Transcription
Good evening, everybody. This is Radio Free Mormon. It is episode 427. Mormon meets Satan is the title. And this is a story that I'm going to tell you today, which is probably the most remarkable, slash, unusual experience I ever had in my life of a spiritual kind, a spiritual nature. Even though it's a negative spiritual experience, a dark spiritual experience, I have put off telling this story for about as long as I've been podcasting, which is nine years. Yes, that means that for 9 years, I've been putting off telling you this story. And in fact, I would have managed to have put it off again today because I originally had a podcast scheduled with Colby Reddish, continuing about the light on truth letter. We are going to get that finished and hopefully by the end of the year, we've got three more chapters. But it turned out that he couldn't make it because he's traveling today. So all of a sudden, with very little time left, I had to come up with something to talk about. This has been sitting on the shelf, gathering dust and mold and all sorts of fungi because it's been on the shelf so long. This is a story that I do not talk about very often, perhaps no more than a handful of times since it occurred in June of 1979.
Now, I have told other stories regarding my encounters with spiritual forces of a dark kind. These seem to predominate back in the year and four months between my getting baptized in June of 1978 and my going on a mission in November of 1979. So, let's see, June, July, August, September, October, November. Go a year and 5 months. In that time period, I had many spiritual experiences, both of a positive and of a negative nature. I've talked a number of times about the positive experience I had when I gained my testimony of the Book of Mormon, when I prayed my way through it. I've said that oh, many, many times. There's another story that I've told that had to do with a time when I was meeting with the missionaries of a negative encounter. I've told that before a few times. I'm going to start off by telling that story as a way of leading into the second story. Um, the second story of Mormon meets Satan. Instantly regrets it. Oh, yeah, I absolutely regretted it. And for more reasons than what may be obvious on the surface. There's a reason I don't talk about this a lot. It'll become obvious here as I tell the story. But first, this other story I'm going to tell you.
Now, let me tell you about how I'm telling you this story, okay? Because I want you to understand, I'm 65 years old. The year is 2025. I'm recording this on November 7th, 2025. I hope for it to premiere tomorrow on the evening of Saturday, November 8th, 2025. So, this is something that happened in 1979. That's a long time ago. That is 46 years ago, by my calculations. And I double-check it all the time because I stink at math, but I'm pretty sure it's 46 years ago. It's going on 50 years ago. So why should you trust me to remember something that happened 50 years ago, even though it happened to me and even though it was of a decidedly memorable nature? That's what I want to tell you about first, which is my source for this is not just my memory. Because back in the '70s, Spencer Kimball was president, and keeping a journal was promoted strongly among the Latter-day Saints. In other words, we were told to keep journals. We're not told that nowadays, interestingly, and it's been a while, quite a while, since I've heard an LDS leader telling the members of the church to keep journals. I can't remember when it was, but at this time in the 1970s, all the time we were told. It wasn't something that I was good at. Very few people were. Wilford Woodruff might have been the only person who was good at keeping a journal in the church. And maybe William Clayton, though we haven't actually seen his journals yet. We've seen some of the entries. Apparently, he was really good at keeping journals. We'll see when they get published, if they get published. It's been promised now by the church for a long time that they'll be publishing the William Clayton journals. But I, along with the vast majority of Latter-day Saints, was not good at keeping a journal. But I did write these stories down. I was given a gift of a missionary journal when I went on my mission, and it was specific to missionaries because on the front it said "Missionary Journal." What a great gift. So, somebody gave that to me, and I used it, and I wrote down these stories within a year of their transpiring. So, they're not absolutely contemporaneous, but I'm doing a lot better than simply trying to remember what happened 46 years ago. I'm going off a document that I wrote down from my memory when it was fresh, only a year or so after the events transpired.
Now, I have since lost that missionary journal. But, but fortunately, as fate would have it, in 1991, I was doing another thing that we were encouraged to do by the leaders of the church, not just keep a journal, but create what is called an autobiography. I don't know that they said an autobiography. They may have said a life story, but take your journal entries, condense it down, make it into a life story for your kids to read. When I was 31 years old in 1991, I did that. And as one of my primary sources for creating that autobiography, I used my missionary journal, which was not lost at that time, but still available to me. And coincidentally enough, the other day I was rummaging through some old stuff in some old boxes, and lo and behold, what should I find? But my autobiography that I had written in 1991. So although the missionary journal has gone the way of all flesh, my autobiography, which used my missionary journal as a primary source, still remains. And that's what I'm going to be using. So, not just my memory, I'm going to be going off this document from my autobiography, 1991, which used this missionary journal. So, these stories are as absolutely 100% authentically recorded as I can possibly make them.
Now, I want you to understand, I am also going to be relating these stories to you as they happened to me. I'm not going to be putting a whole lot of interpretation on them. That's something that I've grown into is losing the desire or the need to put interpretations on these stories. There may be a little bit of interpretation on the stories when I wrote them in 1991. We'll see. But I'm going to try and tell them to you as factually based as I possibly can and simply relate to you what happened to me. So the first thing I have to do is set the scene as to where it was that we were living at the time when all of these things happened. Okay, so there is the thumbnail. That looks pretty spooky, doesn't it? Mormon meets Satan. Instantly regrets it. There's a t-shirt I found there on the internet somewhere.
At the time, I and my family lived at a place called Lake Tapps. That's in Pierce County, Washington. It's about a stone's throw from Mount Rainier. And you will see Mount Rainier figuring prominently in many of the pictures. This is an overhead diagram of what the lake looked like with, of course, the lake waters in blue and the land in white. Here's a picture of Mount Rainier. I actually took this picture. The amazing thing about Mount Rainier is not only is it incredibly tall. I think it's over 14,000 ft. Is it 14,410 ft? I think it is. Let me check. Just checked. Boom. Chakalaka. 14,410 ft is the correct answer. There are certain things you learn after a while of living in Washington, like the precise height of Mount Rainier. It's a huge mountain. It's absolutely gorgeous. And I grew up with it looking over my shoulder for the wonderful 5 years between 1974 and 1979. 1974 was when my family moved to Lake Tapps, a house on Lake Tapps with Mount Rainier in the background. And then in 1979, November, I went on my mission and left Lake Tapps. Unfortunately, forever, at least as a place where I lived. Now, I could go back and visit and get some of pictures like this one and this one as well. This is also from a visit just a few years ago when I was able to be out on a boat on Lake Tapps and snap this beautiful picture of Mount Rainier. And that's what it was like all the time, at least when you could see Mount Rainier. There is an old saying in Washington of how you can tell the weather. That if you can't see Mount Rainier, if you cannot see Mount Rainier, it's raining. That's how you tell the weather. And if you can see it, like in this picture, that means it's going to rain. That's the old saw about how you tell the weather in Washington State using Mount Rainier.
