws. He makes it illegal to send anything that is sexually. themed, permissive, anything sexual through the post included in that is birth control. So it's not just sending out birth control, but anything written about it, any discussions of it, any

educational material, it's all gone. So he is the self-appointed censorship, right? He's got a whole group of people working for him. They can intercept letters, they can open letters, they can arrest people, they did arrest people, they all be prosecuted on obscenity charges. He boasts. He boasts.

that throughout his career he had 15 suicides. Yeah. He's not a nice person at all. He is, and he is really, really, he's very repressive, he's very puritanical, and he sets people up to catch them out as well. And there's been some amazing scholars who do work on the actual things that he was finding. Some of it, there's a lot of porn at the time. He was finding things like that. He was even finding things like sex toys.

But some of the things that he's hauling people in for are like letters where they discuss adultery. Like if I wrote you a letter saying that what I got up to, some of it is stuff like that. So that is how he is trying to censor. And obviously this has a profound influence because not only can people not write to it, but you can't get information out. Companies aren't going to print and sell books

that they can't sell through the post. So it's really, really limiting. I think it's also interesting to bear in mind that this will be coming from a very religious place with Hitt and Wright. Yes. And that people at this time, the way they see it is that death by suicide is a damnation for the soul. Of course, we know that that's not the case in today's world, but that is what he would have believed.

So the fact that he was bragging that he had caused 15 deaths by suicide and therefore, if he truly believed what he was supposed to believe, that he had damned their souls through that, it gives you a little bit of an insight into the ruthlessness. He is ruthless. And the worst thing is he becomes incredibly powerful. It's some of these courts that he's presenting at. He doesn't even have to present evidence. His word is enough. That's going to come up. That'll bite Ida in the ass.

He literally can just stand there and say to the court, I know that this person's guilty. And they will accept his word. It's really, it's so corrupt and so messed up. He becomes kind of messianistic. Yeah, he is. Yeah. He's speaking divinely.

And it's such a tricky thing, this kind of stuff. because obviously he's campaigning against pornography and degeneracy. So who's going to stand up and go, I want more pornography and more degeneracy. Yeah, it's fine. People aren't going to do that because they're going to be then embarrassed. But what also happens is any educational materials are all swept away completely. And is this how he crosses paths with Ida in that she is sending,

I presume some of the stuff that she's writing is going out via post? The first time that they lock horns is in 18. 93. There is a World Fair at New York. There's loads of different exhibits there and one of them is a belly dancing exhibit of a dancer calling herself Little Egypt and for Ida when she went to see this dance it was like everything that she believed and researched suddenly crystallized in front of her of like that's it that's the thing and she saw the belly dancer and she saw like she's been researching the history of phallic worship and of Eastern religions and of tantra and yoga and yoga.

and she just saw everything in this dance of like that's everything that I believe in and it's sex and its sensuality but it's also sophisticated and beautiful and it's art and she just loved it. Anthony Comstock tried to get it banned. He said that it was obscene and it was a disgraceful orgy I think he called it. And he did get ridiculed in the press because even by this point, I think the Comstock laws came in in 1870s, so this is 20 years later. Now people are starting to get a bit, oh shut up.

Right. Oh, shut up. She's just having a dance, let her have a dance. Ida goes off on one, and she publishes this in defense of belly dancing, which comes out of nowhere. She, I think it was published in a magazine, and then she self-published it as well. And literally, she goes off on this, like, how we used to worship penises, and it was used to be amazing and in these religions. And you're just reading it going, Haida, like, take a breath, my God. I'm here for it, Ida, but, you know, you're going to get yourself in trouble.

