Dan Jones Casts Out a Legion of Evil Spirits, Including Spirits Claiming to Have Been at the Carthage Slaughter, From Three Women at Merthyr (1848)

“In five minutes after their arrival, which was seen by some, three females were possessed and many more nearly as bad; however, I perceived the enemy’s design, and having command of the post, I lost no time in returning him a heavy broadside with the artilleries of heaven, by commanding every evil spirit in the place to depart in the name of Jesus Christ, which was responded to by all the audience with such powerful Amens! that the neighbours thought it thundered, that all the devils, except three, run away in a fright. The spirits left one of the three females at the first rebuke, but the others cursed all the elders, calling many by names, with whom the females were totally unacquainted. They said they were at Carthage in the slaughter of the prophets; we compelled them to acknowledge the authority of the priesthood, loudly, to the astonishment of all. I then told the congregation that these women had broken their covenants, and that the devil had taken possession of them in consequence, and that I would not cast them out unless they would repent and renew their covenants; and I proposed to the church to excommunicate them, which was carried unanimously. The spirits then left them, and they were restored to their right minds, and have been humble ever since.”

— Dan Jones, letter to Orson Spencer, dated 3 May 1848, published in The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 10, No. 11 (1 June 1848), p. 174