#necrophilia
Somnophilia refers to a sexual interest in which someone is turned on by the idea of having sex with a person who is sleeping—or being asleep and receiving sexual attention from someone else. I recently wrote an article exploring what we know about how common this sexual interest is and what somnophilia fantasies look like—but in this article, we’re going to take a deeper dive into the psychology behind it.
A recent study sought to explore how interest in different forms of somnophilia (consensual vs. non-consensual scenario and active vs. passive role) are related to a range of other sexual interests in an online survey of 437 adults.
One of the questions they explored was whether there is a potential connection between somnophilia (specifically, the kind that involves taking on an active role with a non-consenting partner) and necrophilia (a sexual interest in dead people).
I hadn’t previously thought about how these interests might be linked, but it makes intuitive sense. For example, as I’ve discussed before, the single most common reason reported for necrophilia is a desire to have an partner who will not resist or reject you. Having sex with a person who is sleeping and does not wake up would offer another way of fulfilling that kind of desire, right?
Through this lens, then, somnophilia—the non-consensual type—and necrophilia may both be about attraction to passive partners who are unable to reject one’s advances. Alternatively, it may be that somnophilia is a stand-in or substitute for necrophilia in some cases, given that the former may be seen as more feasible way than the latter .
Consistent with this idea, the researchers did find a link between interest in necrophilia and interest in non-consensual somnophilia, which suggests that whatever psychological factors underlie necrophilia could also be what drives certain forms of somnophilia.
The researchers also looked at whether non-consensual somnophilia is related to interest in non-consensual sex more broadly (known as biastophilia)—and, indeed, there was also a connection there. So that could be another motivating factor for some.
And, yet another connection that emerged was between somnophilia interest and having more dominant and sadistic fantasies—but this link appeared primarily for the active, consensual somnophilia scenarios. Thus, when somnophilia is motivated by BDSM, it’s not about wanting to abuse/harm someone or about fear or rejection—it’s about using sleep as a vehicle for establishing a consensual dominant-submissive dynamic.
Consistent with this idea, among those who reported interest in passive somnophilia (that is, being asleep while someone else has sex with you), this was linked to having more fantasies about submission and masochism—as well as more fantasies about being “forced” to have sex (i.e., consensual non-consent fantasies).
This study doesn’t provide insight into every possible origin of somnophilia fantasies—it’s possible that interest could be motivated by other factors, too. And the motives are probably very different in cases of somnophilia where the sleeping partner wakes up and continues sexual activity (i.e., Sleeping Beauty Syndrome), which this study did not explore. Also, it doesn’t shed light on which motivations are most common, although it is worth pointing out that interest in consensual somnophilia was more common than the non-consensual forms, which would suggest that ties to necrophilia and biastophilia may not be the main drivers of this.
It’s also worth pointing out that there were some gender differences in this study, with men being more interested than women in taking on an active role in the scenario; however, men and women did not differ in their interest in taking on a passive role.
With all of that said, the results of this research suggest that the psychological roots of somnophilia—like most other sexual fantasies—are diverse. Different people can be drawn to it for very different reasons; however, in exploring the underlying motivations, it is essential to avoid looking at somnophilia as just one thing and to consider the role people are taking (active vs. passive) and whether or not consent is present.
Somnophilia is often discussed in the popular media in the context of sexual abuse—and, indeed, it is abusive when consent is not present. However, given that non-consensual somnophilia interest is less common than the consensual type, this suggests that somnophilia in general may not necessarily be indicative of a proclivity toward sexual offending.
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To learn more about this research, see: Deehan, E. T., & Bartels, R. M. (2021). Somnophilia: Examining its various forms and associated constructs. Sexual Abuse, 33(2), 200-222.
Image Source: Photo by DAVIDCOHEN on Unsplash
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time for a crossover
Karen Greenlee: The Unapologetic Necrophile
So this here is my favorite necrophiliac, self professed “morgue-rat” Karen Greenlee. She’s a strange one, but such an interesting study – check her out!
According to Karen, necrophilia is more common than we like to think, and it is a very real problem in funeral homes. Most necros aren’t killers, they have no desire at all to end anyone’s life; as Queen sang, they just want “some body to love”. And that is precisely the deal with Karen Greenlee, the woman who became famous for her romantic love of corpses.
Karen realized as a young girl that she was sexually attracted to the dead. So, she did what she needed to do in order to gain access to the cute young dead boys: she began a career working in the morgue as an apprentice embalmer. Karen admits to having been busted doing the nasty with a stiff more than once, but since nobody wants to put grandma in the funeral home where that girl was busted for bumping uglies with the dead, her bosses always turned the other way. She claims to have been intimate with as many as 40 stiffs at the time of her interview, and she was very adamant that she’s not the only one doing it.
