Has anybody seen Satan?

[Cold Steel]

The time I saw him, he appeared blacker than the darkness that surrounded him.

Yeah, what you saw is commonly referred to as "shadow people." They appear human, but they appear like black, black and generally move very quickly. I have a good friend who saw one at the foot of his bed shortly before his mission. The first time there were no details; it was just a black image against the ambient darkness. The second time he saw details, such as the eyes and teeth. The third time he and his roommate both saw it and it appeared as a man with a cane and hat. It smiled wickedly at him, but said nothing. The two were up for the rest of the night with the lights on.

During this fellow's mission, this spirit apparently followed him and appeared to him twice during his two years. After that, he saw nothing but felt an evil presence. It finally stopped and he's never heard or seen anything since. His wife said she felt the presence once when they were first married, but that she never saw anything. No problems since then.

[William Schryver]

I had a strange experience when I was 19 where I saw Satan (or one of his minions; I didn't card him).

I was wondering if anybody else has had a similar experience.

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

I encounter him, or one of his minions, pretty much every day. Right here on this message board!

[Zakuska]

From the title of this thread I thought that Satan might have gone missing. Has he gone missing?

If he has, we won't be seeing him for 1000 years.

[Duncan]

I am watching him play hockey right now. He plays for Slovak!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miroslav_%C5%A0atan

[O-Brother]

I have seen him around here before...

[Zakuska]

He goes by other names too...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azazel

[Ron Beron]

I had a strange experience when I was 19 where I saw Satan (or one of his minions; I didn't card him).

I was wondering if anybody else has had a similar experience.

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

I teach in a jail. I see him and friends everyday....or was that the deputies??

[The Nehor]

I used to see a representation of him in my dreams. Hasn't happened in years.

Met some of his minions, yeah? Exorcised a few. I don't like them much.

Encounters with the infernal sound exciting but they're all grit and yuck. You feel like crap around them and are too dulled to be awed at any supernatural marvels. I agree with C.S. Lewis. The devil is a very boring person.

[erichard]

I had a strange experience when I was 19 where I saw Satan (or one of his minions; I didn't card him).

I was wondering if anybody else has had a similar experience.

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

After being in Italy for 20 months (the last 9 in Roma) I was having emotional exhaustion after arriving the night before at the mission headquarters in Firenze (Florence). I was alone in a bedroom having a difficult time getting up. I felt the presence of evil and hopelessness beyond any I have ever felt before or since. However, I did not see anything. I felt this influence off and on until I returned back to Salt Lake City.

Richard

[Brade]

Yeah, what you saw is commonly referred to as "shadow people." They appear human, but they appear like black, black and generally move very quickly. I have a good friend who saw one at the foot of his bed shortly before his mission. The first time there were no details; it was just a black image against the ambient darkness. The second time he saw details, such as the eyes and teeth. The third time he and his roommate both saw it and it appeared as a man with a cane and hat. It smiled wickedly at him, but said nothing. The two were up for the rest of the night with the lights on.

During this fellow's mission, this spirit apparently followed him and appeared to him twice during his two years. After that, he saw nothing but felt an evil presence. It finally stopped and he's never heard or seen anything since. His wife said she felt the presence once when they were first married, but that she never saw anything. No problems since then.

That's called hypnagogic hallucination. I actually have that problem and "see" such beings and "feel" their evil presence several times a month. In my case it's associated with sleep paralysis too. So, I wake up, my eyes are open, I can visualize my surroundings, and I am conscious of my surroundings, however, I am unable to move or speak. When we sleep we're all paralyzed, and that paralysis keeps us from acting out our dreams and injuring ourselves. In my case, apparently because of some chemical insufficiency, my body will sometimes remain paralyzed even though I am otherwise fully awake and conscious. That in itself can be quite frightening at times. But my sleep paralysis is also nearly always associated with hypnogic hallucinations. These hallucinations are often instances of what's been termed "the intruder". Basically, I'm paralyzed and then see a dark humanoid figure enter the room and approach the bedside. Sometimes this is accompanied by a sudden loud screeching sound. Other times the figure gets on top of me and pushes down on my chest. In the latter case I have the sensation of being smothered and it is sometimes hard to breath. I usually groan and gasp and try to force air out of my mouth because if I can force air out loud enough I'll jar myself out of the experience. Thankfully, since I've been married, my wife usually wakes up because of the noises I make and then touches my face, which brings me out of the experience quicker than when I have to try to muster up a nice loud scream on my own. These experiences have been such a constant feature of my life for so long that I actually kind of miss them if they don't occur for a few weeks. It's scary and exciting all at the same time.

