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0:00:00
Ben Radford: Welcome to Squaring the Strange, the podcast that examines all manner of the mysterious and the mundane through a critical lens. So let’s square the strange.

0:00:11
Pascual Romero: Welcome back to Squaring the Strange. I’m your host, Pascual Romero, and with me as always is your other host,

BR: Ben Radford.

PR: This is going to be episode 28. We are at episode 2 of our four-part Halloween series. And today’s going to be a pretty, pretty, pretty interesting and a little bit…

BR: He looks at me apprehensively. PR: It is a, it is a really a unique topic. Let’s put it that way. This week we’re going to be talking about ghost sex. And Ben, what is ghost sex?

BR: Oh, wow. Way to put me on the spot there. Well, you know, it’s more or less what it sounds like. It’s sex with supernatural entities. Of course, you know, in the realm of ghosts, and for those who follow ghostology, if you will, you know, one of the inherent problems of identifying ghosts and researching ghosts is there’s really no way to be absolutely certain that what you’re experiencing is in fact a ghost. It might be, it might not be. There are lots of things that are mistaken for ghosts and of course everything from orbs in photographs to unexplained feelings, this and that. But let’s just say for a moment that they’re not misunderstandings and misperceptions, but some actual genuine entity that’s external to us. Even assuming that’s true, there’s really no way to know for sure that it’s a ghost, as opposed to a malevolent spirit, or a demon, or a fairy. So that’s one of the things that’s interesting about ghosts and the idea of a ghost is that really it’s such a general thing that it could be anything. So yeah, so that sort of leads into ghost sex. So we’re talking about assaults. Some of them are assaults. Well, consent is  an interesting…. that’s a bit of a sticky wicket there. I’m not sure how one would either get or not get. But it’s interesting, when you read accounts of this, some people are upset by it. Many people are pleased with it. It’s like, what are you going to do anyway? If you’re generally being assaulted by a ghost, physically, sexually, spiritually, in another way. You know, I guess you can get angry and throw holy water around, but at the end of the day, what are you going to do?

PR: Well I’m really excited to dig into this topic, but first let’s change it up for a minute. Ben, what are you skeptical of this week?

BR: Well this week I want to touch on a recent email that I got from…

0:03:38
PR: Oh, these are always fun.

0:03:39
BR: Yes, listener email. This is not fan mail specifically, although I’ve got a couple more fresh ones for the audience that we’ll hit on soon enough. But this was an email that I got from a fellow, I won’t give the name or anything, but I’ll just read it to you. It’s fairly short and you’ll sort of see where I’m going with this. The subject line is “case of synchronicity in a published novel.” And it says, hello Mr. Radford, I am the author of a novel which was published in August 2016. The thing is that I find the plot bears a close resemblance to facts that have been occurring after the publication. Now, his English is not perfect, so I’m just going to, rather than try and clean it up, I’m just going to, you get the sense of it. So I’m reading it verbatim, but you’ll get the idea. I started to notice coincidences after the Odebrecht scandal that broke out after the announcement last December 22 of the Justice Department of the United States, which indicates to 12 countries have received millionaire bribes by the Brazilian constructor Odebrecht in exchange for contracts which reached my country Dominican Republic, so he’s Dominican, as well as many other Latin countries. In my novels plot, a transnational company tries to seize the government with a series of bribes and bogus contracts. He says that at first the coincidence surprised me but I had left it, that I decided it wasn’t, it was, it went beyond historical, goes beyond the historical derivation of events. More recently, with the with the independence referendum in Catalonia in Spain, that has led me to think that the coincidences are too many to not think of the phenomena of synchronicity being the simultaneity of two related events by the sense but a causal way. Again that’s how he describes it. So anyway, in conclusion, this cannot be coincidence. I’m…

0:05:55
PR: Strong language.

0:05:57
BR: I assure you, dear sir, this cannot be coincidence. All this makes sense if we consider the common factors that give rise to the plot. My nationality, Dominican, one of my origins, Spain, the socio-political situation of both nations, plus Latin America, plus North America, and the types of leadership emerging in the world. Therefore, I ask you to investigate this fact as a sign that the phenomenon of synchronicity is real, even if we do not understand it very well. Your sincerely best regards, blah, blah, blah. So this is interesting.

PR: Yeah, yeah, very interesting.

BR: You know, it’s an interesting variation on a common skeptical theme that you and I and many of our listeners probably noticed, which is of course people seeing patterns in ambiguous stimuli or information. We see this in ghost photos all the time. I’m forever being sent ambiguous ghost photos. There’s something blurry. There’s a video of some darkish thing that flits across the screen at three minutes and two seconds that really does nothing other than darken out part of the screen. And you, having a background in video, are very familiar with artifacts.

PR: Sure, sure.Yeah, absolutely. I’ve spent a good amount of time on the internet just looking at videos. I tend to focus a little more, a little bit of my background that I don’t really talk about too much is, I mean I have talked about that I’ve worked in TV and film, but when I first started college I actually went for 3D animation. And so I learned a lot about 3D special effects. Now this is in the late 90s before the technology was quite where it is nowadays. It was still good at the time, but because of that I got really good at spotting animation or added effects in videos. And so whenever people show me these very clear UFO videos, I usually point out where the keyframes are off and where you can tell that the camera is moving more than the object is. Which it’s…

0:08:12
BR: Giveaways like that.

