Experiences With The Occult

[_Blixa]

My closest encounter with "the occult" really wasn't occult at all in the final analysis. It was, however, very real, very scary and very sad.

Like alot of kids, I'd played with a Ouija board a couple of times at sleepovers and such. Never got any results worth mentioning, or found it scary in the least.

When I was much older, in my early twenties and in grad school, I had a close friend (L) who was also in the same department and a teaching assistant like myself. We hung out a lot, we were really tight. She had not grown up in Utah, but had grown up in a much more TBM family and situation than I had. She had believed and only lost her faith, ironically, after moving to SLC. I think it had a lot to do with women's issues, the black priesthood problem and the obvious way the leadership meddled in local politics. She was vocal and got ex'd. It was very traumatic for her. Although she was a few years older than me, in many ways she seemed younger as she struggled to put together a new life and identity out of Mormonism.

She lived with her boyfriend, who I also came to know well. I'll call him C. C had grown up in TBM Utah: he wasn't a believer anymore, but his family were still strong members. He'd also been married and had two kids; he seemed to have a good relationship with his somewhat TBM-ish ex, and he dearly loved his young daughters.

I don't know if C had any conflicts about giving up Mormonism. He hadn't gone on a mission and he was a rather bohemian and liberal type. He was a professional musician---he was in the Utah Symphony. He wore his hair long (in late 70's SLC this was a clear gentile marker!) and volunteered at the Rape Crisis Center, something your typical Mormon male probaby wouldn't have found himself involved in. He was a gentle guy, very compassionate and emotional.

As I got to know them more as a couple, my friend L mentioned that C was in therapy and on anti-depressants of some kind. I didn't think much about it, although at the time I didn't know anyone who was or talked openly of such things.

I hung out with them alot one particular summer. C liked to talk about the occult in terms of how people believed in things, or else tell ghost stories, or gab about local mysterious folklore. We talked and joked about local legends and stories we'd heard in school or through our families like "Emo's Grave" in the SL cemetary and "The Ghost of Memory Grove."

One night after being out for dinner or drinks, we drove through Memory Grove so C could show L and I the "ghost." And its funny---there was something there. It was obviously an optical illusion of some sort, light reflecting down into the deep mini-canyon of the grove, but odd all the same. I wasn't sure how it worked: I mean the conditions had had to remain the same for years and years: the story was old! As we talked I got the impression C actually "believed." If not in the Memory Grove Ghost per se, at least in things like that. We went over their place and I pressed him and yes, turns out he did believe in spirits and stuff.

Once he broke the ice with me about this interest of his, we talked of it more and more. One night he brought out a Ouija board and I'd never seen anything like it! It worked alright! That thing was moving and spelling out coherent messages. C and I had our hands on it while L took down the letters we called out.

I was fascinated and so everytime I was over there I would beg him to play with me and the stories we got were very detailed, believable and as far as I could tell, not things either C and I would come up with on our own. I tested it, too, by asking things about my family, things C wouldn't know, and....well, I got accurate information.

It was freaky and compelling. I admit I was a little scared, even though I can't say I really thought we were channeling spirits. Or maybe I started to wonder a bit if we were. Anyway, after I told this to C, the next time we played, a "voice" came through that said it was a spirit assigned to guard me and that I would always be protected. I had to wonder at that, but even if it was C somehow conjurning this message (and it never seemed like either of us touched the planchette) it was a thoughtful gesture.

Meanwhile, L had confided to me that C was having some real emotional problems. His ex was remarrying and would be moving out of state with their kids. C was apparently devastated. He didn't want to stand in the way of her happiness, but on the other hand it would mean a real breach in contact with his girls (he'd been seeing them several times a week). There was also apparently some family pressure on the ex to cut C out completely: he was living in sin, didn't go to church, etc. Her bishop had actually showed up one day to convince C to let his kids be adopted and sealed to thier new dad.

He'd started to tell L that bad "things" were out to get him---forces, spirits...things. She said he was seemingly worried more about these abstract threats than about the real business with his family.

I, too noticed a change in C. He was not as happy or as joking and he pretty much only wanted to talk about his vague feelings of doom. He never exactly said in my presence that evil "spirits" were lurking around, though he would get antsy about their cats being out of the house at night because "something" might get them. He still liked to play Ouija with me and we still got lots of interesting messages---not foreboding, scary things either, just teasingly historically specific stories that you might be able to verify if you did some tracking down in the library.

