Sian Jameson is a little breathless as she describes her first night of passion with her lover. ‘He knew instinctively what I wanted and I didn’t have to say or do anything,’ says the 25-year-old from North London.
‘He was very handsome, with beautiful hazel eyes and, as we made love, he stroked my body tenderly and I could feel the weight of him pressing down on me.
‘His body felt incredibly light. The whole encounter lasted an hour and afterwards he whispered: “That was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced.”‘
‘As we drifted off to sleep in one another’s arms, a voice in my head kept asking: “Is this really happening?”‘
Sian had reason to question her experience. Because, incredibly, she claims that Robert was a ‘ghost’ — an amorous apparition of an artist who had died more than 100 years ago.
Sian Jameson, pictured, is breathless as she describes her first night of passion with a ghost
‘Some people look at me as if I’ve gone mad. My family don’t know anything about it, but then what woman feels comfortable discussing her love life with her parents anyway?’
Her story sounds implausible, but over many centuries there are legends of spirits having sex with humans in Christian, Greek, Jewish and Celtic folklore dating back to 2400 BC.
In modern cinema, Demi Moore got intimate with her dead partner played by Patrick Swayze, and in Ghostbusters, Dan Aykroyd’s character was pleasured by a spectre.
Aykroyd — and celebrities including Charlie’s Angel actress Lucy Liu and the late Anna Nicole Smith — have described what they claim are real-life sexual encounters with apparitions. The phenomenon is called spectrophilia — sexual attraction to ghosts.
Modern science is quick to explain away all reports of it as simply very vivid dreams. Yet those who say they’ve had spooky amorous encounters swear they are not making it up.
Indeed, in some cases, women claim they enjoy sex with spirits so much, they’ve given up on real men.
Sian, a writer, artist and spiritualist, says her paranormal paramour began visiting her not long after she moved into a cottage in a remote part of Wales. She had split up from her boyfriend and was lonely, but insists the experience was not imaginary or stress-induced.
‘Scientists may explain it away, but I’d just say they didn’t experience what I experienced,’ she says.
‘A couple of days after our first encounter, Robert arrived and said it would be our last night together. I never asked why. I sobbed when I woke and Robert was no longer in my bed. I guess I had been falling in love. Though I had one other ghost lover after that, I haven’t had sex with a ghost for over two years.
‘I’m in a relationship with a living man who thinks my past experience was just a dream and finds it funny. But I recall my little fling with Robert fondly.’
While it may stretch the boundaries of belief, Sian is not alone. Amethyst Realm, a 27-year-old ‘spiritual guidance consultant’ from Bristol, says an ‘out of this world’ relationship not only ended her engagement to her childhood sweetheart, but put her off living men forever.
‘My first time with a ghost was around ten years ago,’ she says. ‘I was living with a boyfriend in Hereford and he travelled a lot for his job. I was lonely and noticed that items kept disappearing and then reappearing in our guest room.
‘I thought I must be going mad, but then I became aware of a presence. I could feel it all around me and it was very comforting.
‘About six months later, my boyfriend was away and I saw a heart drawn on the condensation in the window of the guest room.
‘As I peered closer, I felt someone come up behind me, put their hands on my hips and breathe softly on my neck. It wasn’t warm or cold, just a soft breath, but it felt lovely.
‘It lasted two or three seconds, then faded. I couldn’t see or hear anything, but I knew someone was there. I wasn’t scared at all.’
Like Demi Moore in the film Ghost, some women freely admit to having an affair with the super natural
After a few weeks, Amethyst decided to explore further. ‘I went to bed early in the guest room, wore a sexy negligee and lay there in the darkness. I felt a little mad and nervous.
‘After an hour, nothing happened and I thought: “I’ve scared him off, I’ve been too keen.”‘
But as she was falling asleep something happened. ‘I felt a pressure all over my body as if a person was lying on top of me, but lighter and softer than a human. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced.
‘I know how bizarre it sounds, but it felt real. It was different to having sex with a man and afterwards I slept better than I had done in years. When I woke up, I knew it hadn’t been a dream. I didn’t feel at all guilty about cheating because the whole thing felt so natural.’
Amethyst claims she began an affair with her ghost.
‘We’d have sex two or three times a day. We never spoke and I never even saw him, but we had a huge emotional connection.’ But her relationship with her fiance began to suffer and finally ended when he nearly caught Amethyst and her ghost lover.
‘He’d seen the shadow of a man through the curtains when he got home and came rushing in, shouting: “Where is he then?”
‘He was circling the room looking for the other man. I felt I had to tell him the truth.
‘My fiance ran out of the house there and then looking so pale and shocked. I’ve never seen him since. I was actually jealous that my ghost had made himself visible to him.’
