Coming, “a Faith-Fueled Reformed Mormon Horror Nightmare”!

Last updated on: January 29, 2026 at 6:14 pm by Dan Peterson

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Coming, “a Faith-Fueled Reformed Mormon Horror Nightmare”! 2026-01-29T18:14:40-07:00 Dan Peterson

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In this promotional still from the 1911 Danish silent film Mormonens Offer (A Victim of the Mormons), an evil missionary (played by Valdemar Psilander) marries a bevy of young virgins in the Salt Lake Temple. As you can easily see at a glance, the film was meticulously researched and scrupulously accurate. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image).

I participated in a meeting up in Salt Lake City yesterday afternoon that was sponsored by the Communications Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of the matters discussed was the question of where most Americans get their information about the Church, and where they form their impressions of it. The relevant data indicate that their information and impressions come, mostly, from the entertainment media.

Happily, we’ve been blessed by a continuously flowing river of objective and sympathetic portrayals (in, to cite a few examples, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and Big Love and the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon and Under the Banner of Heaven and The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and Heretic and Surviving Mormonism with Heather Gay and American Primeval.)

Unfortunately, though, we may not be able to rely on such favorable media treatment forever. Out on the horizon, I notice this: “DIABOLIC Trailer Unleashes a Faith-Fueled Reformed Mormon Horror Nightmare.” And I’ve already mentioned Together Forever here. There’s a lot to look forward to!

The British classic “Trapped by the Mormons” was made in 1922, but, as the Danish film above illustrates, it was hardly the first anti-Mormon film — because such movies go back to the very origins of moviemaking. And the tradition continues vibrant and healthy still today. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

In the meanwhile, the Interpreter Foundation has tried to make its own little cinematic contributions through its feature films and, most recently, via its just-launched series of Becoming Brigham mini-documentaries. If you’re interested in supporting these efforts — we still need to raise additional funds in order to fully complete Becoming Brigham — please feel free to make a contribution. And please share the relevant links with others. Moreover, we invite you to attend a special fireside related to Becoming Brigham that will be held at the Orem Lakeview Stake Center this coming Saturday, 31 January 2026, at 7 pm. The stake center is located at 450 West 1800 South, in . . . well, Orem.

And, on the same general subject, here’s something else: The Interpreter Insights Podcast — January 29, 2026: Becoming Brigham, with Dan Peterson.

Sunrise over Earth. (NASA public domain image)

It’s been a busy day — including, among other things, a meeting about Interpreter’s finances (a topic that, although it demands regular attention, doesn’t rank high on my own list of personal pleasures) and an interview with a reporter from the Salt Lake Tribune. So here I share some notes from my reading, a while back, of Threshold: Terminal Lucidity and the Border of Life and Death, by Dr. Alexander Batthyány:

For the majority of these people were severely impaired before they died; most suffered from dementia or similarly devastating neurological disorders. They were confused, had forgotten most details about their earlier lives, and some of them didn’t even know their own names. Due to progressive brain diseases, they had lost their private worlds, perhaps even their self-identity, long before they died. Given their diagnosis and years of mental and cognitive decline, one might not expect their stories to be inspiring and reassuring. But why, then, did most of those who witnessed the deaths of these persons describe the experience as “beautiful,” as a “gift,” and as an assurance, if not tangible evidence, that there is something about our personhood—our core self—that is whole, safe, sheltered, sound, and protected even in the face of illness and frailty, even in the face of death? And why did many insist that after what they had witnessed, their conviction grew that life is meaningful—that we, our lives, are meaningful; so meaningful, in fact, that nature or existence, if you will, seems to have bestowed us with a self that is in some fundamental ways preserved and protected even when all that outside observers can see is decline, dementia, and finally, death?

We observe (and study) this phenomenon in people with severe dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, as well as in people who have suffered strokes and other massive health crises, people who have been unconscious and/ or unresponsive for long periods, and people who have been incapacitated by severe and chronic mental illness. Many, in fact most, had been given up on by their doctors and their relatives and friends—the dementias and other chronic neurological disorders are mostly held to be irreversible. Spontaneous healing, or a “return of the old, pre-morbid self” is not to be expected; it is not in the textbooks. And yet, at the hour of their death, some of these patients make what my friend and colleague, near-death research pioneer and professor of psychology Kenneth Ring calls “a miraculous return.” (4)

The phenomenon as such is not new. But for a long time, it didn’t even have a name. And for most of that time, there were no attempts to study and understand, even to acknowledge it. Reports of this phenomenon are scattered in the older medical literature, but it was long seen as a mere medical curiosity: one of those clinical observations that, while being occasionally noted down in medical reports, was deemed too rare to warrant scientific attention. Every researcher, and most clinicians know that occasionally things happen that are unexpected, unlikely, or simply strange. They happen, and they are either written off as weird (if sometimes overwhelmingly beautiful) onetime events, or they are forgotten—or they become anecdotes. Perhaps you talk about them in the breaks of research meetings of conferences, or over lunch with a colleague, or you share them with your spouse or your friends. But you rarely present them as your main findings during your lectures, nor would you write scientific papers about them. And if you did write and submit a paper for publication, passing peer review would be unlikely. (5)

And indeed, only recently did researchers—among them Michael Nahm4 in Freiburg, Sandy Macleod at the Nurse Maude Hospice in Christchurch, New Zealand, Joan M. Griffin’s international research group at the Kern Center (Mayo Clinic, Rochester), and my research groups both at University of Vienna and at Pázmány University in Budapest—begin to systematically study cases of terminal lucidity in more detail. (6)

Terminal lucidity is the technical term for the unexpected return of cognitive clarity, self-awareness, memory, and lucid functioning of patients who were assumed to have permanently lost their mental capacities. (4)

A rich harvest of wheat (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Here, taken directly from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™, is an appalling example of theists freely admitting, if not boasting of, the shameful crimes that they commit in the name of their so-called “religion”: “3-Part ‘Harvest of Faith’ Series on BYUtv Highlights Church’s Welfare Efforts: The Church of Jesus Christ assists people of all faiths, or no faith, around the world”

And here’s another crime report from the Hitchens File: “‘Cougar Pell Promise’: BYU offers a ‘top-off’ tuition program for cash-stretched students: Recipients of BYU’s ‘last dollar’ tuition assistance program can utilize the program for eight semesters”

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