This is an actual photo from high up in the sky looking down on Lake Tapps. So, you remember what that chart looked like? Well, this is the actual photograph, and that's Lake Tapps. You can see Mount Rainier in the background, and that yellow arrow is pointing to the precise location, give or take a few feet, of where it was that I lived along with my family for those 5 years from 1974 to 1979. And you can see that it is way out there in the middle of freaking nowhere. In fact, there's only one thing between me and Mount Rainier, other than miles and miles of forest, and that is the small town of Enumclaw. At least that's the way it was back then. It has built up significantly over the past 50 years, as most places have. And here's another picture. And you can see the houses there, those big houses. Oh my gosh. None of those were there when I lived there, but it has been built up exceedingly since then. Here's another picture showing the beautiful sunset from Lake Tapps. And here's another shot from the sky. You can see all the boats. You can see these beautiful houses. My gosh, most of these houses weren't even there back 50 years ago. It was just beginning to become developed. And the houses look more like this one. Now, I grabbed this shot off the internet. This is not the house I lived in, but it gives you the idea of what it was like back when I did live there. Because you can see the house that's up there on the crest of that hill, that comes down the hill to the lake. This house has a dock at the water. Our house had a dock at the water as well. These are extremely narrow lots. They may be 100, 150 ft across, but they're very narrow, and they go all the way up to the house, obviously, from the lake, and then beyond the house, they go out to the highway to Lake Tapps Highway. So, very narrow lots. House up there to take advantage of the view, then a slope down to the lake and a dock at the lake. This is what these houses and lots tended to look like.
Now, this is actually our house. I dug around into old photographs yesterday and I found a picture of our house, the house that we stayed in at Lake Tapps. This is not from the 1970s. This is actually from the 1990s. So, this is a photo that I took when I was in my 30s. I returned to Lake Tapps on a sentimental journey of sorts. Took a couple of pictures of the old homestead. Even this picture is different from the house as it was when I lived in it. There's been some remodels made. Over here on the second floor to the top on the left, you can see it's much bigger. It's been built out. That wasn't there. Down below, you can see a banister outside leading down what is apparently a path. That was not there. It was nowhere near as nicely landscaped either. I've got to admit to you, I was in charge of mowing the lawn and taking care of those things. And I can tell you right now, it was nowhere near as nicely landscaped. It was a beautiful place, but they had done a lot with it, obviously.
Now, I got one second picture from my trip out there. And here it is. This is down at the waterline of Lake Tapps. You can see the water there at the bottom of the picture. That is I standing there posing for the camera with my foot up on a log or a stump or something. And beyond me to the right, that's the lawn coming down from our house behind me, and it swoops down to the water. Now, this concrete barrier was not there at the time. It was simply a bunch of rocks that were put there in order to try and protect the shoreline from erosion, and it looked a lot more like this at the time. See, there's no concrete barrier, but they had added that sometime since 1979. And most significantly to me is the building that you can see back there between the two trees. There's a window in it, and there is a piece of Native American art on the side. The reason that is so significant to me is because that very structure was built in 1977 by me and my dad. Dad had come back with some plans for a treehouse. That's the other thing you need to know about this. That structure was a treehouse, and it was originally built about 15 feet higher. It was up there between those two trees. And what they did with it apparently was they detached the structure from the trees, they lowered it straight down, and then they put on it that piece of decoration, and voila, they've got an outbuilding. So that brings back a lot of very pleasant memories to me, working out there in the backyard in the beautiful Washington summer sunshine, working on building that treehouse with my dad. And so I was glad to see that that was still there. All right. So now you've got a basic idea of what it looked like, the lay of the land, although I'll have to describe a few other things more here presently.
Let me go now to my autobiography from 1991 and read to you the first of the two incidents I'll be talking about today with a lot of commentary. These aren't the only two incidents that I had with evil spirits, if I may use the term, that occurred to me before my mission, but I think they are the two most prominent. So once again, I'll start with the one that I've told before, working my way toward the one that I have been putting off telling forever. All right, here we go.
My family moved to Sumner, Washington in the fall of 1974. Now, Sumner, Washington is the little town that's closest to Lake Tapps. It's where the high school was. It's where I went to high school and where I graduated from high school in 1978, right before I was baptized. Remember, this was so many other things was to prove an important step in my eventual conversion to the Lord. Where it was in Sumner that I met Bruce. I've talked to you before about my best friend Bruce. He was a member of the LDS church. He became my best friend. Ultimately, I got baptized, and he was the one who baptized me in June of 1978. But that is where I met him. Also, you'll notice from the language in my autobiography that it's written from a very faithful perspective, as one might expect from an autobiography that RFM was writing back in 1991. I met Bruce in my ninth grade classes at Sumner Junior High School. We soon became fast friends and engaged in many escapades too frivolous to mention here. Too embarrassing to mention here, I should add. And I'm not going to talk about them, okay? This has got to be a serious episode because this is a serious story. But yeah, a lot of crazy stuff we did. Ridiculous stuff. But you could almost hear that echo of Joseph Smith in his First Vision account, right? He was a member. Bruce was a member of the church. And unlike many of the other members at the school, he was not just a Mormon, but a Latter-day Saint, from which I'm trying to make the point that not all the other Mormons at school were as faithful in keeping the commandments as was Bruce. Through my association with Bruce, I came to know many other Latter-day Saint youth, and I attended their dances and activities as often as occasion would permit. Oh my gosh, this is drenched in First Vision language, isn't it? And I attended their dances and activities as often as occasion would permit. Bruce broached the subject of religion with me several times, but always I brushed it off with an irreverent remark. He also gave me a copy of the Book of Mormon with his personal testimony written inside. But though I thanked him for the gift, I had no interest in reading it and put it on my shelf to sit out its days.