0:08:13
PR: Yeah. It’s like a musician finding auto-tune. You hear it, once you’ve heard it, you hear it all the time. So anyway, to your point, I’ve definitely seen a lot of that stuff and of course, my experience has made it very easy for me to spot these things very quickly.

BR: Sure, sure. And the underlying psychological process is the same, and it’s basically people see something that’s ambiguous and they see patterns in it. We see faces in clouds, right? We see pareidolia.

PR: Sure. The EVP is especially common with that. We talked about artifacts with that at one point.

BR: Or psychic mediums. You know, we did a show not too long ago on John Edward and his performance. And you know, when Celestia and I were in the audience, and again, it’s the same thing, he throws out a couple of facts, a couple of ideas, and you know, 20 people in the audience think it relates to them. They piece it together and they make sense of what they’re saying. And you also see this in, going back to another show, we talked about biblical prophecy and apocalypse. Where again, people will read the Bible and they’ll try and compare them to current and recent events and say, well if you just read it this way, clearly, or Nostradamus, right? A great power will rise and then fall.

0:09:39
PR: Yeah.

0:09:40
BR: Welcome to the real world. So anyway, what was interesting is that in this case, he’s seeing parallels in what he himself wrote.

0:09:49
PR: Right.

0:09:50
BR: Which is sort of a different twist than usual.

PR: Yeah, that’s unique.

BR: Yeah, yeah. So it was interesting. So I wrote back to him after sort of giving it some thought. And I’ll just read what I wrote, because it’s easier than me just describing. I said, thanks for writing to me, it sounds like an interesting idea, but it’s not clear to me, oh, let me just back up. So, when he referred to the Odebrecht scandal, so I did some research on this, I had actually heard a bit about it, I follow Latin American news a fair amount. And the Odebrecht scandal was a Brazilian, as you probably know, the government of Brazil is, you know, it just… They get a little fishy. Yeah, everything is especially dicey. Dilma Rousseff, it’s just, Brazil is in the middle of yet another corruption scandal and Odebrecht is one of the highest profile ones at the moment. One of many, just to be clear. Anyway, so when he mentioned the Odebrecht scandal, I spent a few minutes to familiarize myself with it. So, just as background, I said, I have not read your novel, being unable to devote the time to do so merely in order to reply to you, but I understand it deals with the corruption of a major corporation and the fight against injustice and to reveal the truth. So I was carefully not promising I was going to read his novel. He sent me a link to his novel on Amazon and I looked through it and I can read some Spanish and I got a sense of what it’s about. I’m not reading a 200 page novel in order to reply to your email. So to be fair, it could be that if I had read his entire book in the original Spanish and translated it, it could be that I will just be astonished at the parallels. I’m guessing that I’m on fairly safe ground here. So I said, this is a very common theme in fiction, including television shows, movies, books, and so on. So that by itself does not strike me as significant. What about the fact that you see parallels in the Odebrecht scandal? Keep in mind that you would see the same coincidences in any number of other large scandals. And that while the Dominican Republic is a big part of that story, so are a dozen other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. And you might see similar coincidences if you lived in any of those other countries as well. So again, he’s saying, hey I’m from the Dominican Republic. I think he makes some reference to his part of his family is Spanish or something so he’s looking in his own biography and saying wow I wrote about this government scandal and there’s a scandal that’s a Brazilian company but a big part of it is in the DR and he’s like oh and then there’s this you know there’s this the struggle for independence on the Spanish side he’s just finding all these pieces, this constellation of ideas.

PR: Which for the record is not at all new, that has been going on for quite a while.

BR: Yes, not new in the least. So I wrote to him and I said, you may be right that it is more than coincidence and that you have some prophetic power, but if this is a claim that you believe is true and that you’re asserting, then it’s your claim to prove. It’s not up to me, and I cannot drop what I’m doing to investigate the validity of your claim. I said if you wish to hire my research services I’m sure we can negotiate a fair fee. This of course yeah results in never hearing back.

PR: Always crickets when you when you tell them you can hire you know you can be hired for your services.

BR: Yeah it’s like what? I said however if you wish to pursue it I’m happy to offer advice. In order to establish this, you would need to compare your novel with other novels published in other countries by other writers who may have written on similar common themes. I’m certain that a survey of other novels by writers from one or more of the countries affected by the Oudbrecht scandal will reveal similar patterns. And, of course, the further back you go, the more you will find. Hope this helps. So, again, keep in mind that the scandal was, last time I saw it, and he was right in terms of the breadth, is a dozen countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. So it could well be that his novel has some amazingly prophetic narrative to it. In order to determine that, then that’s fine. In order to find out whether this is unique, then we need to go to all the countries, all dozen countries that were affected by the Odebrecht scandal. Find all the self-published novels and other novels that have themes of government corruption, injustice, scandal. Good luck with that. And of course, at the end of the day, there’s only a dozen or so plots. Everything is just recycled versions. I mean, Joseph Campbell talked about this in the mythologies.

PR: Sure, sure.

