Woman marries pirate ghost

THIS IS GETTING REALLY BIZARRE

Not only is there an energetic debate in the Letters to the Editor of the Dominion Post regardingthe legality of Pastafarianism, where pirates are regarded as celestial beings, but a woman had trumped Helen Hollick's confession about falling in love with her fictional pirate hero.

She has actually married one.

According to the New Zealand Herald, Amanda Teague says she couldn't connect with anyone in the physical world, so looked to the afterlife to find her kindred spirit.

Like any normal couple, Amanda and her husband Jack Teague go on dates, have arguments and even have sex - despite the fact he died almost 300 years ago. And amazingly, Amanda even hired a registrar and journeyed into international waters so she could legally marry him - using a spiritual medium to allow him to say 'I do' during the ceremony.

Amanda, 45, says: "He is my soulmate. I am so happy, it is the perfect kind of relationship for me. There are a lot of people out there who don't know about spiritual relationships, but it could be right for them - I want to get the message out there."

Amanda's love affair with the spirit started in 2014 when she was lying in bed one night and could feel his energy laying beside her. She says she initially wasn't that interested in making contact with the spirit, until she realized she could speak to him through mediumship. [Now, that's a new and useful word!]

The spirit used to sit with her when she watched TV or while she was driving her car, and the pair started to get to know each other. Amanda says she soon started developing "strong loving feelings" towards him. She says: "We became really close, the more I learnt about him, the more I liked him.

"One day he said to me 'We can actually be together you know' but I had never heard of an intimate relationship between a spirit and a human before. I did some research and found out that it is a real thing and there are lots of people in spiritual relationships, but not many people like to talk about it."

Amanda had a previous marriage to a "physical being" for six years, and had five children with her ex husband. But says she has never been able to relate to anyone alive the way she connects to Jack.

Amanda says in his past life, her husband was a Haitian pirate who lived in the 1700s. He was eventually caught and suffered a traumatic death - being executed for being a thief on the high seas. [How typical.]

Amanda says Jack had one serious relationship whilst he was alive; he was even engaged to be married, but his fiance changed her mind and left him at the altar. Jack would have to wait three centuries before he finally got the wedding of his dreams.

AND, SUDDENLY, WE GET A KIND OF EXPLANATION....

Amanda works as a Captain Jack Sparrow impersonator.

AHA!

And (of course) she believes the pirate connection is what brought them together. And even though she has never seen her husband in physical form, she imagines he is very similar to the character of Captain Jack, played by Johnny Depp, 54, in the movie series Pirates of the Caribbean.

"He is black, so he is not the same color as Johnny Depp, but he is dark skinned and has very dark jet-black hair, so he tells me," Amanda says.

Having lived hundreds of years ago, the world Jack lived in is very different to the one he sees today. But Amanda says he is fascinated by modern technology, especially mobiles phones and tablets, and he likes trying to switch them on and off.

Amanda says: "I have always had a real fascination with his era, I like a lot of the stuff from that time.  And there is a lot about the modern world that he likes. I am very 1700s and he is quite modern, so it balances out."

Amanda says Jack is a very powerful spirit and has witnessed him turning stereos on and off, flickering lights and even moving things.

Two years after they first met, the couple got engaged. "Jack proposed to me," Amanda said. "I told him I wasn't really cool with having casual sex with a spirit and I wanted us to make a proper commitment to each other. If I am going to be in a long-term relationship with somebody I have the right to be married. I wanted the big traditional wedding with the white dress, it was very important to me."

Amanda found a Shaman priest and legal registrar who agreed to marry the couple - despite their unusual relationship dynamic.

There is no provision in UK law for posthumous marriages, so the couple took a boat into international waters in the Atlantic Ocean, off the Irish Coast, for their ceremony. Marrying a dead person is legal in certain countries such as France, Singapore and China [WHAT???], so by going into waters which aren't governed by any particular country, Jack and Amanda's union can be upheld.

Amanda chose a 1700s style dress - similar to the ones from Jack's time - to wear to the ceremony. She also held a flag bearing a skull and crossbone as a symbol for her husband.

"I told him I didn't want him to see the dress before the wedding but if he had a cheeky sneak peak while I was trying it on, I wouldn't know," Amanda says. "I don't know where he is or when he is around most of the time - it is hard to keep secrets from him."

The couple also had matching rings designed for the ceremony. The design incorporated brass, which is Jack's favorite metal [which is probably the hardest part of this story to believe], and white-gold, which is Amanda's. Because Jack cannot wear his ring, it has been fitted to a candle which was used in the wedding ceremony to represent him.

Only 12 people were allowed on the boat, so Amanda and Jack invited their closest friends and family to join them in international waters.

They also had to ask a medium to say "I do" on Jack's behalf.

Amanda says: "Obviously I can't speak for him but there has to be verbal consent from both people. "If I gave consent on his behalf it would put a question mark over the authenticity of the marriage, so we had an independent medium to speak for Jack."

When the boat returned home, they had a wedding reception with the rest of their guests.

