When I was younger, I had a recurrent vision. That one day I would be visited by someone or something from the paranormal. Whenever I was caught nicking sweets from the downstairs cupboard and stashing them behind my bed, Mum warned: “I can’t always see what you’re up to, Daisy, but Granny Bertie can.”
It was a horrifying thought. The idea that my dearly departed grandmother was watching everything I did filled me with dread, especially as a teenager – taking my first intoxicating draw on a fag in the park; sneaking out of my window to snog my first goth boyfriend. I was so worried about Granny Bertie watching me from the other side that I refused to wank off Mark Jones at the back of the dodgems at Cirencester Mop Fair circa 2000. He dumped me. But, honestly, it was a relief. No grandmother needs to witness that, regardless of whether she’s a spirit or not. Talk about killing the mood!
Decades later, my preoccupation with the paranormal shifted from horror at the possibility of being observed by ghosts to excitement at the prospect of dating one. I’d read that in China ghost marriages are regularly practised when someone dies before a planned marriage takes place, to avoid spirits wreaking havoc. But this is where it gets fucking weird. In the ceremony, a white rooster stands in for the groom, and later gets to turn up to any dealings with the groom’s family. I cannot even begin to imagine what the wedding photographs would turn out like or how the rooster conducts those all-important negotiations. Cock-a-doodle-doo for a yes? Shits a pellet for no?
And, I shit you not, France is one of the few countries where marrying a dead person is totally legal. For this to happen, the living must prove that the couple intended to marry before one half unceremoniously dumped the other by gasping their last breath. The law sounds like it’s a hangover from ancient times, but it isn’t. Unbelievably, it was only introduced in 1959 after a vast dam on the French Riviera collapsed, drowning more than 400 people. And you know what the best thing is? Before almost all of these ceremonies, you can still write a wedding list. Just because your betrothed isn’t actually breathing, it doesn’t mean you have to miss out on the thick-slice toaster or George Foreman grill that will get shoved in a cupboard never to see the light of day.
According to my research, extramarital sex with a paranormal entity is also surprisingly common. It’s even got a name – spectrophilia. Apparently some people are able to manifest the ghost of their dreams and have a fucking great time with them. And that’s how, in a “spirit of inquiry” moment, I attempted to get jiggy with a ghost.
Admittedly, it was hard to know how to set the mood. And when you’re a busy working mum it’s difficult to fit in an encounter with anyone, let alone the other realm – amiright? I decided a weekday mid-afternoon rendezvous was probably my only chance, squeezed in between a Tesco shop and banging some turkey drummers into the oven ready for when my kids came home from school.
Did I need to wear anything sexy? Probably not. I figured that a ghost would be able to undress me and pass through me any way it wanted. Wasted effort to get out my plunge bra and matching knickers. Besides, I didn’t want to look desperate. I opted for my pink Barbie sweatshirt and cotton lounging shorts. I needed something to loosen me up a bit so I sat in the kitchen for half an hour with a glass or three of wine listening to I’ll Make Love to You by Boyz II Men on repeat. Then, it was time …
Upstairs, I drew the curtains and lit a couple of candles. Nice soft lighting. Shit … What next? I had taken some notes from mediums I’d read online. They advised lying on my back and doing some yoga breathing. Not one described how I should lie. Legs akimbo in an open-all-hours kind of way? Was that too forward? Maybe … Or clamped shut? Was that too strait-laced? Fucking hell … This was turning out to be a minefield. And if I did get a visitation, I hoped to God it wasn’t a ghost with a weird kink. I’ve been there already and it didn’t end well. That particular boyfriend loved being an inanimate object – a coat hanger, a footstool, a human rug I’d have to walk over in Primark stilettos. It did give him a massive boner, but it got tedious after a while.
Many of the online articles I’d read suggested that I imagine my ghostly lover. I shut my eyes and tried to conjure up my ideal ghost. I flirted with the idea of a Viking, but I stopped myself. On balance, I wasn’t sure I wanted to summon someone who considered plunder, rape and pillage simply a warm-up on a weekday afternoon. All the advice was: keep it light. Think Daisy, think. Eventually, I got it. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of him before – Ben Shephard. He’d be a real gent, too. Some mediums recommended some light chanting. I closed my eyes again and took a deep breath. “Ben, if you can hear this … come to me … ”
I felt absolutely nothing other than creeping humiliation and rising anxiety. Suddenly, I heard a weird crackling from the corner of the room. Fuck. It was one of the candles; the wick had burned right down. Any longer and it could leave a massive scorch mark on my dressing table and possibly set fire to my curtains. I leaped up and blew it out. Then it dawned on me. Ben Shephard is very much alive. Why would he want to visit me in a ghostly form?
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Back to the drawing board. I searched the recesses of my mind and alighted upon a dreamboat Victorian ghost. Sideburns the size of a small rodent could really do it for me – Dick Van Dyke to my Mary Poppins. At last I was in the zone. “Spirit come to me …” Suddenly, I felt a tingle on the back of my left foot. Could this be the way my spirit lover announced himself? Maybe I’d conjured a ghost with a foot fetish … I felt the tingle again. No. It was in the exact spot where I’d Bazuka’d a verruca the night before.
I lay there for a further five minutes, but sadly, I still wasn’t feeling anything. Apparently, one of the barriers to experiencing ghost sex is if you don’t believe enough. But I did and I still do believe. I really believe. Ten minutes after that, I felt the sudden urge to get up and go for a piss. It seemed to interrupt the magic, and as I sat on the toilet I realised that the moment was probably over. I couldn’t help feeling a weighty pang of rejection, though. Jesus … not even a ghost wants to fuck me.