Then, just as I was getting ready to graduate from high school in 1978, a confluence of circumstances prepared me to receive the gospel. One such circumstance was that my family was moving back to Texas shortly after my graduation, and I knew that my time left in Washington was growing short. Another circumstance was my level of spirituality, which was low at the time. Though I had lived the majority of my life up to that time in accordance with the dictates of my conscience, just a month or two prior to graduation, I had begun doing things I ought not. Yeah, I'm making out with a girlfriend. That's what this is all code for. I'll tell you now. Her name was Janette. And as a result, had slipped into a dark abyss of emotional misery. That's a little bit flowery. That's how I put it, though. When I was 31, I had found out from my own experience the truth of Alma's statement, "Wickedness never was happiness." I had learned for myself that the pleasures of the world bring no lasting happiness, but only heartache and despair. You can't tell a Mormon wrote this, can you? While I was laboring under these conditions, again with the Joseph Smith First Vision language, while I was laboring under these conditions, I one night went over to Bruce's house where I spent a lot of time in those days. As I entered the living room, I was surprised by the scene that greeted me. Two mutual friends of Bruce and mine, Barbara Freeman and J. Simmons, were seated together on the couch in the living room at Bruce's house. Across from them, seated on chairs, were two men about my age, talking with them and showing them pictures out of a flip chart. Bruce told me that they were missionaries from his church. My response was to be somewhat aloof. I didn't want to really be involved in this. I was over there to hang out with Bruce, and this was an obstacle and only an obstacle as far as I was concerned. All it meant to me was that I would have to wait until the missionaries were done before I could have any fun. So I stretched out on the floor, and me being me, I stretched out on the floor directly between the missionaries and between Barbara and Jay. So missionaries in the chair teaching Barbara and Jay sitting on the couch, and I lay out on the floor right between them, not interfering at all. At least I kept my mouth shut. That was amazing, believe me. Because as I was lying there listening to the missionaries teach Barbara and Jay and ask them questions, you know, the missionary discussions, this is back when the missionary discussions were memorized, as well as the questions that were asked by the missionaries, but I had never heard them before. I did not know that they were memorized. And I was intrigued. I listened with interest to what the missionaries were saying, though I did not let on that I was interested. They would periodically ask Jay and or Barbara questions about what they had just taught. I would listen to the answers that Barbara and Jay gave in response to those questions and found that I wanted very much to add my two cents worth to the discussion. But the missionaries didn't ask me what I thought, nor did I choose to interject anything. I just laid there. The one thing of importance that I did learn that night was that there were missionaries in the LDS church. There was such a thing as elders who taught discussions to people who wanted to learn more about the Mormon beliefs.
A week or two later found me once again at Bruce's house on a Friday evening. It was very common for me and a bunch of other friends to go over to Bruce's house on Friday nights to play games, hang out, and have a good time in a relatively safe kind of situation. There's no alcohol being consumed, of course, it's a Mormon house. There's no drugs being done. This is a group of good kids who want to hang out with Bruce because he's a popular guy, and we like the group, and we had a lot of fun. And that's where we all went every Friday night. Bruce did tell me later after I joined the church that he intentionally created this group in order to have a pool of investigators that he could hopefully introduce the gospel to. And with me, it worked. A week or two later found me once again at Bruce's house on a Friday evening. The situation in Bruce's house was somewhat uncomfortable when I arrived due to the fact that J. Simmons, remember him? He was one of the two on the couch. Due to the fact that J. Simmons had become hopelessly infatuated with Bruce's big sister, Roberta. But Roberta was not reciprocating. So, here's J. Simmons, who's taken the missionary discussions, probably in large part because he has a crush on Bruce's big sister, Roberta, who is, of course, a Mormon, and she is not reciprocating his affections. He did end up joining the church, though, although he's not a member today, to my understanding. Roberta was not reciprocating Jay's affections. In light of this embarrassing situation this caused to everybody else like me who's hanging out, and this is awkward, Bruce and I decided that we would go somewhere else. Instead, we would go, not somewhere else inside the house, but somewhere else on top of the house, up on the roof. In fact, it was an easy matter to get up on the roof of his house because there was a deck on the second floor, and on the deck was a picnic table. You move the picnic table, you go on top of the picnic table, and from there, it's an easy jump up onto the roof. Bruce's house was a two-story affair. It was a duplex located in a sparsely populated neighborhood. Tall evergreen trees rose on all sides of the house because they're all very close by. And those trees, looking up into the sky, they framed the night sky above us as we sat on the roof. It was good weather. The sky was clear. The stars shone. Everything was very still. Everything was very peaceful. And as I was hanging out with Bruce, it was just me and Bruce up there. The discussion turned to things of a religious nature. I now suspect that that didn't happen by accident, but that Bruce did it on purpose. Bruce began telling me about the premortal existence and the grand council in heaven before the world was created, about how we were all there and we cast our lot with Jehovah to be our savior. As Bruce spoke, I no longer felt the need to make flippant remarks or pretend to be aloof. In other words, from a faithful point of view, I was prepared to hear the gospel by this point. I was drinking in everything he had to say. I had never heard such concepts before, but it seemed so right. I felt a special presence in the night air, thrilling my heart and seeming to make time stand still. Later, of course, I would attribute that to the Holy Ghost.
Our discussion was suddenly interrupted by a cracking noise, loud in the still night, which emanated from the shadow-enshrouded trees just beyond the rooftop on which we were seated. Both Bruce and I jumped at the sound. We peered into the shadowy tree boughs, seeing if we could make out what had caused the sound. We saw nothing. This is just 10 ft away from where we're seating, if that far. It might have been seven feet away. That's why we jumped so much. It was a loud snapping, cracking sound like a tree branch being broken. Neither could we figure out what could cause such a sound in a tree at a spot 20 ft off the ground. We both agreed that it had sounded like a dry twig snapping under a person's foot or being broken across a person's knee. But that seemed even more ridiculous. The sound was not repeated, but the special feeling I had been experiencing suddenly vanished. It was replaced with a visceral feeling of dread. Bruce felt the same as I. We both tried to make a joke out of it, imagining a bird or squirrel in the tree, waiting for just the right moment to break a twig over its knee to scare us. The feeling of dread persisted. Bruce suggested we get off the roof and go into the house. I too felt the need to beat a hasty retreat and agreed quickly. Soon we were back in Bruce's living room. Bruce explained to me that one of the reasons the sound had startled him so much is that it was virtually identical to the sound Joseph Smith hears in the movie The First Vision. The church had just created, was it their first movie of the First Vision? I can't remember. It was in 1976. This is in 1978. So it was a big deal with Stuart Peterson, I think was the name of the young boy who played Joseph Smith. And in that movie, there is the sound of a cracking branch, which is supposed to pre-age the appearance of Satan. Now, why a cracking branch is supposed to pre-age the appearance of Satan is anybody's guess, but it does appear in that movie. So Bruce explained to me that's why he was so startled because he made the connection between the sound we heard up on the roof and the sound that Joseph Smith hears in the movie. And this happens as Joseph Smith gets down on his knees to pray in the grove just before the powers of darkness seize him. Later, when I saw the movie, I too felt that the sound we had heard on the roof that night was substantially the same as the sound heard by Joseph Smith in the grove. I suppose one cracking branch sounds the same, pretty much as another cracking branch. I did not attach much significance to the coincidence of sounds at the time, since the use of that sound in the movie appeared to be a directorial device to dramatize the scene and nothing more. I mean, if you read the scriptural account, the 1838 account, the one in the Pearl of Great Price, First Vision account, there's nothing in there about any sound of a cracking branch to be had there. This is why I thought that in the movie it was simply a directorial device to increase the tension. I did not know that Joseph Smith himself had described this as happening in a different First Vision account than the official account. But many years later, I was to discover that the use of that sound to represent the presence of dark powers in the movie came not from the director's imagination, but from a lesser-known account of the First Vision by Joseph Smith. And yes, lesser-known by design. I was to find out after I wrote this down in 1991, in Joseph Smith's words, "I called on the Lord for the first time in the grove, or in other words, I made a fruitless attempt to pray." This is the 1835 account of the First Vision. "My tongue seemed to be swollen in my mouth so that I could not utter." And then this important addition to the story, "I heard a noise behind me like someone walking towards me." That's where it is. That's where it's contained in this 1835 account of the First Vision. "I heard a noise behind me like someone walking towards me." And the director in the movie says, "Okay, we'll make that a snapping twig like someone's stepping on a twig." Because you would definitely hear that, right? So that's was in part a directorial decision because Joseph Smith doesn't out and out say he heard a twig or a branch snapping behind him. He says, "I heard a noise behind me like someone walking toward me." A cracking branch would definitely fit that bill. Although Joseph Smith does not specify it as being such, he continues, "I strove again to pray, but could not. The noise of walking seemed to draw nearer. I sprang upon my feet and looked around, but saw no person or thing that was calculated to produce the noise of walking." And that is the end of the quote. "The similarities between Joseph Smith's account and mine should be evident," I wrote. This was to be only the first of numerous encounters I was to have with the forces of the dark one, capital D, capital O, which forces seemed to take an intense interest in me the moment I began to demonstrate a disposition to accept the gospel.
