Forbidden Love

U haul and drove north. And while we lived in Hartford, the capital of the state, it was a pretty sleepy place, and I soon found myself sprit to fill my time and make friends. So I sought out volunteer opportunities with organizations that I figured would attract like minded people, and I was right. It turned out to be a great way to make friends. One of those friends was a young woman in her late twenties, a researcher at Yale

who was volunteering at a relatively new advocacy organization. For the purpose of the story, I will call her Sarah. She and I were the only women in the group, and having spent a lot of time together helping a new organization get off the ground, we ended up becoming friends. Sarah was petite, but full of energy, incredibly dependable, thoughtful,

and warm. I took a liking to her immediately. She would come over to my plays, hang out with my family and other friends, and we'd meet up for coffee. But I never went over to her place ever. I knew that Sarah lived alone in an apartment in New Haven, an apartment that she had moved into fairly recently. Now we have been friends about a year when inevitably, one day our conversation turned to merrite. Because the matchmaker and me can't help but ask my single friends if they're

looking to meet someone. So I asked Sarah if she was open to being introduced to a couple of eligible bachelors that I already had in mind. Sarah took a deep sigh and said, I'd love to, but I just can't. Now. I wasn't exactly sure what she meant by that. Was she too busy? Was she interested in someone else already? Was she just painfully shy? Sarah went on, She said, Robbia, you're going to think I'm crazy. But I have a problem. I've wanted to meet the right guy and settled down

for years, but there's this this thing. It won't let me. At that point, I thought, oh, maybe there's a health issue she thinks is preventing her from being in a relationship. But it wasn't that at all. Sarah went on to explain that for years, verse since she was a teenager,

a gin had been following her. She tried everything to get rid of it, prayers and amulets, seeking help from spiritual healers, consulting exorcists, moving from one city to another, moving from one apartment to another, but everywhere she went it followed her. While mostly it didn't bother her, there had been times it scared the heck out of her, showing her that it was there with her at all times and that it was powerful. Once, said Sarah, she

woke up in the middle of the night, disoriented. The ceiling looked much lower than it had before, and she thought for a second that she was dreaming, But she wasn't. She was hovering, floating a good foot or two above her bed, suspended and frozen in fright. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came. Out. She said every prayer she could remember in her heart, and suddenly she fell,

flopping back into her bed. Another time, she woke up, warm and cozy on her blanket, still in bed, but her bed had been dragged to the other side of the room. And then there are countless times that objects moved from one place to another, things disappeared and reappeared, Voices whispered from empty corners of her apartment, cabinets creaked open and closed by themselves. There was always an increase in activity, she realized when she began getting romantically involved

with somebody else. Eventually, one of the religious leaders she consulted he knew about her entire Gin history, told her that the Gin was really possessive, and it was jealous of any man who got too close to her. That for her getting into a relationship might be an impossibility. The Gin wouldn't let it happen, because, you see, the Gin was in love with Sarah. Now, of course, as she's telling me these things, I went through a range of emotions. This is ridiculous. I thought she's lying. She

has to be lying, But why would she lie. She's not a lot, sire, She's level headed, smart, educated, honest. Okay, well, maybe she's hallucinating imagining things. But over and over again, for years and years, I remembered. I wasn't sure what to do with my face. She was dead serious, and I was confused. I returned home that day and told my husband the story as he munched on some cookies. Yeah,

he said, completely unphased. That happens. He happened to know a lot more about Jin than I did, so that's when I first began digging deeper into the world of Gin, tracking down everything I could find to read and learn about them. Sure, I had heard spooky stories growing up, and was familiar with some of the scripture that mentioned these beings. But the more I learned, the more I realized I didn't know. Every rabbit hole led to another, And in one of those rabbit holes, I found centuries

of stories, love stories between humans and Gin. Like in Sarah's case, it wasn't always a two way street, but in many cases the love of was mutual. Today will explore what happens when lovers aren't just star crossed, they're supernaturally crossed. My name is Robbia Chaudry, and I'll be your guide into the world of the Hidden Gin welcome. If you aren't familiar with one thousand and one Nights, you might think the only time Agin appears in the whole volume is in the Tale of Aladdin and a

