Necrophilia is an obsession with and usually erotic interest in or stimulation by corpses. It is also known as Necrophilism, Necrolagnia, Necrocoitas. A ten-tier classification of Necrophilia exists:
Role players: People who get aroused when pretending their partner is dead during sexual activity.
Romantic Necrophiliacs: Bereaved people who remain attached to their dead lover’s body.
Necrophiliacs fantasizers: People who fantasy about Necrophilia, but do not physically interact with corpses.
Tactile Necrophiliacs: People who are aroused by touching or stroking a corpse, without engaging in intercourse.
Fetishistic Necrophiliacs: People who remove objects or body parts from a corpse for sexual purposes, without engaging in intercourse.
Necromutilomaniacs: people who derive pleasure from mutilating a corpse while masturbating, without engaging in intercourse.
Opportunistic Necrophiliacs: People who normally have no interest in Necrophilia, but take the opportunity when it arises.
Regular Necrophiliacs: People who preferentially have intercourse with the dead.
Homicidal Necrophiliacs: Necrosadists, people who murder someone to have sex with the victim.
Exclusive Necrophiliacs: People who have an exclusive interest in sex with the dead, and cannot perform at all for a living partner.
Necrophilia has been reported since ancient times. Most cases in the literature have been males aged between twenty and fifty years old and heterosexual cases exist. A consistent observation has been that Necrophiliac individuals often choose an occupation that provides them ready access to the corpse. Such as cemetery or mortuary attendants, hospital orderlies.
Greek author Herodotus stated in his Histories that in Ancient Egypt bodies of exceptionally beautiful women were not embalmed immediately after their deaths, but only after several days had passed, to prevent a recurrence of a case where it was discovered that an embalmed had sex with the body of a recently dead woman.
King Herod of Judea desired a certain maiden and after she killed herself to avoid marrying him, he preserved her body in honey for seven years.
In the 19th century Russo-Turkish war, military forces sexually abused dead bodies.
Arthur Shawcross, an American serial killer from Rochester, New York, was convicted of 11 murders in November 1990. He claimed to have killed, raped, decapitated and eaten two Vietcong women.
Those who place value in prolonged and specific necrophilic acts, needless to say, have learned to think about death in a complex and unique way, and is our job to unpack human behavior to determine where these people have found death and the dead to be preferable.
