At BYU Idaho my actor friend was given the role of Joseph Smith in a play being put on by the college. As he was developing the character he wondered what it would have been like to spend time in a small jail cell so he got into full costume, took his scriptures and went to spend the night in a practice room in the theatre building. These rooms, which were soundproof and designed to practice voice and other musical talents, were very small and windowless. Of course students aren’t supposed to spend the night in the theatre building, or any other school building, so he snuck in.

This building, like most theatres, had a reputation for being haunted. We had all heard strange stories of a faceless ghost, or a phantom ballet troop who practiced on the main stage at midnight and then disappeared.

The janitor, who had heard all these stories many times, was cleaning the lower level where the practice rooms were. My friend was in full character when the door opened and when asked who he was said: “I’m Joseph Smith”.

The poor man ran full tilt down the hall, up the stairs and out the door.

A new ghost story was added to the legend.

In mid February of 1999 I received a phone call from my bishop. He said that both he and the Stake President had received the prompting that I should be made a High Priest as soon as possible.

I was an Elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and becoming a High Priest was typically something that wouldn’t happen until I was a bit older, I was thirty three, or called to be in a bishopric or something along those lines. Usually they wait until stake conference so they can present the name of the fellow to become a High Priest to the membership. The bishop said that the Spirit had given them a strong sense of urgency and they weren’t going to wait until stake conference.

My father was a High Priest and had set me apart in every office of the priesthood that I had ever held-Deacon, Teacher, Priest and Elder. It was an honor to have him set me apart as a High Priest.

Still, no one understood why there was such a sense of urgency.

A few months later my father passed away.

The Lord, in His tender mercies, let my dad set me apart one last time.

I once went to Alaska to work for the summer. I got a job house sitting in this beautiful home in the middle of acres of forest. The family had two dogs, a Labrador and a mixed mutt. I took care of the house, fed the dogs, and watched tv.

After a couple of days I got a call from a friend of mine.

He said: “Hey, there’s a salmon cannery nearby that is hiring. I’m going to apply and was wondering if you wanted to go with me. It would mean more money and you could still house sit.”

I agreed and he said they would pick me up in the morning.

The next morning the doorbell rang. Opening it I saw my friend standing there with a strange look on his face.

He said: “Why’s the dog dead?”

“What?” I replied intelligently.

“Yeah, the Labrador is in the driveway, dead. I flipped him over with a stick a couple of times just to be sure.”

“Um,” said I.

“Well, let’s go. We don’t want to be late.”

His mom was parked out front in their huge suburban capable of carrying the population of a small village. Three of her seven children had their noses pressed against the windows asking: “Why is the doggy sleeping?”

I sat up front next to her and after a moment she asked me what I did to kill the dog. She was a bit mortified because she was friends with the family and had been instrumental in them hiring me to house sit.

“Did you feed him?” she asked.

“Of course I did,” I responded.

“Give him water?”

“Naturally.”

“Where did you get the water from?”

“I filled up the dish from the hose.”

She gasped. “Don’t you know better than to give an animal water from a hose in Alaska? They had it hooked up to a herbicide.”

I was devastated. I made her promise to go back to the house after dropping us off and dump the poisoned water dish so the other dog wouldn’t wind up dead. She promised.

I was sick.

Well, I got the job at the salmon cannery. I was put on the Slime Line, where I stood with a rubber apron and a spoon. My job was to take a salmon from the conveyor belt, where it had just been slit open, and scrape out all the blood deposits and place it back on the belt. Twelve hours a day.

Every dead fish made me think of the poor dead dog lying in the sun.

When I got back to the house the dog (who’s name was Lucky) was gone, friends of the family had taken it away. So far the other dog seemed fine.

The backyard, where the dog dishes were kept, was down a flight of twenty steps. I went down them, got the water dish, went back up them, filled it at the kitchen sink, went down them, put the bowl down for the dog and then came back up the stairs.

Three times a day. For a couple of weeks.

Down the stairs, up the stairs.

After the house sitting job was over I learned an interesting fact about dear departed Lucky the Labrador. My friend’s mother had fibbed. There was no herbicide. The hose water was perfectly fine. Lucky was old and everyone had been expecting him to pass away.

I left Alaska a few weeks later and she was still laughing.

Several years ago I got an email from NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. They asked me if I would be one of their speakers at a training seminar they were giving. I marked it on my calendar and when I got there no one else had shown up. I spoke to the lady in charge of the facility and after a lot of looking on her calendar and making phone calls it turned out that I was early. By a month.

This was on a Friday so I drove across town to attend a public speaking group I was trying to decide whether or not to join. I helped set up the chairs, shook hands with a lot of people, even got to speak a bit.

Afterwards I met my wife for lunch and as we sat at the table I told her about my day. She looked at me and then said: “How long has your shirt been buttoned up wrong?”

My mother had carcinoma of the liver and got along very well with it for eight years. Then one afternoon she lost her balance and fell on the lawn. She passed away three weeks later. She spent the last couple of weeks in a long term care facility in their hospice ward. I spent as much time with her as I could. My father had passed away eight years earlier and I am an only child, so I was alone with her much of the time.

One afternoon when I was with her she needed to get to the bathroom. She was far to weak to be able to go alone so I rang for the nurse. No answer. I went out into the hall to try and find someone but the hall was empty, except for an older fellow dressed in workman’s clothes walking towards me.

“Need some help?” he asked me.

I explained the situation and he told me he had some experience with this kind of thing. He helped me get my mom up and to the bathroom, and then back into bed. As he was leaving I told him how incredibly grateful I was. He stopped by the door and looked at me with a smile.

