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Sex & the Paranormal

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In Sex and The Paranormal the author Paul Chambers concludes that all experiences are nothing more than sleep paralysis. I have never had a sexual paranormal encounter. However, I do know several reputable people who have, and they were not a sleep to have had it during sleep paralysis. I have actually witnessed scratch and bite marks on several women. This book does not even address the most famous incubus attack in history that the movie "The Entity," was written about. That lady was put under observation at Duke under Dr.Rhine and was still attacked.

There was no deep scientific study done in this book over an x amount of time. All this book is, is the ramblings of the author and his thoughts on what he be lives the encounters not to be. I do not recommend this book.

In Dr. Paul Chambers' introduction to _Sex and the Paranormal_ he mentions that the results of the combination of sexuality and the paranormal are sure to be truly bizarre. Chambers' does not disappoint the reader when he makes this claim. _Sex and the Paranormal_ tries, almost with a straight face, to examine some of the most uncanny phenomena imaginable. Reports of ghost rape or Old Hag attacks are common throughout the world and can be explained as a form of sleep paralysis. A good deal of attention is paid to the notorious and eccentric witch-hunter's manual, _Malleus Malefecarum_, a book which in fact was in accordance with the worldview of the day and not completely the misogynist rantings of two zealous Dominican priests. The history of the demons known as Incubi and Succubi, which would sexually molest either men or women, is traced. The Lilith is another sexually ravenous demon who originated in Cabalistic myths centered on Adam's rebellious hypothetical wife before God created Eve. In the ancient world at temples and sacred spots, different cultures worshipped the creative powers of nature, in particular the image of the phallus, which is alluded to in the Bible. Temples, including Solomon's own (according to the Bible after the king's apostasy) frequently employed prostitutes who the ancients believed could help men be in touch with the gods. During the Middle Ages, the Christian Church conducted witch-hunts in fear of the lewd sexual practices of witches and sorcerors, which included nocturnal orgies, the Black Mass and copulation with the Devil. Chambers posists the popular theory that the witch scare was the result of subconscious fears of female sexuality, exacerbated by the ultra-conservative Christian views of morality and religion at the time. Poltergeists, the proverbial "things that go bump in the night," are possibly the result of sexual anxiety or tension. The second half of the book takes an even more distrubing turn when it discusses Satanic ritual abuse. There is little or no physical evidence for this phenomena, or that of penis-snatching by mysterious beings in Asia and Africa, multiple personality disorder or alien abductions in which people either have love affairs with extraterrestrials or are medically examined and sexually abused by them. These are found to be interrelated as these happenings are connected by similar geographic area, culture and the people that experience them already have a predisposition toward the paranormal. Testimonies of Satanic ritual abuse and alien abduction could be the products of religious culture, and suggestability of patients under hypnosis and mass hysteria (similar to the girls who would scream and cheer when they saw the Beatles, as the author notes). Even Shunamitism (derived from a Biblical story about King David in his old age) is mentioned--the notion that an elderly man sleeping next to a virgin but without intercourse would be healthful--is in here. However, the most bizarre story in here is about Smurfs (yes, the little blue cartoon characters). In Houston Texas, 1983, there were rumors of Smurfs in junior high schools carrying weapons and threatening students. There were even rumors of principals being killed persisting after it was well evident that they were alive. This case indicates the extent of how no matter how unreasonable an idea is can spread and be held onto depending on the right circumstances. The outlook of _Sex and the Paranormal_ suffers, I feel, from too-much of a secular outlook, especially in the treatment of the more Christian-orientated subjects. In the end Dr. Chambers praises the Fortean tradition as going outside of the scientific box when it attempts to amass as much knoweldge as possible about the most outlandish incidents and ideas, and tries to make sense of them.

Dr. Paul Chambers in his "Sex and the Paranormal" gives us a thorough histoical walk-through of about every abberant sexual paranormal manifestation from "Popbawa", an African/Idonesian demon who assults men in their sleep, to the current trend of having extraterrestial sex. All the reportage is done with the eye more on the scholarly than the tabloid. Dr. Chambers answers the question, why, through all the millennium, is sex regarded so evil? Why does each indigenous culture seem to create their own sexual monster? What's going on here? What happened to just good, clean sex? The answer, Dr. Chambers points out in this very readable book, deals with our very human shame and guilt about sexual matters which has its roots in the very earliest Biblical expression. After all it was Eve who tempted Adam and got the two of them thrown the hell out of Eden. We learn that mythology has given us much to ponder about our own sexuality and none of it very good.