Genie from the Magic Lamp. If so, you might be surprised to learn that not only wasn't this story a part of the original collection in one thousand and one Nights, but also that there are many other Gin stories that are Some stories, however, are less palatable for the subject of Disney films than others, and certainly, if there was one subject that American audiences weren't ready for, it's the repeated theme in one thousand and one Nights of love, marriage,

and sexual relationships between Gin and humans. While these stories may seem wondrous and fantastic, they were delivered to an audience that not only widely believed in the existence of Gin, but in a coexistence between Gin and mankind, in which the Gin occupied both supernatural and earthly planes, interacting with humans, living alongside them, communicating with them, and naturally, given the right circumstances, it was understood and accepted that both humans

and Gin could and would develop romantic feelings for one another, which takes us back to the many tales, the one thousand and one of them that Shahrazadey told her king to keep him entertained and to keep herself alive, where we repeatedly come across this theme. In one story, we learn about a far away place called the Mountain of the Bereaved Mother, given this name by passing fishermen who heard ways and moans whenever they passed by the island

where the mountain stood. According to the tale, a beautiful female Jin, a Ginia from China, had once fallen in love with a mortal man, which didn't fare well with her Jin family. She was desperate to have him, though,

and she came up with an idea. She searched the entire world for a place that no man or Jin could access, and found an island in the middle of the Sea of Troubles, And so she whisked her love away to that island, with or without his consent, it's unclear, but she kept him there for the rest of his life. She would secretly visit him, sneaking away from her Gin family, and over the years they ended up having many children together.

Now how she hid that from her family is unclear. However, every time she had a child, she would leave it behind on the mountain with the other children and their father, and the moans and the cries heard by fishermen were in fact the whales of lonely children crying for their mother. A complic hated love story, if you will, and whether

or not had a happy ending is debatable. Nonetheless, that Ginia got her Man One thousand and one Nights has dozens and dozens of such tales of human gin love, sometimes ending in socially accepted marriage, other times ending up an elopement, abduction, and even death. Now you might be thinking, well, these are tales told within a tale and are about as real as the vampire human love stories in Twilight

or True Blood. Maybe, But then you have the real life stories like Sarah's and many others, and at one point in time it was actually pretty commonly accepted that these relationships took place. As one example of how ubiquitous and while normal, the very idea of human gen romance was, we turned to a tenth century volume titled All Fairest, which means the Catalog, and it was indeed a catalog.

In fact, alphaist is considered to be the very first such catalog in history, indexing over ten thousand books inciting

to over two thousand authors. It was written and compiled by the brilliant Bardadi polymath is shock Ibbin al Nadim, who himself described the book as such, This is a catalog of books of all peoples, Arab and non Arab, existing in Arabic language and Arabic script, dealing with various sciences, together with the accounts of those who composed them, and the categories of their authors, their genealogies, dates of birth, length of life, times of death, locations of the cities,

and their virtues and faults, from the beginning of each science to this our own time. That time, by the way, was the year b c. The catalog basically indexes every book ever written in Arabic up to that point in time, over a hugely vast array of subjects, politics, religion, history, science, literature, poetry, and yes, the supernatural and I'll know them. Had two

sections directly relevant to our subject at hand. One section titled names of those of mankind who loved the Gin and vice versa, and the second section titled Lovers of the Gin. These sections contained long lists of human Gin couples, including head scratching entries like quote, I'll dre them the lion, Judd the Liberal and Walks the Worthless, and another one titled All Delfa, her Brothers and the Ginney. Now, whether these were love triangles or threesomes, either way they were

pretty scandalous. But of course, who doesn't like a good scandal, And what juicier drama than a love affair between a gin and a human, an affair the society had no power to stop, in which one lover could appear and disappear right out of their beloved is bed. Never mind the romance of a powerful supernatural entity choosing a mere

mortal as a partner. What about the actual physical experience itself. Well, you can understand the kinds of things people imagined and whispered incredibly seductive gossip fodder, if you ask me, And ever more so given that it was believed that when a Jin male or female fell in love with a human, they would follow that human forever, and once that human accepted the love, the gin would impart some of their secret Jin knowledge to them, like how to heal disease?

