Succubus / Incubus Attraction
Added 26 Jun 2026 · Updated 31 Jul 2026
An eroticized or romantic attraction to demonic sex-spirits, the succubus (female) and incubus (male) of folklore, as desirable fantasy partners. It is expressed through imagination, art and themed media rather than any real-world act, and is a staple of the monster-romance genre.
- Prevalence
- Rare
- Category
- Identity & Transformation
- Domain
- Sexual interest · Paraphilia
- Confidence
- Low confidence
- Status
- Not a recognized clinical diagnosis; a fantasy-based, folklore-rooted niche interest within the teratophilia/monster-attraction family.
- Also known as
- demon attraction, incubus, succubus, demon-romance, sex-demon attraction
- Added
- 26 Jun 2026
- Updated
- 31 Jul 2026
Featured in
Overview
Succubus / incubus attraction is an eroticized or romantic interest in demonic sex-spirits: the succubus, a female night-demon said to seduce sleeping men, and the incubus, her male counterpart said to lie upon sleeping women. Unlike ghost attraction (spectrophilia), which centres on a haunting presence, this interest treats the demon itself as a wanted, alluring partner. Because the object is mythological, the interest lives in fantasy, folklore and themed media rather than in any enacted practice. This article covers the demon-lover's deep folkloric roots, the medieval theology that fixed the pairing, and its current life as a monster-romance staple.
Definition & scope
The interest is the appeal of the demon-lover as a desirable figure: a being that is beautiful, powerful and dangerous, and that wants the dreamer. It differs from neighbouring interests in a few clear ways. Spectrophilia centres on ghosts and the haunted rather than on a sexual demon. Teratophilia is the broader attraction to monstrous beings, of which the seductive demon is one popular subtype. Monster fetish overlaps heavily, covering the wider field of non-human creatures rendered attractive. Succubus / incubus attraction is the narrower case where the figure is specifically a sex-demon drawn from European demonology and its modern descendants in anime, games and fiction.
Examples
What the term covers. The succubus or incubus written as a love interest rather than a threat: the demon partner of paranormal-romance novels and webcomics, the succubus character in anime, visual novels and games, character art and fan writing, and role-play in which one partner takes the demon persona. The recurring shape is a being that is beautiful, powerful, forbidden and unambiguously interested, met somewhere safe — a page, a screen, a scene — because there is no real counterpart to meet.
What the term does not cover. It is neither a religious practice nor a claim that demons exist, and frightening night-time "visits" are better read as sleep paralysis. It is narrower than teratophilia and the general monster fetish, which cover monstrous partners of every kind, and it sits alongside rather than inside the neighbouring archetypes: vampire, werewolf, monster girl, alien and tentacle themes each carry their own conventions. Fictosexuality names attraction to fictional characters as such, whatever they are; hierophilia attaches to sacred objects rather than to demons; the hell and damnation fetish eroticises punishment and damnation itself; and otherkin identity is about being non-human, not about desiring one.
How the word is used. Succubus and incubus are Latin folk terms out of medieval demonology, not clinical vocabulary, and neither appears in DSM-5-TR or ICD-11. In current use they are mostly genre labels — a standard character type in "demon romance" and the wider monster-romance market — so people are far likelier to describe a taste in fiction than to claim the attraction as an identity.
History & origins
Folkloric and theological lineage
The demon-lover is among the oldest motifs in recorded storytelling, and its clinical-sounding names are simply the Latin folk terms.
- c. 2400 BC: The earliest documented incubus-like figure is the demon Lilu, named in Mesopotamian sources connected to the Sumerian King List, said to seduce women in their sleep; the female Lilitu visited men in erotic dreams. These were originally storm-demons later reread as night-demons.
- Late antiquity to the Middle Ages: Christian demonology systematized the pairing. The female succubus, beautiful but sometimes betrayed by bird claws or a serpentine tail, was set opposite the male incubus. The succubus was widely linked to the older figure of Lilith.
- 1486: The witch-hunting manual Malleus Maleficarum, by Heinrich Kramer, gave the demons a reproductive theology: succubi were said to gather seed from seduced men, which incubi then used to father deformed offspring called cambions. The manual listed remedies against such attacks, including confession and the sign of the cross.