BR: You’ve got the hero stories. There’s only so many versions of this. It doesn’t surprise me that he might see real-world parallels coming out of his novel and saying, oh, well, this all came true. It’s like Nostradamus. He’s not making predictions. He’s making post-addictions. He’s saying things that in the light of, in the perspective of months and years later, wow, you know, look, I said this and I said this and these things came true. Yeah, but you also said 30 other things that didn’t at all come true. So that’s, anyway, so that was just sort of interesting email that I wanted to share because it sort of gives insight into, not only some of the weird emails I get, but also you know how people can sort of approach the skeptical inquiry on their own. And I get this a lot, you know, where someone is like, oh, you know, can you look into this for me? Well, usually I can’t. I just don’t have the time. But when possible, I do try and encourage people to like look at it skeptically, look at it critically, and say, okay, well, if you want to pursue it, again, not my job. It’s not my job to stop what I’m doing and read your novel and see if there’s any parallels with what’s going on today. If you want to do it, here’s how you would start to go about it, using critical thinking and logic.

PR: Totally. And it’s kind of a cool opportunity when someone approaches you like this, especially when it kind of sounds like, by the language of that email, this isn’t one of those people that’s so firmly, just, I mean, they believe what they’re saying, but they aren’t coming from some crazy ideological perspective that’s going to be impossible to really discuss honestly. So you’re kind of able to give them the tools to reflect. I would think that even if maybe they’re a little hesitant to actually apply that doubt to themselves, they still are able to kind of see it. Because that situation, again, neither of us have read this book, neither of us probably will read the book.

BR: I’m not going to. I’ve got enough books to read as it is.

PR: Exactly, so you know I can’t say for sure, but what I will say is that these themes first off are nothing new, that the what he’s describing isn’t exactly something that hasn’t happened before I’d be a little more inclined to to raise an eyebrow if you know he was like you know if he predicted something very specific that was unprecedented.

0:17:38
BR: This is something unusual, or maybe he mentioned some unique name with some known company that happened to… I mean, that’s fine. And again, all I can go from is his description. So I’m not pretending that I did an in-depth investigation here. I did not. I did the best I could with the information that I was given, and tried to sort of give the meta-analysis in terms of why he might see patterns that aren’t really there.

PR: Right, right. And I think you handled it really well because you weren’t refuting him at all and you didn’t even really offer a lot of alternative explanation because again, you just didn’t have enough in front of you to go off of, which is the most intellectually honest thing to do. I think I might have been inclined to speculate a little and just be like, yeah, you and every other writer who has some dystopian corporate government collusion, Blade Runner. This stuff’s been around forever. It doesn’t predict the future. It’s a reflection of our views of things that are already happening. Corporations and governments have been in each other’s pockets for a very long time.

BR: Well, yeah, there’s nothing new there. And one thing I mentioned in closing my email to him, I said, you know, it also depends on how far back you go. In his mind – he said that he wrote that novel, I think, in 2016. So in his mind, it’s only a year old. But as I sort of delicately mentioned to him, how far back are we going here? How prophetic is this? 20 years? 30 years? 50 years? I mean, it’s wide open, right? So to him, the fact that he wrote this last year is meaningful. I’m like, well, for all you know, somebody in Brazil wrote a novel 10 years ago that almost exactly matches the current situation. And we don’t know until we look. So again, it’s almost an issue of control groups and having a sort of representative sample and just understanding the statistics of meaning.

0:19:53
PR: Yeah.

(MUSIC)

0:19:54
PR: So, on to our main topic for this week. We are going to get sexy with ghosts tonight.

0:20:09
BR: Oh yeah, baby.

PR: Now, this is something you had very kind of in passing mentioned when we were talking about sleep paralysis and some of the other things. And it kind of caught my interest that you had mentioned it then because that’s definitely one little angle into it. But the overall topic is really interesting to me and I think we’ve got a lot to dig into. So Ben, we kind of set it up. We talked about what ghost sex was a little bit, but let’s go ahead and jump into it. What’s the first thing you want to get into?

BR: Are you guys ready for spirit sexy time? Okay, well let’s sort of give an overview here. So let me start with a couple quotes from people who have actually experienced or certainly claim to experience, and we can’t. We have to take their word for it. Like all ghost experiences, we have to assume that they’re experienced.

0:21:26
PR: It’s your experience.

0:21:27
BR: Right. But let me just read you a couple that I managed to collect from the internet, which of course, in the internet, it’s always true. So there’s one person, this is an actress, I’ll see if you can guess who they are. So this is an Asian American actress, and there was an interview in Us Weekly in 1999, and she was talking about the time when she went for a nap on her couch, and an unknown presence laid on top of her. Quote, it was sheer bliss. I felt everything. I climaxed. And then he floated away, she told the magazine. Who do you think it might be? I gave you a hint earlier.

0:22:12
PR: Wow. It’s an Asian actress with a couch?

0:22:16
BR: Yes, with a couch. Let me give you a hint.

0:22:19
PR: Definitely. Okay, go ahead.

BR: She’s known for being an angel.

0:22:23
PR: Known for being an angel. Ah, Lucy Liu.

0:22:24
BR: Yes, yes. Alright. So there you go. Here’s another one. Again, this one just happens to be a woman, but here’s another one. It says, quote, I was watching TV. I was sitting on the couch at 11 a.m. and I was wearing a nightie and I felt my dress move up my leg. I looked down and got freaked out. I pushed it down, watched TV, felt it again. And I could see it being pulled up. And then I felt a guy breathing in my ear. So this is a buxom woman.

PR: Okay.

BR: I believe she was in a reality show.

PR: Okay.

