STBYM Halftober Monsterfest Playlist, Episode 8: Demon in the Halls of Sleep

Halftober Monsterfest is about to get even weirder. Explore the basics of incubus and succubus myths, a few international variants and the possible biological, psychological and neurological explanations for these paranormal encounters.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuffworks
dot com. Hey, you wasn't the stuff to Blow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and
Robert I have a question for you. Hit me with it.
Have you ever had the experience of waking up in

(00:24):
the middle of the night, dark room and realizing that
there is someone in the room with you, somebody who
wasn't supposed to be there, um not. Since I was
a child, I had a couple of incidents like that
where I thought there was an extra terrestrial in the
room with me. Like I've been watching too many episodes

(00:45):
of Unsolved Mysteries. Those were really scarier. They were scarier
than any horror movie I saw, especially when they got
into the Supernatural whatever season that really took hold. But yeah,
I remember being influenced by those I think, and waking
up and feeling like there was like a creature setting
on my bed, and that like the worst thing I

(01:06):
could possibly do would be to set up and acknowledge
its presence, because then they gave it the up right,
you just had to pretend. But I haven't really experienced
anything like that in my adult life. Aside from you know,
the cat coming in and you know, peeping under the
bed or something of that nature. All natural phenomenon, All natural, Yeah,
total natural explanation for the cat phenomenon. Now did you

(01:28):
see the alien? Could you remember what it looked like?
I couldn't see it, like, so it wasn't an actual
visual hallucination or anything, but it was it was like
being stuck between a state where I'm kind of having
a dream awareness of what the situation might be, so
like a dream image, which I guess if you really

(01:49):
wanted to stretch you, you you could even say it's kind
of like an ounder body experience because I'm having like
a third person view of the scenario. It's almost not
not visual. It's a presence awareness, yeah, like presence awareness,
but then kind of backed up with with with a
thought interpretation of what this scenario might look like from
you know, from a third person perspective. You know, I

(02:12):
can't really remember having this experience in a very strong way, though,
I think I have woken up and and had weird
kind of thoughts, almost as if dreams were continuing into
the moment. But this is not an uncommon thing for
people to report waking up in the middle of the
night dark room, or I guess it doesn't even have
to be all that dark. You just wake up and
as you're coming out of that liminal state, there's a

(02:34):
silhouette leaning over the bed, or or even something clutching
your throat, pressing down on your chest, sitting on your torso,
or covering your face. Uh, these are experiences people sometimes have,
and one can imagine if you take it the next step,
as you're sort of you're you're lying in bed, you're

(02:55):
lying supine, you're prone, you are in this vulnerable position.
An obvious way that this threat could could take on
a new sort of connotation is if people believe that
there's a sexual element to it. Yes, and you know,
and it's it's worth noting here too, and all of
this that we talked about, the darkness often your break.
You're waking up into a mix of darkness and a light,

(03:18):
a twilight of a realm between day and night. And likewise,
this is a space between a full awaking and full sleep,
between dream and waking wakefulness. So in many respects, you're
space between exactly yeah, and you're you're also in a

(03:39):
space that's a physical space that's often between two acts, right,
I mean, what do people primarily think of the bed
in their house being for It's for sleeping, but also
people think of it as being for sex. Yeah, I mean,
I don't know what you think of it for, but
I mean that's that's the comment that is a common
use of the of the bedge or Yeah. And so

(04:02):
it's pretty clear to see how if you have this
kind of experience of waking up thinking there is a presence,
an unwanted presence or an unrecognized presence in the bed
with you, on the bed with you, or even on
top of you, that this type of experience could take
on sexual types of feelings and certainly also on top
of you know, various nocturnal um arousal nocturnal emissions, you know,

(04:26):
their sexual elements common to the sleeping experience. Right, And
so this connects to the topic that we wanted to
talk about today, the concept of the incubus and the succubus,
the age old legendary demons that come in the night
to have sex with human beings. Yes, it's one of
my my favorite topics because it has everything right, it has.

(04:50):
I knew that about because I mean just just as
a topic, right, I mean, it has demons, it has
we have mythology, we have folklore, we have we have
we haventten and evil culture. We have various cultures of
international folk beliefs. We have some psychology, we have neuroscience. Um,
the mysteries of sleep and dreaming. All of it, um

(05:12):
wound up into a tangle. Absolutely. And you add onto
that the fact that even the even the old reports,
even the historical reports, when you read medieval and early
modern sources on this kind of thing, they're kind of salacious.
You know. There's there's nothing better than old timey salacious. Yeah.
And I mean it's really creepy salacious too when you

(05:34):
get into into some of the the ideas we're gonna
be discussing here, where the notion of incubi and succubi
are informed in large part by first of all, witchcraft
theorists and and also the testimony of torture victims. So
you have just like the engine of creativity for these

(05:56):
ideas is just obscene and filter through a strong lens
of misogyny. Yes, yes, it's um. Yeah, So it's a
very it's a very disturbing topic. Uh, in in many respects,
and yet we can't quite look away like it's such
a captivating idea because it also does play into a
universal experience, that of of sweet paralysis, which we'll get

(06:19):
into in a bit, that of that of just strange
nightmares and visions. Well, Robert, I agree that it's something
that we can't look away from, and not just us
types of weirdos who are interested in these strange historical
phenomenon possible psychological explanations. There are people today who I mean,
if you're willing to believe what they write on message
boards online and stuff, who think that they are being

(06:40):
haunted by an incubus or a succubus. They think that
there is a demon who's coming to them for a
sexual relationship that they don't want. I've seen Yahoo answers
pages where people literally are saying, you know, I have
an incubus visiting me. I need to know how to
get rid of it, And people are offering different types
of advice for how to rid yourself of this demon,

(07:01):
you know, to having spiritual types of remedies, of converting
to a certain religion, of doing certain incantations. It's a
thing that some people still believe in today. Well, it's
it's always important to know with these these episodes we
were talking about at heart a paranormal experience. I mean,
regardless of how many explanations we have in an actual

(07:22):
scientific underlying causes for these experiences, the experiences themselves are real.
The experiences themselves are traumatic, are potent, and and have
an effect on the individual. Yeah, I'm sure you can
probably guess we're not going to conclude at the end
of today's episode that there are real nighttime demons. Certainly
there are real experiences, right right, Yeah, even even though

(07:44):
we're gonna go ahead and just put that to bed,
that that demons do not exist, they kind of do.
Like if they exist in your mind, if they exist
in your experience of them, then that's that's good enough.
Like that's a reality you're gonna have to deal with. Yeah. Yeah,
So let's hit the basics of the incubi and the succubi.
Are these the plural we're gonna use. Surely we're not

(08:06):
gonna be saying succu busses, no, no, no, sucuba maybe,
but I think incubi, incuby, and succubi. I also see
text just referring to them as incubus demons and succubus demons. Um.
But yeah, incubye and succuby. So let's start with the
The incubus translated as that which lies upon incubi carry

(08:28):
out the same basic torment tactics that you find in
the traditional nightmare or night mara. Um. It's so this
is not just the word for the dream but a
type of creature, right. Yeah. Even the yeah that we
get the word nightmare from the night mara which was
this essentially just one of the many different there's so
many different names for the nightmarish um, you know, night

(08:50):
terror entity and sometimes their sexual elements. Sometimes they're not
the broadly speaking, the less sexual version of it is
just the night the nightmare of the nightmare that comes
the creature that comes to a press you in your
dreams and to physically, you know, press down on you
and keep you from getting up direct tie in there
to sleep prowsies, which we'll get into later on an episode. Um.

