I don't try and get anybody to believe any you know, I don't care what it's your business. For those that believe, no proof is necessary. For those that don't know, proof is sufficient. I can't make you believe something you don't want to believe. I can only tell you my experience. This is my uncle Dennis, the medium. My experiences in reading came about because through the course of having normal jobs working in a warehouse, drivn't know for what drop whenever I was doing every job I had, you didn't last they closed or I was fired, and it's thought that I wasn't a good worker. It was just that's the way it happened. The last job I had, which I plan on staying are they closed. And at that point in time, I thought to myself, you're either gonna do something you enjoy or something you can do, or you're going to start at the bottom wrong again. And I just didn't want to do that. So I picked up the Tarot deck, which I had used it a long time, and I began to realize that, you know, people were interesting. He learned to read tarot from his mom, who learned from her mom, who learned from her mom on the face they were averaged, low income New Englanders, but in private, the family had been working as mediums, readers, and psychics everywhere from New Age shops to tea rooms. Sort of an old, tiny undercover way of saying New Age shops and at one point where the Boston Police Department cops suck, don't do that for generations. I got to speak with my uncle Dennis a few weeks ago while my mom was visiting him and my auntie Karen in South Carolina. Mom's dad, my grandfather, just passed away, and she's down there to be with them and remember and hang out. They retired there a couple of years ago. But Uncle Dennis Dennis Callahan, fourth generation hereditary, which according to his website, still does do readings. He grew up in what used to be a funeral parlor in Massachusetts, sorry funeral Paula in Massachusetts. That was mean, and he tells me that he became sensitive to spirits, seeing, hearing, smelling beginning around middle school age. He's carried on the family tradition as a professional medium for decades now and was my first connection to spiritual ideas when I was really young. Well him in a distant aunt named Susie who said I was cursed with negativity and wouldn't start living until I turned thirty, which on the first point kind of true. Second point to be determined. I'm so fucking young and virile. But you know, my parents were a little upset. You know, you probably shouldn't tell a ten year old that they're cursed. I don't think it's affected me though, Just kidding anyways, Uncle Dennis, he's a medium, except he doesn't like that word because it comes with all this baggage when you people's talk about being a medium in a psychic I mean, I'm not trying to be mean here, and I'm not saying I'm any better than them. I'm not because there are true people out there to do that, but very shut These people are sort of playing on people's emotions, and that's what they do. Somebody, you know, they lose a son because of addiction. They want to talk to this son. They'll believe anything. Well, you know what, you don't choose who you've talked. When spirit comes through, you don't know who it's gonna be. And if you don't know what you're doing, don't play with it. It is not a game by any search of the imagination. His current reading room has amazing light, these green walls, a pentagram area, rug, a small table, and his tarot cards and ruins. In a separate room is a table full of crystal skulls in a painting that needs to be seen to be believed. It was made by one of his long time clients. I will try to do it justice. It is a painting made of my uncle looking very serious, holding a black cat and a sword. Below him are the phases of the moon. Beside him are a honk in crystal and a goblet. Above him is saturned the stars, a glowing candle, and a massive, massive ghostly angel over his left shoulder, just arms outstretched with these big old wings and no face at all. It's it's terrifying, it's magnificent. You gotta see this painting anyways. Uncle Dennis was a practicing medium and reader in Massachusetts. Could you tell that from the accent. I've spent years getting rid of that, But he's practiced forever there, and I'm biased in obvious ways, but I can say with certainty that he does not abide by anyone's rules on how living a spiritual life works other than his own. That is to say, he talks to ghosts but is not a member of ghost Church. And of the mediums that I've spoken to, he's the most openly skeptical of a lot of readers working today. Let me show you what I mean. You know, it's like the fake psychics. I'm I'm sensing the letter and okay, I agree, you're a moron. Is your employment? Okay? Easily most basic tricks that they use, and it's like that's I used to get very amy because it's like, that's not what I do. Okay, I'm I'm reading a story. I'm looking at these things and putting these things together because people because they're gonna hear this and they gonna think of terrible people are cheaping the more they don't know how to ask a question. I would have people coming me and go, what colored drash? Sho? I wait to the promp. You're gonna sucking ask spiritus what colored drash? Get away to the prom Yeah, the archangel Michael is sitting there, going, I go with a baby blue. I come to us. Intellectual split in the road. Pretty often, you can believe in talking to spirit and think a lot of people who claim to speak with spirits are opportunistic assholes. Members of Cassadega, the spiritualist camp that I visited this year, expressed similar views on mediumship. Part of why the training at Cassadega is so thorough without shutting the door to the possibility of communication. Two things have to be true here. At best. I cannot, in good conscience tell you that there hasn't been a shipload of fraud in this profession. Just