Another week later, Bruce and I were on our way home from a stake youth dance. This would have been probably in May of 1978. We are getting very close to graduating from high school, Bruce and I. Bruce was driving his old Maverick. I was in the passenger seat. We had already dropped off our other friends at their houses. The conversation had lapsed. I had been thinking things over in my mind during the past several weeks and chose this as the time to put my thoughts into words. "What does it take to get baptized into your church?" I asked out of the blue. Bruce later told me that this question really caught him off guard, but at the time he hid it well. Bruce explained to me that I needed to hear all the missionary discussions and pass an interview. I suggested we set up the discussions immediately. In the course of 10 days, I heard all seven missionary discussions and was baptized. The elders who taught me were Timothy Shansen and Leland Christensen. I remember that Leland Christensen really, really impressed me because he had a prosthetic leg. He had been involved in a horrible car accident not long before he went on his mission, and he had to recover, get a prosthetic leg, use, learn how to walk with it, and then decided, "Yes, I'm going on my mission." And he did. The elders who taught me were Timothy Shansen and Leland Christensen. By the way, big shout out to you if you're watching. I had them giving me discussions back-to-back and even made them come out on their preparation day, too. They wore their P-day clothes as well. So these missionaries were not ones to put on shirt and tie to teach a lesson on P-day. No, they came out in their grungies. I remember distinctly the day they were teaching me about the premortal existence and the war in heaven, the plan of salvation, right? And about how Lucifer had rebelled and drawn after him a third of the host of heaven, and how all these became evil spirits here upon the earth. We were in Bruce's living room where I heard all the discussions, and Bruce was present too, as he was for all the discussions. It was an overcast afternoon, not that unusual even in June in Western Washington. But the gloom of the day was dispelled by the bright glow of the lamp beside us. As the missionaries spoke, the lights went out. The gray light from outside seeped through the large picture windows and filled the living room, lending it a sad and foreboding atmosphere. I fought off the urge to give Bruce a quizzical look. You know how when something weird happens and you look over at the person who's sitting next to you like, "What the heck is up with that?" That's what I felt like doing, but I didn't do it because I thought it would be making too big a deal out of it. I mean, the lights just went out. It's the middle of the day. It's not that big a deal. But I felt kind of weird about it anyway. So I don't look at Bruce. Instead, I focus my attention on what the missionaries are saying. And the missionaries, they're completely unimpressed by the power outage. They're just continuing with their memorized message. Soon the lights came back on, and everything proceeded as usual.
After the discussion was over, I asked the missionaries whether there really were such things as evil spirits and demons. Elder Shansen assured me quite matter-of-factly that there were not. Really what I wanted to hear, and then proceeded to tell me of an experience he had which he attributed to evil spirits. His experience having to do with loud sounds of banging pots coming from his dark kitchen at home. Then when he went to turn on the lights to see what was going on, the sound stopped, and he saw that the kitchen was in perfect order, not a pot or pan out of place. As if to drive the last nail in the coffin of this story, Elder Shansen told me that he checked the sliding door that connected the kitchen with the outside. You see, he'd been outside of this kitchen. He hears the banging and the clanging of the pots and the pans. He comes rushing in through the door into the kitchen. He sees everything is in place. There is only one other way out of the kitchen other than the way that Timothy Shansen came into the kitchen. He would have passed anybody else who was leaving the kitchen. If there had been somebody in the kitchen, this is the whole point of it. Only one other way out, through the sliding glass doors. He goes to the sliding glass doors from the kitchen to check them to see if they're locked. And yes, they're locked from the inside. Something that nobody could do if they had left by the sliding glass door. On that chilling note, the missionaries set up a return appointment and departed.
Now, I have to tell you a little bit about myself, okay? Because I'm going to tell you the story with everything on it. I'm going to tell you the stuff that makes it creepy. I'm going to tell you the stuff that maybe makes it not so creepy, but I want you to have all of the facts. When I was a child, my mother used to read to me at my insistence a poem called "Little Orphan Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley. It was not about the comic book character with no pupils in her eyes that they made a musical about, but it was about a young lady who hired on to work around the house and in the evening after all the chores were done, engaged the children of the house with spine-tingling stories involving little boys and little girls who misbehaved and who were punished for their misdeeds by being snatched away by goblins. Yes, this is the story that my mother would read to me when I was six or seven years old. I particularly remember the image of the young child standing at the head of the stairs and sassing his parents, which I was known to do on occasion, and who then suddenly discovered that there were two big black things a-standing by his side, and they whooped him through the ceiling, for he knew what he's about. And the goblins will get you if you don't watch out. That's the repeated refrain of this poem. As I said, it was at my insistence that my mother read it to me, but I always asked her to read it to me in the middle of the day with the sun high in the heavens. However, even though I was careful to take this precautionary measure, the images were so strong in my young mind that they invariably lasted until bedtime, and then I would be treated to relive in multiplied horror all the varied demonic child-snatchings that occurred in the poem. Of course, I realize now that these were simply scary stories to try to keep children from misbehaving, for each of the abducted children acted atrociously and was only getting his or her just desserts. But I never made the connection in my six or seven-year-old brain between the bad acts and the comeuppances. To me as a boy, it was just a bunch of innocent children suddenly and inexplicably being seized upon and snatched away by goblins. And the repeated refrain made it only too clear that the same could happen to me at any moment. And the goblins will get you if you don't watch out.