BR: And her husband is a famous rapper and actor

PR: Ok, a famous rapper and actor… uh that would probably be well let’s see a famous wife reality show it’s gonna be coco ice tea’s wife that’s right all right man i’m i’m 10 for 10 i i i kind of am uh very loosely uh uh acquainted with them uh because of uh the mayhem tour when body count was on it for the record

BR: oh there you go i i remember uh uh i listened to uh i think it was his album OG, Original Gangster.

0:23:44
PR: Laying down the rhymes, man. Hardcore.

BR: Okay, so let me give you another celebrity. Another celebrity’s ghost sexy account. All right. This is a musician, a widower. That’ll probably give you a clue, he says, I bought this mansion in Georgia. It was a really, really spooky place. Now I’m wondering if you’re rich and famous, probably you’d buy a spooky mansion, but anyway. He says, yeah, one time I woke up and yeah, a ghost. I was being mounted by a ghost.

0:24:16
PR: Huh.

0:24:17
BR: And this was during a interview with Robin Roberts on 2020, and he assured Roberts that he was not high or tripping. The two phrases he used. Apparently the assumption is, I know you probably think I’m higher tripping, I ain’t higher tripping. Any idea who that might be?

PR: Boy, a widower lives in Georgia. I’m going to have to pass on this one. I really can’t. I mean, no one…

0:24:49
BR: That’s your prerogative.

0:24:51
PR: Yeah, Bobby Brown.

0:24:53
BR: There you go. Good job. All right, so there’s a couple. Let me read one more, because this is just delightful. And I actually wrote about this a couple of years ago. OK. And it’s a delightful story. And so here’s her story. So this is a singer. And she wrote a song called Supernatural.

0:25:23
PR: Oh, OK.

0:25:23
BR: So you probably already know who that is anyway.

PR: I’m getting there, yeah.

BR: And there was an interview with Ryan Seacrest in 2012. And she mentioned what inspired her record. And she says, quote, I had a couple of experiences with the supernatural. I don’t know his name. He was a ghost. Which, in a way, okay. It’s less skeezy if you don’t know his name and it’s a ghost. Right. I mean, that’s okay. That’s cool.

0:25:54
PR: Right. Ghosts don’t go around introducing themselves that often. Yeah, it’s like a one night thing.

0:25:59
BR: Yeah, sure. He was a ghost, she said. I’m very open to it. I was in Africa rehabilitating baby lions, as one does. I went diving with great white sharks, again, as one does, and just went on this crazy spirit quest. I got hypnotized and really just wanted this record to be really, really positive, really raw, really vulnerable, and about the magic of life.

PR: Okay, that person I actually know because I know her guitarist actually and I’m going to tell him to listen to this episode. Hopefully we have him tuning in. Hi Nick. But anyway, yeah, so that’s Kesha.

BR: It is.

0:26:47
PR: That’s Kesha.

0:26:48
BR: It is. Good job. All right, cool.

0:26:51
PR: So she wrote music as a result of ghost sex, you’re saying? Yes. I didn’t know this story at all, for the record. It’s totally news to me.

BR: Yeah, well, you know, inspiration gets you where it gets you.

0:27:07
PR: Sometimes in the pants.

0:27:09
BR: Make of that what you will. And I actually have a couple more in front of me. There’s a couple, Anna Nicole Smith, apparently had a sexy time with a ghost that was apparently not her 150 year old husband at the time.

0:27:26
PR: Oh, so he was still alive at the time. Or not.

0:27:29
BR: Because that just gets weird. Natasha Blasik, the actress from Paranormal Activity 2. She’s quoted talking, it’s rather saucy so I’ll read it. She says, I was laying in bed and then I felt something enter the room and I couldn’t see anyone, she said. I could feel that someone was touching me and the hands were pushing against my will and I could feel the weight of the body on top of me. I couldn’t see anybody but I could feel the pressure, the energy, the warmth, pushing in different directions. I’ll just leave that there. According to Natasha Blaskett, ghost sex can be pretty rowdy. She says, quote, you’re feeling specifically where they’re touching. They’re touching my left breast, they’re touching down there, they’re touching something. You actually feel penetration often, she said. She said she really enjoyed it, something that Lucy Liu also mentioned, which is good.

PR: I mean, no, that’s I mean, I that’s that’s actually the part that kind of gets me and I hope I’m not getting too ahead of the conversation here, but it seems a little interesting that people are not sexually assaulted in these stories. No, no, which is which is really actually kind of surprising to me because I… surprise sex is not typically anything but assault.

BR: So you’re right, it’s fascinating. Keep in mind that to be fair, these are self-selected stories. So if you’re a celebrity, and who knows, they’re doing it for attention, they’re doing it because they want to be weird. I mean, just by the way, you know. And of course, the truth is, there’s probably a lot of other actors and actresses and celebrities who have had a similar experience but just didn’t happen to mention it in an interview, or just a personal thing. So it’s probably much more common than we’re seeing. However, there is a case, following up on that, let me tell you about a weird news item by one of my favorite people, David Moy, who’s a writer for HuffPo. He’s interviewed me several times. Strange guy, but I like him. We’re friends on Facebook and we bounce ideas out.

0:29:49
PR: We love strange people.

0:29:51
BR: Yes, we do. Yes, we do. So this is… Here’s an article from November 21st, 2011, and it says, Ghost Groping: British grandmother Doris Burke complains. She’s being touched by pervy poltergeist.