(09:12):
But the the incubus not only crushes the victim, not
only holds a victim in place, but adds this additional
sexual element. So the Latin root of the word incubus
is is the same place we actually get the English
word incubate. I thought this was kind of interesting in
for upon in Cuba a for to lie or to

(09:33):
lean um. So you know, a mother hen is actually
the incubus, for her own egg lies upon it. That
makes this is sort of a literal translation and also
associated with the idea of the incuba, which sometimes means
a nightmare, you know, a bad dream. But it's also
related to another construction from the Latin in coomberre, which

(09:55):
means to lie down upon, giving a whole new meaning
to the concept of incumbent. The word incumbent comes from.
So the incumbent politician is sort of the incubus of
the office that he or she holds. An incumbent bicycle
Is that a thing now, I'm thinking of incumbent, and
certainly an incubus bicycle not a thing um. But so

(10:17):
the incubus, the incubus is the night visiting demon who
has some kind of sexual connotation too, and it has
sexual activity with the person that it visits. And typically
the incubus is described as being male, right right, that's
the very broad even you know, dungeon, dragons, monster manual
distinction that you have the male incubus and the female succubus. Now,

(10:40):
I do have to say that a lot of this
kind of breaks down when you start looking at different
regional interpretations and different texts. Sometimes they'll use a uh,
incubus as being possible possibly a male or a female form.
It's not it shouldn't come as a surprise that people
kind of seem to be making up the rules for
these things they went along. Yeah, yeah, imagine that. It's

(11:02):
almost as if demonology was was pulled wholesale out of
somebody's butt. Um, perhaps that the devil's but because the
devil's but just a ground everything does show up fairly frequently,
uh in witchcraft theory. Okay, yeah, But on that note,
it's uh, it's interesting to notice we're talking about a

(11:22):
male incubus pray praying on females and a female succubus
praying on males. That that that homophobia ran so deep
in medieval culture that, as author Walter Stevens pointed out
in his excellent book demon Lovers, which will discuss a
little more in a bit, he pointed out that witchcraft

(11:42):
theorists of the day, they can talk concocted all sorts
of body demon on human scenarios for accused witches of
both genders. Yet they balked at the notion of male
demons engaging in in gay sex. Yeah. I thought that
was interesting because that so, if I recall correctly, Stevens
has a section in the book where essentially he writes

(12:04):
how people of the late medieval early modern period considered
that male demons the incubi, would would find sex with
a human male abhorrent. Which but there there He's He's like,
their very nature is that they're abhorrent. Yeah, you would
think that a culture that that vilifies homosexuality would then

(12:25):
have the embodiments of of evil. These demons just embrace
it completely. But I think the way Stevens characterized it
was just that that, for example, Heinrich Kramer, the author
of the Mallius Malificar, The Hammer of the Witches that
we're going to talk about at length in a bit, Uh,
he was just sort of so repulsed by the idea

(12:47):
of homosexual intercourse that he he thought, oh, that's below
even the demons. Yeah, yeah, so it's there. There's a
lot of there's a lot of personal anks that goes
into being a proper witchcraft theorist as well. But then,
of course, so we have the incubus, that's the male demon,
but then the female counterpart is known as the succubus,

(13:07):
that's right. And while the incubus is that which lies upon,
the succubus draws its name from the Latin sub under
and kubare, which we I think we already mentioned here
to lie down. So it's technic is to lie beneath. Yeah,
so it sactic is somewhat altered from that of your
typical nightmare. It abandons the crushing tactic of its cousin
and cranks up the sexuality with a submissive flare. Uh.

(13:29):
And it exclusively targets male victims and um and may
take on other forms unknown or visible females also withered
hags or crones. That's typical. And there's this wonderful motif
that you see throughout incubine succuby myth in in Western traditions,

(13:49):
and that is that. Okay, so God's allowing all of
this to happen. Essentially, I'm not gonna cast stones, but
this is all happening in God's creation. So God would
surely not allow demons to create like a perfect facsimile
of the human form. Surely there'll be some there'll be
some out will be some loophole, right, And so you

(14:12):
see this idea that the the incubier succubi can replicate,
you know, a fetching male or female specimen completely except
for one detail, and generally it's the feet, so it'll
look like a beautiful maiden, but it will have the
feet of a duck, so that, you know, a a
proper Christian individual would be able to notice and when

(14:35):
would realize, oh, this has the feet of the duck.
I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead shut this down, Whereas
I guess a sinful person would be would be like, oh,
wells observant, yeah, less observant or hush, she has the
feet of a duck, but why not? What moves is it?
What movie is it where there's a sorceress with the
feet of a duck. Oh, you know what I'm thinking of.

(14:55):
I'm thinking of Ray harry House and Sinbad in the
Eye of the Tiger, in which there is a sorceress
witch character who I remember being I haven't seen this
in years, but I remember her being pretty great. But
there's a scene where she changes herself into a seagull
so she can spy on a ship, and then she
changes herself back, but she can't fully do it, and
she retains a bird foot. See. I wonder if that

(15:19):
is a direct reference or kind of like like a
cultural echo of this older idea. It also reminds me
of the movie Freaked. I don't know if you ever
saw this tremendous film. It's um Kanu. Reeves has a
small part in it, but it's mainly who's the other
guy in Bill and Ted um Uh Winters Alex Aux Winters. Yeah,

(15:39):
so it's Alex Winters project and it has Randy Quaid
as I'm suddenly big on Randy. My favorite Randy Quaid
films recently. Randy Quaid plays like an evil, a freak
show operator, mad scientist, and there's a there's a scene
towards the end where he essentially shaped shifts into a
supermodel and and almost pulls it off, and then you

(16:01):
realize the supermodel has monstrous feed. Oh but that's a
great film there. If you haven't seen it, I highly
recommend Freaked. One last side note, you know a good
game to play with with Randy Quaid. As you take
Dennis Quaid movies and you just name a Dennis Quaid movie,
and every time you do, you imagine that in the
Dennis Quaid role, it's Randy Quaid. See Randy Quaid is slash.

(16:24):
Was a tremendous actor. I think he he didn't get
a proper shake, you know. I mean we remember him
for these comedic roles. But I was just talking the
other day in an episode about his portrayal was Frankenstein's Monster,
and he was great. I don't think I've ever seen
that which movies though it was Patrick Bergen early nineties
adaptation made for TV. I think, huh, but I haven't

(16:44):
seen it in ages, but I remember it being quite good. Okay,
Well back to the Incubus. In the Succubus, So these
spirits that we've talked about are mostly going to be
coming out of Western sort of Middle Eastern and European folklore,
but surely there are other examples of these types of
creatures around the world, because, as we talked about at
the beginning, they seem to have something to do with
a common human experience of waking up from dreams and

(17:07):
having these kinds of feelings of terror and panic and
vulnerability in the night. That's obviously not isolated to Europe
or or the Middle East. So surely other places around
the world have similar types of creatures. Oh indeed, Yeah, we'll, we'll,
we'll reference a few of them here. One that immediately
comes to mind from me and I imagined for a
number of our our listeners are the fox spirits of

(17:30):
various Asian traditions. In particular, the one I probably a
little more versed in is the huli Jing, which is
um that the Chinese fox spirits. So this is a wonderful,
um monstrous creature that shows up in in various folk
tales and myths of China. And it's a multi tailed

(17:51):
fox that also has the form of a beautiful woman,
and it it depends on the tail exactly how villainous
the fox spirit actually is. But you often see versions
of it where it's it seduces men, curses them, um
uses a spell on them, or in other times rewards

(18:12):
worship or drains your vitality. So it's the creature is
kind of a a a magical feminine embodiment, so it's
a it's a creature of the the yin universal principle,
and in some of these versions of the tales, it
actually drains yang energy, so yen is generally considered female. Generally,