Like, wow. Like, she doesn't just say, it's a very nice dance. Please shut up, you prude. She's like, cocks are great. Ida take it down a notch but she's really going for it and so that's the first time that she locks horns with him and now he's firmly on a war path with this woman he's going and she names him as well right she names him

she basically has Anthony Comstock's an idiot and she really goes after him which may have been a mistake either so now he is laser focused in on this woman and it's easy to underestimate how big deal the 93 Chicago World Fair was this is world news. It's making headlines all over the country in America obviously,

but all over the world as well. And so if you have an opinion on some of the things that are appearing there, then the press are covering it. People are talking about it. This is something that people are talking about around the dinner table. Okay, they may find that the belly dancing

is not dinner table talk, but the men will be talking about it afterwards over a drink and the women will be talking about in the salon or whatever. So this is going to be conversation that is not celebrity, tiddle tittle, but it's headline news, you know. It is. And then Ida did that thing that the press love,

which is where maybe they shouldn't be talking about something directly, but if somebody talks about the thing, now I can talk about them talking about it, and I'm kind of off the hook a little bit. So because she's published this huge essay about why we've all become prudes and how sex worship was amazing, which all looked at Eastern tantric religions

and penises were fabulous and all of this stuff, now people are talking about her. And it's really shocking for the time. I mean, you've seen how graphically she can write. Yeah. This is, she's a very petite, very pretty, educated woman, single woman, just offered her own writing about dicks. And actually that's one of the points too, right,

that they expect a woman of her class and of her standing to not be like this. To not be like this. And she's in her 30s by this point. So she's what they would have comfortably called a spinster. Except she's not a spencer because she's married to a ghost. Of course. I do keep forgetting about the ghost when we're talking about here. Spinstre schminster.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, her heavenly husband. So that's 1893. You've talked about the Comstock laws being in place since the 1870s, did you say? 1870s, yeah. It's 1874, I think. Okay. And so they're in place. Is that how they're going to pursue her?

Yeah, that's exactly how they're going to pursue it. So she is moving around the country quite a lot. She's even in England at one point, largely to avoid her mother and the doctors that her mother keeps sending out. So her mom's still going for it, like to the rest of her life. And she's even at one point, I just got to go back and live with her. really worried about doing it. So she's moving around and she sets up a practice in Philadelphia where she calls

herself the Grand High Priestess of yoga. Perfect. Does she mean yoga in the now way? In the Hampstead way? She does. It's just, it's so interesting when you go back and you look at this kind of cultural melting pot that's happened. Like now we're really keen on

on, you know, like cultural appropriation and like don't just be picking and choosing these things. They've got big traditions. She's just smash and grab. Smash and grab all of it. I'll have a bit of that. India, a bit of that from China. I'm a priestess of yoga off some of that as well.

She's really going for it. But yeah, she means yoga. So she sets up this like yoga school. If you were interested in the history of yoga, she's quite a big deal. Sure. Of bringing it to the masses. But what she's also doing is she's opening a clinic for couples. I just kind of strange. That's kind of strange.

She's kind of strange. Yeah. In some ways, she's really conservative. And in other ways, fat crap crazy. Like they're like she's very into monogamous. she thinks that sex should only really between a man and a woman and she's married to a ghost

she's not pro-homosexuality at all she doesn't believe in artificial contraception but she does believe that women should be able to control their pregnancies with the withdrawal method

and that you shouldn't be pregnant all the time so she's a real I guess she's just absorbed a lot of messages from the time a woman of a time she's trying to find her own way through in all the contradictions

included in her but she was also hell-bent on getting this message out there about sex and then not just the basics of it, but teaching that women could enjoy sex and that they should enjoy sex and that sex should be as pleasurable for you as for a man and you have a right to that. And she writes another one advice to a bridegroom

and she writes that if a woman has sex when she doesn't want to and she doesn't enjoy it, it may as well be rape and she's like really going for it for the time. But she said to the clinic to try and get information and try and counsel young couples. she's on dangerous ground already with this. As long as it's not being sent to the post, but the problem is she does start sending things to the post.

Because people write in, because people are embarrassed. They don't want to come to the clinic, but they do want to know stuff. So they start writing to her, and she is sending out copies of her books. It's not good. Anthony Comstock sets her up. He poses as a 17-year-old girl, and he writes requesting a copy of one of her books. Ida is very smart.