PR: Okay.

BR: So here’s here’s here’s the other side of the coin. Yeah, yeah And again, I won’t read the whole story you can If you’re interested you can find it Just in a nutshell it says a birch a 73 year old grandmother living in the British town of Herne Bay Is being kept up nights by a ghost who keeps groping her when she’s trying to rest. Quote, it’s like an octopus. She told ThisIsKent.co.uk, It started four months ago. I was lying in bed when I felt this creepy pair of hands. I kicked frantically and it went away. The next time it came, I hurled down the duvet to the floor.

PR: Interesting.

BR: She says, I’ve tried sleeping without the duvet, but it started shaking my mattress. I even threw the mattress off the bed and bought a new one that has made no difference. I told my 16 year old granddaughter and she was gobsmacked.” I love the word gobsmacked.

PR: It’s a great word.

BR: Gobsmacked. Gobsmacked. I can’t even do the British accent. Anyway, so she’s gobsmacked. And then the article then goes on to quote paranormal researcher and HuffPo blogger, Alexandra Holzer, who is the daughter of a mystery-mongering fellow named Hans Holzer. I have several of his books. They’re very, what’s the polite word, gullible, mystery-mongering, sensationalized, not necessarily anchored in truth or reality, but whatever. But whatever, I’m glad that Alexandra Holzer has a comment on there. She actually says, it’s hard to tell what’s inspiring the spooky sexual assault without a full proper investigation. What would that even be? Really Alexandra? Help me out here.

PR: That is always my number one issue. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but with ghost hunting, ghost investigating, is that that you’re starting from from a position of Knowing what something is before the world has even established it. You know so it’s it’s that to me always It’s like you’re you’re you you’re starting from from a from a non Idea to begin with so you know what in what what in-depth investigation is going to determine anything I mean, we don’t even know what a ghost is.

BR:  Who’s the lucky Scotland Yard detective gonna be assigned to this case He’s just waiting for that phone ring yeah 73 year old grandma at Herne Bay Great. Yeah, I’ll be right on that. Thanks, Alexandra So, you know, so there are cases of course where the the the groping or touching is is unwelcome now keep in mind this this actually in my mind I hearken back to a case that you and I talked about before, where I interviewed a guy who believed that he was being attacked by a ghost at night.

PR: Right, right.

BR: That was the case that turned out to be Restless Leg Syndrome. Mm-hmm. And again, it was very mysterious, very strange, in the context of spooky, I mean, that’s what he thought it was.

PR: Yeah, yeah.

BR: And again, I don’t know any more about the case than what I just read. I mean, I poked around, but I have not investigated that. But I suspect that the first question should be, does she have any symptoms or anything else of any sleep disturbances? Before you start calling in ghostbusters, before you start calling in all these paranormal experts, find out how she’s doing. Is there sleep disturbances going on? Do a sleep study. Are there medications? She’s an elderly woman. I don’t know.

PR: It could be neurological. It could be a number of things.

BR: Yeah, but I would diplomatically suggest that before reaching for the ghost assault explanation, maybe you should try other things first.

PR: Go for the more solvable mysteries.

BR: Exactly. So that sort of gives you a flavor for where we’re going, a bit of a salacious flavor. But that sort of sets the stage for what we’re talking about. So one thing that’s interesting is the idea of the gender of ghosts. Because if you think about it, I mean, again, ghosts can be, depending on what you think they are, I mean, some people think they’re disembodied spirits. Some people think that they’re astral projections, whatever else. But one of the most common ideas is, of course, that the ghosts are the spirits of the departed. And the idea is, presumably, that their personality, their gender, probably, carries over. I don’t know.

PR: That, even by modern science standards, is probably going to be changing pretty soon.

BR: Right, no, you’re exactly right.

PR: We understand the fluidity of that and in ghosts there shouldn’t be any question that it would apply, I would suppose at least.

BR: You would think. So I actually found a short section in a book on my shelf, it’s called Ghostly Encounters, The Hauntings of Everyday Life by Dennis and Michelle Waskul. I’ve mentioned them once before in another context. And on page 87 they have a short bit, and I’ll just read it to you, it’s quite short. They conducted a study of 144 ghost reports, and they said only 30 were described as having an observable gender. Yet when people refer to ghosts, they most often use male pronouns.

0:35:35
PR: Okay, yeah, I can see that.

0:35:37
BR: Yeah, so they say, quote, it says, most often people tacitly presume masculinity unless a ghost is seen engaging in stereotypically feminine behavior. And of course, I’ve seen that as well. If you go around Old Town, for example, here in Albuquerque, there’s very clear stereotypes of who the ghosts are. You know, there’s at the Press Club, Alki Press Club, where we did the live show a couple of months, a couple weeks back. You know, there’s Mrs. M, the matronly ghost there. And oftentimes in ghost hunting, because it’s such an amorphous idea, people will impose their own stereotypical ideas about, oh, it’s a cowboy ghost. It’s a chef ghost. It’s a Confederate soldier ghost. It’s just fascinating how they just love to pigeonhole and get these stereotypes of what these things are. And it absolutely makes sense. So for example, if you go to the St. James Hotel up in Cimarron and you go to Deadwood, the ghosts that are claimed to be there are very clearly in their generals. So there’s the ghost of the murderer or prostitute. There’s the gunslinger, right? All these hyper masculine, hyper feminine roles that people impose on them. Yeah. So anyway, in other words, as a general rule, ghosts are presumed to be men unless there’s evidence to the contrary. And I think that that’s often the case. And again, I’ve seen that quite a bit where the… And this is also particularly true with ghosts that you would not otherwise assign a gender to. For example, shadow figures. It’s fascinating because I’ve asked people, people who claim to have seen ghosts, and I say, what exactly did you see? Because I don’t know what ghost means. I mean, I’m not being facetious. I don’t know what you mean by ghost.