Amethyst says her relationship with her ghost lasted for three years before petering out. Since then, she says she’s had 20 ghostly lovers and is more embarrassed about her tally, than the fact that her lovers were dead.
So what do the scientists say? Are these women simply dreaming? Having hallucinations? Mentally ill?
‘We need to avoid any kind of simplistic notion that anyone who has weird experiences is suffering from a mental illness,’ says Christopher French, professor of psychology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and co-author of Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief And Experience.
‘What is generally accepted is that hallucinatory experiences are much more common in the non-clinical, totally well-functioning part of the population than was once appreciated. Anyone can have hallucinations — particularly if you are stressed or sleep-deprived.’
Professor French believes that most cases of ‘sex with ghosts’ can be explained easily.
‘Sleep paralysis is common — 20 to 40 per cent of people say they’ve experienced it — and is the state between sleep and wakefulness when you realise you can’t move. In a smaller percentage of the population, you get associated symptoms that can be very scary. One that’s commonly reported is a sense of a presence — something or someone in the room with you.
Amethyst Realm, pictured, said she went to bed wearing racy underwear when she was ravished by a ghost
‘You can also get hallucinations where you see dark shadows or monstrous figures, you can get auditory hallucinations — you hear voices, footsteps — and also tactile hallucinations.
‘You can feel as if you’re being held, you might feel as if someone is breathing on the back of your neck, you can feel as if you’re being dragged out of the bed.
‘During a normal night’s sleep, you go through different stages and it’s REM sleep that’s associated with vivid dreams.’
He adds: ‘In normal REM sleep, the muscles of your body are actually paralysed, presumably to stop you acting out your dreams, but under certain conditions something goes slightly awry and your brain wakes up, but your body doesn’t.
‘Your body is paralysed, you can’t move, but you can see you are in your bedroom and you have these weird dreams coming through.
‘As part of the normal sleep cycle, men and women can become sexually aroused.
‘That is normal and also happens during the REM stage. It’s not surprising then that when you get these episodes of sleep paralysis, there could well be a sexual component there and arousal.
‘Another common feature of sleep paralysis is pressure on the chest — you feel as if there’s something on top of you. Combine that with the sense of presence and sexual arousal and it’s not surprising you will sometimes get cases of men and women who actually think they’re having sex.’
But Steve Parsons, author of Ghostology: The Art Of The Ghost Hunter, doubts this is the whole story. ‘You’d have to be a fool to say that ghosts exist, but you’d also have to be a fool to say 100 per cent that they don’t,’ he says. ‘I’ve been investigating the paranormal for 35 years and reports of sex with ghosts seem to be on the increase.’
‘This may have something to do with the number of programmes about the paranormal on television and the celebrities who say it’s happened to them.
‘It may be down to the prevalence of social media — ghosts can no longer be the rather dull white lady wandering down the hallway with her head under her arm.
‘They have to be more threatening and physical to get an audience interested. Of course, we don’t know what ghosts are.’
For Ann Elizabeth, a 52-year-old charity worker from Lancashire, the sexual encounters with ghosts have provided comfort in times of heartbreak.
‘At points of sadness in my life I’ve felt a strong presence,’ she says. ‘Kitchen utensils would go missing and appear in the living room. The ghosts were playing with me and assuring me I wasn’t alone.
‘At 43, after two divorces, I decided I needed a break from men, but not from sex. Mediums taught me how to become more intuitive and in tune with the paranormal.
‘Lying in bed I wondered if I could summon a ghost to have sex with me. Closing my eyes, I envisioned a strong handsome man with big shoulders.’ Minutes later, Ann says, she had a ghostly visitor.
‘I kept my eyes closed throughout because I was worried I might scare him or ruin the moment if I opened them. Afterwards, I thanked the ghost and asked him to leave, which he dutifully did. I jumped out of bed with flushed cheeks and glowing skin and went about my day.’
Professor Chris French says. ‘If you believe in ghosts and have a vivid imagination, you’d imagine it was possible it was a ghost.
‘Or it could be a hallucination or a false memory.’
Ann is adamant her experiences were real. ‘Over the next year I had sex with nine ghosts,’ she says.
‘I know they were different because I always asked for a different male form. I only wanted sex on my terms — in the morning and in my bed. I never had to worry about STDs or him not calling me.
‘But in 2009 I realised that I wanted to meet a real man, so I stopped the ghost sex. I met Jonathan in 2010.
‘I told him about the ghost sex and he was understanding. He’s spiritual, too. Jonathan proposed in 2011 and we moved to Italy two years ago.
‘We feel the presence of ghosts frequently, but now that I have the love of my life, there’s nothing more I need in the bedroom.’
Additional reporting: HELEN CARROLL
Femail classics: This feature was originally published by the Mail on 13 November 2015