The newlyweds even went to Newcastle, in Northern Ireland, for their honeymoon. Amanda signs all her documentation as 'married' and says her posthumous relationship has never been questioned by authorities. But she says if she had to go to court to fight for her relationship, she would.

After the wedding, the couple bought their first home together, and even though Jack couldn't contribute financially, he helped pick the new house and had an input with the interior design.

Amanda says sex with a spirit is surprisingly similar to sex with a physical human - and can even have a happy ending. She says: "It is well known that people often feel a spirit touch their hands, their face or their hair. The only difference with having a sexual relationship with a spirit is obviously that sense of touch goes a lot deeper. You can feel the weight of the spirit, their touch, the pressure. You can literally feel the physical act of what the spirit is doing to you, and the spirit can feel it too."

Amanda cannot see her husband physically, but she says this isn't an issue because she only experiences sexual attraction when she forms a strong emotional bond with someone. She says: "For me, it is much more about a spiritual and emotional connection than it is about the physical looks and the physical body."

Amanda says there is no way a person and a spirit can have a baby - but after the wedding she did have a pregnancy scare. She says: "Shortly after we got married, my periods stopped. I did a couple of pregnancy tests and they came back positive - I was shocked! I did not think I had to worry about birth control when having sex with a spirit. On further tests it turns out it was the start of the menopause, and sometimes you can get high HPG readings - what a relief that was."

Amanda says her family and friends are very accepting of her spiritual relationship and that Jack is treated like part of the family. He is included in Christmas cards, invited to parties and there is always a place set up for him at the dinner table.

Amanda swears she and Jack and are like any other normal couple, and says they even have date nights. The pair go out for dinner, drinks and even to the cinema - except Amanda doesn't have to pay for Jack's meal or his movie ticket, saving her cash.

She says: "He can't eat or drink, but he can sense it through me, it is called 'embodiment'. I can order Jack a drink and allow him to feel it through me, or he can taste my food."

They also buy each other birthday and Christmas presents, with Jack making clear what he wants to buy her through one of her daughters, who often has vivid dreams that Amanda is convinced are messages from Jack. Amanda says: "We get each other Christmas and birthday presents. Obviously he doesn't physically buy them - it has mostly been through one particular daughter. Although she is not a medium, she often has dreams and premonitions and usually coming up to a birthday or Christmas, she will have a dream of him and he will say what he wants to buy me. So last Christmas as an example, he had told her that he wanted to buy me a coffee maker, and it cost £40. And she told him 'I hope you're going to come up with the money because I'm not paying £40, I have to buy my own present for her!'

"And he said someone will be giving me some money in the sum of £40 and that money will be for the present. And literally as she was telling me this, we were sitting in the car and I got a message from this guy, who wanted to buy something I was selling on Facebook - and it was for £40. It was so strange.

"In the beginning, the first couple of years, it wasn't too hard me buying stuff for him because I could only buy symbolic kind of stuff - candle holders, a plaque - that kind of stuff. But there are only so many plaques and memorials you can actually buy before it becomes really really tacky. For his last birthday, I just paid for us to go away for a couple of days so we could spend some time on our own together. I thought that was more practical than buying physical things. Even though he can look at them - there is only so many ornaments a person can have. Men are hard enough to buy for anyways. I can't buy him clothes, I can't buy him aftershave, I can't buy him jewellery. It is kind of difficult."

Amanda, of Downpatrick, Northern Ireland, says she was inspired to speak out about her spiritual relationship after reading about spiritual advisor Amethyst Realm, 27, who only has sex with ghosts. Amethyst, from Bristol, says she has had more than 15 spirit lovers - but Amanda says the "amateur" doesn't have a clue.

"Without doing a reading for her, it is hard to tell but I am certain it is just one spirit and not many, like she claims," Amanda says "But she doesn't appear to connect with the spirit at all, she doesn't know its name or anything about them. I think it is really sad she doesn't realize she can have a real relationship with this person, get to know them and even marry them - rather than just these weird one-off sexual experiences."

Amanda and Jack are now co-writing a book about their relationship, with advice for other singletons on how to find a soulmate on the other side. The book will be called "Ain't no grave can hold my body back", after the Johnny Cash song - one of Jack's favorite singers.

JACK TEAGUE?

Surely, Amanda's dead lover is confused with EDWARD TEAGUE, the fictional father of the fictional Jack Sparrow?

He's not black, but he is rather lovely.

According to his fan site, Edward Teague  was not just a pirate (and a rather "sweet" one, too, who could "break hearts" with a "ballad from his guitar"), but also the Pirate Lord of Madagascar.  More excitingly still, he went on to feature in a couple of his son's films (though actually portrayed by Keith Richards), at one point saving his son's life by knocking out the vile Rusty Knickers. 

Jack, according to the story, went missing when he was young, so Daddy Edward went a-searching for him, in his ship Misty Lady.  And lo, the quest was successful, because he found young Jack Sparrow in command of a pirate ship called Barnacle. 

And so the story goes on.  Hit the link, and have fun.