Richard E Kelly

The “ghosts” I refer to in my new book, which will be published in May, are metaphors for the toxic residue—dysfunctional behavior patterns—that people acquire during their time in a cult, in my case Jehovah’s Witnesses. These “ghosts” manifest themselves in various forms. True cult believers will see the ghosts as warrior angels, championing God’s truth. But individuals who decide to abandon their high-control religious experience will encounter haunting Ghosts, ghosts with the potential to hinder them from becoming mature individuals able to lead productive lives.

In either case, the ghosts are active agents in the life of both the believers and the former believers, acting as wardens, trying to restrict actions and thoughts. Each ghost is capable of reconstituting itself in many shapes and forms in an effort to bedevil those people who try to leave the cult as well as those who have left it. The six ghosts that you will meet in this book are:

1. The Ghost of Misinformation – This is the most insidious of the ghosts. It creeps into one’s life in various ways, constantly affecting one’s decisions, thoughts and actions. For instance, in the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, this ghost insists that one will die at Armageddon unless…
2. The Ghost of Separation – Shunning is the principal manifestation of this ghost. This ghost also uses separation anxiety to make it difficult to bring closure to a person’s cult experience.
3. The Ghost of Inadequacy – The manifestations of this ghost are an inability to think for oneself, an inability to articulate well-thought out beliefs, and a nagging feeling of inadequacy, especially by women.
4. The Ghost of Dependency – The manifestations of this ghost are an inability to assimilate into mainstream society, a need to control and put down other people, a lack of self-control and an attraction to high-control religious groups and/or people.
5. The Ghost of Guilt – This ghost leaves its victim in a constant state of guilt.
6. The Ghost of Indignation – Blaming the cult for one’s complicity—taking no responsibility for going along with the rules and constraints—and obsessively trying to topple the cult are two reactions that characteristically beset people who have emancipated themselves from their indoctrinations.

While I tell my story in The Ghosts from Mama’s Club, I’ll explain why I have enumerated the ghosts as I have and thoroughly explain the ways in which each ghost affects the lives of those who are still manacled as well as those, like myself, who have freed themselves of those shackles. But please do not forget, my book is about real people—the good, the bad and it is what it is—and their struggles to find meaning in their lives.

I am currently writing a sequel, The Ghosts from Mama’s Club. The book is an autobiography of my life after Bethel, and it prompts the question, “So what are these ghosts?” In my story, they are dysfunctional behavior patterns, residue from the time spent in a highly controlled religious group. These ghosts can be toxic and debilitating roadblocks to a full, happy life after leaving the Club, if they’re not identified and exorcized. They are:

1. Prodigious amounts of misinformation acquired wittingly/unwittingly.
2. Constant guilt due to thinking one is not pleasing God. This occurs when old religious fears are not properly cremated.
3. The loss of cognitive thinking skills, an inability to think for oneself.
4. An insatiable need to have other people or groups do one’s thinking.
5. The inability to articulate well-thought-out religious/philosophical beliefs.
6. A potentially unhealthy attraction to high-control fundamentalist groups promising God’s truth & the correct interpretation of the Bible.
7. The inability to tolerate the insecurity of anything outside the sphere of physical science and a person’s conscious experiences.
8. A need to control other people. (When you’re abused, you can abuse)
9. A lack of self-control related to sex, alcohol or drugs.
10. The inability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.
11. Black and white thinking, as answers were always found in the WT.
12. Difficulty understanding that the only things a person can control are one’s beliefs about events, people, circumstances, etc.
13. Difficulty assimilating into mainstream society due to JW phobias.
14. Stuck on constantly blaming the organization for robbing the best years of one’s life and unable to acknowledge one’s duplicity.
15. Obsessive time and energy spent on projects intended to topple the organization. (Expose them, yes. Toppling them isn’t going to happen as JWs fill a market niche for people in need of heavy-duty structure.)
16. A propensity to underline in ink key points in magazines and books.
17. Suffering persistent shunning by JW family and friends. (For many people, this is the most brutal ghost, and can be severely debilitating.)