- 1597: King James VI's Daemonologie extended the lore, proposing that demons could even take dead bodies for such encounters, a thread that connects the tradition to broader anxieties about the uncanny.
Throughout, the physiology behind reported night-visits is now usually read as sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucination: waking immobile, sensing a presence, feeling weight on the chest. The medieval incubus and the modern report of a demon-lover often describe the same neurological event in different cultural language.
From terror to temptation
The striking modern shift is tonal. Where pre-modern sources framed the succubus and incubus as predators to be feared and exorcised, contemporary depictions, as the Wikipedia treatment of the incubus notes, increasingly render the demon as a charming, handsome or alluring seducer built to attract rather than repel. This reframing, carried by Romantic-era literature and then by manga, anime, video games and paranormal romance, is what turns an old fear into an object of desire.
In practice
The interest is expressed through imagination and media: demon-romance fiction and webcomics, character art, role-play scenarios, and games and anime that feature succubus or incubus characters as love interests. The appeal often rests on a fantasy of being irresistibly wanted by a powerful, forbidden being, within a scenario that is entirely safe because no real partner exists. It overlaps with a taste for gothic and dark-fantasy aesthetics.
Psychology
What is the appeal?
Proposed accounts link it to the pull of the forbidden and the powerful, the safety of a fantasy with no real partner who could reject or be harmed, and the long cultural script of the demon-lover as both threat and temptation. Writers on teratophilia suggest monstrous partners can act as escapist figures that carry desire while sitting outside ordinary human social dynamics. Some reported "encounters" map onto sleep-paralysis experiences read through a cultural frame. None of this rests on dedicated empirical study, which is essentially absent for this specific interest, so these remain interpretations rather than findings.
Prevalence & culture
How common is succubus or incubus attraction?
No prevalence survey isolates succubus or incubus attraction; it does not appear in the major sexual-fantasy studies such as Joyal, Cossette & Lapierre (2015). What can be said is that its cultural footprint is large for so niche a label: the sex-demon is a standard character type across paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and Japanese visual media, and sits inside the broader, demonstrably popular monster-romance market. The interest's visibility runs through that fiction rather than through any organized real-world community.
Safety, consent & law
Because the object is mythological and no real, living person is involved, the interest raises no consent, legal or safety concerns in the ordinary sense. It is a private fantasy interest. Where reported demon "encounters" are frightening, for instance distressing episodes of sleep paralysis, the useful framing is medical (a sleep specialist) rather than supernatural.
Common questions
What is the difference between a succubus and an incubus?
Gender and posture, in the original folklore. The succubus is the female demon said to lie beneath a sleeping man; the incubus is the male one said to lie upon a sleeping woman, and the Latin verbs behind the words say exactly that. Medieval demonology treated them as a matched pair, and the Malleus Maleficarum of 1486 linked them directly, claiming succubi gathered seed that incubi then used. Modern fiction keeps the pairing and handles the gender rules loosely.
Is sleep paralysis what people mean by an incubus visit?
It is the usual explanation. Sleep paralysis leaves a person awake but unable to move, frequently with a sensed presence in the room and a feeling of weight on the chest — the same phenomenology medieval sources recorded as a demon lying on the sleeper, which is why the word means "one who lies upon". Cultures name the intruder differently; the underlying event looks the same. Frightening or recurrent episodes are a matter for a sleep specialist rather than an exorcist.
Is being attracted to a succubus or incubus a disorder?
No. There is no diagnosis for it in DSM-5-TR or ICD-11, and there could not usefully be one: the object is mythological, nobody exists who could be harmed, and no question of consent arises. This catalog records it as an atypical erotic focus, which describes what the interest points at rather than saying anything about the person holding it.
How is this different from a general monster fetish?
Most monsters are frightening first and desirable second; the demon lover is the one figure in the tradition whose entire function is to want you. That is the distinguishing feature. Teratophilia and the wider monster fetish cover non-human partners of every sort, from beasts to machines, and seduction is optional in them. Here it is the definition, which is why the succubus and incubus travel into romance genres so much more easily than other monsters do.
