All over Britain police are reporting a disturbing rise in the number of graves being robbed as a perverse new craze grips the nation’s youth – necrophilia. Sex with the dead is fast becoming the most fashionable liesure activitity amongst Britain’s thrill-seeking youngsters – and the ultimate status symbol amongst young ‘Necros’ is a real corpse for home use. “There is just no substitute for the real thing,” says Marvin Parlour, a young necrophiliac from Plymouth. “At first I tried drugging my girlfriend and having sex with her whilst she was in a death-like comatose state – but she was too warm and pliable. I even tried putting her in a bath full of ice for half an hour before I made love to her, to give her that authentic ice-cold feel – but it just wasn’t working. In the end I had no choice but to obtain a real corpse from a morgue – unfortunately it wasn’t embalmed and it got a bit messy, her right breast came off in my hand as I groped it, and it left a terrible mess in the bed after I’d made love to it. My mother was furious when she found bits of body littering the sheets the next morning – it took her weeks to get all the stains out!”

Fortunately, Parlour was subsequently able to obtain an embalmed corpse. “From the first time it was sheer bliss!” he enthuses. “There’s no substitute for kissing cold permanantly erect embalmed nipples!” Parlour’s sentiments are echoed by twenty five year old bus driver Frank Pipe – “I tried getting my partner to stick his bum in the fridge for twenty minutes each night before we made love to create a corpse-like feel, but it wasn’t the same. Eventually I obtained a complete embalmed arse from a hospital – it was wonderful!” Pipe is typical of many necrophiliacs who don’t even require a complete corpse in order to obtain sexual fulfilment. “I’ve heard of a Liverpool foot-fetishist who illicitly collects embalmed severed feet from local hospitals, and spends his evenings lovingly fondling and sucking his macabre collection,” Bob Clodge, a Home Office necrophilia expert told us. “There are also rumours of a Surrey man who wanks himself off with the severed hands of young girls.” Inevitably, such activities have led to a backlash against necrophiliacs in some parts of Britain – two suspected necrophiliacs had to be rescued by police when a band of vigilantes stormed their flat on a Portsmouth council estate. “Someone has to protect our dead – they’re powerless to defend themselves,” claimed Hilda Skitter, the leader of the mob, whose own mother’s corpse had been sexually abused by a group of necrophiliacs who had hijacked her hearse at gunpoint during its journey to the cemetary. “Its not funny when it is your loved ones being groped and fondled by these sick perverts – they left my poor mother naked in a ditch, they even stole her burial shroud!”

Many necrophiliacs confine themselves to far less extreme activities, preferring a low-key approach to gaining sexual gratification through death. They prefer to visit funeral homes disguised as mourners and view recently deceased corpses. “Every day I scour the local press for attractive sounding death notices – like Mary Jones, aged thirteen, died suddenley, for instance,” explains Roger Hammock, a twenty three year old Leicester necrophiliac. “When you go to view the corpse, the trick is to be able to stroke its marble flesh while nobody is looking or, even better, steal a kiss from those cold lips. Mind you, I once got a terrible shock when I hadn’t realised the deceased had died in a car accident and that her face had been cosmetically reconstructed for the viewing – as I kissed her, her nose fell off and her lips came away! I ran screaming from the funeral home, one of her wax lips still stuck to my face!”

The funeral directors have noted a sharp rise in the number of ‘mourners’ attending viewings in the past six months. “Often there are five or six of the sick bastards at a time crowding around the coffin. Its getting so bad that the real families can’t get a look in – we’re going to have to start asking to see ID before we allow them into the viewing room,” says Arthur Todd, a Birmingham undertaker. “Sometimes they even attend the funeral. In one recent case, as the coffin was being lowered into the grave, a distraught young man everyone had assumed to be a mourner, hurled himself after it, shouting “I love you, don’t leave me!’. Next thing they knew, he had the coffin lid off and was shagging the corpse! That sort of thing is very distressing for the relatives, you know.” Todd angrily rejects claims that some undertakers are collaborating with necrophiliacs – accepting money in exchange for leaving them alone with the corpse for half an hour. “There have been isolated cases of undertakers firms being infiltrated by necrophiliacs,” he concedes. “We had a case of a female trainee undertaker in Gwent, for instance, who was caught sitting naked astride a male corpse on her third day – she apparently used a metal rod to simulate an erection. She was, of course, dismissed immediately”.

In order to minimise the distress of grieving relatives, it has been proposed that necrophilia be regulated by the government. “Necrophiliacs should be registered and given a regular supply of corpses – those of dead tramps, illegal immigrants and the like, who have no known relatives – in order to stop them from grave robbing,” suggests Labour back bencher Austin Horn. But what is behind this sudden craze for sex with corpses? “Sex and death have always been linked”, says Bob Clodge. “The French refer to the orgasm as the ‘little death’ and strangulation is quite commonly employed as a sexual stimulant. Shagging corpses is simply a natural progression.”

Professor Bob Mincer, Balham University’s Head Creative Erotic Writing believes that the rise in necrophilia stems from the media’s coverage of celebrity deaths. “We make icons of dead celebrities – Marilyn Monroe, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, even the Queen Mother. Look at the number of people who queued to see her casket – death has become glamourous,” he opined from a West End lap-dancing club. “I’m only surprised that more celebrity corpses haven’t been robbed – it would have to be the ultimate accolade of fan adoration, bonking the mouldering corpse of your idol. I’d wager a fair proportion of those lining the streets for Princess Diana’s funeral procession secretly wanted nothing better than to get into her coffin and shag her beautiful corpse to destruction. After all, a sex act so powerful it physically destroys the once powerful and unobtainable object of desire is the ultimate display of sexual potency, isn’t it?”