[consiglieri]

I have seen him around here before...

Oh, man, now that is just too funny!

Okay, I will give a few more details, though it is a bit of a long story.

This happened on a Sunday evening in the summer of 1979.

The previous Friday, I came out of the neighbor's house to hear the sounds of screaming; it sounded almost human. I went running into the field that separated the neighbor's house from mine and saw four dogs sitting in a ring staring at something in the center. As I came running up, I saw that another dog had my dog on his back in the middle of the circle, holding him down with his jaws clamped on my dog's chest.

The dog holding my dog down was named "Gabriel," and belonged to the neighbors whose house I visited. They were shocked saying he had never been violent before.

When I came running up, Gabriel let my dog go and Gabriel and the other dogs walked away without a sound.

I held my dog and he had the death glaze in his eyes. I yelled at him not to leave, and he came back, blinked his eyes and got up. I thought he was okay, but he later had trouble walking, and it got so bad we took him to the vet that night, where he was looked at and the vet said he had a punctured lung. In spite of the vet staying up late with him, my dog died before dawn Saturday.

I was very upset.

The following Sunday afternoon, I was lying on my back in my bed, still upset over what had happened. The sun was low in the sky but the light still came through my maroon bedroom curtains, though it was summer and early evening by that time. I was not sleepy. Sleep seemed the farthest thing from my mind.

Suddenly (and quite immediately and unexpectedly), I found myself in a field with one tree in it. It was dark out but I could make out objects. The area underneath the tree was in deep shadow. In the shadow I could see the figure of a man, though only the figure and no details; his figure was blacker than the shadow in which he stood.

He was holding some kind of stick over his shoulder, which I took to be a shovel.

Then he spoke to me.

"Do you want me to use your field again?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"The same way I used it four years ago tonight," he answered.

I had no idea what he was talking about, and at this point I was viewing myself talking to him as if I were a third-party to the scene. I thought I could see a glint from the dark area of his face which I took to be a smile.

I realized that this was an evil being and fear took hold of me. I turned around to run and as I did so, I went from viewing myself talking to him to being inside myself turning around. I began to run as hard as I could. A loud roaring noise came chasing after me, like the sound of the sea, and it was closing fast. It seemed to crash over me like a great wave and send me spinning end over end.

Suddenly I was back in my room and opened my eyes. The sound of the roaring was still in my ears but gradually died away. I was still on my back in my bed but now my position was reversed; my feet were on the pillow and my head was hanging over the end of the bed. I looked at the floor at the foot of my bed (upside down because of my position), and saw on the floor what looked like a white tea set with the pieces set out randomly.

I tried to move and found myself paralyzed. I struggled as hard as I could to move with no success until, feeling desperate, I "wrenched" myself as hard as I could and sat up in bed. As I sat up, I found I was back to my original position in bed and my head was coming up off the pillow. The same late afternoon sunlight was still coming through the maroon curtains in my bedroom. I walked to the foot of my bed to check the floor. No tea set.

_____________

I kept trying to make sense out of what happened. I still have no idea about a lot of it, like the tea set. I wondered what the dialogue between me and this other being had meant. It occurred to me that the "field" where I met him was the field between my house and the neighbor's house. Each had only one tree in it, and though it was not identical, it seemed to me to "fit."

I then thought about my big brother's cat who had been hit by a car some years before and had been trying to get home, but made it only so far as that same "field" before he expired, and that is where we found him. By this time it was night, so I grabbed a flashlight and went outside and down the hill to where we had buried the cat under a pine. We had nailed a little cross-piece to the base of the tree for a grave marker and written his name on it and the dates of his birth and death. I wanted to check the death date. The writing on the cross-piece had faded over the years, but I could still make it out with some effort.

It would be really creepy to say that that the death date for the cat was exactly four-years before the date my dog was attacked, or from the date that I had the "visitation." But it wasn't exact. It was a few days off, but it was four years before.