Having a lover who could teach you powers others didn't have. Well,

that's quite a French benefit. These cross species trists were apparently such a fairly common occurrence at the time in the region that religious and legal scholars had debates over the rules governing such relationships, about, for example, whether the marriages to the gin were actually legitimate, and most scholars, by the way set up well not but there were some exceptions, and whether the children produced from such marriages

were legitimate. Now I can't help but wonder if maybe sometimes single women had to claim marriage to a jinn when they ended up inexplicably pregnant in a society that would shun children outside of marriage, and charges of fornication and adultery could lead to some very serious consequences. I can see how it's very much a possibility that gin marriage was well a cover, and some scholars have even positive that maybe unions with supernatural entities were a vehicle

for female liberation and protection. The sexual liberation of not having to explain a pregnancy, protection from social or religious consequences of such a pregnancy, and from the charges of adultery, and liberation from the societal pressures of marriage to a human. In a year old story shows how this arrangement could protect a woman. The story takes place in the time of the Caliph Ali, one of the men given the mantle of leadership of the entire Muslim community after the

profit of Islam Mohammed had passed away. One day, the Caliph Ali noticed a child in the area acting strange, and he asked who the child was. Someone pointed out the child's mother, so Ali asked her who is the father, and she responded, I don't know. One day I was pasturing sheep for my parents when something in the form of a cloud mate it with me. I became pregnant and gave birth to this child, and that pretty much

settled the matter. Whatever purpose human gin romances may serve, there's no doubt that there's just a general fascination with them. And for the record, the lure of love between the supernatural and mortals is not just confined to the Arabian Peninsula and the t else that come to us from one thousand and one Nights. You find it across different

cultures and religions throughout history. Those of you who know your Bible will remember that in Genesis, the benni Iloheim, known as the sons of God were commonly understood to be angels that descended to Earth and took up human wives. In Celtic and Irish folklore, it's not only believed that fairies have long hooked up with humans, it's not uncommon even today for families from the region to claim some

fairy ancestry. And South Asia abounds with stories of love and marriage between humans and the mythical half human half snake creature called the noggin if male or neguini if female. They're said to be irresistibly beautiful and incredibly wise, and they often seek to mate with human royalty, resulting in attractive, brilliant, noble offspring. There does seem to be a rather universal inclination towards accepting and even honoring supernatural romance, says and

why not. Human curiosity has no limit, and our attraction for the unknown, the forbidden, the powerful, for love and desire and to be desired sometimes at any cost, is very much a part of being human, which is maybe why I'll gnaw them so matter of factly compile those lists of human and gin lovers in his book The Catalog, like It's any other fact of life. One last note about the book. Interestingly, All Fairest maybe the first documented reference ever in history to the book One thousand and

one Nights. Unfortunately, however, All Nah Them wasn't very impressed with it. He notes in his catalog that it is quote a truly coarse book without warmth in the telling. I'm sure Shahrazadi would disagree. In the world of Gin, there are some who fall in love with a person and person do that one love for years, even decades a lifetime. But then there are those who are never

quite satisfied with just one partner. Two female Gin in North African traditions are particularly flirtatious and amorous, collecting lovers as often as they like. Both of these Gin with the honorific title Lula, meaning lady. Their names are Lulla Mulicca and La La Mira. As her name, which means queen, suggests Lulla Mulca is Jin royalty. She is the daughter of a Gin king. Malika is not just regal and beautiful, she's chic as well. She likes to be well dressed.

She only wears garments embroidered with gold thread, and she expects her followers those who seek her to likewise be dressed beautifully and smelling nice. She loves clothing so much, in fact, that it said that she lives inside of wardrobes, where no doubt she's planning her outfits. As you may have guessed, Mulika is an egg exactly a fearsome gin. She's sweet nature and fun loving, often tickling people and

leaving them with uncontrollable giggles. La La Molika is a lover, not a fighter, you might say, and she's a lover particularly of married men. When a man gets her attention, she unseen to him, passes her hands in front of his eyes, clouding them over, putting him in sort of a trance, a trance in which he forgets everything he knows and loves, even where he lives, and suddenly is taken over for a deep longing from Mulika, who he hasn't even seen or heard, but his heart already knows.

