In October 2001, the
Deseret News printed a story about Chad, who, two months earlier, had published
One Foot in the Grave, his account of working as a gravedigger in the Springville cemetery (
Not all is grave for a sexton). The account includes numerous stories that Chad admits are "strange." But this strangeness, he tells the Des News, is actually proof of their authenticity.
"I couldn't really exaggerate or fabricate any of these stories," he insists, "they're just too bizarre."
Sixteen years later, in his autobiography, Chad answers what he says is the question he gets most often: "What parts of your books are based on what you've seen in a vision, and what part did you make up?" (
FOX 13 Investigates: Do Chad Daybell’s books leave clues about missing Rexburg children?). Well, it's pretty simple. None of it is made up.
"I don't fictionalize any of the events portrayed," he writes. "I'm really not that creative . . . My torn veil allows information to be downloaded into my brain from the other side. The scenes I am shown are real events . . ."
He describes one of these "real events" in his 2015 blog post "Eddie and the ghost boy" (
13- Eddie and the ghost boy | cdaybell.com).
During one of his stints as a gravedigger, Chad buried a man named Eddie, who in life had apparently been known as "a petty thief." From the moment Eddie was in the ground, "weird things" started happening. The window to the women's restroom would crack open every morning, even though Chad had shut it the night before!!! Then, three times in one week, the gate to an enclosure was found open, despite Chad's having locked it every time!!!
"Eddie was still picking locks," Chad tells us, "despite being dead."
Then one morning the strangest thing (or "biggest surprise") of all happened. Once again, despite Chad locking the door the night before (!!!), a shed was found open and, this time, the padlock had been hooked tauntingly on a peg above it. By now, Eddie's high jinks are getting to Chad. Furious, he turns round and shouts: "Eddie, you don't belong here. There's a better place for you. Look around, go toward the light, and don't come back!"
Thankfully, Eddie listened, and Chad "didn't have any problems with the locks after that."
This is indeed a "bizarre" story: a dead man picks a bunch of locks but stops when Chad tells him to. According to Chad, we should believe it happened exactly as he reported because he lacks the creativity and imagination to make something like that up. Really? A man capable of writing a dozen novels is incapable of making up a story about a thief who keeps doing thief things after he dies?
For the non-Mormons on this thread, you should know that stories like these are very common in Mormon culture. They proliferated in the early days of the Church, and, in truth, they have never gone away. I make this point explicitly because for mainstream Mormons there would have been nothing particularly unusual about this story. Now whether they
believe it or not, I'm not sure. But it's an incredibly
familiar kind of story and not one that any born-and-bred Mormon would read and immediately think to themselves "OMG! Chad is a liar!"
But really, what are the other options? If, like me, you take it a given that the events Chad described here never happened, then there are really only three possible explanations for why he said they did.
The first and most innocuous is that Chad wrote stories like this to teach good principles in a humorous and engaging manner. If he'd never insisted they were real, it might have been reasonable to assume he had written them with tongue firmly in cheek. But Chad insists these strange things happened exactly as he said they did. So he himself rules out the most favorable interpretation.
The second possible explanation for Chad writing stories like "Eddie" and insisting they're real is he's insane. He wrote them because he genuinely believed he had experienced them. But to me this is not plausible. The stories are far, far too neat to be the product of a truly deranged and psychotic mind. This explanation does not pass the sniff test.
The third possible explanation, and to me the only remotely persuasive one, is that Chad made these stories up. In other words, he lied. Why did he lie? Well, I'm not a psychologist, but it seems to me there are two very obvious motivations: 1) he wanted to feel special and 2) he wanted to make money. Telling quirky tales and putting them into a book that people bought . . . Well, what's not to love?
I don't know how much money
One Foot in the Grave made for Chad, nor, of course, do I
really know that publishing it made him feel special. But here's what I feel like I
do know: the books Chad writes and the comments he makes about the things he describes in those books are evidence that he has had a very tortuous relationship with the truth for at least 20 years. And what's more, he's fine with that. He is, and has long been, a very calm and accomplished liar.
MOO