For as long as humans have walked the earth, we’ve asked certain questions: Is there life after death? Do the departed spirits of the deceased walk among us? Can we have sex with ghosts? Though the 1990 film Ghost came close to answering at least one of those, I’m going to be honest: My sexual awakening came as the result of that hot ghost boy in Hocus Pocus who, despite spending the majority of the movie as a talking cat, was so attractive in that knockoff Leonardo DiCaprio way that I am shook to this day. (I’m not alone in this, by the way.)

The nineties were an amazing time for burgeoning spectrophilia—that’s, of course, the fetish by which one is sexually attracted to ghosts. We had the aforementioned Hocus Pocus and Ghost, Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense, even Alec Baldwin in Beetlejuice. (OK, technically that was 1988, but Baldwin is kind of slept-on in the hot ghost canon.) Though ghosting means something different now, back then it implied wearing a wedding dress and closed-mouth kissing Devon Sawa like so:

But is ghost sex really common enough to deserve its own fetish? After all, ghosts are probably not real. (Don’t you think if Ghost Hunters had actually discovered proof of spectral activity it would’ve been bigger news?) However, because it’s nearly Halloween and we can’t possibly answer for every unexplained haunting that’s ever happened, it’s worth exploring just how we as a species have interacted with paranormal phenomena. Not to mention, if a thing exists—even just conceptually—there’s probably somebody out there who’s thought about having sex with it.

So who’s boning ghosts? Well, world-famous pop star Kesha for one. The song “Supernatural” off her 2012 album Warrior is apparently about a one-night stand with a specter. “That song was about having sex with a ghost,” the singer told Ryan Seacrest that year. “I lived in this flop house at Rural Canyon, and there was this weird energy that lived there. It used to keep me up at night and wake me up. It progressed into this dark, sexual spirit.” She admitted that, while she didn’t know his name, the encounter “did scare me, but that’s part of the fun of it.” We’ll take her word for it.

But are normies like you and I engaging in paranormal activity between the sheets? In his article “Ghost Modernism: A Beginner’s Guide to Spectrophilia,” Mark Griffiths, Ph.D., of Nottingham Trent University, a psychologist who explores “addictive, obsessional, compulsive, and/or extreme behaviors” on his blog (he’s given Glamour permission to cite him in this story), writes that spectrophilia as a condition is probably real, even if ghosts themselves aren’t. He points to the numerous historical and folkloric tales of spirits having sex with humans as proof that people have always been intrigued by raunchy wraiths.

In fact, most world cultures have some version of a lingering spirit that lives on beyond death. The most famous mythic examples of sex ghosts coast-to-coast were the incubus and succubus. First referenced all the way back in Mesopotamia, incubi are male demons who engage in sexual activity with sleeping women (succubi are their female counterparts). Though, historically, it wasn’t a sexy as it sounds: Copulation with an incubus is how they believed witches were conceived. (Just because your dad is a creepy sex demon doesn’t mean you can’t go on to have a totally fulfilling life, though. After all, Merlin was said to be fathered by an incubus.)

For his part, Griffiths notes that there’s (unsurprisingly) no empirical evidence that anyone’s truly had sex with a ghost. That said, most spectrophiles actually don’t admit to going all the way—they’re merely aroused by the idea of having relations with a spirit. Therefore, he writes, “the main sexual outlet for spectrophilia would appear to be masturbation.” And if you were also super into Thackery Binx at an impressionable age, this definitely tracks.

PHOTO: Walt Disney Pictures

Thackery Binx, low-key breakout star of Hocus Pocus

For that reason, millennials who were into Devon Sawa for the three minutes of Casper he wasn’t a cartoon, knockoff ghost Leo for the three minutes of Hocus Pocus he wasn’t a cat, or even Patrick Swayze makin’ horny spectral pottery with Demi Moore can consider themselves, in a way, spectrophiles.

How’s that for unfinished business?

More:

—Everything You Want to Know About Tentacle Porn

—Glamour’s 2017 Sex Toy Awards

—9 Instagram Artists Changing the Face of Erotica

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