Lalla Molicca will then whisper to him, I want to marry you. I want you to sleep with me. Because these men are usually already married, well, they have to negotiate a bit with Molcca. They have to get Lula Molicca's permission to continue to have relations with their earthly wives before they'll enter into the sacred supernatural marriage with Mulika. And that's not exactly a deal breaker for her. After all,

she has only one use for the man. She's not exactly trying to settle down and have a family here as long as her husband's agree to her terms being clean shaven and well groomed, perfumed and well dressed, and of course fulfilling her needs in their marital bed. She doesn't much care for what they do in their own time. But even more popular and more powerful than La la Mulica is La la Mira, a ginia that's both feared and loved by those who believe in her. You could

say Mira is complicated. She's both giving and foreboding. She can be playful and charming, but quickly loses her temper, and unlike Mulca, she's jealous and possessive of her lovers. Mira too has a fancy for married men, but when she wants a man, she will not share him. She will come to him in his dreams. And I don't mean just as a vision. She will actually visit a man as he sleeps and enter his dream ames, making

those dreams well not exactly suitable for children. The dreams will get more frequent and intense, even to the point of becoming debilitating for the object of her affection, rendering him unable to sleep and unable to function when he's awake. Because when he's awake she expects him to basically spend his time worshiping her. But if she gets bored with her lover, he'll know because the dreams will get less frequent,

and eventually they will end all together. Now, as far as Mara is concerned, her lovers should be honored that she's even interested in them, and they should be completely and utterly fulfilled by her and her alone. That's not to say that she will never share a lover. She has been known to negotiate terms, set up a schedule if you will, but she doesn't like it, and if you cross her or betray her, you will pay the price.

La La Mira attacks suddenly and viciously, leaving her victims paralyzed or possess, sing them and leading them into hysterics and madness. It's rather interesting that both Lalla Molica and Lalla Mira prefer married men over single men, and you can't help but wonder about that, especially because it's said that these gins sometimes appear to their lovers disguised as women they already know. Seems pretty convenient if you ask

me a ready excuse for infidelity. After all, how can you blame the poor married man for being forced into an affair with the gin. It's easier and less dangerous to just give the gin what she wants instead of denying her right, even if she happens to look just like the lady from down the street. Not all flings with the gin are long term. Brief sexual encounters are reported commonly, even going back centuries. The sixth century pre Islamic Arab poet Babbitt Ibn Jabber lived a very colorful life.

While he was known for his poetry about desert life, he lived with a band of bandits that raided local tribes, and then they hid in the hills and mountains, evading capture. Out there, one night in the wilderness, he found himself face to face with a female gin. Now it's unclear exactly what happened next between the two, but Jabbar ended up writing a poem about the meeting, called How I Met the Ghoul I lay upon her through the night, that in the morning I might see what had come

to me. Behold two eyes and a hideous head like the head of a cat, split tongued legs like a deformed fetus, the back of a dog, clothes of haircloth or worn out skins. Now, some have interpreted the poem to mean that he killed the gin and then he just kind of laid on top of her all night so he could take the Jin's body back to his camp and showed the others. But others interpret the poem to mean that Jabbar made love to the ghoul, who then revealed her true hideous form, and so he killed her.

I'm going to go with the second interpretation because, well, it just makes more sense. And that's because there are an entire class of Gin, both male and female, who draw their energy from sexual relations with humans. You've probably heard of them too, the succubus a female entity, and an incubus a male entity. I didn't realize these creatures are gin. Oh, but they are very low le gin, on the very bottom of the totem pole of gin.