“I’m always glad to help a fellow High Priest.” Then he left.

I hurried to the door to ask him how he knew I was a High Priest , but the hall was empty.

I had never before seen this fellow, and have never seen him again.

Darren Griffin – Stories of Faith, Inspiration, and Laughter

Ahh, Halloween

     I’ve loved horror since I was a little boy.  That feeling of snuggling under the covers and reading a scary story, knowing that no matter how terrible and horrific the events became I was still perfectly safe.

     Every Friday night my dad and I would stay up late and watch monster movies.  This was before VCRs and long before DVD players.  The only way to see a movie on television was to stay up and wait for it.  It was an event.  My dad called it our “Night to Howl”.  He always made sure I didn’t get really scared.  If I started to get disturbed he would give the monster a nick name like: “Harry Larry”.  “Ooh, here comes Harry Larry again!  He probably just wants a shave.”

This is a little story I wrote some years ago about a creepy cabin. Hope you enjoy it.

THE CHAIR

 Rain pelted down through the leaves and drizzled down the bark of the thickly packed trees.  In a clearing, barely visible through the downpour and the occasional flashes of lightning, was a small shack.

     The hinges of the single door had long ago been eaten away by rust, and the door itself had crashed to the floor, giving itself up to a covering of rotting leaves which grew deeper each year. 

     There was a window on either side of the vacant doorway, the glass brown with accumulated filth.  The overall impression was as if two dim eyes, covered by cataracts, stared with a blind malevolence out at the world from either side of the black pit of a nose that had rotted away.

     Although leaves had blown in through the gaping doorway and made piles in the corners, no animals made their homes here.  No squirrels scampered and no birds sang.  In the rafters of the ceiling, where one would expect the occasional bat, lay nothing but emptiness.  It seemed that even the creatures of the night avoided this grim place.

     Lightning flashed again and thunder rattled the opaque windows.

     A black mound against the wall may have been all that remained of a bed and night stand.

     In the corner was a chair, seemingly untouched by the decay surrounding it.  A chair that a mother may once have rocked her baby to sleep in, or sang soothing songs at bedtime. The wood was worn smooth from years of use.

     Now all was stillness and emptiness.

     The sound of the rain was muted and barely audible. 

     In the darkness and silence there was a creak.  Then another.

     Lightning flickered.

     The empty chair, in the forlorn solitude and darkness, was rocking back and forth, back and forth.

Happy Halloween

Once upon a time there were two young people who came from very different places. Coincidently they both chose to serve missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Even more coincidently they were both sent to the Samoan islands.

Our little scene opens on the day that the elder had reached the end of his mission and was returning home to the states. The sister of our story was working in the mission office dealing with paperwork and things of that nature.  Enter the elder.  We find this young man in a panicked frenzy because he lost his passport. The sister joined the search (keeping her opinions of this young man to herself) and after much going through luggage, bags and everything else nearby, the wayward passport was finally found in his shoe. He continued on his homeward journey, and she continued her work in the mission office thoroughly unimpressed.

Let us fast forward a few years. We now find our two heroes attending a mission reunion where they meet again and oddly enough a relationship ensues. We then find them married, living in Idaho and, after some time, become pregnant. This is the point that I enter the story.

As everyone does when expecting a baby, they made preparations for the blessed event. A hospital was chosen, the LDS Hospital, a route planned, bags were packed and they were ready to dash out the door at the first contraction.

It is now a Friday night in September. One of the major networks is showing a musical (I won’t call it by name because of copy write reasons but there’s 76 trombones in it) in two parts, half that night and the other half concluding the following night, Saturday. This happens to be her very favorite musical in the world and since the universe has a sense of humor, it was during this program that the contractions decided to start. Now begins a battle of wills. The Contraction’s determination to push out a baby versus her determination to finish watching the first half of her musical.  She won.

As the show comes to an end, a mad dash to the hospital begins. Suddenly they found themselves on a one way street never before seen. This street led to another one-way street taking them to a maze of one-way streets. Eventually they pulled into the parking lot of the hospital.  The Catholic hospital.

The contractions continued to come although I did not. Fortunately the room had a television, and as Saturday evening rolled around she was able to see the conclusion of her musical.  Her roommate, also in labor, hopefully enjoyed the show as she really had no choice.

Now, I have several relatives whose birthdays are in the latter part of September and it was thought that my birthday would land on one of theirs, but I was determined to have my very own. I chose Sunday morning to make my appearance on this earth. This did a number of things. One, I have my very own birthday and two, my mother got to spend the rest of her life telling people (especially me) how she suffered for days bringing me into this world.

I suppose this is the point where I should tell you how much I weighed, my length, maybe put in a [picture of a lock of my hair. The fact is, I just don’t care that much, and I suspect, you really don’t either. 

In short I was a baby, and as such, I don’t remember much about it.

By way of being welcomed to the planet, I caught chicken pox while I was only a few months old.

And that was only the beginning.

Why a blog?

Just like you, throughout my life I’ve worn many hats.

I’ve been a singer, guitarist, songwriter, magician, ventriloquist, radio personality, commercial copywriter, voice over talent, television editor, multiple EMMY winner, published author, teacher missionary, hypnotist, father, husband, ex-husband, stepfather, grandfather.

Now, in this particular season of life, my time is spent with multiple health issues. I am experiencing what it’s like to be a crippled shut in. Being alone most of the time makes me ask the question: “How can I still be valuable to my fellow travelers though mortality?” The answer is this blog.

The stories of my life may be similar to yours, or maybe very different. It’s possible you will laugh, maybe shed a tear, and maybe find an inspiring thought or two. Regardless, I hope you will take this journey with me.