0:37:41
PR: Objectively, skeptics don’t have a good clear answer.

0:37:42
BR: And as an investigator, you don’t want to impose your own definitions. Exactly. It’s really important to let the eyewitnesses speak for themselves.

PR: Absolutely.

BR: So I remember a couple of cases where I’d ask them, you saw, what exactly did you see? And they said, oh, sort of a man-like shadow figure. And I said, what does a man like shadow figure mean? I mean, you can sort of, look, you can tease out a silhouette of a burly bouncer from a 16 year old girl, but we’re talking about figures whose forms are amorphous, right? They materialize. How you might interpret the ghost and its gender could vary depending on what second you happen to see it.

PR: Right, right. That’s pretty, that’s actually fascinating because I think back to my own experiences with sleep paralysis and the figure that I used to see in my doorway when I experienced these episodes.

BR: I remember you talking about that.

PR: And just in my memory and in my head it always kind of just strikes me as male although there’s absolutely no reason for me to have assumed that. I mean there’s there just is no reason. I mean it the form as I recall it is just about as vague as it could be. As much as I could really ever make out was just sort of a shadow of head and shoulders and I mean it was never.

BR: So no dangly bits?

PR: Right exactly so that’s a part of my huge thing walks in all bow-legged and you just see this other third shadow kind of you know but no I mean –

BR: That ain’t my leg boy!

PR: There’s just no reason that I should have ever assumed that and and I you know I’d have to look into my own my own kind of perceptions of things to understand that I think a lot of it a lot of it probably is because of how often these things are assigned the male gender because I never saw these as being real I always knew that they were not but but my own experience still I was assigned to gender so that it’s very very interesting that you mentioned that about this because even I’ve fallen for that and I have no defense. I mean, it did not walk in swinging its junk in my face.

BR: Although maybe tonight, you don’t know. But no, it’s interesting. So let’s take a quick look at the history of this. The idea of consorting with, certainly sexually, with unknown entities at night, it’s always been ambiguous. I mean, was it a dream? Was it a neurotic dream? Was I visited at night? And some of the debate about witchcraft was whether submission to an incubus, a male spirit was itself evidence of consorting with the devil. So you go back to the notions of the incubus and the succubus, the demons that would come in at night. And it was often thought to be the same entity or creature, just in different forms. So it wasn’t like there’s a male incubus and there’s a female incubus. It’s like there is this creature that will come and have its way with you at night. If you happen to be a woman, then it’s incubus, if you happen to be a man, it’s succubus. So that was sort of the idea.

0:41:21
PR: So it was called a Ubus.

0:41:22
BR: Ubus, exactly. And it was interesting, during the medieval Europe, middle ages, people often believed that a deformed child was the result of an incubus.

0:41:37
PR: Oh wow.

0:41:38
BR: Who would come and visit it. So you have, and also the incubus, like Satan, is said to have an ice-cold penis. I’m just passing along.

0:41:49
PR:  That sounds uncomfortable. It does.

0:41:52
BR: It does, certainly for all involved. And even if you look at the Malus Marificarum, there’s a section titled, as you know – the chapter titles hundreds of years ago were like a mouthful. They’re like, you know, chapter 3, blah, blah, blah. So here’s the section that says, the title is, “Here follows the way whereby witches copulate with these devils known as Incubi.” And even Catholic Saint Thomas Aquinas believed that demons would float in the air until the day of judgment and come down and have their way with men and women.

PR: Sounds reasonable.

BR: And why not, right? Sure. And his belief was that if a succubus could conceive, the result would be a giant like the Nephilim mentioned in Genesis.

0:43:05
PR: Oh, okay.

0:43:06
BR: Sure. So it sort of ties back into the Bible. But a lot of people believe that, and this goes back to how we started the conversation, what are we talking about? Are we talking about an incubus? Are we talking about a ghost? In many cultures, particularly in the British Isles, it wouldn’t be considered a ghost or demon but instead a fairy. There’s a really good book I recommend called The Strange and Secret People by Carol Silver. I love the book, it’s got all fascinating stuff on the history of fairies, particularly in the Victorian era. She talks about these Manx fairies that were said to come and visit men at night. Again, these weren’t ghosts, they were specifically not ghosts. They were in that realm of magical creature, but it’s all a bit amorphous anyway. At the end of the day, there’s no way to be sure exactly what Kesha experienced or Lucy Liu or whoever else. As we alluded to, there’s lots of psychological phenomena that can give the impression of a sexual ghostly lover. Sexual dreams are not uncommon among anybody. Teenagers, young, old, I mean, that’s not uncommon. It’s not, nothing pathological about them, it’s okay.

0:44:31
PR: Nothing to be embarrassed about.

