The Devil Sat on My Bed: Encounters with the Spirit World in Mormon Utah

In the mountains of beautiful, bucolic northern Utah, many Latter-day Saints (Mormons) are visited by spirits. Local folklore is filled with stories of uncanny encounters of all kinds, and Latter-day Saint scripture and prophetic teachings emphasize the reality and the importance of the spirit world. Spirit encounters are common in this community. People report visits from the benevolent spirits of kin offering aid and also from evil spirits who tempt and harass. Combining folklore research with ethnography, the book examines many types of spirit encounters and shows that such experiences must be understood as particularly Latter-day Saint phenomena. Spirit encounters take place within a larger cultural and religious framework that emphasizes the important relationships between living and non-living beings. For Mormons in northern Utah, spirit lore and experiences are interpreted and understood with reference to Latter-day Saint cosmology and particularly Mormon conceptions of the nature of the person, the spirit, and the family, and the nature of righteousness, evil, and spiritual power. The book also explores how people in Utah differentiate between "Mormon culture," the institutional church, and how they understand the "true" meaning of the religion, which has relevance far beyond understanding of people's relationship to the spirit realm and spirit power, and speaks to key issues of concernDLand polarizationDLamong Latter-day Saints today.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements I. Chapter One: Introduction II. Chapter Two: The Realm of the Spirits III. Chapter Three: They Have Shown Me What I Need to Know: Ancestors and Spirit Children IV. Chapter Four: Where the Veil is Thin: Temple Work, Posthumous Baptism, and the Gratitude of Spirits V. Chapter Five: The Devil Sat on My Bed: The Slippery Edge of Righteousness VI. Chapter Six: The Power of the Priesthood, Gender, and Evil Spirits VII. Conclusion Bibliography

About the Author :
Erin E. Stiles is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her primary interests are in the anthropology of religion and law, and she has worked in East Africa and in the western United States. She has conducted extensive ethnographic research on the everyday workings of Islamic courts in Zanzibar, Tanzania, with a particular focus on marital disputes. Her more recent work focuses on Latter-day Saint experiences of the spirit realm in northern Utah, where she grew up.

Review :
The Devil Sat On My Bed ... contains fascinating information. I found Stiles' account illuminating. Growing up in Cache Valley herself, Stiles offers a unique standpoint of the interconnectivity between Latter-Day Saints, spiritual encounters, and religious and gender norms as they compare to religious practices within the larger LDS community. This is a careful and insightful folklore study into one facet of lived religious experience. Excellent for any collegiate collection. The Devil would be useful in supernatural or contemporary folklore courses. One of the most valuable parts of this book is its clear proof that many of the more "charismatic" aspects of Mormon spiritual folklore, visions and visitations remain vital to the spiritual lives of many Mormons today. The Devil Sat on My Bed will appeal to folklorists, especially those interested in the Latter-day Saint tradition. The book is a valuable addition to the study of the Great Basin. It highlights the value of fine grained local ethnographies of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and displays in full force the ethnographic richness of northern Utah as a field site.