(18:36):
this is like it's far more complicated than that, of
course when you get into dallasm But but that's kind
of like the surface level understanding, you know. But but
certainly it has a lot in common with the succubus myth.
And then you also see various versions of the incubus
as well, and in Chinese of folklore you see something

(19:00):
known as the Wutong shin. So these are I feel
like I've heard of that before, As with a lot
of things mythical, they're they're you know, they're various versions
of exactly what they are, but that you have some
accounts where they descended to earth in a blaze of fire, uh,
swiftly assuming assuming the human form of five brothers. And here,

(19:22):
like the Western incubus, they they function as demonic seducers.
Yet while the the incubus exploits a female victim sinful nature,
the Wu Tong preyed upon innocent victims, traumatizing them with
nightmarish sexual assaults. And their form ranged from that of
a handsome youth to a one legged monster, just as
their their very nature varied from like a complete demonic

(19:46):
enemy to a god of wealth that some individuals actually worshiped.
You know, this makes me think about a thing that
is definitely there in all the stuff we've read about
the incubus and the succubus and seems to be present
in these types of creature legends around the world. Is
there's not a very consistent thread as to um whether

(20:06):
these creatures are rapists or seducers. You know, do they
essentially have sex with their human victim completely against their
will or do they kind of hypnotize them and seduce them? Yeah,
And I imagine that depends a lot on the the
exact nature of the paranormal experience, right like if it's
like highly traumatic, dramatic and it feels like an assault,

(20:28):
or if there is a like a consensual element to
the experience um or and then certainly how one is
coloring yet afterwards in memory, because it could be one
thing I guess in terms of the dream experience, the
paranormal experience, and then you're trying to make sense of
this seemingly otherworldly encounter um and and certainly it would

(20:49):
you know, for instance, it might depend on how you
saw the wutong Shin, if you saw them as demonic invaders,
or if you saw them like like many did. Is
this um this out of wealth and greed that you
could um you could you know, venerate through hedonistic excess
and and actually benefit from Wait, you mean like people
would worship the wutong Shin. Yeah, apparently, But again you

(21:13):
get into you get into, you know, sort of an
amorphous definition of what they were. And certainly they're going
to be different different things to different people at different times,
depending on where you're you're looking at. But for instance,
you you you did see Wutong temples uh in xang
Su Province up until their state order destruction. Five. I

(21:33):
was reading about this in a paper by Richard von
glan Uh titled The Enchantment of Wealth, the God Wu
Tong and the Social History of jeng Nan and Uh,
and he pointed out that there were these There was
this idea that a man would enter into a pact
with the Wutong uh, suffer the seduction or outright assault
of his wives and daughters, and then he finally lose

(21:55):
all his old gait and old gotten wealth through additional calamity.
So it's um so in that it's kind of like
this this typical uh tale of someone who enters into
a pact with the demonic and then suffers for it.
But but also like clearly enough, people also believed in
this is something that you could you could benefit from,

(22:16):
Like they had a more I guess beneficial definition of
what these entities were, the Wu Tong, the five penetrating ones. Well,
we'll definitely see this show up in some of the
late medieval and early modern witchcraft ideas, right because that
they had the idea that the incubus is not always
necessarily just a night invader, but it might be an
entity that you make a relationship with and that gives

(22:39):
you power. Indeed, indeed, because that's that that yeah, like
you say, that is that is core to the whole
witchcraft theorist idea. That because it's one thing to imagine
these scenarios, but then when you start applying your your
waking mind rationality to it, then you have to explain
what's going on, Like what what are these things? Why

(23:00):
are they interacting with humans? How are they interacting with humans?
Like that's a whole topic in and of itself. This is,
as we've pointed out several times, is where you start
to get all these weird conflicting rules and characterizations. Yeah yeah,
because you you're you're building something out of air, right,
You're you're you're constructing something that doesn't exist. And in
many cases you have these witch witchcraft theorists in the

(23:21):
Western tradition that are trying to support the the theory
by invoking, you know, everyone from Thomas Aquinas to Aristotle
to have a learned theory of why a demon would
have sexual relations with a human. Now, obviously China and
Western Europe do not do not have a monopoly on

(23:42):
sexual demons. Sure, And one of the things that's interesting
to me is that there are a couple of different
elements at play, and I think the core idea of
the incubus and the succubus, the orcubus or or as
an eternal the or incubus or succubus the mythology one
is the night time element. And it's definitely true that

(24:03):
throughout all types of cultures we see night time demons
right the night which, the night wanderer, the night hag.
They you know, they show up at night and they
do horrible things. But the other is the pure sexual element,
either either an element of being some sort of rapist
type creature or being a sexual seducer. And though these
things are sort of natural companions, I think it makes

(24:25):
sense to look at them separately. So I wanted to
talk about the idea of God's demons, angels, and other
unearthly beings that come to earth to have sex with
human beings. And it turns out this is extremely common
in ancient mythology. It's all over the place. So you
probably remember all the stories of Zeus in archethology, right, Zeus?

(24:46):
What is wrong with him? He is constantly transforming himself
into a bull, a swan, or some other animal in
order to have sex with a human woman. There are
these extremely weird story Do you remember how weird these are? Yeah? Yeah,
I mean it could be. It was like, it's it's
already weird enough that he's appearing and forcing himself on mortals,

(25:09):
but then that he's taking an animal form on top
of that unnecessary, And of course there there are plenty
of other examples throughout there. It's actually there's even in
the Hebrew Bible. Uh, there are stories of God's having
sex with human beings. So in Genesis six one through four,
there is a passage that do you remember the passage
about the nephilim o the giants in the earth exactly? Yeah,

(25:30):
So where did the giants on the earth come from? Well,
Genesis six one through four tells us now it came
about when men began to multiply on the face of
the land, and daughters were born to them. That the
sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful,
and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then
the Lord said, my spirit shall not strive with man forever,

(25:53):
because he also is flesh. Nevertheless, his days shall be
one hundred and twenty years. The Nephelim were on the
earth in those days, and also afterward when the sons
of God came into the daughters of men and they
bore children to them, those were the mighty men who
were of old men of renown. So that word nephelim,

(26:14):
sometimes in other translations, is rendered giants, but it's telling
the story of how whatever it means by the sons
of God, and this is often interpreted to be some
sort of angelic being servants of god lesser deities of
some form. They saw that earth women were beautiful, and

(26:34):
they decided that could be. It's not made especially clear
in the in that rendering, but yeah, so they decided so,
and they were like, well, let's go have children with
those women. And they did, and their children were not
like normal human babies. The the offspring of these heavenly
creatures and the earth women were giants. Yeah, they were.

