On a cold January night in the year 2016, two human women attempted to seduce a ghost. This is their story.
Spectrophilia — sexual intercourse between living human beings and ghosts — is a phenomenon with a history that dates back centuries. The folklore of many cultures include stories about humans gettin' it on with ghostly entities — gods, demons, Caspers, you name it.
In modern day, though, barely anyone talks about ghost sex. It's pretty much just Kesha and Paranormal 2 actress Natasha Blasick. Not even one Kardashian has Instagrammed about it.
A person in search of answers to their ghost-sex inquiries has very limited resources. For that reason, we — Arianna Rebolini and Katie Heaney — decided to investigate it for ourselves.
We decided to fuck some ghosts.
How To Seduce A Ghost
Thanks to the aforementioned interview with Ms. Blasick, we knew where to find an expert — we looked no further than Patti Negri, a psychic medium and self-proclaimed "good witch" who has emerged as our nation's leading/maybe only expert on spectrophilia.
Before we began our attempt, we spoke with Ms. Negri over email, and she generously agreed to provide us with general guidelines and a step-by-step list of directions, which she titled "Ghost Sex 101."
THE GUIDELINES
1. Know that it is real. Take it seriously. Be as goofy as you want, have tons of fun, but know that you really are inviting a real spirit from beyond in, and that you are opening a real portal into other realms.
2. Know your belief system (who ya gonna call if you get scared?): God, your angels, your guides, your higher self, your cat... Doesn't matter.
3. Don't get scared! Fear will do two negative things: 1) Fear will prevent it from happening altogether. 2) Fear will bring in the wrong kind of energy — a darker energy that will feed on your fear. (Editor's note: aaaaAAHHHHHHHH?!?)
4. Know that THIS is our realm of existence. They have to play by our rules. They have power over you only if you give it to them.
5. Have fun with it. Let go of any preconceptions of it being "evil" or "bad." Keep it good, healthy, and fun!
THE STEPS
1. Be in a great personal space — clean, happy, good mood. Be in your good senses.
2. Prepare your space: candles, incense, mood lighting, sexy music (just as if you were inviting in a living lover). Do NOT burn sage; that will keep spirits away.
3. Define your space and set its boundaries (i.e., bedroom only).
4. Protect your space in whatever way works with your belief system.
5. Start doing some slow deep breathing. Begin visualizing your ghostly lover — what it/he/she feels like, etc. ASK the universe (or whomever) to send you a ghostly lover. Be very clear that you want it to be positive, good, loving, and light — as well as hot, of course!
6. Softly add a chant to your deep breathing — something short that you can repeat easily, like "Come to me, loving spirits."
7. Believe.
8. Hopefully you will start feeling sensations. You may hear something, smell something, notice orbs of light or shadow. Hopefully the physical sensations are coming — often a feeling of pressure on the body, the feel of a soft touch, and then different forms of sexual stimulation. Enjoy it!
9. Throughout your encounter, communicate with the spirit. Make sure there is mutual respect and that NOTHING is done or allowed that YOU are not happy or comfortable with.
10. When it is over, thank the spirit (you can decide it you want to invite it back or not) and CLOSE THE VEIL or portal that you opened. Consciously, verbally state that all entities must leave and you are closing the veil.
With our instructions ready to go, and a free, weird Saturday night ahead of us, we prepared to get busy.
A complicating factor here is that we are both in (happy, human) relationships. We decided to talk to our significant others to see how they felt about our plans to have sex with a ghost. This is how that went:
Katie: My girlfriend claims to not believe in ghosts (despite refusing to see a single movie that features them), much less one's ability to have sex with them, but she was still, I'd say, less than thrilled by the idea of my pursuing it. Which I get. I asked if she thought it counted as cheating, which I do not think she dignified with a response. I also asked if there was anyone dead in particular she wanted me not to have ghost sex with, and she said Louisa May Alcott, which I was not expecting, but did agree to. So then I was like, "OK, I'm going in my room to do this now," and she was like, "OK," in a way that I think implied she still loved me as much as she did before I proposed having sex with a ghost. Then she went into the living room to play a game on her phone until I was finished.
Arianna: It's possible I dropped the news too casually (over Gchat, just a quick "heads up, I'm gonna be trying to seduce a ghost this weekend"), and my boyfriend was, understandably, confused, but all in all he remained unfazed. I did ask him if he'd like to go on record with his opinions about his girlfriend banging a ghost, but he respectfully declined.
So, with permission (basically) granted, we got ready to summon some spirits. What follows are our individual experiences.
Katie's room (left); Arianna's room (right).
THE SETUP
Katie: My room is generally pretty clean, so I didn't have to do much to tidy up. I lit a red candle that I'd bought from a witchcraft shop (red for sex), closed my curtain, and lay down on top of my bed, fully clothed. Everyone knows that ghosts can go through things, so in my mind, that shouldn't matter. Also, it was too cold to get naked.