The reason I bring up this childhood memory is because the same darn thing happened to me regarding the information the missionaries had given me regarding the actual existence of evil spirits. I had heard these things during the day when it really didn't bother me very much. But that night it was to return to haunt me by playing upon my imagination and filling me with childhood fears. At least I thought it was my imagination at first. The rest of the house had retired, and I lay in bed trying in vain to get to sleep. The words of the missionaries kept coming to my mind accompanied by unbidden images. Many years before, when I had been studying the Jehovah's Witness religion, and studying may be too strong a word, I was 12 years old and out of an abundance of nothing to do, I read a book that they had dropped off at the house. I read a book of theirs in which the subject of demons was discussed, illustrating this concept in the book was a drawing of a man sitting up in bed looking in fright up to a dark corner of his room from which were staring back two malevolently glowing eyes. Now, that was the last image I wanted in my mind that night, but I could not get rid of it. Wanting to make sure there were no such eyes staring down maliciously upon me and my room, I summoned up my courage, it took a lot, and turned my head to check out the upper corners of my room. Nothing there. The lights are off, of course, so I returned my head to my pillow and closed my eyes again. Then the thought assaulted me. But what if it's there now? So, of course, in order to dispel my new fears, I had to go through the whole ordeal again, summoning up the courage to look in the corner only to find that there's nothing there. I went through this process numerous times, berating myself all the while that this was not a very mature way for an 18-year-old who had just graduated from high school to be behaving. Finally, I got tired of continually twisting my head to check the corners of the room for glowing eyes. So, I just pulled the covers up over my head. That proved to be only a temporary respite because it soon became intolerably hot under the blanket, and my need to breathe overcame my fear of spooks. So I had to gather my courage again in order to come up for air, thus exposing myself to whatever entities might have materialized while I was so foolish as to be under the covers, where I couldn't observe what was going on. Nothing had materialized, of course. I then began to imagine hideous, misshapen hands rising from around the edges of my bed. I didn't actually imagine them, but I imagined that such an unpleasant scenario might occur. So back under the blankets I went, only to emerge again sometime later when once more my oxygen supply was exhausted. This sort of nonsense went on for over an hour. All the time I experienced intense feelings of dread and sensed the presence of evil entities swirling invisibly about me in the air. I attributed this too to an overactive imagination. I question now whether these feelings were purely imaginative.
A point came when I needed to visit the bathroom to relieve myself, but I was scared to swing my legs out of bed and plant my feet on the floor for fear that talon claws, remember those hands coming up over the side of the bed, that talon claws would dart out from under the bed and grab me by the ankles. Eventually, though, my bladder went out over my apprehensions. When you got to go, you got to go. Nothing grabbed me when I put my feet on the floor, and nothing grabbed me when I walked to the bathroom. The bathroom was located down the hall from my bedroom, and I reached it alive, but not without severe trepidation. It was now the wee hours of the morning, and everyone else in the house was asleep, my parents and my brother. I had been in the bathroom only a short time, chiding myself severely for my childishness, when, in the utter stillness of the night, I heard from down the hall the sound of three distinct scratches at the door to my room. Now, this part is interesting to me because when I remembered this story, as I've told this story before, this is the first story. Like I said, I had through the process of memory transferred the scratching sounds that I heard to the door of the bathroom. But now that I'm reading what it was that I wrote much closer to the event, I'm seeing that that was an incorrect memory. That actually the scratching came not on the door of the bathroom, but down the hall, making it sound like the scratches were on the door of my bedroom that I had just left. I naturally thought that curious. And when I opened the bathroom door to poke my head out to investigate, the hallway was empty. The door to my parents' room, located immediately opposite my bedroom door, was closed, as was the door to my room. I thought it possible that my mother's toy Picanese had scratched on her door for admittance, and I had only thought that the scratch I heard had been on my door. So, in other words, I'm in the process of trying to come up with rational explanations for what it is that I had experienced. I heard three scratches from down the hall. It sounded like they came from down the hall. That hall dead ends. On the right is my door, which was closed. On the left was my parents' door, their room, which was closed. My mom has this little Picanese. And frequently he would go to their door and scratch on it in order to get in. If the door were ajar, he'd be able to scratch on it to open the door and go into my parents' room where he would sleep. If the door had been closed all the way, his scratching would not open the door. Obviously, it didn't mean that the dog had not scratched on my parents' door, it just meant that he had not opened it with his scratching and gone in. I thought it possible that my mother's toy Picanese had scratched on her door for admittance, and I had only thought that the scratch I heard had been on my door. The dog never scratched on my door for admittance, so it would have had to have been on my mother's door. If the noise had been caused by the toy Picanese, it would have removed a lot of the mystery from the strange occurrence, since that dog was the only thing that I was aware of in the house with claws.
On a hunch, I went to the landing at the top of the stairs. This is all on the second floor. I went to the landing at the top of the stairs and looked down to the very foot of the stairs, knowing that there was a pad there, which was the Picanese's favorite place to sleep. At least if he couldn't get into my mom's room. As fate would have it, he was there at the bottom of the stairs on his side, fast asleep. So much for the Picanese scratching the door theory. It was simply too much for me to believe that our dog had scratched three times on my door or my mother's door, for that matter. Raced past the bathroom, as he would have to, to get where he ended up, around the landing, and down the stairs, only to throw himself on his mat and pretend to be asleep, in order to fool me when I looked down upon him. Especially did this seem unlikely because the dog could not have had more than 60 seconds after I heard the noise in the first place to execute this daring maneuver on his part. Even had he done something so unusual, I would have heard his footsteps and the tinkling of his little metal collar tags as he raced by the bathroom door on the only route available to the stairs. No, it was clear to me that whatever had caused the scratching sound on my door that night, it was not our Picanese dog.
Upon the heels of that realization came further waves of dread, as you might imagine. As I had spoken with the missionaries the previous afternoon, Elder Shansen had fortunately not only told me that evil spirits exist, but had also told me what to do should they start getting out of hand. I went straight back to my room, knelt beside my bed, and prayed in the name of the Savior that the entities would depart and leave me alone. As I
Said those words, the feelings of dread and evil that had plagued me for hours left me and were replaced by feelings of calm and peace. The air in my room ceased churning with malevolent preteratural activity and was still. I was able to get back in bed and go right to sleep.