(26:54):
So they were essentially kind of like demi gods, right ideas,
And and this is interesting because this comes an area
of frequent argument among theologians and witchcraft theorists later on,
because this is they they everyone ends up looking back
to this is a possible scriptural um definition or scriptural

(27:14):
proof that demonic entities are capable of interacting with humans
like on a like a material level, because they were
there were theories They're like, Okay, well maybe demons are immaterial,
and how is an immaterial being supposed to uh engage
in a physical act with a material being? They have bodies? Like,

(27:35):
this is a whole way we could we could. Walter
Stevens goes into this a lot in his book Demon Lovers,
and it's tremendously interesting. Yeah. The obviously later theologians expended
a lot of energy on the subject of whether demons
have physical bodies, whether if maybe they're made of aerial material,
and if they're made of aerial material that can still

(27:56):
interact with your body as with a fan. Does. I
think that's the point Augustine made. It's it's amazing how
important these people thought this was. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
and we'll well, I guess we'll unpack this in in
a bit, but yeah, you're coming down to physical proof
of the spiritual realm. Like that's what it all essentially

(28:18):
comes down to. Like if if demons, it's kind of
kind of it's kind of like the hand of God thing, Right,
if the hand of God is entering our world, there
has to be some proof. There has to be a fingerprint,
a thumb print, and then we can look to and say, look,
there is the proof. Even if God is immaterial, he's
having material consequences, right, And if the the handprint the
fingerprints of God are not forthcoming, well then how about

(28:42):
the fingerprints or the footprints of angels? And if those
are not forthcoming, then what about demons. That's where we
we enter into this this idea, well, can a demon
have a physical form, because that seems to be their
requirement has to somehow interact with our physical world for
us to have physical proof of it. Yeah. So I
want to follow up on what I was just talking

(29:03):
about with the story about the gods, the sons of
God coming down to mate with earth women, because the
Genesis six version reads sort of like the cliff Notes version.
It's like the back of the book summary. Um. There
are much longer and more detailed versions of this story
that appear in apocryphal text texts that are not usually

(29:23):
considered part of at least part of the standard Christian canon.
And one example of this from a great old Jewish
text that is just awesome is the First Book of Enoch.
If you have never read the First Book of Enoch,
look up a translation online. I think there are a
couple of translations available on the internet. It is just great,
it is it is really interesting. Um. So the story

(29:47):
goes in First Enoch chapter six quote. And it came
to pass when the children of men had multiplied, that
in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely
daughters and the angels. The children of the heaven saw
and lusted after them, and said to one another, come,
let us choose us wives from among the children of men,

(30:08):
and beget us children. And then later in chapter seven
it continues, and all the others, together with them, took
unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one. And
they began to go unto them and defile themselves with them.
And they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting
of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. And they

(30:31):
became pregnant, and they bear great giants whose height was
three thousand l's. I'm not sure how tall an l is,
but there's three thousand of them. That's gotta be pretty tall. Anyway,
going on about the giants who consumed all the acquisitions
of men, And when men could no longer sustain them,
the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. And they

(30:53):
began to sin against birds and beasts and reptiles and fish,
and to devour one another's flesh and drink the blood.
Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones. So
this is a much more fleshed out version of what
appears to be the same tradition that shows up in
Genesis that the sons of God, these heavenly beings, came down,

(31:15):
made it with earth women, and gave birth to these
offspring who were very destructive and sinned against the world
that the Lord had created. And in this version, I
think it's very interesting because there there appears to be
something transactional going on between these heavenly beings and the
women who became their wives, because it says these heavenly

(31:36):
beings taught them things, and it's this mixture of things
that seem like real skills, like you taught them how
to cut roots and use plants that might be some
kind of uh that might be referring to agriculture itself,
or to some kind of medicinal herbology, but also taught
them charms and enchantments. Yeah, like it's it's of course,

(31:57):
with any of this, it's easy to apply the the
ancient alien explanation, right, I'd say, well, clearly this is
showing ancient alien visitors to Earth who taught early humans
some of the basic building blocks of civilization agricultural techniques, etcetera. Uh,
and in exchange, they got to have sex with them,

(32:21):
or at least it were to put a more like
refined the spin on it initiate a breeding program with humans. Uh. Yeah,
I don't take that idea very seriously, But I also
think that it's it always occurs to me that that
explanation might not actually be all that distinct from what
the authors of this passage actually had in mind. No,

(32:43):
because I mean, really, the the modern alien abduction scenario,
the the probing scenario even, I mean, this is this
is all just an updating of the classic Incubi succupy
succubi notion that visitors from another world are coming to
your to your house, to taking you away, maybe maybe

(33:04):
experimenting on you. They're doing things of a sexual nature
to you, and you don't understand what is happening, and
you have no control over the scenario. Yeah, and I
think you might be at pains to explain to the
author of first Nach what the difference is that you mean, like, what,
why is the thing you're calling an alien different than
what a god is? Yeah? Okay, So anyway, in these

(33:25):
ancient traditions, it's obviously been believed that angels or some
lesser deities came to Earth, had sex with human beings
and were able to create viable, if not very good offspring,
with them creating these powerful evil kind of offspring. You know.
Another if I storry to cut in again, Joe. But
something that comes to mind here too, to put a
slightly more scientific spin on it. What if one were

(33:46):
to interpret this with early hominid species. So what if
it were saying in Neanderthals and uh and Homo sapiens.
So maybe the aliens were not from another world, but
they were just a another human tribe or another near
human tribe and other just another hominid species that had

(34:06):
techniques to share if only we had if only we
had a tribe of giant witches. I have nothing to
pack that up with that. I'm just saying that's maybe
a slightly more scientific greed one could take auditive one
who's going to spin off some some notions. Well, I
mean it's true if you do think of the idea.
I don't necessarily subscribe to this. I actually tend to

(34:28):
think often that legends very frequently reflect creative imagination. But
a lot of people tend to think that legends like
this grow out of real experiences that get embellished over time.
I think that probably happens sometimes too, But I think
we've talked about this on the show before. I think
the idea the role of creative imagination gets undersold in

(34:48):
the creation of myth and legend. But anyway, Yeah, if
you just say that maybe something real happened, it got
embellished and mythologized over time and became this kind of story,
that's plausible, I guess. But anyway, sorry, back to back
to the incubus and the succubus. So we we we
have this belief angels come down to Earth have sex
with human beings. But is this type of theological belief,

(35:10):
this feature of ancient myth. Is this connected to the
more recent idea of just the night demons, the incubine
and succubi that visit people in their beds and and
have sexual encounters with them. Well, yes, there are some
theologians who draw connections between them, and one example we
could look at is Augustine. Do you say Augustine or Augustine?

(35:32):
I personally always say Augustine, but that's just me. Well,
let's let's keep some variety. I'll say Augustine. Okay. Saint
Augustine of Hippo, in his long treatise De Day the
City of God, Augustine asks a question. This is, you know,
big political theological treatise. Augustine is asking the question of
whether angels and other heavenly beings can physically mate with

(35:56):
human beings. And he writes, and this is translated by
Marcus Dodds quote, there is to a very general rumor
which many have verified by their own experience, or which
trustworthy persons have heard the experience of others corroborate that
sylvans and fawns, who are commonly called incubi, have often

(36:18):
made wicked assaults upon women and satisfied their lust upon them,
and that certain devils, called deuces by the gulls, are
constantly attempting and affecting. This impurity is so generally affirmed
that it would be imprudent to deny it. So Augustine
is not really arguing for the existence of incupy. Instead,

(36:40):
it sounds like he considers their existence so obvious as
to be undeniable, and rather he's using that as a
premise or a starting point in his argument about whether
angels really came down and had sex with human beings,
as described in say, the Book of Enoch. And just
for the record, Augustine kind of he denies knock. He

(37:01):
of course affirms what's in the Bible, but he tries
to say that the sons of God parton the Bible
is more referring to some kind of different version of
a physical man, which he identifies with the sons of Seth.
But here we have this line where you know, a
theologian living in when did Augustine live? I guess the fourth,
fourth or fifth century CE. Uh. He's trying to draw

(37:25):
this line from these older stories to the modern experience
of the incubus. And that's going to bring us to
maybe my favorite example of the early modern incubi commentator,
King James, the King James, King James one of England,
James one, the first one also James was the sixth

(37:45):
of Scotland, whichever one. I think they had a lot
of James's. But anyway, this is the same King James
who authorized the production of the King James Bible in English.
But he did you know this, wrote and published a
book in the Fetes that's basically Demons in Black Magic
for dummies. Yeah, I have I have run across this before,

(38:06):
but I've never read it in depth. This was new
to me when when I was reading up for this episode.
Is So, the book is often called the Demonology, and
it's a series of fictionalized dialogues, kind of like the
dialogues of Plato. You know, there are these two fictional
characters who are having a conversation, and it's in that
conversation that you work out the points you want to make.