I didn't know how to take any of this until L finally told me that C was convinced that in fact actual demons were targeting him. But, he'd told her she shouldn't worry because he had a guardian spirit that would help him, warn him and protect him when danger was near. He'd told L a whole backstory about this spirit: it was female, a woman who'd lived long ago, somehow related to him, etc. Whenever something harmful was near, L said, this good spirit would possess C until the threat had passed. She'd seen it. C became a different person.

She'd talked to his doctor, who he was still seeing, and told him about this. The doctor told her not to "indulge" him and that he'd just have to snap out of this nonsense. She should tell him that, in fact and not coddle him.

Whatever was wrong with C was extremely real, though. One time I called their place and a woman I didn't know answered. It was C's guardian spirit. I talked to her for a long time. I was talking to woman. I wasn't talking to C. It scared the daylights out of me.

I didn't know what to do, and neither did L. But he was seeing a doctor, and the doctor was talking to him and had him on different meds--what else could you do?

After one such switch in meds, C seemed to be doing a lot better. One day I saw him when I was picking L up to go shopping. He was upbeat, cheerful, had just gotten some new accessory for his instrument and was trying it out. That night, while L and I were at a party, he killed himself.

Its clear to me that there were no supernatural forces involved---in fact C's story is almost textbook in its details. Hearing voices, probably having near hallucinations, inventing an explanation to make sense of it (spirits, demons and ghosts). A bonafide "split" or second personality. Whatever form of schizophrenia C suffered from, it was woefully mis- or undiagnosed by his incompetent doctor.

I guess I explain our Ouija success as a result of C's personality. I don't think he consciously physically manipulated the board, but I don't think its beyond the range of possiblity that he did so unconciously, either through minute physical movements neither of us were aware of or perhaps by something more like telekinesis. Either way, I think it was part of his illness and his macabre way of trying to cope with it.

[_Yoda]

Wow! That's quite a story, Blixa!

I'm so sorry to hear about your friend. How is your other friend doing since the suicide?

[_Blixa]

Well, this was over 30 years ago, so much has happened. My friend has had a hard life with many tragedies besides this one. In fact, not long after C died, L's younger sister was killed in a car accident. I"m afraid both of these things took quite a toll on her. And her luck didn't stop there, nor has it stopped even in the recent years.

All in all, though, she has survived and pulled through without loosing either her own mind or her human decency and generousity as a friend. She would never think so, but she's a very strong person.

We had lost touch with each other some time after all this and only reconnected in the past four years or so...via RfM! She recognized me from very few details and we're now back in touch. Which I'm very glad for.

[_Sethbag]

As a freshman at BYU I had a couple of episodes of sleep paralysis which I interpreted as being evil spirits. I recall waking up, being unable to move, and to "feel" some kind of presence bearing down on my chest, just exactly as it's described. I knew I was being attacked by an evil spirit, and I recall crying out in my mind (because I couldn't speak) for God to save me, and for Jesus Christ's power to drive away the evil spirit. Within a few seconds, this would pass, and I would feel as if I had in fact been saved by God's power. It strengthened my testimony. There were times, after these experiences and on my mission, where I, just like The Dude, told people that I had a very strong testimony of Satan because I'd been assaulted by evil spirits before, and had seen God's power drive them out after crying out to him in my mind.

These experiences were so strong, that approaching Christmas time during my Freshman year, when I didn't return home to Massachusetts, I actually was interviewed by my BYU bishop for being ordained an elder in the Melchesidek priesthood, and had my uncle (my mom's brother) actually ordain me, which I believe disappointed my own father, who had assumed that he would someday ordain me to the MP, as he had ordained me to deacon, teacher, and priest. What's interesting is that these episodes of sleep paralysis were what actually drove me to asking for, and receiving this ordination at Christmastime, and not to wait until the winter semester was over and I could go home and have my dad do it. I was convinced that I needed the MP as soon as possible, so that I would have the power to cast out evil spirits, with which I was certain I'd already had some experience.

As a freshman, we also did the "light as a feather" trick where you have four guys lift up another guy using just one or two fingers each, where it feels like the guy hardly weighs anything. It works, in the sense that you really do get the impression that the person weighs almost nothing. After we did that, we were kind of spooked a bit, and I spoke out and said I'd had some direct experience with Satan's minions, and that we ought not to do anymore of this kind of thing, because it was real, and scary, and so we didn't do that trick again, nor move on to anything else.[/url]