This article originally appeared in Penthouse Magazine.



SEX, BLOOD & ROCK 'N' ROLL

Vampires and sex have always made for strange bedfellows. Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula, presented the world's most famous bloodsucker as a mysterious and dangerous figure, but one who oozed unspoken eroticism. The first filmed version of the book, Nosferatu, in 1922, is viewed by movie buffs as a cinematic masterpiece. But Max Schreck, who played the lead role of ratlike Count Orlok, was white as a sheet, skinny as a rake, and looked like he needed a good meal, rather than a pint or two of the red stuff.

Bela Lugosi, who took on the role of Count Dracula in Universal's 1931 production of Stoker's novel, did a fine job, but came across as someone's grandfather hamming it up after a few drinks at a Christmas party. Actor Christopher Lee's version of Dracula - from the famous Hammer films of the 1950s to 1970s - was a more potent and sexually predatory count, whose fangs graphically penetrated the throats of his buxom female victims.

Hammer certainly knew when it was onto a good thing: In 1970 the company released The Vampire Lovers, starring curvy Polish actress Ingrid Pitt as one of the lesbian "blood nymphs" who loved to suck hot female neck. Hammer's fans clamored for more girl-on-girl action and the studio was happy to oblige: Lust for a Vampire surfaced one year later, and Twins of Evil hit the big screen in 1972.

Forty years later, vampires are still oozing sex through movies, TV shows, and even sex parties. The Twilight movies and HBO's True Blood series are both enjoying phenomenal success. While the former is geared toward a tween/teen audience and has a more romantic and gothic approach to its subject matter, the latter is full-on sex, gore, and carnal carnage. Actress Evan Rachel Wood's "vampire queen" Sophie-Anne Leclerq in True Blood, for example, is both bisexual and deadly - two things guaranteed to boost ratings.

These pop-culture characters may be rubbing off on the nation's sex life. Type "vampire + sex" into any search engine and you'll find clubs and chat rooms that cater to just about every bloodsucking fetish out there.

Swingers are getting into the action, too. In recent months, at least two vampire-costume sex parties have been held near Dallas; those interested in a bit of Saturday night partner-swapping could also indulge their Sophie-Anne fantasies.

"It's just for fun," says Lucy (not her real name), a 32-year-old Fort Worth secretary. "We dress in black, crank up Rob Zombie or Nine Inch Nails, and have a good time. And the folks who plan the parties try to get the mood right - there are lots of black and purple curtains in the rooms, candles, and everyone drinks out of cool goblets." And, she stresses, "The look is important, too, and we all make the effort. Everyone's in black, and a lot of the girls go for leather boots, short skirts, lots of skull jewelry. That's my angle: kind of like Abby from NCIS."

"The guys tend be rocker-types - Trent Reznor, Marilyn Manson style. It's all about fucking, of course, but it's incredibly sexy when you get into the idea of, 'Wow, I'm getting done by a beautiful vampire couple.'"

So there's no real-life bloodletting going on, then? "No," laughs Lucy. "Though one guy did come to the first party with plastic fangs. That was pretty stupid."

Do they get people turning up dressed as Bela Lugosi or Count Orlok? "No way!" Lucy screams. "It's all True Blood, baby!" Welcome to the new breed of vampire lovers.



PARANORMAL FUN AND GAMES

Raven Meindel, a Wiccan priestess who was recently featured on the History Channel's Monster Quest series chasing bloodthirsty werewolves, believes that the world of the supernatural can play a significant role in fantasy-driven sex. She says of people like Lucy, "In some cases, I would definitely say that it's good old-fashioned fun to seek out the darker side of our animalistic human selves. Roleplay in this fashion is a safe way to experience a world beyond our own."

Meindel adds, "Fulfilling one's desires, especially for those who typically lack such confidence in the real world, becomes easier once the costumes and masks are on and the role-players act out the characteristics and often lurid sensuality of the characters or creatures they are playing."

But what about allegedly true-life close encounters of the supernatural sex variety? Here's where things get a little darker. Louis Proud, of Melbourne, Australia, is the author of the 2009 book Dark Intrusions: An Investigation Into the Paranormal Nature of Sleep Paralysis Experiences, which Proud describes as "a condition that occurs either prior or subsequent to REM [rapid eye movement] sleep, in which the mind is awake and the body is asleep and paralyzed, and is sometimes accompanied by hallucinations. Some episodes can be extremely terrifying and unpleasant, since they involve the feeling of a malevolent presence in the room. Many perceive these experiences as encounters with demons and evil spirits."