(38:27):
And this book was designed to sort of educate as
well as argue, So it's to teach the reader all
about how evil beings are going to use sorcery and
necromancy and demonic power against humankind, but then also to
make some political arguments, such as for the moral imperative
of witch hunting. And a side note that I thought

(38:47):
was interesting, The Demonology appears to have been a major
influence on Shakespeare's Macbeth, so like some of the stuff
they talk about in there shows up in Macbeth. The
Weird Sisters are are sort of by the book King James,
which is but anyway, so there's a dialogue in the
King James Demonology where these these two guys Philo, Philo

(39:10):
Matthews and Epistemon are having a chat about demons and
the incubi and succubi come up. So Epistemon says, quote,
that abominable kind of the devil's abusing of men and
women was called of old incubi and succubi. According to
the difference of the sexes that they conversed with by
two means this great kind of abuse might possibly be performed.

(39:34):
And he goes, I'll summarize. He says, first of all,
they can appear as a devil, but they can steal
the sperm out of a dead man's body and then
take it to a woman. Okay, so but appearing as
a devil. And then Epistemon adds a note, I'm not
quite sure what to make of this. It seems to
be historical example, he says, quote, as we read of

(39:57):
a monastery of nuns which were burnt for their being
that way abused, I guess saying it like the devil
stole dead men sperm and then came to the nuns
and maybe impregnated them, and they were burned for this reason.
But then anyway, the second way he says it can
work is essentially by possession of a dead body. He said,
he can quote borrow a dead body and visibly appear

(40:20):
as a human when you converse with your drowsing victim.
And this word can conversation. Conversing is their word for
sex here. But Epistemond notes that either way, first of all,
the sperm is gonna seem intolerably cold to the victim. Uh.
And that's because if a demon steals it from a
quick person, meaning a living person, it's going to get

(40:40):
cold on route to the destination. And then quote I
thought this was great, if he occupying the dead body
as his lodging, expel the same out thereof in the
due time, it must likewise be cold by the participation
with the qualities of the dead body where out of
it comes. Now, one thing that's I think notworthy about

(41:03):
both of these uh theories, if you will, is that
they they they skirt the issue of the physical body
right because either I mean, it's it's taking the physical
element of reproduction, the sperm from a living human, and
or it's animating a dead body. So either way, the

(41:23):
sperm is not coming from the demon, it's coming from
a human. Uh. And so Epistemon goes on to claim
that incubi and succubi are not separate beings divided by sex,
but basically the same creature being able to appear either way.
And then they talk about how come there are more
of these spirit attacks in places like Lapland, Finland and
the Orkney Islands, and Epistemon's answer is, well, of course,

(41:45):
it's because that's where you find the greatest ignorance and barbarity.
But then there's a very interesting conclusion in the chapter
two I thought, uh so at the very end they
address what sounds to be talking about sleep paralysis us
and James's uh Socrates character Epistemon has a kind of
straightforward answer about it. So Philip Matthews says, is it

(42:08):
not the thing which we call a mare which folk
which takes folks sleeping in their beds, a kind of
these spirits whereof you are speaking? And Pestemon says, no,
that is but a natural sickness which the mediciners hath
given the name of incubus unto ab incubando, because it
being a thick flegm falling into our breast upon the

(42:30):
heart while we are sleeping, interclude so our vital spirits,
and takes all power from us, as makes us think
that there were some unnatural burden or spirit lying upon
us and holding us down. So despite believing wholeheartedly in
incubi and succubine, James seems to dismiss them as an
explanation for the experience some people have, like we talked

(42:51):
about at the beginning, of waking up from a nightmare
with the sensation of a person or an entity on
top of them. Essentially, James's idea with this is now,
that's just him, So he's basing it in the humors. Yeah,
but James was not the only authority figure in late
medieval or early modern Europe to square the incubus, that's right.

(43:12):
And this this brings us back to Heinrich Kramer, who's
widely published six text Malice Malificarum or Hammer of the Witches. Uh.
It's a central text and the sort of demonology and
witchcraft theory that dominated Western traditions from the late fifteenth
century onward, especially so far as as again, witchcraft theory

(43:34):
and the persecution of alleged witches were concerned, as well
as the persecution of of men and children who are
also targeted but for them, but buying large females that
suffered the most for you know, mostly imagined crimes and uh.
And these were based in large part on not only
the theories that were concocted by these witchcraft theorists, but

(43:55):
also from testimonies that were obtained through the torture of
the the ledged witches. Yeah. So Kramer's witch Hunter's handbook here,
the Hammer of the Witches is this is a profoundly
misogynistic book and has stuff in it about essentially like
why women are especially prone to witchcraft. And this will

(44:17):
come up with reference to the Incubus in a moment.
So but but who was Kramer? So, Kramer was a
German Dominican churchman and inquisitor, and he in his writings,
in his writing of the Malice Malificaire, and he drew
on the works of various philosophers, theologians, and other witchcraft theorists.
Top theologians of the day didn't really agree with Kramer's work,

(44:39):
but he was he was tireless, and he was really
really connected with his intended audience, both both at the
pulpit and in the written media. So, I mean, his
his work really resonated, especially in what was kind of
a broken age, uh, you know, and in this week
we have to look back on on the time period uh,

(45:01):
medieval culture, on early modern culture. And you know, we've
touched on this before, but there's there's always this temptation
to look back on people from previous eras and and
not really view them as fully human, you know, not
I know exactly what you mean, thinking that people in
the past must have been stupid. Yeah, they didn't have
all of the complex technology and stuff like that we have.

(45:22):
They had different social values than we have. They must
have just been somehow deficient in the brain. And I
think that is not a safe assumption to make. No, no,
not at all. I mean, I mean, of course it
plays into the same for the same reasons that one
will look down on, or not understand or just dismiss
individuals from other cultures or even just other you know,
demographic areas within one's own culture. But but now that

(45:47):
this was a time when things were a little bit broken.
I mean, the medieval world was threatened by heresies and uprisings.
Faith itself, especially among learned members of society, seemed under
siege at times. Uh, there was a lot of change
going on. You know, we look back and it's these sales.
Is just a dark time where people have stood around
burning witches for for for for years and years. But

(46:10):
but no, there were a lot of exciting new ideas,
a lot of threatening new ideas. So working out the
anxieties of the time on unfortunate victims who were accused
of witchcraft. Yeah, I mean it's it's in this sense,
it's not really that different from other dynamic times, even
our own time today. They're parallels, you could make that.
I mean, our world is always in change, and as

(46:30):
we as technologies advanced in our awareness of global uh
situations are enhanced, we're constantly encountering the anxiety UH, and
that in the in the blowback from advancement. Okay, but
so say Heinrich Kramer, somebody like him is up given
a speech about what's going on with witchcraft today? What? Well, like,

(46:52):
what what would he say? So the resulting witchcraft theory
of the day was was like a fever dream of
black masses, satanic lots, uh, misogynistic suspicion, and the details
were as wild as could be devised by either theorist
or torture victims in the dungeons of the inquisition. Um,
you know, you just see some really awful weird ideas

(47:15):
that it that that it at once on one hand,
you can say, well, that takes some imagination and some
depravity to come up with. But on the other hand,
it's kind of like you can you can easily imagine
somebody being tormented, and you will say anything to make
your torments stop, and so you will tell the the inquisitor,
the torture the theorists what they want to hear. So

(47:38):
the same imaginative capacities that lead people today to come
up with grosser and weirder horror movies and and devil
cult movies could at the time also have been put
toward alleging real activities. Yeah, well, I mean you see,
you see, you know, grosser ideas in these some of
these witchcraft theories of the day, you can look at

(48:00):
on one hand as uh as these theorists just coming
up with with suitably scandalous ideas to fit their agenda,
but also with people who are just like, I better
tell this person something shocking so that they will stop,
And I'm gonna keep keep telling them shocking things and
then making adjustments to meet their demands for the script,
because ultimately that's what the witchcraft theorists wanted. They didn't

(48:20):
want just any crazy nonsense that would come out of
an accused of witches mouth. They would want very particular
tales because they had a theological script. Yeah, they had
a script, They had an agenda. They it's kind of
like you know, a modern cop show where they're grilling
the suspect and they don't want the truth. They want
them to uh, they want them to admit to the crime.

