I remember being called by a Bishop's councilor to go assist in casting a demon (their term was "the devil") out of a person.

The demon was cool in a weird childlike regression sense. Petulant and angry. The people asking for it to be cast out and the person being "possessed" weren't. When it was over I was freaked out. I was wondering if I had just participated in a small group delusion.

Listening to Spencer Kimball belch out his horrifying vision of the "repentance process."

"Deep...Inner...Cleansing," he croaked.

My Mormon father approaching my bedroom at night.

During my last temple visit I was fighting a serious case of the runs. When I was up at the curtain trying to remember the handshakes and speeches and what not my sphincter almost let go. I managed to make it through the rest of the ritual but I was sweatin' bullets the whole time. Not sure but I suspect that squirting poop all over Lord's foot is a no-no. (I imagine it's even worse in the dunk tank.)

Genius.

How awesome it would be if temple recommend carrying unbelievers were to have "accidents" at the veil, or sitting in the celestial room. Brown smelly goops of poop stinking up the celestial room so no one else could pass through the veil for hours. Could they even get the stain out of that white carpet?

Could a bit of courage and a cup of exlax effectively shut down a temple?

The next time a non-believing teenager vents their frustration about having to do temple baptisms the only response should be: let loose your exlax bowls in the baptismal font. Temple trip over...

this needed to become a thing like yesterday!

Had a Marine inactive member point a gun at me and escort my companion and I down his sidewalk so we got the picture to never show up at his house again, let alone near nightfall, unannounced like we did. The laser sight was a nice touch though.

The missionary program is ridiculous. The ghettos I walked through for that bogus faith could have killed me...

Believing in magic. Believing it's real. It's occult. Silly xtians.

I thought Christians did believe that it's the occult.

of crazy adults. The spitting, even foaming at the mouth, as they yelled at me for asking questions.

I learned to pretend I went to class and hide out in the building.

Being Lied to, then told 'it doesn't matter'

My first year at girls camp we did a faith walk at night of all times where the leaders placed all the girls in a field and then would come back for us Idk what the point of that even was but whatever but anyways it was a medival camp in Idaho and to make a long story short it was a camp from hell lol (ill have to do a post on it sometime it really was a pretty crazy week) well anyways the dude in charge of it was a super weird actually pretty creepy guy he insisted we call him "lord William" and he would fart in front of us ladies nice! Well the leaders let him place us all in a huge field and then through our "faith" they would all come back for us well the dude placed me by a road and then they all forgot about me (guess I didnt have enough faith to be found go figure lol) and went back to camp and I was out in this field in the dark by myself for probably an hour and a half to two hours I was only 12 at the time and there weren't very many cars on the road but one car drove past me a few times kinda slowly and luckily nothing happened but it really scared the crap outta me this was a long time ago it was actually the summer that Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped and was still missing and thinking about that did nothing to calm my nerves finally someone came and found me but it was not a very pleasent experience at least the leaders felt bad though hopefully they learned not to do anything like that again especially at night! Good greif!

That sounds downright terrifying to put anyone through let alone a 12 year old!

And utterly irresponsible of them.

Were you able to tell your parents? &/or would it have made any difference if you had?

:/

Being ordained an elder in the morning and that night being told to go with another brand new elder to Utah Valley Hospital to give very sick folks blessings. We had no idea what to do, and we were afraid to say anything too promising--some of the folks were clearly dying. That scared the shit out of me, and I never gave blessings after that. I would always volunteer to do the anointing. The scared Boner.

Expecting some sort of divine manifestation, then instead being molested and told that I could have my throat cut If I did not keep my mouth shut about the matter, otherwise known as the MORmON temple endowment. Oh, there were some insanely stupid secret handshakes in that deal too.

After a full work week, we had to meet in the church parking lot at 6:00 p.m. on a Friday evening. Then there was an overnight bus ride from our little podunk town to the Atlanta temple. I couldn't sleep on the bus, so I was absolutely worn-out when we arrived there.

I was so tired, I remember very little from that first temple trip, except being terribly bored and wishing I could sneak away somewhere to sleep. I missed out on all the throat-slitting stuff.

I attended once more, as I was secretly slipping toward non-belief. That's when I realized how silly it all was.

I was supposed to be doing endowments for a long-deceased German lady, who had a regular tooth-chipper of a name, full of umlauts and glottal Rs. Since I grew up with a German grandmother, I could pronounce all those things without any problem - but the poor lady on the other side of the curtain could not. She asked me to repeat it several times, and then she took a stab at it and made total hash of the name.

That was kind of mean-spirited of me, and at times, I feel sorry that I did it. But not ALL the time. . .

Hey, I might have been there too! I would have been the petulant and angry one who wasn't really possessed. Lol!