Where do the words "succubus" and "incubus" come from?
From Latin. Succubus derives from succubare, to lie beneath, and incubus from incubare, to lie upon, so both words describe the demon's position over or under the sleeper rather than anything about desire. Both entered English in the late fourteenth century. The figures are far older than the words: Mesopotamian sources name comparable night-demons millennia earlier.
Can a succubus or incubus interest be acted on with a real partner?
There is nothing to enact literally, which is much of the appeal, but the persona travels well. Partners use costume and cosplay, adopt the demon role in a scene or in writing, or borrow the monster girl conventions the genre supplies. Played that way it is ordinary role-play between adults and raises the ordinary questions about what each person does and does not want. The demon itself stays fictional either way.
- Ghost Fetish13/100Spectrophilia · Identity & TransformationGhost fetish, clinically spectrophilia, is an erotic or romantic attraction to ghosts and spirits, or to the idea of an intimate encounter with the supernatural. It is a fantasy-only interest, expressed through imagination, folklore, and themed media rather than any real-world act.13
- Teratophilia35/100teratophilia · Identity & TransformationAn erotic or romantic attraction to beings perceived as monstrous, deformed, or non-human, ranging from fictional creatures such as werewolves and demons to people with unusual physical features. It is mostly fantasy- and media-driven.35
- Monster Fetish38/100Teratophilia · Identity & TransformationAn erotic or romantic attraction to monstrous, mythical, alien, or otherwise non-human creatures as portrayed in fiction, art, games, and film. Sometimes called teratophilia, it centers on imagined fantasy beings rather than any real person or animal.38
- Alien Fetish25/100Exophilia · Identity & TransformationAn erotic or romantic attraction to fictional extraterrestrial or otherworldly beings, expressed through media, art, and storytelling rather than any real entity. A fantasy-driven interest closely tied to science-fiction fandom; not a recognized clinical paraphilia.25
- Transformation Fetish33/100Metamorphophilia · Identity & TransformationA transformation fetish is an erotic or imaginative fascination with the process of a body changing form, such as turning into an animal, object, or another kind of being. The appeal centers on the metamorphosis itself rather than the end state.33
- Dollification23/100Identity & TransformationA role-play and transformation kink in which one partner (the "doll") is styled, posed and treated as a lifelike human doll by a partner (the "maker"), through costume, makeup, restrictive material or a doll-like persona. The charge comes from performing as a doll, not from attraction to an actual inanimate object.23
From the Latin folk terms succuba/succubus (from succubare, "to lie beneath": sub-, "under" + cubare, "to lie") and incubus (from incubare, "to lie upon"), naming the demon's posture over the sleeper; the English words date to the late 14th century.
supernatural · fantasy · monster-romance · demon
Prevalence is computed from the entry's cited population estimate. Rows marked ESTare indicative editorial estimates scored against a fixed anchor rubric — not measured quantities. Method & anchors: methodology.
Rare · ≈ 1 in 1,000
- 01Incubus — WikipediaFolkloric and theological lineage of the incubus (Lilu and the Sumerian King List c. 2400 BC, Malleus Maleficarum 1486), the sleep-paralysis reframing, and the modern shift toward depicting the demon as a charming seducer.
- 02Succubus — WikipediaDefinition and etymology of succubus (from succubare, 'to lie beneath'), the Lilith link, the Malleus Maleficarum seed-theology, and modern depictions as a beautiful seductress.
- 03Teratophilia — WikipediaFrames attraction to demons/monsters and the escapist-fantasy interpretation within which the seductive demon-lover is one subtype.
- 04Sleep paralysis — WikipediaDescribes the sensed-presence and chest-pressure phenomena that reframe reported demon night-visits as a sleep event.
- 05Joyal, Cossette & Lapierre (2015), What Exactly Is an Unusual Sexual Fantasy?Major sexual-fantasy prevalence survey in which demon/succubus attraction does not feature, illustrating its rarity and absence from mainstream prevalence data.