(48:40):
They want them to to to to provide testimony, to
provide an account of the crime that matches up with
the evidence they have, or to point the finger at
the guy that we've got so so with with witchcraft
theorists of the of the day, you see this huge
emphasis on demonic sex. And while you know, we'll get
to some of the possible underlying reasons in a few minutes. Here,

(49:04):
let's just discuss a couple of theories and uh. In
the hammer of the which is still is do y
demons would want to engage in all this ichy human
sex to begin with? So a lot of it is
is grounded in the theological arguments over whether demons had
physical bodies, which we already touched on. Uh, And that's
the whole quagmi in and not itself. But then you
had For instance, a fifteenth century bishop Alonso Tostado, who's

(49:27):
citing the work of St. Augustine, weighed in on the
topic of masturbation, namely that it's not only an unnatural
act uh in in his view and the view of
many of the church at that time, but that it
can accidentally result in pregnancy equal through the agency of
incubus and succubus demons. Okay, so they're saying if a man,

(49:48):
if a man unnaturally releases his sperm, it can be
swiped essentially. Essentially, yeah, not unlike o what we're talking
about earlier with with the the semen of dead men
um quote. For in the form of a succubus, the
demon can gather the semen thus emitted events, having turned
himself into an incubus, he can deposit in the vessel
of a woman and the woman will conceive. So again

(50:10):
we see this idea of the incubus and succubus being
two forms of the same thing, of it maybe even
being what I like to think of as an as
an incuse succubus, you know, where it's just one entity
with two different forms. Um So two Statto took Thomas
Aquinas's concerns over demonic reality magnified them, as did Cramers.

(50:31):
So we end up with this concept again of the
incubus and the kind in the succubus being two forms
of the same thing. They're gathering or even harvesting, the
semen from self polluting men or men who were willing
to to to give themselves over to these uh, these
imperfect disguised demonic uh succuby. Like if you fell for
a woman with duck feed, Yeah, exactly, so you fell.

(50:53):
It fell fell for the duck footed woman. And what
she's actually doing is harvesting your semen, yeah, which also
ties in with some of these uh these dallas ideas
of the of the fox spirits stealing your essence in
Chinese traditions. So they're taking the semen and then they're
ideally here depositing them in a suitable woman. And here's

(51:15):
a quote, uh from Cramer along along those lines. Devils
know how to ascertain the virtue and semen first by
the temperament of him from whom the semen is obtained.
Secondly by knowing what woman is most fitted for the
reception of that semen. Thirdly by knowing what constellation is
favorable to that corporeal effect, So we're left with the

(51:36):
with the incou succubus here is sort of an in
vitro fertilization entity that conducts its work in order to
see the birth of more witches who will further this
devil worshiping agenda and ultimately kind of a devil worshiping
subspecies on Earth. It gets into the idea of like,
where do whiches come from? Why are they? Why are
these so many of these women and these people just
so inclined to uh, you know, worship the devil and

(52:00):
be the devil's plaything. Well, it's because they're they're bread
that way from other witches. And there's this kind of
um that adds to the imperative to crack down on
the witches because you're you're cleansing the species. Yeah. In fact,
I think even the story goes that Merlin, right, the
story Merlin of King Arthur's Hulin, right, was a figure

(52:21):
who was supposedly born of a human woman and an incubus, right, Okay, Yeah,
And and that would account for his magical powers, right,
And it also accounts for the question like why can't
anyone get in on this witchcraft thing, right, Why does
it seem like only so like people can benefit from it? Yeah,
I want in on that cursing power. All right, we're
gonna take a quick break, but when we come back,

(52:41):
we're going to look at a real world example of
an organism that acts as a sexual essence thief. All right,
we're back, all right. So, yeah, there's this. So we're
left with this idea within the in buying the succubi
as being an entity that wants to steal genetic material

(53:05):
from males of another species and do something with it.
And uh, I love to take sort of seemingly ridiculous
ideas such as this and then saying, well, actually, is
there is there a counterpart in nature? Is there's something
in nature that works like this, Because most of the
time I find that, no matter how weird the idea is,
you're gonna find it reflected in the natural world. There

(53:28):
are more things in heaven and earth, that's right, than
are dreamt of and your your your black mass fever dreams.
And that's where we see the Pagano mier mix harvester ants,
specifically too closely related species that are found along the
Arizona New Mexico border. Okay, so, yeah, this is this
is interesting. According to a two thousand fourteen University of

(53:48):
Vermont study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society b,
the queen of one species is known to mate with
males of the other species, and that he lie many
a succubus. Duped human center can't tell the difference between
his own females and those of the deceiver, at least
not at first. Huh So wait this makes me wonder

(54:10):
because usually I think one of the main things that's
considered the denominator of different species is that they can't
interbreed with one another. Right, Well, you have like the
the the the donkey and horse producing a mule scenario,
you're the production of unstable hybrids, right exactly. Okay, yeah,
so so that's that's what we're seeing in play here.
But so by the time the male aunt realizes that

(54:31):
he's made a mistake, it's too late. He's already depositing
sperm within his interspecies lover uh heat, and he's already
reduced his rate. He's trying to reduce his rate of
seamen loss, but the female simply grapples him in place
till he delivers his entire reproductive deposit, thus robbing him
of the chance to pass his genes onto subsequent generations. Like, really,

(54:53):
he's been he's been cheated here in terms of his
basic genetic mission. So the queen then uses the Pilford
sperm to produce sterile hybrid worker ants for her colony. Crazy, yes,
And and and it's apparently an essential tactic because copulation with
her own species results in queens but no workers. So
like the succubus, she depends on the the gullability and

(55:17):
weakness and seed of another species to further her ends.
So like making armies with the seed of another and
making real offspring with the seed of one zone. Yeah,
imagine it's kind of drawback on the idea of horses
and donkeys and mules. It's like you have, like a
queen horse that needs an army of mules to do
her bidding. Okay, Well, I was trying to think of

(55:41):
a biological parallel to come up with, and I couldn't
really except for the one particular example the way King
James describes it, where the demon the incubus or the
succubus does not really does not impregnant of itself the
human species. It steals the sperm from one human and

(56:03):
takes it to another. And this is a common way
of characterizing the incubus, right yeah, yeah, Either it's just
like taking sinful semen and putting in a sinful woman.
Some variation seems to seem to imply or or outright
state that there is a manipulation of the semen. So
it's so there's almost in the sense of some sort
of in vitro fertilization where there's been genetic augmentation going on. Right. Well,

(56:26):
the parallel I couldn't help but think of is well,
then the incubus is a pollinator us it's should think, yeah, exactly.
It wouldn't be in the true biological sense, because plants
depend on sexual reproduction by pollination in order to encourage
genetic diversity and good health. By all accounts, of course,
most people who believed in this form of demonic human