Karen was just 22 when she was finally busted. In 1979 she stole the corpse of a particularly good looking young man instead of delivering him to the cemetery. Karen took 33 year old John Mercure to the next county over and did everything that she wanted to with him. Two days later, she wrote an in depth suicide letter confessing to all of her sins, swallowed a boat load of Tylenol 3, and waited for lights out. Karen’s plan didn’t go the way she wanted, the pesky cops caught her and saved her life. And that was it, everyone knew what Karen had been up to. Charges were pressed; Karen received 11 days in jail and a fine of $255, mostly for stealing the hearse as Cali didn’t have laws against necrophilia at the time, and she owed $117, 000. to her dead lover’s mama.
I’ll add the best parts from the interview Karen gave with Jim Morton, and I’ll site the link below. She’s very candid, though she later said she absolutely regrets talking publicly on the subject because, as you can imagine, she’s caught a lot of slack over it. Today, Karen is in her 60’s, she has changed her name, and virtually disappeared. But old habits die hard; you never know, Karen may very well be sneaking into a funeral home near you!
“When you’re on top of a body it tends to purge blood out of its mouth, while you’re making passionate love .. You’d have to be there, I guess.“
When asked about how a person goes about doing the deed with a stiff, Karen had this to say: “Yes, that’s the question! People ask questions like that– even people who seem pretty cool, seem to have open minds– then when you tell them, they say, “That’s very interesting,” then don’t want to have much to do with me. I don’t mind telling people how I do it. It doesn’t matter to me, but anyone adept sexually shouldn’t have to ask. People have this misconception that there has to be penetration for sexual gratification, which is bull! The most sensitive part of a woman is the front area anyway and that is what needs to be stimulated. Besides, there are different aspects of sexual expression: touchy-feely, 69, even holding hands. That body is just lying there, but it has what it takes to make me happy. The cold, the aura of death, the smell of death, the funereal surroundings, it all contributes.”.
When asked about sex with corpses since the AIDS virus became an issue: “That’s the reason I haven’t tried anything lately. I’m sure I’d have found a way to get into one of those funeral homes by now, but the group I find attractive– young men in their twenties– are the ones who are dying of AIDS.”.
Karen was asked to speak about when she first realized she was attracted to corpses: “It’s something I’ve been attracted to all my life. I used to hold funeral services for my pets when they died. Had a little pet graveyard. I lived in a small town and the fireman’s barbecue was next door to the funeral home. To go to the bathroom you had to use the facilities in the funeral home. I’d find any excuse I could to go to the bathroom, then I’d take side trips and wander around the mortuary.”.
About getting caught doing the nasty with a rotter: “I had tried to kill myself and was living in a halfway house a couple of blocks up from this funeral home. I decided to go to the mausoleum and try and kill myself again. The mausoleum had a door connecting it to the mortuary. I was sitting in there, real depressed, when, just for the hell of it, I decided to try running my driver’s license along the edge of the door and click! the door popped open. I couldn’t believe it, so I tried it again and the door popped open again! I went into the prep room and there happened to be a body in there. I had me some fun, did my thing and forgot all about killing myself. I told the folks at the halfway house that I stayed the night with friends. I went in there several times. Sometimes there were absolutely no bodies, so I turned around and snuck back out. I usually went in the back door. About a week later I snuck back into the funeral home. I was on the prep table having a good old time, when all of a sudden I felt like there was somebody nearby. Next thing, I heard people walking down the hallway. I quietly jumped off the table and threw the sheet back over the body. My clothes were in quite a state of disarray, and I had blood on me and everything else– it had been an autopsy case. There was a casket with the lid open in the side casket-room, so I ran and hid behind it. The casket was on a church-truck so they couldn’t see me, but they could see my legs. It was a man and a woman. There were standing there saying, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” One of them said to the other, “you go get the gun and call the cops and I’ll stay down here.” I knew I only had one chance then, so I busted out and ran. I knew the layout of the place, so I just ran down the hall and out of the place and out of the cemetery. At the time I still had a friend who worked at the funeral home. He said, “Somebody broke into the funeral home. They know it was you.” They put in an alarm after that. I think they called the police, but there were never any charges. I’m sure they didn’t want the publicity.”
Finally, this is what Karen had this to say about the corpse she stole: “That happened at the time I was breaking into this funeral homes. There was a side room, one of those arrangement areas, where they always have their case folders out. I read there was an exhumation order for John Mercure. Then I read something in the paper about it. His mother wanted the body exhumed, said she wouldn’t bury her cat there. On the day he was suppose to be exhumed I snuck out into a field across from where he was buried. I sat out in the field and watched them dig up the body and give him to this other mortician. They shipped him back to Michigan.”
A link to the rest of the interview: http://www.cvltnation.com/the-unrepentant-necrophile/