I believe the most invasive of the ghosts is misinformation. Shedding “things a person knows that ain’t so” is a very challenging task. It requires cremating old religious fears. It may take years. But it can be done. If I were to leave the organization today, my recovery plan would include reading the following six books, in this order, and here’s why:

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Although a bit apprehensive at first, I was recently asked to help a non-JW mom in a child custody hearing. Due to my story of Growing Up in Mama’s Club – A Childhood Perspective of Jehovah’s Witnesses, she believed I could help convince the court that her three school-aged children should not be baptized as JWs, if that was their choice, until they were 18 years old.

She had married a disfellowshipped JW and early on made a non binding verbal agreement with her husband that the kids would not be raised as JWs. After their divorce, the dad had a change of heart. He was reinstated and began attending meetings sporadically. Several months ago, he started taking the kids to the Kingdom Hall on the Sundays he had custody. As soon as the mom found out, she filed a complaint.

The mom did her homework and provided good documentation to the court to support her concerns. And, she petitioned for me and another ex-Bethelite to be her expert witnesses. The questions and our testimony were to be as follows:

State your name for the Court: Richard E. Kelly

Briefly describe your experiences and expertise related to the Kingdom Hall and the Watchtower Society:

I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness after my mother became a convert when I was four years old. I was baptized at ten. In 1958, my family answered a special calling to “serve where the need was great” and we moved to a small rural town in Nebraska. I started giving one-hour public talks at 15, appointed a ministerial servant at 16, and began to “pioneer” (a special 100-hour per month door-to-door ministry) at 17. At 18, I was invited to live and work at Bethel, the world headquarters for JWs. While there, I was selected to serve with an elite group of public speakers.

After two years, I left Bethel to get married. A year and a half later, I officially resigned from the church. Since my wife decided to stay, we worked out an amiable agreement on how to raise our children. However, in September 1981, a new policy of “shunning” was instituted. Because I was baptized and no longer a believer, I, along with thousands of ex-JWs, was shunned. My parents and siblings refused to speak to me.

In 1998, my youngest sister was murdered by her husband. My mother didn’t inform me until a week after her death. I soon began to write articles and a book about, “Growing Up in Mama’s Club – A Childhood Perspective of Jehovah’s Witnesses.” In 2008, I printed a revised, third edition. I am currently writing a sequel called, “Ghosts from Mama’s Club.”

State for the court within your experiences, what beliefs were of concern for you, not only from your own life, but for that of your children:

• As a child: 1) my grandparents and I would meet a violent death at Armageddon if we didn’t believe the way JWs do. My mom tried to give it a positive spin, saying I would live forever in a paradise-like new world after God destroyed the world, but I knew in my heart that I wasn’t a true believer, so if Mama was right, I wasn’t going to live in paradise with her; 2) I would not be able to go to college; 3) in order to please God, I could not celebrate holidays, my birthday, or associate with non believers; 4) the country I lived in was demonized and serving in the military, pledging allegiance to the flag or standing when the national anthem were cardinal sins; 5) I could not challenge or question church beliefs or policies without being made to feel guilty and I was often told that this kind of reasoning was a sign that I didn’t really love Jehovah God.
• As a parent: I reached an agreement with my wife that: 1) our children would receive blood transfusions if their life depended on it; 2) they could not be baptized until they were adults; 3) our religious beliefs were personal decisions based on research and spiritual needs and I didn’t love God less, and my actions and beliefs were not controlled by the devil, because I wasn’t a JW. 4) While my wife respected our agreement, behind my back, relatives and other well-meaning JWs would send our children letters, talk to them on the phone, or tell them in person things like Armageddon was close and they needed to go to the meetings and read the Watchtower if they didn’t want to be destroyed, etc.

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