So that story I've told before, though I have not read it from my autobiography. And when I've told it before, I have inadvertently made the mistake that my memory supplied to the story about the scratching being on the bathroom door instead of down the hallway on my mom's door or on my door. It was on one of the two. And after my investigation, when I found out the scratching was not caused by the one dog in the house, it became more apparent to me the scratching probably wasn't on my folks door. It was probably on my door.
I continue in my autobiography with my baptism on June 22nd, 1979. We're not going to go through that here. Past the story of how it was I received the gift of the Holy Ghost. Pass the story about the Book of Mormon and how I gained my testimony of the Book of Mormon. Past my story about receiving my patriarchal blessing. Here we go. Now we get to a year later, June of 1979. The Dark Side is what this is titled. And this is a story that I'm going to tell you now that I haven't told more than a handful of people in the almost 50 years since it's happened.
During the first year and a half as a member of the church, comprising the time between my baptism and my departure to the mission field, I experienced a number of encounters with preternatural entities. I have already described a few of these. In light of the references to the powers of Satan seeking dominion over me recounted in my patriarchal blessing alluded to above, let me go back to the section dealing with my patriarchal blessing in order to read you this one pertinent paragraph. For example, in light of the macabre encounters I had had with evil spirits, all of which I have not yet recounted, I thought it unusual that Satan's desire to possess me should be mentioned not once but twice in the blessing. That's in my patriarchal blessing. Quote, "The adversary is mindful of you and your mission and will do all that he can to prevent you from accomplishing this great and noble task." That's the first time. In the other place, a similar thought is written, quote, "Satan is mindful of you, and he will do all that he can to keep you from doing that which you have been sent here to do." Period. End of quote.
So you can imagine that having these experiences which I had when I was young between taking the missionary discussions and leaving on my mission in that year and five-month period that having these experiences and then having in my patriarchal blessing not one but two places where it talks about how Satan is mindful of me led me to take these experiences even more seriously than I otherwise might have.
Okay, getting back to the dark side, let me read the sentence again. I have already described a few of these in light of the references to the powers of Satan seeking dominion over me recounted in my patriarchal blessing. I will now describe some other such experiences during that time frame. A fairly regular occurrence for me was to be lying in bed at night and gradually find myself paralyzed. These episodes invariably began with a ringing in my ears which started quietly and then grew in volume until it was distinctly audible. The ringing would then remain at that noise level and I would discover that I could not move. Although I would be able to open my eyes and move them so as to look about my dark bedroom, I could not move any other part of my body, nor could I utter a sound. I was literally paralyzed. And I know that this is often referred to in the literature as sleep paralysis. I wasn't aware of that at the time. I think this is pretty much a classic instance of it. And yet, it seemed like more than just something psychological going on. And here's why.
After a few moments of such paralysis, I would feel as though I were being gently pulled downward and backward. I naturally resisted such tuggings, fearing what would happen should I simply succumb and allow myself to be taken wherever I was being drawn. I thought sometimes that should I just stop resisting, I might just get pulled down into sleep. But the possibility that I would wind up somewhere else kept me from acquiescing. Additionally, I felt instinctively that I should resist. And so, trusting my instincts, I did not give in.
Through trial and error, I discovered how to break the hold of the paralysis. I found that if I concentrated all my effort into moving one finger, I would eventually be able to wiggle it. Though the mental exertion required to do so was akin to lifting as heavy a weight as I possibly could. It was so difficult to do that just to wiggle one finger. But once I had succeeded in moving one finger, I would then concentrate on moving the finger next to it. Though that was still difficult. The second finger was always easier to move than the first. And so on to the third and fourth fingers. Soon I could move my whole hand. From there I went to the arm itself. Once I had achieved that much of a break in the paralysis, I found that with a supreme effort, maximum effort, I could tear myself out of the trance and be free to move again. I would often be perspiring after such an exercise. So great were my exertions. I have thought that the feeling was similar to freeing myself from a large piece of fly paper that had been placed on my bed.
It was not until several years later that I made any connection between my experiences of this kind and the experience Joseph Smith had in the grove immediately prior to his receiving the first vision. Remember what he says. This is the official account. I had scarcely done so when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Is Joseph Smith describing some kind of paralysis as well? In his first vision, he goes on, "Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to utter destruction. But exerting all my power like I had to do in order to get out of that sleep paralysis. Joseph Smith had to exert all of his power to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me and so forth. And he does talk about how this unseen being had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being."
So back in 1991 at the age of 31, I'm making this connection between what Joseph Smith experienced in the first vision and what I experienced with his sleep paralysis. Although the above type of experience happened on numerous occasions to me, the experience I will describe next happened only once. One night I was laying on my back in bed when once again the faint ringing began in my ears. This was a common occurrence and grew until it was plainly audible to me. This much had happened several times. I had learned to associate this noise, the ringing in my ears, with the advent of future natural hijinks. But I was not at all prepared for what was to happen next.
As I lay there, the ringing in my ears suddenly escalated in volume until it seemed to be as loud as a jet engine of an airplane. I sat up in bed putting my hands over my ears to shut out the sound which had become painfully loud. I thought blood was going to start spurting out of my eyes. It was so loud. My hands did not block out the sound though. The sound was somehow coming from inside me, not from outside. I prayed that God would make whatever was causing this depart. I continued to pray this until gradually the sound began to diminish. I ceased praying in relief. Immediately the sound returned and escalated up to its prior volume and beyond. The sound was so loud in my head that I thought my brains would turn to jelly. It was actually like I was out on a tarmac right next to a huge jet airplane with its jets going. As the volume increased, the pitch of the sound went higher as well, so that it had become a shrill roar. I began praying fervently once again. After several long seconds, the sound once more gradually began to decrease at a slow but steady rate until after about 30 seconds, it had completely departed.
And now, with that background, I think we're ready to get to the story that I promised you. I think it would be fair to say that my adventures with the dark side prior to my mission culminated with the events that took place on the night of June 24th, 1979. So you see, just almost exactly a year after I was baptized on June 22nd of 1978. That was the night when in a waking dream I came face to face with a minion of the adversary. But in order to properly tell this tale, we must first go back to a sunny spring day in 1975. I apologize, there's a little bit more background I have to give you.
A sunny spring day in 1975 when my family took me to the Humane Society in Tacoma to pick out a dog of my own. It was really the only dog I ever had in my entire life and the only dog that I will probably ever have. I chose a medium-sized malamute type dog with long hair. He was kind of a crossbreed that was colored blonde and black. Though he was of a sweet disposition, I named him Cerberus after the three-headed dog who stands guard at the gates of Hades in Greek mythology because I like the name. I think I like the image more than I like the name. I called him Servy. C E R B Y for short.
