POPSUGAR: Everything You Never Knew About Halloween Fetishes

“This is a paraphilia in which a person experiences sexual attraction to and sexual arousal by ghosts, spirits, and specter figures in mirrors,” CalExotics’s resident sexologist, Dr. Jill McDevitt, told POPSUGAR. People get really into the fetish. In fact, “some people claim to have sex with ghosts,” she says.

Why? “Because humans have always been obsessed with understanding their place in the world and life after death. And per the nature of fetishes, if it exists (and in the case of ghosts, even if it doesn’t exist), a human can develop a sexual interest in it,” she says. It might be hard to access “real” ghosts, but you can play up this fantasy on Halloween by decorating your home with ghost decor, using fog machines and imagery to create ghost-like reflections in mirrors, or asking your partner if they’ll dress up, she suggests.

While lots of people might be freaked out by clowns, some get a little hot. This paraphilia involves sexual attraction to clowns, mimes, and jesters.

“In 2016,” McDevitt says, “when there was an evil clown epidemic that was all over the news . . . Pornhub saw a 213 percent increase in clown-related searches. There were 100,000 searches on Pornhub for clown porn in just one month.”

Clearly people are into it, and part of the reason is because so many people have clown phobias, she explains. This Halloween, dress up like a clown for your partner in bed. “Get fully into the wig, costume, and makeup — and your clown persona,” she says.

There’s a reason people like schoolgirl or baby costumes; going backward in time to a period of innocence and dependence on others (but with a potentially raunchy attitude) can be really arousing. Halloween is the perfect time to wear a baby costume. “Wear a diaper and pacifier costume,” she suggests. Why might this be a fetish? “Some theories include that perhaps [an] infantilism fetish is about regression to a cared-for state,” she explains.

On Halloween, lots of costumes involve dominatrix or submissive characters, so it’s the perfect time to experiment with this fetish, which comes from the intrigue of playing with power dynamics, very Fifty Shades of Grey-style. For a dominatrix outfit, wear a latex catsuit and don a riding crop, like the Scandal Split Tip Crop by Cal Exotics ($24), she says. Then, get to the bedroom and take charge.

Let’s be real: some people wear less clothing than usual on Halloween, so if you’re into exhibitionism as a fetish, this is the perfect occasion to act on that desire to be exposed. “Exhibitionism is about getting a reaction from an unsuspecting person seeing you naked, which is not consensual and not cool, which is why this is better for fantasy and dress-up with some clothes,” she explains. “Be ‘naked’ for Halloween — or nearly naked (like, wear underwear that matches your skin tone) and put a ‘censored’ bar in front of you,” she suggests.

This fetish involves sexual arousal by blood. Yet, take note: “It can be super dangerous (for instance, consensual knife play as an extreme BDSM practice, which should be well-researched first and done only while sober and with a partner you trust 100 percent), but the sight of superrealistic fake blood around Halloween by way of bloody makeup and bloody crime scene decorations is a thing,” she says.

Why?

Blood is life. It’s powerful and primal, and many people get off on sexualizing power and letting their primal desires come out.

Seems weird, but it’s legit. “Pumpkins are shaped like buttocks, they are good for carving holes into, are firm on the outside, squishy on the inside, and have a hard, phallic stem,” she explains. It wasn’t long before people figured out they could have sex with one. Maybe take that spare pumpkin with you into the bedroom.

It’s not just penetrating a pumpkin that turns people on, but also the scent. “The smell, according to one clever study that had men blindly smell different scents while measuring their penis growth, marking arousal, found that pumpkin, when combined with another flavor, was the biggest turn-on,” she says. Rub some pumpkin spice on your body before getting into bed with your partner, or use a pumpkin-flavored air freshener in the home.

Take morning wood to the next level by dressing up as a tree for Halloween. This fetish involves the love of trees and nature, and Halloween is a great opportunity to dress up in branches, greenery, and other nature-inspired items.