She smells a rat and basically sends back a letter that goes, sod off, Anthony. She says she knows it's him and she kind of and then she sends it to a lawyer but he is closing the net around it she's in Philadelphia it's okay but then she makes the mistake and moving to New York which is his home turf that's where he is

and what's interesting is that in her diaries you get a real sense of like she's going for a showdown she's going for a showdown feels like that you know I didn't know that it does it does why would you go there why would you move to be nearer this maniac he has her arrested and she is sentenced to, I think it's three months at a workhouse in New York straight away,

and there's still the letters that she wrote out of there survived to this day. He then manages to push through a court. He has her arrested twice for the same offence, once under New York law and then once under federal law. So for the same crime of sending out her book. He really is going after her. It's going for her. He hates her.

What year are we now? By the time we're doing all of this, this is 1902. So we're into the 20th century. So, and she is, she's, she's still got friends. She's still got people that support her. People wavering a bit on the husband bit, but okay. WTC is still trying to support her. She's got people saying, no, no, no, it's good.

Alastair Crowley was a big fan, by the way. You know, the member of the hermeneutical Golden Dawn. So she's got fans, but he manages to have her arrested twice. The court case, all of her witnesses are banned. They won't let a call any witnesses to defend her work. She had doctors and people lined up to say, actually, this is good stuff, this is good information. None of them were allowed to testify. Anthony Comstock is allowed to get up and lie, basically, and say that she's given this stuff out to children.

And she absolutely wasn't. The judge was appalled by it. He wouldn't let any of her work be read out. He said that it was disgraceful, and I can't believe that any sane woman would ever write this. He's so horrified, and they find her guilty. And she's released a pending sentencing. And this is where the story gets very sad, is in that moment she knew. that she would be sentenced for years and years and years

in Riker's prison or whatever it would be really nasty. She makes the decision to take her own life. I know. I know it's really, really sad. So she spends her last night writing letters. She writes a really beautiful letter to her mum about don't be sad for me. I've gone to the other side to be with Sof, I'm fine.

Please keep seeking spiritual enlightenment. Then she writes a letter to the public. And it's this huge tract and she rips into Comstock. She absolutely savages him. She talks about how he's a pervert. He's a sexual degenerate. And she talks about how the whole trial was thrown

and you wouldn't let me speak. And all I'm trying to do is educate people. And she knows she's martyring herself. And her death, as she knew it would, really turn the tide against Anthony Comstock. Because now it has another death on his hands and this letter that she wrote about, you absolute hypocrite, you pervert,

you pervert, you degenerate, you bully and she lays it all out of how unfair it was and all the stuff that she's trying to do and the tide really starts to turn against this guy. We're going to take a very quick look at that letter when we come back after this short break. I have a quote from that letter here that Ida wrote to the public.

This is the one she wrote to the public and we'll just talk through it. But before we do, I just want to make the point that this is why your work is so brilliant. because here we are at the top of this thing laughing and joking about having sex with ghosts and having sex with whatever else and we're having a nice old time

and then for want of a better word, knife gets twisted and you actually find yourself at the heart of a really fucking important history. It is important. And here's the other thing. You know, we're laughing and joking about the ghost part of it. But actually what she gets arrested

and tried for is educating about sex. It's educating people particularly women about sex. She'd only see couples by the way she didn't see like, you know, perverted men she wasn't selling sex or anything like that. Like I said she was oddly conservative in a lot of ways but she really wanted to get that information out there.

And so you suddenly find yourself confronted with the you get this whack in the face of reality which is what makes flick so amazing of going fun fun fun fun but actually behind it this is what's going on and here's it Here's what she says in this letter to the public.

Perhaps it may be that in my death, more than in my life, the American people may be shocked into investigating the dreadful state of affairs which permits the unctuous sexual hypocrite, Anthony Comstock, to wax fat and arrogant and to trample upon the liberties of the people, invading, in my own case, both my right to freedom of religion and to freedom of the press. Hey, those are some pretty... those are fighting words there. She's not...

Those are not the words of a madwoman. No, I don't think she was mad. I don't think she was. I don't know what was going on with Ida. I don't know what this spiritual husband was, but she believes it so intensely. She believes it, but she's not a raving lunatic. You can read through a letter.