But Jin, nonetheless, and both the succubus and incubus are after only one thing sexual gratification, and both of them tend to sexually assault their victims as they sleep without warning and certainly without consent, a terrifying and you could say paralyzing experience. The phenomena of being sexually attacked during

sleep is so common. In two thousand seventeen, the University of Leiden in the Netherlands conducted a meta study titled Prevalence Rates of the Incubus Phenomena a Systematic Review and meta Analysis. The team of researchers reviewed thirteen existing studies that took a look at the sleep experiences of eight people from across the globe, including Canada, the United States, China, Japan, Italy,

and Mexico. They found that nearly eleven percent of the general global population has at one point in their life experienced something that could be described as an incubus or succubus encounter, and of course this is not just a contemporary phenomena. The researchers noted that the experience of being sexually assaulted while asleep has been documented all the way back to antiquity, and it seems to occur in every single population group and every culture in every nation, in

every time in history. Each culture, however, interpreted the phenomena in their own cultural context. In Newfoundland they called it the Old Hag. In Japan, it's the cannashibari. In Brazil, these creatures are called the piece of di era. But no matter what people call it or how the creature is viewed literally and otherwise, the actual experience, regardless of the culture or historical context, was almost exactly the same.

And here is how the study describes it. The incubus phenomena is a paroximal sleep related disorder characterized by feeling of pressure on the chest while the sleeping individual has a sensation of being awake. Attacks are typically accompanied by sleep paralysis and compound hallucinations involving a creature sitting or lying on the thorax, exerting pressure, and carrying out aggressive and or sexual acts. The creature may appear in the shape of a human, animal or metaphysical being, or be

of an indeterminate nature. Attacks may occasionally commands with a scream, whereas for the remainder of the time, persons experiencing an attack tend to be mute, although they may be able to move their eyes. A tonia of astrit muscles prevents them from making any other movements. Attacks are usually accompanied by the feeling of a sensed presence and by vegetative symptoms such as a cold, sweat, hypertension, of feeling of suffocation,

and sometimes also sexual arousal. The duration tends to be in the order of seconds to minutes, culminating and a feeling of severe dread and the conviction that one is about to die. Around that time, the sleep paralysis tends to come to an abrupt ending, and the hallucinated creature appears to fall or glide from the bed, leaving its victim behind in a state of anxiety and hyper arousal, being unable to go back to sleep out of fear

for repetition. The researchers found that many participants dismissed the experience as a nightmare, but for some, repeated encounters led to some very other real problems when awake, like off the chart's anxiety, anxiety from an increasing fear of going to sleep, and the terror of feeling like you might

actually die. They also found that while there wasn't data connecting repeated attacks to sudden unexpected death syndrome, in which people who are otherwise healthy and fine die in their sleep, well,

it was possible. It's important to understand that the framework of this study, and indeed most studies on the incubus or succubus experience, is within the field of sleep paralysis itself, which doctors describe as a perfectly explainable and common sleep disorder, and the terrifying creature that so many have described being assaulted by during sleep paralysis. It's merely a hallucination, said

the experts. The sleep demon, they say, is what some people see when they're suddenly jolted awake in the middle of the rem sleep cycle. Their brain still stuck in dreams or nightmares in this case, that are now being

projected into the dark room around you. Your brain, as it does when you sleep, has shut off the signals to your body that would ordinarily cause it to move, walk, run, turnover, so you're paralyzed, and as you're still in rem sleep that segment of our sleep patterns in which we dream, you're seeing remnants of a dream projected onto the reality around you. That says, science is what's really happening. And look, I believe in science. I believe in climate change and evolution,

in mitigating pandemics through social distancing and wearing masks. But there is a part of me that wonders, why are all these experiences so exactingly similar and why are they always menacing? I mean, we all also have highly pleasant dreams. Why don't we wake up paralyzed it in a sunny valley of mountains made of chocolate and gems flying through

the air, surrounded by unicorns? Or why don't we wake up in the middle of a dream with a sexual encounter with someone that you might actually want to have one with. Why is it always a dark, ominous, horrifying creature pressing down in your chest, cutting off your breath, trying to kill you. I don't know, and a scientific

explanation only works to a certain extent for me. You might be thinking, well, look, what about the fact that people in different parts of the world see the creature differently. Doesn't that mean that what they're seeing is indeed a project of their own imagination? Well? Maybe, or maybe the gin who can transform into anything, transform themselves into something that can be understood by their victim, that resonates within

their cultural context. For those who have lived through these attacks, however, science may choose to understand them. They are all too real. In two thousand and six, Canadian journalist Peter Duffy wrote about his first such encounter. I went to bed. It was midnight, late for me, and that's when it happened. I became aware of a strange presence in the bedroom, something emitting waves of malevolence. And then I saw it.