Arianna: I, too, was clothed because of the temperature of my apartment but, to be fair, could have probably chosen a sexier outfit than my Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and BuzzFeed sweatpants.
Katie: I wore an X-Files T-shirt and jeans.
Arianna: My ambience wasn't ideal since the seduction happened at around 3 p.m., but that was when my boyfriend was out of the apartment, so, what are you gonna do. Who knows what temporal realm my ghost exists within, anyway. My room was fairly clean, my cat was banished, and I lit a white candle for protection (safe [ghost] sex is key) and good vibes.
Katie: Just like another person might prepare to have sex with a new human for the first time, I prepared for having sex with my new ghost lover by having two glasses of wine at dinner.
Arianna: I'd finished up some wine the night before, so I grabbed the lone, sad Bud Light Lime left over from a summer party in my refrigerator. It was fine.
Katie and Arianna, prior to attempted ghostly intercourse.
THE SUMMONING
Katie: I tried, as directed, to visualize my ghost, but it is hard to visualize something you have never seen before. I kept picturing a lady in Victorian dress. That is who I think of when I think "ghost" — a sickly, severe, middle-aged woman in a high-collared Victorian dress. With, like, a brooch. So I was not the most turned on I have ever been in my life.
Arianna: I pictured a Jon Snow-reminiscent entity, though I personally don't believe ghosts exist in humanlike form. (That just seems silly.) I was more focused on ~ energy ~ and tried very hard to practice deep breathing — something I am surprisingly bad at. My (living) boyfriend suggests I try yoga.
Katie: I do practice yoga (lol "practice," kill me), and I utilized the same deep breathing techniques I might use in class. But when it came to the chanting, I was extremely embarrassed — for myself, but also for any ghosts who might have been considering it, up until the moment I started chanting.
Arianna: Chanting required a level of commitment I couldn't confidently deliver. This is not limited to ghost seduction. I can barely commit to, like, putting on sexy lingerie without laughing at myself.
Katie: I also had a really hard time with step number 7, which is just "believe." That is easier said than done. This is something you encounter a lot in supernatural/metaphysical stuff — the idea that it "won't work" if you don't believe in it. But why? If there are ghosts just sitting around, waiting for humans to initiate sex with them, why would they let my skepticism stop them? I guess maybe it is insulting.
Arianna: It does seem like a potential cop-out, especially for those of us (me) who are inclined to believe, and who will then assume it didn't work because they (I) just didn't believe enough.
THE SEX
Katie: Good news for my parents, if they are reading this — I did not have sex with any ghosts. Not even close. We did not even get to first base. I felt nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing. Complete rejection.
Arianna: No sex. Well, OK. No recognizable sex. My hand got tingly. Some have suggested I gave a ghost some ... hand action, but if pressed, I would have to say, no, I don't think so. (Also, this has just occurred to me, but why would my ghostly lover have chosen my non-dominant hand?) But I did get swept up in the excitement of it all.
Katie: Even though I didn't expect anything to happen, there was a part of me that still believed it would. It's the same thing I've felt with every Ouija board game, every spell, every séance I've ever done. I'll be like, "Haha, laaaaame," and right away a demon face will appear in a mirror. And, in this case, sidle over to my bed, like, "Heeeeyyyy there, sailor."
THE DEBRIEFING
Katie: After I did not have sex with a ghost, I asked any ghosts who might have come into my room but not had sex with me to leave, like Patti told us to. I also told them to close the spirit portal to my room. I wanted to say "thanks for NOTHING" but I was too afraid, so I was extremely polite.
Arianna: I felt even sillier asking the ghost to leave, being fairly certain no ghost had even arrived, and understanding that I was speaking to NO ONE. But I did it anyway, just in case.
Katie: Patti's directions for us also said we should "ground ourselves" back to the mortal world after the experience by eating something salty, laughing, or "grabbing onto anything iron." I am pretty sure I laughed fairly soon afterward. What did you do?
Arianna: I grabbed onto my wrought-iron bed frame, at which point the tingling INCREASED, and then I laughed in that semi-hysterical, "Wait, did I actually just experience a paranormal encounter??" kind of way. And then I got spooked. My boyfriend was home late that night, and I fell asleep with the lights on and Netflix playing.
Katie: I slept like a baby. I don't remember even falling asleep.
WILL WE TRY AGAIN?
Katie: I don't think so, no. That said, I would LOVE to sign up for the reverse of this. I would love to have something to look forward to when I am dead.
Arianna: Sure. Maybe? More for curiosity's sake than anything else. I don't know. I can't promise I won't.
THE AUDIO
Want to hear our experience live, as it was recorded that night? Listen to this week's episode of Internet Explorer, in which we share audio from our experiences, as well as talk about them with Patti Negri herself!