As for his own experiences with sleep paralysis, Proud says, "I first began to experience it in my teens. I've had a number of sexual encounters with female spirits. These were just as pleasurable as the real thing - in some ways more so. Comparing the two, my sexual sleep-paralysis encounters were much more intense."

Proud is not alone, it seems. "Following the publication of my book," he says, "I received many emails from sleep-paralysis sufferers - mostly women - who claim to have engaged in sexual acts with spirits. Most of them said they enjoyed these experiences, despite being a little uncomfortable with the idea."

Of course, these events, as hot as they may be for the person concerned, might not have any basis in reality out side the human brain. Proud concedes that "skeptics declare that sleep-paralysis episodes are entirely hallucinatory, and are caused by an intrusion of REM activity into wakefulness, meaning that these experiences are 'all in the mind,' just as dreams are 'all in the mind.' The phenomenon, they say, has played a critical role in fostering humanity's long-held belief in spirits, demons, and aliens."

Regardless of what lies at the heart of supernatural sex - something truly paranormal or simply erotic mind games - there is no doubt that it has highly addictive qualities. Meindel states, "As with any type of thrill seeking, I think people can very easily become addicted to it. Some people keep coming back to it because they feel they cannot live their version of a normal life without it. After all, it is human nature to indulge."

Proud agrees: "I believe it could become addictive, but probably more so for a spirit than a human. These experiences can be extremely pleasurable. One woman told me that both she and her daughter have sexual sleep-paralysis experiences regularly. The daughter felt an entity sucking her breast on one occasion. The mom, who occasionally feels a male presence next to her and breathing on her neck, confessed, 'I have actually been turned on by this evil thing.' "

Nevertheless, Proud feels that "to form a close relationship with a spirit, and a sexual one at that, is only inviting trouble." He elaborates on the potentially negative aspects of the phenomenon: "As to whether or not sleep-paralysis sex is healthy, I think this all depends on the type of entity involved. They are motivated by a hunger for the energy of the living, as well as by an appetite for pleasure. After all, sexual activity - even between two people - involves the transference of vital energy. Depending on a number of factors, such as who is involved, this transference of energy can be balanced or unbalanced. For some sleep-paralysis sufferers, these experiences have a negative impact on their health and well-being, leaving them feeling defiled and drained of energy."

Joshua P. Warren, the author of such books as Pet Ghosts and How to Hunt Ghosts, is working on a website for people who have experienced ghostly sex. He claims spirits are quite discerning when it comes to carnal activity. "Every single woman I've met who has told me she has been sexually involved with a ghost is very attractive," he says. "They can be blondes or brunettes, but I have seen more redheads who have had a paranormal sexual experience and enjoyed it. And because a lot of women do enjoy it, I feel there's a social-networking need for people who want to date within the paranormal realm: These people all have something in common."

As for why there should be so much alleged ghostly sex among us, Warren says, "Let's say, indeed, you can die, come back, and do whatever you want. What would you do? Would you be hanging out in an old cemetery or would you be in the girls' locker room? Most men would say the latter."



THE CLOSEST ENCOUNTER

If you're going to get it on with an extra terrestrial, then you could do much worse than a Brazilian lawyer named Antonio Villas Boas did, who claimed in October 1957 to have been seduced by a vibrant space chick with blood-red pubic hair who growled like a wild beast as the pair got it on.

According to Villas Boas, after being abducted from his family's farm by very human-looking aliens, he was taken aboard a craft from another world. His captors left the room and the woman appeared, fully naked.

"I became uncontrollably excited, sexually, a thing that had never happened to me before," recalled Villas Boas. "I ended up forgetting everything, and I caught hold of the woman, responded to her caresses with other and greater caresses." Demonstrating his lack of modesty, Villas Boas boasted, "That was what they wanted of me - a good stallion to improve their own stock."