(56:48):
pollination with the incus succubus as the mediator believe that
it resulted in less health and less virtue in the offspring. Uh.
And this is how quote monsters were born, which is
a phrase back then is often used to refer to
people with congenital disorders. Yeah, and that gets into the
whole sort of changeling legacy as well, Like, how do
you explain um, you know, quote unquote monstrous births? What

(57:11):
how do you explain birth defects? You end up, as
with with the with just human nature in general, you
end up having to explain them, uh, through spiritual failings
and through the the the intersection of spiritual elements. All Right,
So we've looked at the tradition of the incubus and

(57:31):
the succubus, what people believed about them, what people's fears
and anxieties were, and then some possible biological parallels that
we have to aren't too many really good ones here,
but we should get back into the actual scientific explanations
of what's going on here. What what explains the emergence
of the incubus and succubus Smith? I mean, as I've
acknowledged before, I do like the idea of creative imagination

(57:55):
that always plays some role, but clearly this is inspired
by additions and experiences. So what conditions and experiences, both
psychological and neurological and cultural do we think contributed to
the creation of the incubus and succubus phenomenon. Well, in

(58:15):
answering this question, we we kind of have to dip
our toes into the into the into possible explanations for
the witchcraft persecution era itself. You know, why why did
were so many female victims uh murdered in the name
of this this pridiculous quest for non existent witches, accusing

(58:38):
them with non existent crimes, and not only women, but
again men and children like young children, where we're in
some places executed for these alleged crimes. Like why this
big to do? And when you when you try and
answer that questions, So that question there there are several
answers that that manifest and and it's probably one of

(59:01):
these cases where you just you you can't necessarily depend
on just one of them. Were already touched on misogyny.
It's impossible to look at witchcraft persecution and not talk
about misogynistic attitudes. Yeah, it runs through and through this
sort of dismissive and actually even hateful attitude towards women. Yeah.
And then likewise, yes, there were pagan practices that would

(59:24):
that continued and in some cases those were cracked down upon.
There were other smaller petty agendas, you know, just fear
of outsiders, um, distrust of an individual who is a
little off, and just the overall uh, you know, mass
hysteria taking root as well. But one of the ideas
that Walter Stevens discusses in demon Lovers that that I've

(59:47):
always found really really fascinating is that the demonic sex
sex between demons and humans would serve as expert testimony
to the existence of demons and by extension, to the
existence of angels and to the existence of God himself. So,
in other words, a reckless and desperate attempt to prop

(01:00:07):
up their failing faiths in a time of advancing understanding.
This was interesting to me because I don't usually think
of the late Medieval period in the early modern period
as a time of wavering faith in Western Europe. I
I don't know, that just seems like a time when
when everybody was highly religious and had a lot of faith.

(01:00:28):
But according to Stevens, that's not necessarily the case. Like
he sort of has this idea that there was some
emerging crisis of belief in the late medieval period. Yeah,
I mean, it's one of the we we've talked before
about like when people's faiths or questions like, the responses
is oftentimes to double down on those beliefs. So we

(01:00:49):
we we we risked the mistake of looking back on
individuals in this time and saying, Wow, everyone really believed
in this stuff, because look, look at the witchcraft persecution.
That's the act of someone who really believed even what
they were doing. It could be the act somebody who
was trying really hard to believe. Yeah, trying really hard
desperately to to to to create physical evidence for the

(01:01:12):
divine um. You know, it comes back to the scripts
right like time and time again, as the Stevens recounts
in his book, Typically women, but sometimes men were tortured
to get a particular script. You know that they wanted
particular answers and the details could waiver to certain extents. Uh,

(01:01:34):
but they needed a particular story of human demonic interaction,
physical interaction to provide this kind of proof. Now it's uh,
won't won't go too far in depth on this theory
because basically Walter Stevens makes it, makes his case like
page after page in this book. What would you say

(01:01:55):
are his primary pieces of evidence that the demonic sex
panic of of this period was caused by I don't know,
the the desire to bolster belief and and have evidence
of the supernatural. But for the most part, the case
he makes is that, you know, it's looking at materials
from the time that that demonstrate that there was a
lot of change, that there were that the ideas were threatened,

(01:02:17):
that these these beliefs were threatened, and then looking at
some of the individual cases and showing yes, there's like
this clear agenda too to to push this script, to
push this this version of what happens, like they needed
they needed this commonality across all of these which demon
wizard demon interactions like it wasn't enough just to get

(01:02:39):
the individual which to admit to sin that would be
relevant in her own personal case, but that she was
also feeding a storyline like it wasn't just about hurting women,
though certainly, you know that's part of the fabric here.
It wasn't just about persecuting individuals who were outside iters.

(01:03:00):
It wasn't just about distracting from from other cultural um
you know, woes that that you know, individuals in power
didn't want to see acknowledge there was this idea that
they needed to reinforce a a worldview. They needed to
to provide evidence for a worldview. So it's um, you know,

(01:03:20):
which which is ultimately even more terrifying than to me anyway,
far more terrifying than just the idea that, oh, somebody
believed in some crazy stuff and they did something horrible it,
but the idea that someone desperately wanted to believe in
something that even is beautiful, but to get there, they
would they would, uh, they would engage in horrible acts

(01:03:43):
and horrible ideas. It's interesting to me the use of
the use of negative supernatural evidence as the as that
which leads to bolstering the belief in God. But then again,
I guess that makes a certain kind of sense. I uh.
I think in the movie The Exorcist, one of my
favorite horror movies. You know, one of the main characters
father father Caress. You know, he's having a crisis of faith.

(01:04:05):
He he doesn't know what he believes anymore, but it
seems to be sort of the evidence of the demonic
that essentially that restores his faith in God. That's a
good point. I hadn't thought about that. And it also
said be careful what you believe in, right I mean,
be careful what you asked for, because your belief might
be bolstered in um terrifying ways. I guess that's kind

(01:04:27):
of a common thread in a number of different tales. Again,
there are other possible interpretations as well, and and and
other psychological psychological explanations. Indeed, one that that came up
when I was reading about the wutong spirits, for instance,
the wutong sin is the idea that pre nuptial anxiety

(01:04:47):
might have factored into these encounters. So in traditional Chinese society,
women were particularly vulnerable and powerless before and after the
consummation of of marriage, and oftentimes the their spouse was
a complete stranger, and a wutong attack served as And
this is, according to Richard von Glan, who referenced earlier,

(01:05:10):
uh quote, a culturally accepted strategy employed by women to
avoid sleeping with their betrothed husbands or to escape conjugal
obligations altogether. Oh that's interesting, so we were so yeah,
So so that that is it's kind of like that
we have this supernatural, this paranormal experience, and whether one

(01:05:32):
actually experiences it outright, it's it's there as a as
a script. You can draw upon in the same way
that an individual that experiences, say, sleep paralysis, they have
to explain something that makes no sense to them. They
have to explain what is it hard a frightful and
traumatic experience. Here's the script that they can draw upon,

(01:05:52):
be that script demons or fairies or alien abductions. It's there.
You can take it, and then it doesn't take too
much convincing to convince others or to convince yourself that
this is what happened. Yeah, I agree. So I think
obviously there are these very strong cultural and psychological explanations
that we can have for how these types of demonic

(01:06:14):
sex uh myths and ideas emerge. But also I think
we should maybe end by going back to the place
we started with the idea of sleep paralysis and the nightmare,
because this, I think is going to be the real
core of where these beliefs come from. The neurological phenomenon
of what happens to the brain during sleep, especially when