0:44:32
BR: Nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s fine. And, you know, and of course, the nature of when these occur, it’s almost invariably, and we saw this from the descriptions, right? On a couch, in bed at night. These are exactly the conditions under which you’re going to have sleep paralysis or you’re going to have hallucinations, you’re going to be drifting in and out of sleep. Again, there’s nothing particularly unique or special about it. One thing I noticed was, if you remember in Kesha’s case, she made specific reference to being hypnotized.

PR: Right, yeah.

BR: She was, at the time when she had the sexy time with the ghost, she was in this sort of self-described vision quest.

PR: Yeah. She was looking for it.

BR: Yeah, she’s nursing baby lions, she’s wrestling sharks, she’s doing God knows what, right? And she’s intentionally in the exotic wilds of Africa, opening herself up to experiences and whatever else. And so it’s not surprising that in that state of mind she might have this this hallucination this sensation of of something that’s that’s you know touching her.

0:45:49
PR: Yeah, let’s let’s take a listen real quick to a quick line from from her song supernatural where she describes this experience

0:45:57
Kesha: (recording) Baby, when we’re touching in the dark, can you feel it? I can hear the pounding of my heart, can you feel it? When you take my body to the stars, I believe it…

PR: There we go. There we go. That was the beginning of the song Supernatural by Kesha.

BR: Is it hot in here or is it me?

PR: No, it actually is very hot in here. We have a bunch of studio equipment surrounding us and we can’t run the AC. But yeah, that’s the beginning of the song. Very pretty straightforward description of the experience I would say. And a very catchy sounding song for the record. I didn’t hear any guitar, Nick. I’m sure you do play guitar in this band.

BR: Allegedly.

PR: Allegedly. But anyway, so that’s cool. appreciate any musician who derives some material from these sorts of things. So it’s actually really interesting to hear a song being written about that because as far as I know, maybe there have been songs written from these experiences, but at least we have documented evidence of it now.

0:47:29
BR: Right, and that’s cool. I mean I’m not making fun of her. I mean I think that’s cool. I mean it’s as good as anything else to be inspired by. Whether she actually was being felt up by a ghost or not, it’s a cool idea, right?

PR: Yeah, definitely.

BR: I’ll just sort of wrap up with a book called The Terror That Comes in the Night. This is by a folklorist named David Hufford, who I’ve actually mentioned before. He did a survey and he found that about 15% of people experience being assaulted in their sleep by an unknown entity at some point in their lives. And of course, this harkens back to our episode on sleep paralysis.

PR: Yeah, I think that that number is probably pretty consistent with people that experience those sorts of things too, so that’s pretty interesting.

BR: Yeah, so 15% is a lot of people. And of course, given the inherent ambiguity, I mean, it could be much higher, that’s just they don’t really consider, they don’t consider what they experienced to be strange enough or meaningful enough to report it to a surveyor. And again, that’s, anyways, that’s what I find interesting, is, you know, again, some of these are scary, some of them are sexy, some of them are just fun. And the other case I remember, there was a case a couple years back of a woman who, this is a perfect way to wrap it up, she was complaining that she was seeing ghosts having sex on her television.

0:49:09
PR: Oh wow.

0:49:10
BR: Yes. So apparently, and there’s a photograph of this if you look online, you can find anything online. So there’s these, she photographed it and it’s this sort of white blob. It’s like any reflection on any screen. Particularly a curved screen, you’ll see this. You know, there’s light in the back. Anyway, so she saw this and she photographed it and she was complaining that ghosts were boinking in the reflections of the light behind her on her television set. Now, I looked at it, and it was not that hot, I’ll be honest with you. I was not, this isn’t even PG stuff. This is maybe some light petting. This is not, yeah. So whatever they’re doing, knock yourself out. But yeah, so that’s so in addition to people in addition to people claiming the personal experience that you have a handful of people who say that it’s occurring on their TV and and they’re upset about it.

PR: That’s remarkable. I just assumed that she had tuned into the adult channel. You remember back in the 90s when or 80s and 90s really when cable was was was king. The channels that you didn’t get, if you didn’t have a cable box with the specific…

0:50:33
BR: The scramble channel.

PR: Yeah, they’d just be kind of this weird scramble of… And if you went on to Cinemax when it was the middle of the night, you’d hear it. You’d hear it. And then every once in a while you might see a butt or a nipple. Yeah, exactly. So, I just assumed she had accidentally tuned into one of those channels.

0:50:57
BR: No, no, apparently I think the TV was actually off.

0:51:00
PR: Oh, it was off.

0:51:01
BR: Okay, okay. Which makes it all the more bizarre.

0:51:03
PR: Yeah, that makes it a lot more bizarre.

0:51:04
BR: But again, it ties in with what we were talking about before. People see ambiguous figures in clouds and coffee stains, whatever else, and now why exactly she would interpret that as being two ghosts doing the dirty, I don’t know. I wouldn’t have gone there myself.

PR: Yeah, that’s pretty strange.

BR: But yeah, I mean, I’d be like, hmm, is your husband away for long term?

PR: Yeah, that is really, that is really strange. I think that maybe it speaks a little more to where her mind’s at when she’s looking at these things. It’s kind of a little bit of a Rorschach of television reflections.

BR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. My advice is to check the cable bill on that one.

0:51:50
PR: Yeah, definitely. And don’t call in and say you don’t know how that porn got ordered on your account. Nobody believes you.

0:52:00
BR: What? It’s a ghost. Boy those ghosts just been ordering all that porn.