She's very sane. She's very grounded. She's like a walking example of magical realism. Of just like everything is completely normal. Apart from this, this one bit and she clearly believed if it was a bit or something she was faking

she really committed to it I mean she did seven years of this and I don't know why you would make this up because her reputation really suffered because of it because people clearly thought like yeah we want to talk about sex education but you're having sex with a dead person like I don't know if this was

was she dreaming was she really having sex with somebody was she I don't know I don't know what is happening with Ida God knows she deserves a lot more biographies of people trying to find out. As I was here listening to this go, and as a story went on, and initially going, this mad woman, what are she doing? And then it becomes more obvious that, hold on, there's something else going on here and she's able to do this.

So the madness isn't bleeding into that. And so it was occurring to me that maybe she was, you know, you're saying you don't know why and neither do I obviously, because you've worked on this 28 billion times more than I have. But it was occurring to me just listening to you anecdotally that maybe there was something in the idea that she was engaging in some form of propaganda, which is a legitimate thing to go, I'm going to need a cover for this and this will in some way allow me to do this work.

But then you just said something there, which has me thinking again going, there's a million other things you could have said that you were doing rather than having sex with some form of angel to give you that cover of legitimacy. I mean, if we were to postulate on it, right, for a little seconds to go, well what does she gain by saying it's it's an angel she gets some kind of religious okay like god's okay

this because he sent this angel type being to me so she gets the religious tick box she gets the and i have had sex and i so i can talk about sex so i can talk about sex so you're not going to stop me being able to do that because i didn't do that but her own mother thinks she's mentally unwell she does yeah and is trying to have her committed and people are trying to arrest her like this is as well like she's really committed to it. I think about it a lot of what was going on for Ida and I think that because also she really believes in spiritualism and she believes that there is another plane that we're all going to and she believes that you can speak to angels and commune with spirits and people still have those beliefs to this day and when you talk to them about it and I don't want to

disparage anybody's beliefs but like is it like a state that they get themselves into where they believe that somebody's come to them where they like experience something physical like it's psychosomatic that I don't know what is going on with her, but I do know she wasn't insane. These aren't the writings of a mad woman. Her actions, she's very, very clever. Like, at one point, she knows that her mother is sending doctors after her. And so she actually, she sends her typewriter,

which she knows is her most favorite possession, to Canada, knowing that her mother would check the logbook and assume that she'd gone to Canada. And then so she throws her off the track that way, but has arranged so someone can pick it up and send it back to her. Like, that isn't the actions of somebody that is, in some kind of psychosis or something like that. Neither is that letter.

Neither is that letter. So it's really measured. She martyrs herself for this. She knows what she's doing and she knows the impact that her death is going to have as well. Okay, let's talk about that then just as a way to see us out of this episode. So we have,

she has taken her life sadly and very dramatically, but she has also very publicly taken the opportunity to condemn Anthony Comstock. What's the fallout for him? There's a big fallout, actually. suddenly the tide is turning on him. It was already starting to waver a little bit by the 1890s

attitude is starting to change and the federal government does things like it will now no longer fund him to go around the country they withdraw some of his funding so if he wants to go and prosecute all this case he's going to have to fund it himself and he can't do that.

Is this after Ida? This is after Ida's death. Other sex educators and people like Stead WT Stead they use her death to attack this of just like how dare you you do this, this woman.

And now you suddenly start to get doctors and educators coming forward of being like, look, her work was good. It was trying to help people. It was, you know, why are we so scared to talk about sex? So the tide really turns on him. The person that lands the death blow, if you will, against Anthony Comstock is Marie Margaret Sanger. A few years later, the birth control advocate,

who finally she is allowed to send advice around birth control in the post. She has a showdown with him in court. She wins. and that's kind of the end of him. But it was Ida that weakened him, definitely. Because by the time he limps along to that, his reputation is crumbling, people don't want to be associated with it.

People are dying. And Ida's death, like using all of that white female privilege to her full advantage of like, that's a death that you don't, that's not like some grubby man selling porn on the, that was a respectable, well-brought woman, single woman, and now she's killed herself. because of this man and she was no doubt who was to blame.