Are you from the South Seas? This family was Samoan or Tongan. I don't know if they were converts but they were emigres. I lived in a now long gone trailer park down in East Bay Provo. The Freedom First Ward (if that still exists) was my ward.

A funny about this time was this. So the ward was filled with youngerish couples (us), very poor people, and many people where English was their second language. Most of the ward boundaries had either old homes, some run down apartments, and our trailer park. A few months after we got married and moved in a new bishop was called. He was a little older than us and was a lawyer. He and his wife lived in the one newer part of the ward - nice condos.

So his wife one Fast Sunday as the newly minted first lady of the bishop prick gets up and proceeds to excoriate the ward for not donating enough fast offerings. She did this in her designer dress (we sat behind her and I noticed the label sticking out and had taken a fashion mechanizing course in college) with obvious anger. It was a tirade.

I've experienced something absurd things in life, but a woman with money to buy expensive clothing taking to task poor college students, poor people, and people who don't even understand fully what she is anger about definitely makes for one of the more absurd experiences.

No. I guess it wasn't me. I am originally from Brigham City, Utah. It is nice to talk with someone else who knows about using the priesthood to cast out devils. I don't think it was a common thing. So thanks for that!

The devil was very real to my mom; he was always lurking around trying to steal away our bodies and minds. There is some deep crazy on my maternal side. I had a maternal aunt who was institutionalized in the late 50's (after divorce gave her a nervous breakdown) and treated with an ice-pick partial lobotomy. Mormonism coupled with crazy can make a mom believe her daughter is possessed by the devil, I guess. It's possible she was suffering from some untreated postpartum depression at the time as well. She seems much more stable these days. What else can I say?

I remember what it was like to be a poor college student. That bishop's wife was incredibly insensitive!

I've been a part of a few of these casting out devils/the devil things.

It is done one of two ways and in the case I started this thread with both.

"Melchizedek Priesthood laying their hands on the possessed person and authoritatively commanding the evil spirit to depart. In other circumstances where evil spirits may be felt by the priesthood holder to be present, he may raise his right arm to the square and demand by that same priesthood authority that the evils spirits depart."
http://askgramps.org/does-the-mormon-church-practice-casting-out-devils/

So we went to the apartment. His mother came out and spoke to us in her broken English and Moo Moo. It was nice. I was freaking out because it seemed so routine a visit. The person needing this was in a back room. His mother went on and on about why he needed it and how she knew he was posses with evil spirits.

So the son comes out. I don't remember what he was wearing. I think long shorts and a t-shirt. He was in his early twenties I think. He was a large man with longer hair. He didn't say anything at first. The guy I was with ask him to sit in a chair. He did. "My companion" placed his hands on his head and asked me to as well. I could feel my companion (in this task) and his hands were shaking.

He started to speak and the dude started to get up and saying things like yelling at his mom about why we were there and what we were doing. He started out with a high pitched voice. And after being belligerent for awhile he begged her to make them go away and I presumed it was us. He literally ran back into his bedroom I assume. She went after him and they came back. We went through variations on this theme a few times each time the guy's voice was changing and getting deeper and less like a child in his protestations.

So my companion tried the right hand to the square the next time he appeared commanding the evil spirits to leave. The dude seemed cowed by this and then just sat down and started crying. His mom was all over him. I don't remember what she was saying. So we talked a bit and my companion decided to give him a blessing of health so I anointed the big fella and we did the deed and left.

Edit: There were others there I just can't remember them. Younger sibs I think and maybe an aunt/uncle.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/06/2016 12:45PM by Elder Berry.

I didn't tell my parents till I got home but luckily we went home the next day and I told them they were NOT happy to say the least all the leaders told my parents the same story that THEY were the ones to come find me funny cause only ONE of them did but ya one leader my mom was friends with told her that apperently she overheard "lord William" make some kind of perverted comments about some of the girls ( I was only twelve and very sheltered at that point in my life so I either didn't hear him or just didn't get it) so she especially wasn't pleased that they let him place young girls in a field alone at night. He also made us pull his weeds and the food there was disgusting warm murky very bad tasting water and one meal was some kind of weiner I couldn't tell if it was suppossed to be a hot dog or sausage lol with green stuff growing on it no one really ate so we all gorged on junk the whole week. Luckily his camp got shut down the next year thank goodness!!! But he was a strrraaannge duck that's for sure hands down one of the um most interesting people ive ever met to say the least. We really should have just packed up and came home idk why we didn't at least it was an experience no one ever forgot lol

I remember him lecturing us and telling us off quite a bit he was doing a demonstration on some of the punishments they used to do in the midevil times and he had one girl come up and he was like Jesse here has been peeking at the boys bathing in the river and so back in midevil times she would get her eye burned out and when he talked about her spying on the boys she started giggling and he was like this is NOT a laughing matter! Man he was weird! Lol Then we had to sing these weird midevil songs and one of the lyrics went something like madam something had flowers growing from her breast and he sang along louder than all the girls and had the most nasaly sounding voice ive ever heard and one girl couldn't help it and burst out laughing and he almost started crying! Then he caught one if the leaders drinking coke and gave her a lecture about how evil coke was and how she was breaking the word of wisdom then she caught him drinking coffee! Gees not hypocritical at all! Good times good times!....ugh

Here are some highlights:

Having a member of the bishopric show up at my house unannounced (DH was not home) asking me all kinds of questions about income, lecturing me on not paying tithing and requiring us to show up for tithing settlement.