(MUSIC)

0:52:07
PR: We would like to thank our sponsor level patrons Amy Freshour-Kelly and Dr. Angela Mattke. If you’d like to find out what that is and how to become one, head over to patreon.com forward slash squaringthestrange. Patronage starts at just a buck and there are a lot of perks and bonus content just for our patrons.

BR: If you’d like to lend your moral support, you can head over to iTunes and give us a review. Every five-star review gets us a little more visibility on the iTunes podcast charts and brings a smile to Pascual’s face.

0:52:51
PR: So that about does it for us this week. I thought I would bring up a little something. Ben, you are on TV quite often, I’ve heard and I’ve seen. We got you on a new show this week. So, what’s going on with that?

0:53:22
BR: What show is it? Yeah, it’s on the Science Channel and it’s titled Strange Evidence, which is one of those sort of oddly generic titles that is non-offensive and, you know, put strange and put evidence in there and we’re good.

0:53:38
PR: There you go.

0:53:39
BR: Right. It airs on Tuesdays at 10 Eastern Time and I think it’s a 10 part series if I’m not mistaken. And I was interviewed by them, I don’t know, back about four or five months ago. As always, I haven’t seen the cut so I don’t know. I assume I’m in there somewhere.

0:53:59
PR: But you just don’t know if they’ve made you look like a real a**hole.

0:54:02
BR: Exactly, exactly. So, uh, I, but in general, I trust the guys and it’s, it was a fun, it was a fun shoot. Uh, the, the guy that interviewed me, uh, looked exactly like, um, uh, who’s the guy in Notting Hill, the actor?

0:54:15
PR: Oh gee, uh.

0:54:16
BR: The guy that winces a lot.

0:54:18
PR: Oh boy, that guy, yeah, the, the, the only British actor in the whole world.

0:54:22
BR: What’s his name?

0:54:23
PR: Uh, oh boy.

0:54:24
BR: The guy that was busted, uh, with the, with the prostitute. Wow, we’re going way off.

0:54:28
PR: We have a lot of UK listeners too. We’re just about to completely fail.

0:54:32
BR: Anyway, he looked exactly like him. He was with Liz Hurley at one point.

0:54:36
PR: I remember that.

BR: Yes, yes. Anyway, the guy that interviewed me looked exactly like him. I kept looking at him like, you know you look exactly like… Anyway. Nice enough guy. But yes, I’ll be on the show, Strange Evidence, and I’ll also be on an upcoming episode of MTV News on bad clowns, of course. That’s one of the perpetual topics these days. And actually, it comes back full circle because one of the first major TV shows I was on was on MTV. There was a show called The Big Urban Myth Show. Which was sort of a precursor to Mythbusters. Oh, cool. And in that show I was one of a couple experts that basically looked into the reality of urban legends.

0:55:27
PR: I don’t know how I’m not familiar with that show at all.

0:55:29
BR: Well, it only ran for I think a couple seasons, but it was fun. I remember, I think I was interviewed on the organ theft urban legends, sealing your kidneys, and a couple other ones. And it was all very MTV, you know, 1994. But it was pretty cool. So anyway, yes. So Strange Evidence on the Science Channel, Tuesdays at 10, and at some point, either soon or shortly after you’ve heard this, on MTV News.

0:56:01
PR: Awesome, awesome. And Hugh Grant is who we were thinking of yeah just for the record. I did Google it while you were talking because I just could not pull his name

0:56:10
BR: I saw your face blanking horrifically

0:56:12
PR: I don’t know

0:56:13
BR: It’s just like just keep up the pattern keep up the pattern they won’t notice that we don’t know the guy’s name.

PR: He’s like literally the only British actor Americans knew from like 1990 to 2005 too, so Yeah, it’s but anyway. Yes. Thank you too. But anyway, yes, thank you for that. And thank you Google for saving me on that. Although I think we just lost about three quarters of our British listeners. So we’re going to go ahead and move on. Next week, we’re going to be getting into it. We’re going to be getting into the topic that you just mentioned. We’re going to be talking about bad clowns.

0:56:49
BR: Yes, scary, evil clowns. Of course, I spent a couple years writing and researching that. As with the Chupacabra, there’s lots of different angles into it. Of course, the last show we focused on the more scary, mysterious angle of the Chupacabra. There’s lots of other angles we can go into in future shows. But this time we’ll be talking about the scarier aspect of evil clowns. So I’m looking forward to that.

0:57:17
PR: As if evil clowns weren’t scary enough. So that’ll do it for this week. And oh, by the way, we’re having Celestia come in to spend the episode with us on the Scary Clowns episode because she knows clowns.

0:57:27
BR: She knows some clowns. She’s been around a few of them and she’s got some stories, so I’m really excited to bring her in. But until next week, that’ll do it for us. Bye bye. Squaring the Strange is a production of Kronos Creative LLC. Copyright 2017. Theme music by Shriek Back. Additional music by Memory, Guitard and Feathered, and Pascual Romero. Content producer, Celestia Ward. Audio engineering, producing, and editing provided by Pascual Romero at Kronos Creative Studios. Additional support provided by Ashley Romero and of course our listeners and patrons. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of Swearing Strange and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Acronis Creative, Center for Inquiry, our advertisers or any affiliated organizations our advertisers or any affiliated organizations

0:58:16
and employers.

Transcribed with Cockatoo