Let me tell you briefly how we met. I was at the Humane Society. I had pointed at this dog. My parents are there with me and what they did was they had an area that was surrounded by a low fence and it was a big square and I could come into this area and then they would release the dog at the other side of the area so the dog could then approach me if the dog wanted to. So, I'm at one side of this big square that's surrounded by low fencing, and they put Servy in at the other side, and he didn't come straight to me across the square. Instead, what he did was really interesting. He wanted to get to me, and he did get to me, but instead of coming across the square, he walked directly along the fence to the corner, then down the side of the fence to that corner, then down that side of the fence to me. He came right up to me. I'm sitting on the ground and he put his head up under my arm and that's how we met.
So that was 1975 and uh he was a very very special dog to me as all dogs are to all boys and all girls I suppose. This was no different. Anyway, our relationship came to an end on June 22nd, 1979. I was at the neighbor's house that afternoon. They lived one lot away from us on the lake and were members of the church, too. Their name was Alf. They had actually built their house and moved in after I joined the church. It was amazing because there weren't that many Mormons around. And I'm out in the middle of nowhere. And to have an actual Mormon family move in two lots over was absolutely amazing. And I spent a lot of time at their house and borrowed a lot of their books. I think I talked earlier on another podcast about borrowing books from them and being introduced to Hugh Nibley through reading books that they had. Their name was Alf. That's their last name.
As evening approached, I left from their front door in order to go home, which is of course a short block away. I mentioned how narrow those lots are. As I emerged from their house, I heard the sound of screaming. I wasn't sure if it was a person screaming or an animal. I was barely able to distinguish the screams as being those of a dog and not a human. I rushed out of their house to see what was going on. In the front yard of the lot, located between my house and the Alfs' house was a grizzly scene. Remember, they're separated by this one lot. It's a narrow lot. There was nobody who lived there. There was a cabin, but it was used periodically, maybe for a few weeks during the summer by a family that would come out, but generally there was nobody there and it was simply a yard to walk across. And that's what I did coming from the house over toward mine was go across that particular lot. And it's in that lot in between the house and my house that there was a grizzly scene.
About four or five dogs were sitting in a circle, gazing intently at what was transpiring within the circle. You know, it's a real strange thing because the Alfs had a dog. I had a dog. I don't remember ever seeing before or after this any other dogs in the area, but here there were four or five dogs sitting in a circle looking intently at what was happening inside the circle. What they were looking at was my dog, Servy, lying on his back with another large dog at his throat. It was Servy who was screaming. I rushed to Servy's side. The other dogs calmly disassembled at my approach and walked away.
As I began to inspect Servy, who was still lying on his back, the thought passed through my mind that this was precisely the same place on this lot in between the houses, where we had found the body of my brother Mark's cat sometime before. The cat, whose name was Cororac, had been hit by a car on the nearby highway and had dragged himself some 100 feet to that very spot before his strength gave out and his life fled. This was years before, but that is one of the thoughts that came to my mind. When we found the cat, he was already dead, and there was a glazed look in his eyes. As I looked at Servy lying there, that same glazed look was in his eyes. I was scared that he might be dead. I whispered encouragement to him. I'm down on the ground holding him in my arms. I held him. I let him know I was there. He blinked his eyes a few times and his eyes cleared. The glaze went away. I picked him up and took him to the house. We thought for a while that he would be all right in as much as he was able to walk again and there were no obvious wounds that we could see. But it soon became apparent that something was wrong with Servy. We took him to the animal clinic that very evening, it being a Friday. The vet examined Servy and told us that his rib had been crushed and a lung punctured. They would have to operate immediately to reinflate the lung and save Servy's life. Servy died once on the operating table but was later resuscitated. Then he was put on an intravenous device. Bruce and I came down later and we gave him a blessing cuz I had just recently received the priesthood, the Melchizedek priesthood. I've been a member of the church a year. We went down to Auburn. It was quite a drive to the vet's office in the middle of the night. Gave him a blessing by the power of the priesthood that he would live. It didn't help. Servy died at 3:50 a.m. the next morning on Saturday, the 23rd of June, 1979.
Now, the preface is complete, and we are prepared to consider the events that transpired on the Sunday night of June 24th, 1979. At approximately 9:00 that evening, I had just laid myself down on my bed, still greatly upset. Some of the summer evening's late afterglow came through my window. One moment I was there lying on my bed in my bedroom, wide awake with my eyes open, not feeling in the least bit tired. The next moment I found myself standing in a field talking to a stranger. Now, I know that this is going to sound like I was dreaming, and I can't tell you that I wasn't dreaming. All I can tell you is that this was unlike any dream I ever had, and I was not tired at all before it began. But I was lying down in bed. So, who knows for sure? All I can tell you is what my experience was.
So, I'm standing in a field now talking to a stranger. I'm looking at this as if I'm a third-party observer watching myself talking to another person that I don't know. The field that I'm standing in was furrowed as though for cultivation, but was devoid of any plant life except for short yellow grass. And the yellow grass itself was laid flat against the earth. I could see a forest on the far side of the field from me. There was also one tree, just one tree, that stood by itself in the middle of this field between myself and the forest. The entire scene was very hazy. It appeared by the westerning light to be about the same time of day there in the field as it had been in my bedroom just prior to this transition. I cannot recall the appearance of the stranger who was present in the field with me. I only know he was there and I remember him as being shadowy in nature. Perhaps I could not see him clearly because he was standing close to the tree that was located in the middle of the field and the shadows of the tree shrouded his features. The only other things I noticed about his appearance were a glint that came from the area where his mouth would have been, so I assumed he was smiling and the fact that he had with him a large handheld killing instrument. I could not see the instrument clearly, but it appeared to be a pick of some sort, some kind of instrument for digging in the dirt. I was a little uneasy about my situation, but not alarmed. At the outset, I thought I was dreaming. But as the experience continued, I realized this was unlike any dream I had ever had before. And as I write this 12 years after the fact, remember 1979 is when it happened. I'm writing this in 1991. I have never had a similar dream since either. Well, now I'm 65 and I can confirm that I've never had a similar dream either before or after that in my entire life.
The stranger in this scene, the stranger spoke first. He said to me, "May I use your field again?" I replied almost as if I were another person. "Why not? You used it 4 years ago tonight." Even as I spoke those words, I had no idea as to their meaning. I didn't know what he meant when he said, "May I use your field again?" I had no idea what I meant when I said, "Why not? You used it 4 years ago tonight." But I did know, as sometimes one will in a dream, that the stranger was not going to till the ground with his instrument, but was going to bury something. With this realization, fear seized me. I turned around and began to run away from this stranger under the tree. My vision blurred, and I heard the sound of a mighty wind rushing at me from behind. The roaring wind curled up and over me like a giant wave, and then crashed down upon me, blowing me about like a dead leaf in the wind.