Having a former coworker who was a member of the bishopric in another ward tell me at work while we were alone in his office about how his wife didn't like sex and how she would avoid it and making very strong hints about how I might be able to change that for him. He's now a faculty member at one of the church's two private educational institutions.

Being involved in a legal battle with 2 stake presidents, bishopric members, etc. who, outside of church, were the most dishonest, evil people I've come across. They threatened to ruin us if we did anything about it. But as so many Tbms were so good to remind me, not everyone in the church is perfect.

Getting phone calls in the middle of the night, no one on the other end, but this happened for months on end. Having the police show up at my door stating they'd been called because of complaints I was beating my dog, my children, etc. Asking if they could look to see if I had a dog or to see if my kids were ok.

On the first day of the trial of said former business "partners"having a GA show up and sit behind the former partners, shake hands, show support, etc. The jurors were enamored, and it was over before the trial even started.

Having to see men upheld as "godly" who took oath on a bible and then proceeded to lie throughout their testimony.

Having my personal reputation impugned through a whisper campaign by said former partners who are all high up in tscc. You have no credibility when you're trying to defend yourself against what a stake president says about you. As one neighbor reminded me, "There are two sides to each story."

Being absolutely good and decent and knowing you acted ethically, yet having your life, reputation, work smeared and destroyed by bad ppl pretending to be good and there's nothing you can do to stop it or counter it.

Ongoing just generally from living in mormon dorm: From TBM neighbors, being shunned and treated like I'm some kind of criminal or horrible person just because I don't go to church.

The "flower lesson" in YW. The idea that guys would reject you if you were "defiled" (even against your will as a rape victim) and therefore wouldn't marry you, resulting in not being able to get into the kingdom where your friends and family would all be living in the afterlife. Believing your whole eternity hinged on a guy not sticking a d*ck in your hole before he stuck a ring on your finger.

I was a counter terrorist soldier in Northern Ireland. My Brother the now Stake President of if the Belfast Ireland Stake was a Cop.
We were at that time the closest of brothers but parted as My activities for British Military Intelligence contradicted his self rightious ideals and Mormon view of the world.
Eventually Many years later he got his revenge by having me arrested in Canada. Locked up in the Toronto West Dention Center and having the inmates informed that I was an ex cop. I did do a spell in the Royal Military Police. I had to fight for my life each day for a solid month before I managed to get out of there. And that is only a very small part of it. Scary shit all the same. I wrote a book about this time called A Moral Vendetta. It chronicles my entry and exit from Mormonism, as well as my journey with PTSD.

A former running partner had done a stint as a counter terrorist soldier in Northern Ireland, and often talked about the challenging and dangerous situations he was in. I think he was with the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment.

Well pretending to slit my throat in the house of the lord was pretty scary.

I used to be scared to death of disease--it was a phobia. At YW camp, we were forced to play baseball in a field that was flooded with raw sewage, coming from the bathrooms. By "forced," I mean, threatened, coerced, manipulated with peer pressure, verbally abused. My friends and I cried, so they made us play outfield, where the sewage was the worst, as punishment.

Later on, three of us took a walk, following a lovely little stream, and discovered a small herd of cattle upstream, wading and wallowing in the water, to keep cool--and they were also peeing and pooping in the water. We ran all the way back, yelling for the girls to stop drinking the water! I had warned them before, that my Dad said never to drink water in the mountains, except from a fresh spring. My friends and I refused to drink the water, and would not wash our dishes in it, or brush our teeth in it. The three of us were already considered to be trouble-makers, and they thought we were making up the story about the cows.

Everyone came down with "the stomach flu", and within two days, about 75% of the girls and the leaders were violently ill. As punishment for taking a walk up the creek and going out of camp boundaries, we were forced to clean the bathrooms, which were covered with puke. We felt like cleaning up the stuff would doom us to become sick ourselves, and we cried again. One friend and I refused, and walked away, but our other friend didn't follow us, but stayed behind to clean the bathrooms. She got sick the next day. (No surprise, that my rebellious friend and I left the church, but the one who obeyed and cleaned went on a mission, and is still a Mormon.) The camp "nurse" was giving the girls mason jars full of salt water to drink, to make them throw up, to get rid of the poison, I guess. My one friend and I would not drink it. We wanted to go home, but it was 5 hours away. We almost hitch-hiked, but, instead made a plan to bribe the supply truck driver. The boy scout driving the truck wouldn't drive us home, because he would receive "demerits" in the Scouting program. He gave us some soda pop, though, and we survived on that for four more days. It was like we were trapped in a prison camp--or on a Disney cruise ship. There was nothing safe to eat or drink. No one knew who would get sick next.