(01:06:37):
the transition in and out of sleep is is manifesting
in an abnormal way. Yeah, I think this is the
real bedrock. Um no pun intended for the for the whole,
the whole notion of demons, angels or or aliens engaging
sexually with sleepers, and a paranormal ex variance. Because here

(01:07:00):
you have something that is uh that is experienced by
by universally by humans. Yeah, I've got some stats in
a minute about how common it is. So for anyone
who is not familiar with the the actual biological event
of sweet paralysis, the way I always think about it
is this, all right, So when you're dreaming, Let's say

(01:07:21):
you have a dream where you're you're in Ninja, okay,
and you're you know, you're rolling around karate chops, stab, kick, grappling,
hook over a wall. This is all great, right, Your
your brain is working out daily angst or processing all
the Ninja movies it watched. You're in the course of
the day. But then a gang of pirates shows up. Yeah,

(01:07:42):
and then it gets even crazier. Right, But through all
of this, you're you don't know your body and does
not need to be actually throwing karate chops and and
kicking and and all this stuff. Al Right, Right, you
needed a problem that would be a problem, so your
body has to be on lockdown. So ideally, when sleep
is going down, your body is in a state of

(01:08:04):
of of paralysis during the dreams except for you know,
movements of the eye and you know, certain respiration and
other involuntary um actions. But it shuts down your your
motor center. Yeah, so your your body is shut down,
your mind is dreaming. So in the case of sleep
paralysis paralysis, however, the individual is waking up, okay, and

(01:08:26):
what's supposed to happen is all right, we're done with
this simulation. You can have your body back. But with
sleep paralysis, the body remains locked down. You can't move it.
You're waking up, but everything is still frozen in place.
So people often describe this experience of having gaining awareness
but being unable to move, and it's very frequently described

(01:08:47):
as being a frightening experience. Yeah, and on top of that,
you're waking up in the darkness or in the twilight. Also,
you're you're you're in you're in that state, that state
between dream and sleep where you're highly susceptible to hallucination
because the is you're waking up, the the abstract sleeping

(01:09:08):
mind is trying to make sense of actual visual and
auditory stimuli. So there's a weird shadow in your room. Well,
you don't have You don't don't really have the a team,
the logical brain completely online to make sense of it. Instead,
you've got like sleep ninja demon brain to try and
make sense of all that and potentially draw from a

(01:09:31):
cultural script such as demons or aliens or angels or
zeus to explain it all. And again, this is not
all that uncommon. This, by the way, is the It's
what's referred to as the hypnopompic state, uh, the state
between you're waking up, You're coming out of dreams into
the waking world, and it's often accompanied by vivid, lingering imagery.

(01:09:53):
It's the stuff of dreams. So the dreamers, sexual fantasies,
belief system, pop culture are all likely to color the
visions and sensations that are ripped from the dream world.
And it's where where all the probing and the demonic
intercourse comes into play as well. You know, I I again,
I don't have a lot of direct experience of any

(01:10:13):
of these scenarios, but I do I do have a
strong memory from my childhood of dreaming about a toy
that I really wanted, waking up and seeing the toy
in bed with me. Initially you know too, and Grant,
you know, this is a memory of a childhood dreams,
so it's you know, it's manipulated, uh like crazy every

(01:10:34):
time I take it out, right, like all memories. But
but but I do have that strong memory of waking
and seeing it. So I get a life size iron
Maide and you wanted it was like it was kind
of like an old timey robot, you know, the kind
of like metal walkey robots, uh, lined up robots. Yeah.
I never had one except for this one that I
dreamed about and saw in the waking world with me,

(01:10:57):
and then it just kind of faded away. Okay, Well,
so how common is sleep paralysis? That's a good question
to ask, Yeah, especially if you're trying to you know,
prop up the idea that it's informing global myths and
uh in predominant aspects of the human experience. Yeah, so
lifetime prevalence. There's actually a paper from two thousand eleven
from published in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews by Brian A.

(01:11:20):
Sharpless and uh Jacques P. Barber called Lifetime prevalence rates
of sleep paralysis a systematic review, and it looked at
a whole bunch of other studies and sort of combined
their samples to try to get a rough picture of
how common it is for these things to happen. Looks
like it's really common. People experience this all the time,

(01:11:41):
so they say. Aggregating across studies, so with a total
sample size of more than thirty six thousand, it was
thirty six thousand, five thirty three. They found that seven
point six percent of the general population, twenty eight point
three percent of students, and thirty one point not in
percent of psychiatric patients experienced at least one episode of

(01:12:04):
sleep paralysis in their lifetime. And then of psychiatric patients
who had some form of panic disorder, thirty four point
six percent reported lifetime sleep paralysis. So, uh, this, uh,
this seems to indicate that this just it happens all
the time. You know, tons of people have had this
experience at one time or another, and really once is

(01:12:27):
all it takes. It is a sufficiently traumatic experience, as
sufficiently unexplainable experience. And then you also have to think
of it too, like how often does it have to
occur within a group like you just have. If we're
to imagine like a medieval village, right, if it just
happens to what would say of the people that are

(01:12:48):
living there, Well, that's of students. So if you say
seven points x percent of the general population. So if
you have a village of a hundred people, eight people
in the village will experience sleep paralysis at some time
in their life. Yeah, and that's so that's that's enough.
Like even eight separate families, then you have like eight
separate um you know, that just multiplies the number of

(01:13:09):
individuals that are gonna be then invested in believing this experience, right, Yeah,
So so I think in the end, the inc use
succubus phenomenon, it it's sort of inevitable that we arrived
at having some kind of belief in a demon of
this kind, because it you combine a large number of
different natural elements that may have not been fully understood

(01:13:31):
at the time, like the experience of nocturnal emission and
men and boys unexplained pregnancies at a time when sexual
activity was highly stigma stigmatized, and probably incest and family
abuse were under reported, um babies born with congenital disorders.
Of course, Walter Stephen's idea about a popular motivation to

(01:13:51):
validate the existence of the supernatural and people's experiences of
sleep paralysis, which we've now discovered our neurological salient and
very common. It just seems like a perfect recipe for
creating this belief in these nighttime sex demons that visit
people in bed. I would almost be surprised if humans

(01:14:12):
had not come up with legends like this. Yeah, I mean,
just nothing else. Sexual reproduction is like a large part
of what humans do, so of course we're going to
have mythological creatures that get involved in it. So there
you have it. Uh an introduction for some of you
to the world of incubine and succuby. For others, perhaps

(01:14:33):
we've added a little more depth to your understanding of
of this myth as it manifests itself around the world,
and uh hey, maybe it'll inspire some of you to uh,
you know, create some more inventive incubi succubi bits of
horror media out there. Certainly, also, we should remind again
recommended reading from this episode, The Demon Lover's Book by

(01:14:56):
Walter Stevens. It's a it's readily available. I can't remember.
I think I got my copy, like used on Amazon,
one of those where you can pick up, you know,
a great volume of it for like five bucks or so,
and it has illustrations. Also, you can read it online
for free if you are able to deal with some
hilarious spellings in early modern English. But check out King

(01:15:16):
James's Demonology. It's a hoot, excellent. We will include a
links to both of those on the landing page for
this episode, a's stuff to Blow your Mind dot com,
as well as some related articles and videos and podcast
episodes on the site that have dealt with um with
the sleep, paralysis, with demons, with sexuality, and all the
various cultural complications involved. Oh yes, and if you want

(01:15:40):
to get in touch with us directly to let us
know feedback on this episode or any other, or to
suggest episode topics for the future. As always, you can
email us at below the mind at how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

(01:16:05):
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