Or did they? UFO researcher Peter Rogerson has strong doubts about the credibility of Villas Boas's story. He points out that only a few months before Villas Boas first related his claims, a very similar account appeared in the November 1957 issue of the Brazilian periodical O Cruzeiro. Rogerson offers the possibility that Villas Boas, who died in 1992, borrowed details from this earlier account and used them to weave his own tale of alien sex - a sadly far less exciting scenario, but perhaps a more likely one.

On the other hand, believers in the Villas Boas case confidently state that alien sex did not begin and end with the lucky farmer-turned-lawyer: Such accounts continue to surface decades later. Today, even the merest mention of alien sex is likely to prompt jokes about what have become known infamously (and embarrassingly so for some who engage in UFO research) as "anal probes." Yep: apparently E.T. is a big fan of backdoor action. Who would have thought it?

But for many, this is no joke. In his best-selling 1987 book, Communion, Whitley Strieber detailed encounters with strange and disturbing otherworldly entities that he calls "the Visitors." One particularly harrowing one from December 1985, in which Strieber described being taken by his captors from his cabin in upstate New York, was a classic example.

According to Strieber, after having been moved to an unknown location - the inside of a UFO, some theorize - he was placed on a table and two "stocky" beings with gray-blue skin "drew my legs apart." Strieber claims that the pair showed him "an enormous and extremely ugly object, gray and scaly … it was at least a foot long."

Worse still for Strieber was the object's final destination: "They inserted this thing into my rectum. It seemed to swarm into me as if it had a life of its own." Unsurprisingly, he added: "… at the time I had the impression that I was being …."

Despite the graphic nature of the encounter, a near-subculture mocking such experiences has since surfaced. The very first episode of Comedy Central's phenomenally successful series South Park, from 1997, was titled "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe."

Stories of alien sex show no signs of abating. In 2009, Anomalist Books published Farah Yurdozu's book Love in an Alien Purgatory, which told the story of David Huggins, who, we are informed, has fathered no less than 60 human/alien hybrid children. And guess what: the moms may be from faraway worlds, but they are hot! They're curvy, have great tits, have long black hair, and are very eager to please. They're quite the voyeurs, too.

On one occasion, while in the company of a bunch of gothlike babes from beyond, Yurdozu claims "two Hybrid women" made it very clear what they wanted from lucky Huggins. One of the pair, the author says, "put her hands under her breasts and raised them up, as the other crossed her arms under her breasts and lifted them up. The meaning was clear in any culture; the Hybrid women wanted to have sex with him."

Not only that, but there was an audience of aliens ready to savor the intergalactic action. Huggins, however, did not share their approach. "Can we have a bit of privacy?" he pleaded. The room emptied, but the extraterrestrials weren't ready to totally give up their chance to watch. As Huggins got it on with one of the women, says Yurdozu, "the others watched from a discreet distance."



BIG FOOT, LITTLE DICK

Loren Coleman, an authority on America's most famous monster, Sasquatch, and the author of Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America, has boldly dared to go where most other monster hunters fear to tread: in search of Bigfoot's sex life. Coleman, the owner of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, states, "Too many American researchers were prudishly ignoring the sex angle. I started challenging Bigfooters that if you're going to talk about this as a biological species, we have to take seriously that these things are having sex."

And maybe Bigfoot is not just having sex with its own kind. Coleman says, "I give a lecture called 'Sex and the Single Sasquatch.' People laugh at first, but then they start thinking. What I've found in the sexual realm is that, as opposed to the fantasy that most people might assume - of a well-endowed Bigfoot having sex with native girls - the reality of the sexual aspects is mostly in regard to human men being kidnapped to have sex with a younger, female Bigfoot."

Coleman states that those who have been up-close-and-personal enough to see the male Bigfoot's member have described it as being "very small." For Coleman, this is a plus (although, perhaps not for Mrs. Bigfoot); he says, "This connects very favorably with the fact that gorillas and orangutans have small penises, too. This suggests that Bigfoot is also some type of ape." He continues, "Bigfoot researchers have been so embarrassed by the sexuality of Bigfoot that they have been leaving out a major piece of data that, as serious researchers, we should be looking at, because it actually enhances our case that they're real animals."

Our final words go to Joshua P. Warren, who says, "We cannot deny the inherent absurdity and humor of paranormal sex; but we must realize that, whether the event is the product of an outside force, or if the observer subconsciously creates the experience themselves, this is a very tangible thing for those who undergo it, and it should be investigated seriously."