That letter is like it's ferocious. So the public opinion is turning on this man. Questions around censorship, around what's being censored. That's starting to turn. And she laid the groundwork for other sex educators to come in. People like Margaret Sanger and people that would come along later on really picked up the baton that she started of like we have to talk about this. Not to end on him because I'm just curious, did he just, does Construct just,

flitter away. It just flitters away. He just kind of retreats into obscurity. I'm afraid no horrible punishment came his way. Yeah, he gets the privilege of being able to do that

if she doesn't. Yep, she doesn't. But she blaze a glory, Ida. Yeah. And very intriguing. You're so right. Like it seems to be one thing

on the surface where let's talk about this angel sex thing and then you're something that's far more heartbreaking actually. Yeah. And so important. Like one of the things

that she says and it's such a small thing. but it's like, oh my God, Ida, yes. Like, she tells women to move during sex. It's like a small thing. But it's like, God, if you didn't know that, right? Who's telling you? Who's telling you, right?

She's like, look, like, get on top of your husband. She describes, like, go in and move around on his penis. Like, you're screwing something in. And it's just like, I mean, you're reading it. And it sounds kind of mad when you read. But you're also like, my God, but nobody had this information. Yeah. She's there.

And she's not just saying, I think we should control the population through birth control. Yeah. She's saying that. women have sex and should have pleasure and should have orgasms as well and that you're allowed to move during sex. She's saying it's not just for men. It's not just for men. It's not just for men. It costs her life. Literally cost her life. This is such an intriguing figure. Is she like your, I know we're not supposed to have favourites in her books, but like, is she one of your favour? I think I would just love to sit her down. I would just love to have a pint with Ida and

just be like, tell me, tell me what's going on here. Sweetheart. I think I'd actually come away from it thinking, oh, well, she is actually having sex with a ghost. Yes. That's clearly what's happening. I've been wrongly. Yeah, she's so convinced of it. She's so convinced of it. Or else even if she's a propagandist genius and she's made up this cover for herself, she's like, no, I needed to do this in order to do that. Again, there's law in that logic and there's not logic at all, but there's a, there's something going on in her brain that we don't know. We don't, we don't know what's going on. That would just be so fascinating to know. But the balls of that woman, so

brave and so courageous and nobody else was doing was writing like this was doing it was fighting that kind of fight and she went to new york to fight him take the fight to him to his door stuff to take that fight to him so thank you ida i think she thinks she is my favorite i just i just love her she's just so i don't know what word is to describe her i just love her and if you're watching this and you're a producer please get in touch with case please get in touch she needs a documentary or well she does but She needs a film. She's a film. Yeah.

That's what she needs. She needs something. I mean, it's, and it's the perfect story for a film that has a beginning, middle,

end, everything. Yeah. Kate's book, Flick, is available now. By the time this comes out, it will be there for you to get, go to all your good and bad, as Kate says,

bookshops, and of course, online retailers. Are you exhausted? Oh, you'll also be going up and down the country doing different events. Yes, I'm all over the place. Yeah, I'm popping up here

there and everywhere. You and me are doing one. We are. We are in, Levington Spa. We are indeed. I don't even know where that is, genuinely. I have no idea.

I'm not sure either. We're going to find out there. We are. We're going to find out and we'll have a nice little hotel when we're down there. Come here to me. Where can people find you if they want to know where you are on the road, etc, etc.? You can find me on Instagram or TikTok. Just search for Dr. Kate Lister.

And of course, you can listen to me on Betwixtash the shoot, the history of sex scandal and society. You may have heard of it. You may have heard of it. A little podcast on this very safe network. And thank you, as ever, for listening to you are watching After Dark. Did you know we're on YouTube if you didn't go over and watch us on YouTube right now.

You can see myself and Kate chat in the way like there's no tomorrow. In our brand new studio, by the way, I feel like we haven't referenced this enough. We're in the brand new history studio. So we're very, very delighted to be here. Leave us a five-star view, of course.

Wherever you get your podcasts, you can find me at Anthony Delaney History. And tell your friends, by the way, it's a good time to spread the betwixt and after dark lore to people who may not have heard about us before. So go and tell people where we are and what we do and come and see us when we're doing our live shows and listen to our podcasts and all the rest of us,

Basically, you're now part of a cult. The history of a cult, and you have no choice. Listen, I'll leave you to it. Thank you very much for dropping by. I'll see you again soon.