Anyway, that's my experience, for what it is worth. It did not happen in complete isolation; I had just joined the Church in 1978, and I was having a lot of remarkable experiences, both positive and negative, during the first several years of my membership.

This is probably the most significant experience I had in the negative column.

(Well, that and the clawing at the door in the middle of the night. But that is a story for another time.)

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

[Geaux LSU]

I've never seen him, but my nephew claims to have seen some minions - black shadows in his home. Says one actually attacked him when he was working out. I don't have the details, but this supposedly happened a few weeks after he and someone was playing with a ouija board. Scared the heck out of him and he would not go back in the house. Moved out that day.

[Eric Blob]

I've never seen or experienced anything like this, but someone I knew said he knew someone that prayed to see Satan, and then saw him.

I have no evidence that this happened though. It's just something that someone told me, and it could be a lie.

[mapman]

Fascinating stories. It seems like lots of people see demons in bed.

[Geaux LSU]

That's called hypnagogic hallucination. I actually have that problem and "see" such beings and "feel" their evil presence several times a month. In my case it's associated with sleep paralysis too. So, I wake up, my eyes are open, I can visualize my surroundings, and I am conscious of my surroundings, however, I am unable to move or speak. When we sleep we're all paralyzed, and that paralysis keeps us from acting out our dreams and injuring ourselves. In my case, apparently because of some chemical insufficiency, my body will sometimes remain paralyzed even though I am otherwise fully awake and conscious. That in itself can be quite frightening at times. But my sleep paralysis is also nearly always associated with hypnogic hallucinations. These hallucinations are often instances of what's been termed "the intruder". Basically, I'm paralyzed and then see a dark humanoid figure enter the room and approach the bedside. Sometimes this is accompanied by a sudden loud screeching sound. Other times the figure gets on top of me and pushes down on my chest. In the latter case I have the sensation of being smothered and it is sometimes hard to breath. I usually groan and gasp and try to force air out of my mouth because if I can force air out loud enough I'll jar myself out of the experience. Thankfully, since I've been married, my wife usually wakes up because of the noises I make and then touches my face, which brings me out of the experience quicker than when I have to try to muster up a nice loud scream on my own. These experiences have been such a constant feature of my life for so long that I actually kind of miss them if they don't occur for a few weeks. It's scary and exciting all at the same time.

My husband has sleep paralysis during times of great stress. It's truly scary for him. As an irrelevant aside, he's never claimed any feeling or form of "evil' or "dark" presence.

[Eric Blob]

Fascinating stories. It seems like lots of people see demons in bed.

When I was much, much younger I used to be scared when I went to bed that a monster would come and attack me from the dark.

I think when people are in bed, it's dark, they're often most 'insecure', it's usually very quiet and they're often alone, so that would be the perfect time if someone wants to scare you. I don't think it'd be the same if you're with your friends, outside, on a nice sunny day, listening to uplifting music. If you saw a demon or something then, it wouldn't be scary in the slightest.

[consiglieri]

It seems like lots of people see demons in bed.

You'll have to ask juliann about that . . .

[O-Brother]

Oh, man, now that is just too funny!

Okay, I will give a few more details, though it is a bit of a long story.

This happened on a Sunday evening in the summer of 1979.

--Consiglieri

Fantastic story. I'd like to make a couple of comments. Do you remember the story in the Bible where the demons entered the pigs and made them drown? A long time ago, I was told by someone who knew about the occult that sometimes animals end up picking up what was destined for their owners. In other words, they die in your place. When the demons can't get to you either because of the Holy Ghost or your own spirit's strength, they go after that which you love, which is most vulnerable and it's not unusual for it to be a cat or a dog. Demons seem to delight in seeing animal blood. They're probably all over slaughterhouses. Other demons delight in human sacrifice so they're probably all over where these despicable things take place, anywhere in the world.

Your 'dream' or 'out of body' experience could be a reflection of what could have been meant to happen to you and maybe your pet's souls were sacrificed for you. The same demon you dreamed of may have gone into the dog that killed your dog. As the Bible states, demons can possess the bodies of animals. Some spirits are attached or condemned to the physical location where events may have taken place. They either part of the 1/3 or possibly disembodied people who lived in that location at one particular point in time and are imprisoned there.

