By your Mormon auntie
These days, Marlene Murray dabbles in paranormal investigation. But in 1999, she was a regular hard-working supervisor for Amerigo, Inc. One Saturday, she was working on payroll alone after midnight when she heard the adding machine in the secretary’s office start to run and spit out paper. She thought little of it — they were always jimmy-rigging things to get them working and figured it had just gone haywire. She flipped its switch on then off, and it stopped. Exactly five minutes later, it started again, and again she flipped the switch on, then off. When it happened a third time, she was annoyed. She flipped the machine over to take out its batteries, but there were none in the machine. She followed the cord from the machine to the floor and — you’ve guessed it — it wasn’t plugged in. Marlene says she paused for just a beat and then, without thinking, called out into the empty room, “Stop that right now. I won’t put up with it.”
She finished payroll without further incident but did a bit of soul-searching and questioning her sanity for the remainder of the weekend. The next Monday, she told the secretary, Grandma Claudia, about the experience. Without the least bit of hesitation, Grandma Claudia told her it was just the little boy who haunted that floor and how he was a bit of a prankster. There was no fear, no guile, just a matter-of-fact acknowledgment. She went on to tell Marlene that there was a woman on the upper floor who was particular about things being moved, and a “grumpy old man” in the basement. She should run from him, she was told.
This might be any story told any October in America or any episode from one of those ghostly “reality” TV shows, but this one has a twist: Marlene is an active Mormon, and Mormons tend to stray away from the believing side of this sort of thing, which is actually kind of strange. Central to our faith is a belief in certain supernatural interactions. Should it be a stretch for us to be believers in the paranormal? Why is Moroni okay but not other entities? Heck, anyone who has spent much time doing genealogy or talking to family history buffs has certainly heard tales of long-deceased Grandpa Ira (or the like) making connections to the living. Why, then, are some of us squeamish about other types of ghostly encounters?
Marlene is now a member of Spiro Paranormal Investigators. Her group investigates creepy reports in Pocatello, Idaho, and in October they set up Haunted History Tours to raise money for Old Town Pocatello. She found them when her father encouraged her to enter their story contest. The little boy at Amerigo was good for a free dinner and two free tickets to that year’s tour. She took her dad, and as they went from venue to venue Marlene would tell her father her initial impressions or thoughts she had about who might be haunting that building. Her impressions, it seems, were spot on. After several rounds of telling her father exactly what the tour guide was about to say, her father brought Marlene’s gift to the attention of the group. They invited her to one of their investigations where, once again, she felt the same things the other team members felt. There was a woman spirit there, Marlene sensed, who was curious about the living visitors but seemed a bit afraid to stay too near them. As Marlene thought this, another member of the group said, “I get the idea that there’s a woman here — and she’s kind of skittish.”
Marlene didn’t dive into her paranormal investigator role without considerable hesitation. Thanks to the unquestioning confirmation of her late-night payroll experience by Grandma Claudia (“So I’m not crazy!”) and the support of her dad, Marlene didn’t question her ability. That part was fine. She just didn’t know if it was okay that she could do this. She says she spent hours reading scriptures and praying to know what to do. Where did this fit with her faith? Her conclusion was that she has a gift, and spiritual gifts are meant to be developed and used. When she first started with Spiro she would get impressions and feelings, but she didn’t actually see ghosts. She says it works the same way as feeling the Holy Ghost. The more she has focused, practiced, and worked on it, the more the gift has evolved. Now she gets distinct images and voices in her mind. Marlene will tell you she still isn’t sure exactly what she’s supposed to accomplish with her gift, but she is confident that it isn’t crazy and it isn’t evil. Maybe that’s the issue for some Mormons: We figure there are good or righteous spirit encounters and bad or evil ones — and we don’t want the bad. We don’t want to be lead to the dark side.
It should be pointed out that not all of Marlene’s experiences are simple feelings or impressions. She and her team have been poked, pushed, and pinched. They’ve recorded voices. Once she and a female colleague were near a cupboard that suddenly and loudly shut. The other woman was then pushed down but Marlene caught her from behind and stood her back up. When they settled down again there was a large dusty handprint on the woman’s breast — at an angle that couldn’t have come from her own or Marlene’s hand. During the same investigation, another member of their group manifested a handprint on her derriere. This spirit, they concluded, was a bit of a creeper creep. But not all of the entities are angry, skeevy, or evil: Some are playful or lost or just don’t want to leave our world. Marlene relates that a group of children told their aunt that they had been playing with the ghost boy at Amerigo. The aunt told them to tell the boy to “go toward the light.” They reported back that the little boy told them he “couldn’t see the light anymore.” Marlene says the spirits are sometimes manipulative, though, and they tell people what they want to tell them — not necessarily the truth. Marlene’s ghosts have personalities, flaws, and quirks. Maybe that’s our answer to the fear about seeing the right kind of spirit: Maybe we should look at encounters with the supernatural not as decidedly “good” or “evil,” per se. People in our world aren’t 100 percent evil or 100 percent good. Why should people in the afterlife be any different?
Marlene and her group will confirm or deny your claims that your building is haunted, but they don’t handle ghost evictions. She says she stays quiet when they are asked about it, and she lets the founding members recommend that building owners talk to their bishops or other spiritual leaders. There’s also a “Sisterhood” that uses “sage and things” to bind spirits. Marlene won’t say much about this group. She won’t disparage them or their methods, but she does point out that they have failed three times to bind an increasingly malevolent spirit in the basement of a local warehouse. Marlene wishes everyone would call on a priesthood holder to take care of things. “After all,” she says, “that’s the greatest power on earth.” Once again, Marlene amazes me with her matter-of-fact marrying of supernatural and LDS-brand spirituality. I don’t imagine everyone is capable of such complete confidence. This could be part of our LDS reluctance to acknowledge non-churchy interactions with the spirit world: Maybe we think that if people doubt our ghost experiences, they’ll be more likely to doubt our Holy Ghost experiences.
Marlene doesn’t get up in fast and testimony meeting and tell ghost stories. She’s discreet. She will share privately if you ask her, however, without the least bit of sheepishness. She’s a perfect storyteller: She comes across as completely rational, calm, and — most importantly — sane. There’s no sense of her trying to sell you magic beans and no overacting. She knows exactly what to say to get the hair on my arm to stand on end, all with a bright smile on her face. She talks about the spirits a bit like she’s gossiping about the neighbors. She’s a cheerful and well-adjusted Mormon mom. She says she is sensitive to spirits on both sides of the veil — that she can read the spirits of the living, too. Sometimes, she says, people say that makes her “judgey,” because she can see through people’s facades. This reading of people, I have long believed, is a real spiritual gift. Now I am forced to wonder why it shouldn’t mean that she can sense spirits from the other side, as well. It’s all so logical.
A visiting psychic once told Marlene that she’s a “spirit techy.” That means that spirits like to talk to her more than other people. I get it: I like to talk to her, too. She’s warm and bright. And she’s also convincing, which I’m sure makes her great fun on the Haunted History tours. As a fellow Mormon, I both want to believe her and also want to doubt her, but today it seems like much more fun to be a believer. After all, as Hamlet said to Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and earth … than are dreamt of in [our] philosophy.”
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