Something was rearing over me. I don't know how or why, but instinctively I knew it was a demon of some kind. I recoiled in horror, trying to make myself small, unable to tear my eyes away. There was no face. This thing had a human form, but it was swathed in a black cowl like covering, like some kind of monk. And then it was on top of me, soundless and unstoppable, smothering me, assaulting me. There's no delicate way to put this. I was vividly aware of this creature violating me. I yelled,

but nothing came from my lips. My struggles were in slow motion. I was helpless, and then as suddenly as it appeared, the creature was gone. Duffy was so distraught by the attack that he reached out to various people to try and understand it a psychic, a philosophy professor, a priest, and mostly the response he got was that it was a stress induced phenomena dig deeper into your life. He was told to figure out what's really bothering you,

But Duffy wasn't so sure. He wrote, the incident was so terrifying it haunts me still even now, three weeks later. The memory of that dream makes me go cold. If it actually was a dream, I shake my head, still not convinced what happened to me was actually a dream. While the succubus and incubus experiences are terrifying for a number of reasons, the fact that they are violations or

feel like violations, are probably the most distressing aspect. There's no asking for or giving consent in these scenarios, but that doesn't mean there aren't people who actively seek out sexual relationships with the gin. In the fourteenth century, a Moroccan magician by the name of Muhammad al Timinsani wrote a volume with the intriguing title Sons of Lights and Treasures of Secrets. In it, he gave readers the secret spell to cast if you wanted to have sex with

the daughter of the White King of the Jin. Pretty straightforward. Actually. First you have to isolate yourself alone in the desert, where you must fast for twelve days while continuously chanting incantations. After twelve days, a dragon will appear, but you have to be fastidious, not get frightened, and maintain your composure. If you're successful in ignoring the beast, the Jin Princess will appear. She's pale, decked out in gems and jewels and walks with an enticing sway. She can be yours,

but of course it comes with a ice. If you sleep with the Gin Princess, you might experience things that you can never imagine. But the price that you pay is this, you'll become impotent to all the real women in the real world. And that's quite the devil's bargain, you might say. Thanks for joining us this week. Next week we'll be back to take you another step into the world of the Hidden Gin. Until then, remember we are not alone. If you loved today's episode, I'm gonna

ask you a big favor. Please stop my iTunes and leave me a rating and a review, even if it's just one short sentence. Not only is that how other listeners discover the podcast, but it's also what keeps the podcast going. And for every thousand reviews that I get on iTunes, I'll release another Patreon episode absolutely free. That's right, We're on Patreon, so if you're a Gin enthusiast, check out the Companion Patreon series at patreon dot com slash

Hidden Jin. Again, that's patreon dot com slash Hidden Gin and remember Jin is spelled d j I n N. That's where you're gonna find an amazing series of interviews between me, scholars, experts, aretas, historians, and every day lay people who have had extraordinary experiences with Jin and everybody can check out the first episode absolutely free. It's me and my husband sharing our gen stories and it was a lot of fun. And if you have any Gin stories, well,

I'd love to hear from you. Email me at the Hidden Gin at gmail dot com. Once again, it's the Hidden Gin Gin with a D at gmail dot com and you might just hear back from me, or you might hear your story on the show. And finally, don't forget to follow us on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with the handle the Hidden Gin. There you can tweet, post, insta d m me. I'd love to hear from all of you, and believe me, I read

every single message. The Hidden Gin is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey. The podcast is written and hosted by Robbiah Chaudry and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. Music for the show was provided by smith Sony and Folkways Recordings. Our

theme song was created by Patrick Cortez. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.