There was also no water for bathing--we knew that before we went there. My friend and I arrived home encrusted with dirt, and looking very skinny and exhausted. We had to take 3 baths to get clean, and we ate, and went to sleep immediately, and didn't wake up until the next evening. My friend volunteered in the Peace Corps, and had to live in primitive conditions--but the villages were never surrounded by filth and disease, like our dear YW camp had been.

When my non-Mormon grandfather passed away, my TBM mother asked her bishop to officiate and conduct the funeral, including the eulogy. He had to travel to a small town about 100 miles away, where hundreds of non-Mormon relative gathered in a small funeral home for the service. The so called "bishop" was ill prepared and disorganized. The audience had been seated for about 30 minutes, while the Bishop (backstage) gathered bible versus and thoughts to brush up his "talk." Just before he entered the pulpit, he looked at me and said, "I need you to say the opening prayer?" I was 14 years old. I was scared to death. I was shocked and not prepared to do that. He sent me out there in front of all those people, where in Mormon like fashion, I bowed my head and said a stupid prayer. I could tell by the WTF experessions on their faces that they were all in utter bewilderment. The Bishop followed by giving a Mormon sermon. People began getting up in the middle his sermon and leaving.

What heathens to not be "touched by the spirit." I guess she got back at her father for anything he did she didn't like.

Lol..exactly. So true...got him back in Mormon style.

2 things: When I was a young teen, the sheriff in my small town showed up at church and went into the gospel doctrine class and arrested a guy. There was a loud commotion and we all poured out of our classrooms. Come to find out, it was all staged as part of a lesson on obeying the laws of the land or some such tripe. It scared the bejeesus out of us!

The standards night held at the stake center where the stake YW president, in front of all of us YW and YM proceeded to drip black ink on an arrangement of white roses. It was a horrifying visual aid of how people supposedly would think of any girl who would let herself be defiled by being "unchaste". Talk about shaming!

Was her name Elvira?

Mormon Boy Scout troops lose young boys in deadly accidents all the damn time. They are infamous because of it. I got placed with a Mormon foster family, and the father was a sports freak bully who was always horrified by the things I could not do. He made me go on a kayaking trip on the Colorado river, and told the boys that I could not swim, and told them to "teach me how" by throwing me off a cliff in a lagoon off the river. I fought and I hit, but it did no good. The real scary part was that the water, while not opaque, was black, and you could not see what was down there, and there was no shore, just rocks. They had no idea how deep it was, whether there were stones, or anything. I came up out of the water splashing and made my way to the rocks. I had no idea how to get back up the cliff. I lost my shoes and was barefoot, and all they did was shout jeer at me for the half hour or more that it took for me to find a way up the rocks with my feet and shins bloodied, trying not to fall back in the water. But I don't think I've ever been as scared as I was during that fall and not knowing what I was going to hit.

On the last day of the trip, the same guys tried to do it again when we had stopped for lunch. I pulled away from the guys who had grabbed me, and slugged one of them full in the face. So my bully foster father came over and slugged me full in the face--he was a big fat guy, too--then went back to eating lunch. I walked away, and managed to slip my kayak into the water, made it out into the river, and rowed as hard as I could to make it to Havasu Landing. I had no plan, except to try to hitchhike out of there some way. But about an hour or more later a couple of them caught up with me. I wish to hell that I had reported the abuse to my case officer. If I would have been taken out of the family, I could have been spared all that going to BYU, LDS mission, and shit.

Mike T. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If I would have been taken out of
> the family, I could have been spared all that
> going to BYU, LDS mission, and shit.

Why did you stay? That is probably a good story.

Having my Mormon grandfather rape me my entire childhood then when I was a young adult being told by my father that despite my grandfathers 'mistakes' he was in the celestial kingdom because he was a faithful tithe payer

Thetimeisnow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Having my Mormon grandfather rape me my entire
> childhood then when I was a young adult being told
> by my father that despite my grandfathers
> 'mistakes' he was in the celestial kingdom because
> he was a faithful tithe payer

I am so sorry, Thetimeisnow...You deserved far better than you were given.

(I am also wondering if, perhaps, your father might have been a victim too, when he was growing up. This kind of response can be characteristic of someone who never had the opportunity to resolve their own history of abuse.)