I was raised in Spanish Fork, Utah in an LDS family, and that is where a lot of my views come from. However, unlike a lot of "Mormons" (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) in Utah and Idaho, I'm very open to a lot of possibilities. I believe that anything (and I do mean anything) can be explained through natural scientific laws and principles, but I also believe that a lot of what is considered scientific "fact" nowadays is nothing more than theories that are the most likely explanation and can't, as of yet, be proven wrong. Even miracles from the scriptures have some sort of scientific explanation at the root of them, but I also believe that God caused these miracles by using these sciences. God using the natural laws of the universe makes a lot of sense to me, but what all of those "laws" are is what I'm working on figuring out.

I don't know how many of you are from or have been to Utah, and I'm not certain exactly how familiar you are with LDS views and beliefs, but a lot of LDS people seem to be uncomfortable with talking about "hauntings" or "the afterlife" in a serious, scientific way. Namely because they don't have a full understanding of exactly what it is that their church teaches (which is, of course, my opinion), and so they discount anything that goes outside of their own, personal views as being false or the work of the devil. It's not that they're stupid, just naive. Most people in general are uncomfortable with ghosts and spirits, and so it's probably natural that they (people of the LDS faith) for the most part, don't pursue investigating them.

With that introduction, I present my own theories:

• Spirit Matter: Well, quite frankly, this confused me for a long time. Our church teaches that "There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter" (Doctrine and Covenants, 131:7-8). So, I wondered, what exactly is this matter that is referred to here? I still don't know exactly what it is, but studying what we do know about spirits that we can pick up on IR, tape, and other devices, is that somehow it is electromagnetic-related.  In other words, are their forms really made up of electromagnetic material, or is it electromagnetic material that is attracted to them and makes it possible for us to see them?

• Spirit World and its divisions: I once stumbled on a web page (I believe it was www.prairieghosts.com/deseret.html) and read some of Troy Taylor's comments on Utah's history and he hinted at a question - despite the bloody history of the LDS Church's founding days, including the Pioneer trek west from Illinois, during which many died, to the murder of the LDS Prophet Joseph Smith by a mob in Carthage Jail, Illinois, he noted that there aren't many stories or legends about hauntings that are linked with most of these events. He attributes this to the LDS Church being a conservative people.  I, however, attribute it to something else.


This is a really loaded subject that goes into the very heart of the beliefs of the LDS Church concerning where we go when we die. Brigham Young and other prophets of the church have taught that the Spirit World is here, on earth, but because these spirits are made of the more refined spirit matter cited earlier, we cannot see them. Mormons believe that when we die, if we led a good life and were baptized with the Priesthood authority of God and accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ, we go to what is referred to as "Spirit Paradise." However, if we do not ever accept the gospel of Jesus Christ and aren't baptized by one who is in authority, our spirits go to a place called "Spirit Prison." This is not a literal prison of bars and confinement, but it is the condition which is commonly referred to as being "Damned." Like water is halted in it's progression downstream when a dam is built in the middle of its path, our progression as a spirit is halted until we have accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ and had a baptism performed in our behalf by someone who is still in the mortal body (if we didn't do it ourselves here). This, I believe, is why many of the EVP's that are taken record voices that say "Help me" or cry out for some form of help. They want help in getting to the Spirit Paradise. The Bible speaks of the practice of being baptized for the dead, and the LDS Church continues this practice today. This also explains, to me at least, why the ghosts of Mormon Pioneers are not reported as haunting many locations along the plains or cities they inhabited from New York to Utah.

One of the hauntings that is reported of a woman that was alive in Pioneer times, according to Troy Taylor (and I've heard these stories also) is that of the woman who was Brigham Young's 19th wife and left the LDS Church, denouncing it and touring the country with a book about how she felt it was wrong. We believe that a lot of the attitudes that you develop in this life go with you into the next life, and so her attitudes to rebel against anything to do with her husband and the LDS Church are keeping her progression at a standstill.

The whole concept of where we go after this life is really what throws most LDS people off to the belief in spirits (which, once again, is my own opinion). For example, I grew up with this belief that the spirit world was close to heaven in some far off distant place on the other side of the universe or something, and therefore not understanding  that it was right here. I think that this is the way a lot of LDS people feel, those who haven't studied the topic much, and once they do find out that the official teachings of their Church and the scriptures say that the spirit world is right here, all around us...well, I think it gets to be a tough thing to swallow and some would rather go into denial than accept it. But that's just my opinion.
 

• Orbs: I think one of the first websites I saw when beginning to investigate the paranormal through the internet was that of "Dr." Dave Oester, who said that even though we seem to capture "human-like" images in photography of spirits, that they cannot actually appear in human form. I say that isn't even logical. My own personal opinion is that orbs are just one of several forms that a spirit may take, and that orbs are the "traveling" form of spirits. In other words, they don't appear to us in human form because the orb is the most condensed form, when their energy is all focused and easy to maintain. That is why videos and pictures of paranormal or spirit activty most commonly pick up streaking balls of light or translucent, floating orbs that pass through walls or dance gracefully through the air, as if with concious thought. Some speculate that these orbs are nothing more than bundles of random electromagnetic energy floating through the air.  However, these orbs have shown intelligent responses to voices, human presence, and activity (from humans or animals).

 
• Ectoplasm/vortices: Ectoplasm and vortices are, I believe, the second stage of spirit form. When a spirit wants to make itself more manifest to us, it begins un-condensing from the orb form and begins to take shape into first a vortex, and then that spreads into ectoplasm. The ectoplasm can then take shape into the previous "human" form, in which the spirit appears to us as they did when they were alive on this earth, or as what some call an apparition.

 
• "Apparitions:"  This form of materialization is, I believe, more strenuous on a spirit to maintain, which is why it is very rare to catch them appearing in this form, and sometimes when they do, you only see from the waist up, or a head with a jacket, etc. Sometimes there are features that appear more prominently than others, and if we believe that the spirit is the essence of a human, the very mind and psyche, then it is totally feasible that whatever part of the spirit we're seeing is what it/he/she considered or considers to be it's best feature(s).

 
• "Shadow Men:" Shadow Men, as many call them, are those entities which appear as a living, moving shadow. Quite frankly, they are scary just to look at, and it turns my stomach just thinking about them. I had my first and only visual experience with them when I was 13 years old. According to Christian beliefs, the book of Revelations in the Bible talks about the War in Heaven, when Lucifer rebelled against the archangel Michael and the followers of God. When all was said and done, God cast the devil and the spirits that followed him out of Heaven as punishment for their rebellion. One of the biggest punishments was that, unlike us, they never got a chance to get a body and live a life, and in the end after the Judgment Day, they will forever remain in the lowest of the low with the Father of Lies (Rev. 12:7-9). That is why when trying to pick up EVP from these entities, much of it does not come out as English as we know it, as they never lived as a mortal on the face of this earth. Now, I will follow up by saying that not every paranormal activity involving some sort of moving shadow or dark form is this exact kind of entity; one woman from Utah gives an account of how her recently deceased uncle appeared to her as a dark shadow, and there are other accounts of shadow-like forms in cemetaries.  I decline to give an official opinion on the formerly mentioned case of the uncle, but I will say that the vast majority of all "Shadow Men" are the spirits of those that fell with Lucifer.