It's also possible that you were traumatized by the unexpected deaths of your cat and dog causing you to have a bad dream. The death of a pet can cause emotional distress for a few days or even weeks. In order to make sense of the losses you suffered, the brain can manufacture obscure scenarios that translate into dreams. The brain is seeking answers and when it can find it through logic, it makes up its own scenarios at the subconscious level.

On the other hand, Mormonism believes in evil spirits, so you may have had an out of body experience which exposed your spirit to your spiritual surroundings. Maybe there is a spiritual world around us with all kinds of invisible activity going on. You mention that your story happened in the late 70's. The 70's and early 80's were notorious for negative spiritual manifestations all over the world. Many murders and evil things were taking place and people saying that the "Devil made them do it." Today, when these evil spirits possess people and make them do horrible things, society labels it mental illness or insanity.

I think we're surrounded by disembodied creatures. That's probably why Jesus admonished us to "pray always lest ye shall fall into temptation." Who tempts us? Them. The invisible ones.

[MorningStar]

My husband has sleep paralysis during times of great stress. It's truly scary for him. As an irrelevant aside, he's never claimed any feeling or form of "evil' or "dark" presence.

Yep, that's sleep paralysis. My mom, grandpa, brother, and sister all have it. The first time it happened to me, I had a hallucination that there was a dark spirit laughing and shaking my blankets. I couldn't breathe, so I thought he was trying to kill me. If I hadn't known this could happen, I would have thought it was real. Terrifying. Shortly after I started praying, I could finally move. I didn't have another hallucination until after my daughter was born. This time it was just an elderly man who accidentally wandered into our apartment and he was staring at me. I wanted to show him the way out, but I couldn't move, so I laid there wishing my husband would notice and help him.

[Geaux LSU]

Yep, that's sleep paralysis. My mom, grandpa, brother, and sister all have it. The first time it happened to me, I had a hallucination that there was a dark spirit laughing and shaking my blankets. I couldn't breathe, so I thought he was trying to kill me. If I hadn't known this could happen, I would have thought it was real. Terrifying. Shortly after I started praying, I could finally move. I didn't have another hallucination until after my daughter was born. This time it was just an elderly man who accidentally wandered into our apartment and he was staring at me. I wanted to show him the way out, but I couldn't move, so I laid there wishing my husband would notice and help him.

Fortunately for my husband I am a light sleeper. He's able to moan loudly enough to wake me. I then shake him and call out his name and he snaps out of it. Over the years he's learned to relax during these periods. The more he understands what is happening he is able to calm himself.

I think the term "sleep" is misleading. He swears he's not asleep when he becomes aware of what's happening - it's just that he does not believe his mind has caught up with his body during whatever cycle of sleep or wake that he is in. He's very aware of his environment and he swears he is not asleep. Says he can hear me breathing and feel me next to him. He can feel the blankets, etc.

I don't know. It's freaky though.

[MorningStar]

Fortunately for my husband I am a light sleeper. He's able to moan loudly enough to wake me. I then shake him and call out his name and he snaps out of it. Over the years he's learned to relax during these periods. The more he understands what is happening he is able to calm himself.

I think the term "sleep" is misleading. He swears he's not asleep when he becomes aware of what's happening - it's just that he does not believe his mind has caught up with his body during whatever cycle of sleep or wake that he is in. He's very aware of his environment and he swears he is not asleep. Says he can hear me breathing and feel me next to him. He can feel the blankets, etc.

I don't know. It's freaky though.

Yes, exactly. You're aware of everything around you. I can't make any noise when it happens to me or breathe. It's horrible, but I have learned to relax too because I know now that it's not going to kill me. Sometimes I can even go back to sleep, but usually not. I concentrate on just moving a finger and then it doesn't take long to come out of it after that. My mom's doctor says it's a part of her narcolepsy.

[kantgomo]

I had a strange experience when I was 19 where I saw Satan (or one of his minions; I didn't card him).

I was wondering if anybody else has had a similar experience.

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

Yes, something similar. I will PM you with the details.

[David T]

I met someone on my mission I was pretty sure had 'companions' within him who were far older than himself. The impression was that the man had welcomed them in, and that they were using each other for their own means. They were all getting along quite nicely. It freaked me out, and taught me something as well.

[PacMan]

I thought this was a mother-in-law joke.

And mine is very nice, for the record.

[handys003]

Apparently he was in Chile yesterday and caused Stake Coference to be cancelled today in Kona.