From pretty much the start of human history, there have been stories about humans making contact with the other side, but why does it seem to happen so often to celebrities? And more specifically, why do so many of them have sex stories about the encounter?
This week alone, John Cleese said he had been sent a message from his late Monty Python co-star Graham Chapman, while in a more explicit story, Celebrity Big Brother star Lauren Simon shared her heartbreak after being dumped by a ghost she had sex with.
She insisted: ‘I haven’t had a whispering [of a ghost], I have had full-blown sex. I’m not going to be a ghostly booty call, I’ve got my self-respect to think of.’
Lauren is far from the only one: Lucy Liu said in a 1999 interview that a ghost ‘came down … and made love to me,’ comparing it to something that ‘might have happened to Mary,’ apparently referring to the mother of Jesus Christ.
Kesha said she ‘went to the bone zone’ with a ghost, model Anna Nicole Smith insisted she had relations ‘repeatedly’ with a spirit, and Dan Aykroyd claimed an entity ‘got into bed with [him]’ — potentially the inspiration for that infamous Ghostbusters scene.
Of course, it’s not just celebrities who have these encounters: a woman in Northern Ireland married a 300-year-old Haitian pirate named Jack after she told him she ‘wasn’t cool with having casual sex with a spirit and I wanted us to make a proper commitment to each other’.
But what actually causes this spiritual, sexual phenomenon? Is it psychological? Or could it actually, be real? And why do ghosts seem to have such a thing for celebrities?
Metro.co.uk spoke to two experts: professional celebrity psychic Inbaal Honigman, and Emeritus Professor of Psychology Chris French, to find out what’s going on underneath the sheets.
Chris headed the Anomalistic Psychology unit of Goldsmiths University in London, which focuses on finding ‘non-paranormal explanations for ostensibly paranormal experiences’, and he is fairly certain this phenomenon is down to a very common cause: sleep paralysis.
Sleep paralysis is a common sleep disorder which affects approximately one in 12 people at least once in their lives, and in Chris’ words, ‘in its most basic form it’s a bit disconcerting, but not terrifying … a temporary period of paralysis in that state between sleep and wakefulness.
‘But in a smaller percentage of cases, it can be quite terrifying.’
Psychic Inbaal, who has worked as a professional psychic and tarot reader for 24 years, believes there is a far more frightening explanation for these sexual ghost stories: they actually happened.
Some ghosts are ‘imprints,’ appearing as footsteps or something in the corner of your eye, but others are ‘sentient”, and remain ‘ who ‘remained after they passed’.
‘Ghosts that remain as an actual entity [are] interacting with the living, in all sorts of ways,’ she says.
What she means, to put it bluntly, is that some ghosts are able to have sex with the living.
Putting the sleep paralysis theory to her, Inbaal notes that sleep paralysis stories are more well-known for the ‘overwhelming sense of dread’, and points out these celebrities appeared to be having quite a positive experience.
However while sleep paralysis can ‘often be unpleasant,’ it can ‘go either way’, Chris — who has just published The Science Of Weird S**t which includes a chapter on sleep paralysis — explained.
‘You might feel a very strong sense of presence, even if you can’t see or hear anything else … you are sure there is something or someone in the room with you and they have evil intentions.’
But, he adds, ‘there is an under-researched topic of positive sleep paralysis experiences, and … a lot of them would involve sexual feelings that the person rather enjoyed while they were happening.’
Chris notes that stories of paranormal sexual experiences date back hundreds of years, and are likely the reasons legends of succubus and incubus were formed — aka, ‘sex-crazed demons’. And in more modern times, stories of alien abduction.
The psychic and psychologist agree on one thing: why we hear so much about celebrities having sex with ghosts is down to how we consume content from celebrities in general.
We’re more interested in an A-lister’s ghostly experience than a neighbour from down the road, and ‘we hear more celebrity stories than civilian stories full stop’.
Inbaal adds: ‘Celebrities in general have the wealth and opportunities to enjoy lots more experiences,’ from travel to different countries, sleeping in more hotels and therefore meeting ‘a greater number of ghosts.’
Stars can be ‘more open minded’ and less likely to dismiss it, she goes on.
‘And they have access to experts that can interpret for them. Whereas the average Joe who has an experience like that has to wake up at 7am and go to the office and just feels weird for three weeks about it.’
They may also, like Ghostbusters star Dan, whose grandfather attended séances and tried to prove the existence of spirits, have come from families open to the idea of the supernatural and were raised with this open-minded attitude to it.
And Chris fully has a similar opinion. ‘Celebs are very susceptible to engaging in kind of paranormal practices,’ he says.
‘Many of them have their favourite psychics and astrologers and so forth. And without wishing to disparage these lovely, people, the things that correlate with paranormal belief … include people who are very creative, with very good imaginations and who may be fantasy-prone.
‘But if your imagination is good enough, where you can kind of summon up in your imagination a ghostly lover that feels to you very real, I guess you can call that the perfect lover — because it’s a product of your mind, it’s what you want.’
So the next time you find yourself making love to a ghost, don’t be afraid, you might just be sleep paralysed.
The Science of Weird S**t is available to buy from bookstores and online; learn more about Inbaal’s work here.
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