At this point, the scene changed. I was once again back in my bedroom, lying on my back on my bed, but now I was turned in for end. So that my feet were up where my pillow was and my head was at the foot of the bed. I was lying on my back with my head hanging off the end of the bed. My eyes were still open and I was looking down at the floor at the foot of my bed upside down. The floor seemed further away from me than it is in actuality. And there were several objects sitting there in neat arrangements. Objects that I knew were not actually there in my room, or at least hadn't been in my room when I laid down originally. The only one of the objects that I can recall was a cup and a saucer, but the rest of the objects seemed to be tableware as well. My recollection is that they were white in color. All this time, the wind was still churning about me. Actually, I should say the sound of the wind was still churning about me, for I felt no actual breeze. I prayed in the name of the Savior to be delivered. For I realized by that time that it was no dream I was experiencing. It's like me a pharaoh and Rosemary's Baby. This is no dream. I tried to move but once again found that my body was paralyzed. All I could move were my eyes. So I could not vocalize my prayer. I thought it instead. Not feeling that I had the time to maneuver out of this paralysis by that slow finger-by-finger method I talked about earlier. Instead, I gave a mighty frantic wrench of my head, hurting my neck in the process, so that I could sit up.
As I sat up, two things happened simultaneously. First, as I overcame the paralysis and began to bolt upright in bed, my vision blurred momentarily again. And when it focused again, the room was back as it had been originally. No tableware on the floor. Second, as I sat upright, I found that my body position had once again reversed itself. So that now I was sitting up as I had originally laid down with my head on the pillow at the head of the bed as opposed to hanging off the foot of the bed. That was the end of this experience.
Later that evening, I told my mother what had happened. I also told her the strange conversation I had with the stranger under the tree wherein he had asked me, "May I use your field again?" And to which I responded, "Why not? You used it 4 years ago tonight." As I related the story to my mother, I also thought about the coincidence of having found Servy lying in the neighboring yard in the same place we had found Cororac's body before. Remember the cat? Do you remember when Cororac died? I asked my mother, unable to recall it myself. After thinking a moment, she said she thought it was June of 1975. You mean 4 years earlier? It had indeed been 4 years since the shadowy stranger had used that field. But was it exactly 4 years ago?
Well, Cororac, the body of Cororac was buried under a tree. Remember that sloping hill that went down to the lake? Under a tree on that hill. We had buried him, and we had written his name and his dates of birth and death on a little piece of wood and nailed it crosswise at the bottom of this trunk of the tree underneath which he had been buried. "It's nighttime, but I need to know now." So, I grabbed a flashlight, went out into the night, and went walking down that hillside to find Cororac's last resting place. Now, of course, this would be a great story if indeed it had been exactly four years to the very day that Cororac had died. But the dates were actually several days off, which I found out and which I'm including here because it's important to have all the facts straight. Even though the stranger had told me 4 years ago tonight, which would sound like it would be on the exact same day, they were really about a week apart. Cororac had died on June 28th, 1975. That's what it said at his grave site. I verified this by visiting his small grave in our backyard and looking at his marker that night with the aid of a flashlight. Servy was attacked in the field, however, on June 22nd, 1979 and died early in the morning of June 23rd. I received my vision or visitation on June 24th. That was the Sunday evening. It was close enough to four years to give me pause. But I have to bring up that it was not June 28th, which was the date that Cororac died. In fact, it was almost a week different.
As I continued to reflect on the vision, I realized that the scenario therein may have been a symbolic representation of the neighbor's yard where Servy was attacked and where Cororac had died. That yard in between our house and the Alfs, that yard is similar to the scenario in the vision in that there is a collection of trees at one end of the yard and only one tree standing by itself in the middle apart from the rest. I wrote in 1991 this conclusion. My personal beliefs regarding this unusual vision is that the adversary was somehow responsible for the death of Servy or if not nevertheless wanted to pay me a visit that night in order to gloat about it. Well, I don't know that those are my personal beliefs about it anymore. Something remarkable did happen as I was preparing for this podcast. In fact, yesterday I was putting together the thumbnail for this podcast and you've seen the thumbnail if you've clicked on it and if you've listened to this podcast. I expect you've seen that thumbnail. Now, once again, I hold no hard and fast conclusions about this. I'm just trying to relate it to you as factually as possible. But I will say that I had been trying to force this experience through the Mormon lens and therefore coming up with this idea of seeing Satan or the adversary or the devil or however you want to call it, some demonic presence that had appeared to me under this tree. And it was not until I was putting together the thumbnail that I realized that a much more obvious explanation isn't that it was Satan or demonic. It was simply death coming to pay a visit and take Servy away as he had come by four years earlier to take Cororac, my brother's cat, away. Now, maybe if I had told this story frequently over the years, I would have come to this conclusion before, but because I don't talk about it, and because I keep it to myself, and I sure as heck don't think about it a lot, I had never realized that death would be a much more obvious character to be playing this role than Satan. And I'm guessing that maybe that's because in Mormonism, there is not a figure or a personification of death in the theology. There certainly is of Satan and of his followers. I mean, my gosh, a third of the host of heaven followed him. All that's very literal, but we don't have a personification for death. Looking back at it now, it would seem much more obvious that it was death than it was Satan. Which put me in mind of a very famous poem by one of my favorite poets, Emily Dickinson.
Before we conclude with that poem, please remember to hit the like button and also please remember to hit the subscribe button so that you'll receive notifications of future podcasts. You wouldn't want to miss any of those. I know. Also, thank you to every one of you who have made a donation to Radio Free Mormon. If you have not yet and feel like you should, please go to radiofreeormon.org right now. Make that donation today. You'll be glad you did.
Okay, so now let's go to Emily Dickinson and read this poem. Emily Dickinson did not generally give titles to her poems and so they have come to be known by their first line. This poem is called "Because I could not stop for Death" and this is how it goes.
"Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me.
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove. He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility.
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –"
So that is the poem by Emily Dickinson "Because I could not stop for Death." And once I had made the rather obvious observation that the being that appeared to me, whether real or not, symbolized more accurately death than it did anything demonic, which made me think immediately of this poem and want to share it with you. So that is the story about me. That's a story about the stranger. It's a story about me and my dog, Servy. And my boy's heart still misses him very much, as it turns out.
Well, thanks for watching. I think you can tell by now why it is that I have put off telling the story for so long, but at least I've got it behind me. You have it now in your possession to do with whatever it is you want. As I say, that's about all for tonight. Thanks for joining me. Until next time, this is Radio Free Mormon signing off the air.