Giving a voice to necrophiles

One thing I've been curious about. I would expect that individual necrophiles might have different answers to this.

When you think of a particular dead person, is there a sense of personality associated with it? And if so, is that personality meaningfully related to the personality the individual had in life? Likewise, is there an experience of relationship with said personality to be had by a necrophile?

Spiritually speaking, I tend to think of corpses as empty shells. While I can understand the idea of a physical attraction to an object or sensation that isn't a person, I know some of the necrophiles here don't think of this as an attraction to an inanimate object exactly and I'd like to understand better.

Chessplayer wrote:Besides, in order to have a love of death, you kind of have to have a respect for life, do you not?

I've always been fascinated by death, ever since I was an elementary school kid.
I have respect for life as well. I think both are part of something greater, something supernatural, and that they complete each other.

YouthRightsRadical wrote:When you think of a particular dead person, is there a sense of personality associated with it? And if so, is that personality meaningfully related to the personality the individual had in life? Likewise, is there an experience of relationship with said personality to be had by a necrophile?

Personally, I don't associate personalities to dead people, unless I knew them when they were alive. But I do believe in the existence of souls and in communication with the souls of the dead. Also, everytime I am around dead people (for example in cemeteries), I feel a positive energy, some kind of spiritual field.

YouthRightsRadical wrote:Spiritually speaking, I tend to think of corpses as empty shells. While I can understand the idea of a physical attraction to an object or sensation that isn't a person, I know some of the necrophiles here don't think of this as an attraction to an inanimate object exactly and I'd like to understand better.

Well, corpses can't feel anything, so yeah they are empty shells but we still consider them people, worthy of respect and love.
This is a personal belief, but I could also choose to connect to the soul of a dead person. But the body is empty, as the soul ceased to be trapped in the body after the person's death.

My personal beliefs about souls have little to do with necrophilia and a lot to do with my own spirituality. Every necrophile is different. Some have no spiritual beliefs.

YouthRightsRadical wrote:One thing I've been curious about. I would expect that individual necrophiles might have different answers to this.

When you think of a particular dead person, is there a sense of personality associated with it? And if so, is that personality meaningfully related to the personality the individual had in life? Likewise, is there an experience of relationship with said personality to be had by a necrophile?

Spiritually speaking, I tend to think of corpses as empty shells. While I can understand the idea of a physical attraction to an object or sensation that isn't a person, I know some of the necrophiles here don't think of this as an attraction to an inanimate object exactly and I'd like to understand better.

For me personally, there is definitely a sense of personality. I've researched the lives of 'dead friends' from the 1800s, and even have some photographs. They're real people, and I like to feel I know them, if that makes sense. I'd lose all interest in somebody if I discovered they were nasty characters in life.

A corpse is an empty shell to an extent, but it's still the physical part of a person. I've got some spiritual beliefs, and used to attend spiritualist church. I know it sounds mad to a lot of people, but I do believe that 'something' survives of us after death, and that 'something' feels the love of the living.

A lot of spiritualists believe that 'love' is the force that keeps the living and the dead connected, and I like that concept. That's not to say I'm religious. I just think the spirit is an energy, and any physicist will tell you that energy can't be destroyed. At a friend's funeral a few years ago, a girl said: "There must be something after death. Where does all that personality go?"

This is where I sound like a total nut job. I swear I can feel things from graves. Some feel friendly, some feel like they're saying "F off", and a few actually feel sexy! There's one in particular, that makes me go positively tingly.

YouthRightsRadical wrote:One thing I've been curious about. I would expect that individual necrophiles might have different answers to this.

When you think of a particular dead person, is there a sense of personality associated with it? And if so, is that personality meaningfully related to the personality the individual had in life? Likewise, is there an experience of relationship with said personality to be had by a necrophile?

Spiritually speaking, I tend to think of corpses as empty shells. While I can understand the idea of a physical attraction to an object or sensation that isn't a person, I know some of the necrophiles here don't think of this as an attraction to an inanimate object exactly and I'd like to understand better.

I'm definitely not as spiritual as the others here...
With corpses I mainly get the feeling that there's "someone there", and that they have feelings and I'll sometimes talk to them like there's someone there (I do this with both dead animals and people). I'm well aware there's no scientific reason to believe that they can hear me or feel me if I touch them. I don't have beliefs about souls or the existence of souls, that part doesn't really matter to me.

Yeah sometimes they do seem to have personalities. I agree that there's no evidence that corpses are anything more than inanimate objects but somehow I feel compelled to treat them like people. Of course, the scientific half of my brain says that's completely ridiculous. At the same I find myself wanting to talk to them and otherwise just act like they're people.

Weirdly though, I don't care much about what the person was like when they were alive...I don't think I'd ever feel the need to find about what they were like. That's not important to me, I care more about what they're like when they're dead.

Also, for some reason, I have this feeling that they can feel pain. And this isn't any kind of religious or spiritual belief, since I've always had this gut feeling ever since I was little. Anyway, seeing anyone treat a corpse roughly, mutilating them, etc makes me freak out and I feel a really unusual amount of empathy for them. For example, when I dissected a rat in Anatomy lab, one of my group members started tearing the rat open and I got really stressed out, ended up yelling at him, and making myself look stupid. I'm okay with dissections since I'm gentle and usually just think of it as surgery. I just don't like when people are rough or treat dead people or animals harshly.

Whether they feel or not should be irrelevant really. They deserve to be treated with dignity.

One of the most ignorant things that I've had thrown at me, is that necrophiles supposedly have no respect for the sanctity of the dead. It's funny how nobody levels that charge against those who perform totally unnecessary (in my opinion) autopsies, or the money-driven bastards who are planning to bulldoze a cemetery near to me.

Actually, whether they feel things or not isn't really irrelevant. If people who would harm or desecrate the dead really believe they have no feeling, then that makes them even more despicable and cowardly in my book.

Thanks for the replies. I may not fully understand even with all the help, but I get it a lot better than I did before.

YouthRightsRadical wrote:Thanks for the replies. I may not fully understand even with all the help, but I get it a lot better than I did before.

Don't worry about it, it's kind of hard to understand unless you've felt it yourself. Personally I have a hard time understanding how people can be attracted to living people, that's just never made sense to me

YouthRightsRadical wrote:Thanks for the replies. I may not fully understand even with all the help, but I get it a lot better than I did before.

You're welcome, YRR.

sprooglestrewft wrote: I wonder how many necrophiles really do care what a person is like before they die. Also, is there physical attraction to fresh corpses but no physical attraction to the same person when they were alive? That seems odd to me that someone suddenly becomes physically attractive once they die

The only time I've been around fresh corpses, was at the scene of a car accident, and maybe that taints my view, but I'm not interested in them. They just seem meat-like to me, and then there's the smells and body fluids... Even before that accident, I'd have said my preference lies with skeletal or mummified corpses.

The most attractive human being I've ever seen is a mummified woman, and hand on my heart, there isn't a living woman on this planet who I'd rather be with. There are lots of living women I find quite attractive to look at, and who I like a lot as people, but it really is an apples and oranges comparison.

Is age relevant? When we talk of age range of attraction among the living we're usually talking about development or visible aspects of senescence. Does it therefore matter whether it's a 12-year-old, 18-year-old, 30-year-old or 60-year-old? And to what extent does sex matter? And are these things more relevant the more identifiable a corpse is as being of a certain age (or age range) or sex? In other words, an 18-year-old woman who has been dead for a week is much more identifiable as such than a very decomposed corpse.