Exorcisms

From: 
Story type: Ghost
Location: Ecuador
Source: Form Submission
Date submitted: Tue Mar 20 10:28:34 2007

As a Mormon missionary in Ecuador, I was required a few times to deal with cases of possession or obsession (when a spirit harasses but does not possess the body of someone). I will here detail a few of these- two first-hand experiences of my own, and two which happened to people I knew.

The first case happened in Monte Bello, just outside of Guayaquil. A young woman was being pestered by an evil male spirit who threatened her family and wanted her to leave with him. She saw him during her waking hours, even while speaking with us. She once stated: "He's right there next to you. He says he hates you and wants you to leave." We dealt with this spirit by asking the family to pray several times a day in their home and read the Book of Mormon and Bible more often. Within a week, the spirit had left. I attribute this to the fact that when the Holy Ghost is present in a home, the atmosphere is too uncomfortable for an evil spirit.

The next case happened to a girl in Pascuales, who stayed up late at night watching The Exorcist. Two spirits appeared to her claiming to be her granparents. They wanted her to kill herself and go with them. She refused, and they changed aspects dramatically. They shouted horrible things at her, then started making a list of people they hated. Oddly enough, I was mentioned on that list, though I had never spoken to the girl. The spirits eventually left, and the girl was fine, but shaken.

Again in Pascuales, a fellow elder was called upon to perform an actal exorcism. A girl had decided to explore a house that was known to be used for less-than-wholesome purposes. When she came home, she spoke in a man's voice, didn't recognize anyone, and, for some reason, only wanted to eat and eat. Her mother called my friend, an elder who was feeling homesick and depressed. He gave the girl a blessing in which he ordered the spirit to leave, and the girl to go to sleep. She immediately went to bed, and when she woke up she was back to normal.

The last time I had to deal with this kind of thing was in Daule, about an hour north of Guayaquil. A family wanted to be baptized, but had a problem to resolve first. I asked them what it was, and they replied that there was an evil spirit in their house. They would see dishes, pots, and pans moving around by themselves, and felt an oppressive spirit. Their daughter was the focus of the problem. She said that at night, a dark figure would materialize by her bed and molest her. During the assault, she was unable to move away. I was asked to give her a blessing, which I did, protecting her from the spirit and ordering it to leave the home and stay away. Upon returning to the home, I was told that everything was well. The family was baptized that Sunday.

None of the episodes were very dramatic, certainly not anything like The Exorcist. We were never attacked by anything. The blessings were fairly routine, except instead of being for physical health, they were for removing evil spirits. I attribute this to the fact that the people doing the exorcisms had the authority to do so.

My stepfather performed many exorcisms on his mission, so many that he could tell the difference between demonic spirits and those of departed humans. He said that demons often had a difficult time controlling a body, and so would go through contortions and such. Departed humans had owned a body, and were thus harder to detect.

I hope this information proves useful to someone. I've never written this down before.