as and I'll keep reminding you of this, every religion in existence is burdened with varying degrees of frauds who are happy to exploit the belief or vulnerability of somebody else. One thing that's very interesting about American spiritualism to me is that it's a religion that has existed entirely in a time of mass media. To some degree, unlike most of the big religions, it's a little harder to gloss over any incidents of fraud or dubiousness because they're so well documented. It's not really possible to say, well, yeah, everyone was on board right away, and anyone who wasn't was probably wrong. But in spite of the history of spiritualism, being available in the public sense. Most of it is associated with sensation and scandal, but it's a little harder to nail down the specifics of what spiritualists actually believe. Yes, death is merely a transformation of energy, but there's more than that. There's moving tables and spirit teams and divination tools and things that aren't immediately obvious in neat cliffs notes of their story. So today we return to Cassadega for a gala day and for my first spirit message service, and we check in with the founding Fox Sisters, first brush with modern celebrity, all before hitting the eighth grade. All right, let's get the theme going. Actually, you know what, one more word from my uncle Dennis. And I always tell people if somebody was an asshole in life, they were an asshole when they're a spirit. Okay, I'm not going to suddenly die and be a nice person. Oh I'm dead, I'd better be nice, Thank you, Uncle Dennis. Okay. Theme Songka. The day I arrive at Cassadega, I am fresh off a sleepless night spent at a Super eight on the outskirts of Orlando that was wedged between this mini golf course that had live baby Gators. Is that legal? I guess it's legal. And an outlet mall where you can buy an absolute goblin of a knockoff Mickey Mouse toy. That's another thing about the Cassadega community that has a clear bearing on the sorts of people who come to visit. It's only a half hour from one of the most synthetic tourist capitals on the planet, just an uber ride from disney World, the kind of place that crops up in books with ridiculous fonts that say weird floor and attract curious families on a budget between draining financially punishing days at corporate theme parks. Now, Cassadega pre dates all of this Floridian excess. It was first founded in eighteen ninety four to disney Worlds seventy one, but there's no denying that in the current sense it exists in the same financial ecosystem as the cursed mini mall you can buy a t shirt at that says tinker Bell is My Home girl. Oh my God. And this is one of the main differences between Cassadega and their sister camp in lily Dale, New York, which was founded in the eighteen seventies in the Rochester and Buffalo area and the same camp where the Fox House was relocated as a historical monument for a time before, like most spiritualist landmarks do, for some reason, it burned down under mysterious circumstances. The lily Dale Camp is its own organization, but is very close to Cassadega and how it operates. Mediums live on site, they provide session ends and hold services. They often attract upstate New Yorkers on weekend trips, but not quite the tourist ilk that their southern sister camp does. Cassadega exists in an area of infinity tourists in an area where there's pretty low oversight as it pertains to uh COVID safety. Remember this is the land of Governor Ron De Santis and an environmental climate where they can be open year round where they often called lily Dale can't. On the Sunday I get to Cassadega. The mediums are exhausted. The previous day was their quarterly Gala Day, a fundraising event where camp mediums and community members give talks on their area of expertise and provide quick readings on the sidelines to raise money and keep the camp open. When I tell you this is not a religion of means, I'm not kidding. This event raised them about six thousand dollars and they're over the moon about it. I mean they're struggling to keep their post office open. It all feel very Mickey Rooney, let's go in a barn and save the local whatever kind of vibe. I wasn't able to attend, but I do watch all of these Gala Day talks on Zoom on the bus from Tallahassee, and two mediums talks stand out to me in particular, in part because they have kind of the same old man boomer haircut, but also because the ideas that they're expressing are completely abstract and yet important to spiritualism. I want to tell you about them. The first is by Reverend Dr Don Zangi, presenting a talk called Being Awareness. Reverend Dr Don is another long time cassadegga convert sharing more than a name with a main cast member of the show Oz. Yes, I did pick that up, Like what but anyways, Reverend Doctor Don Zanki approaches the podium in a dan flash is great print, just an absolute dizzying vomit of patterns, and he also wears this Indiana Jones hat, reminding everyone that he'll be preaching tomorrow as well. A lot of his students are there. Don's students seem more fervent and loyal than any other group that I see on the campgrounds, and he's got one of the nicer houses that a medium lives into. That's something that I come to know. You need to be a member of the community to own a house in the area, which requires not only the training, but approval from the board. There's a lot of things that involve approval from the board, including uh me. Some of the houses in Cassadega are in pretty bad shape because mediums don't make a ton of money for people who are consistently labeled as capitalist frauds. But the Reverend Doctor Don's house is tall, it's bright purple, It's got this golden metallic sun hanging on the side. It's bigger than most of the houses, more inviting, and again constantly open to and brimming with students. He's also extremely influenced by Eastern specifically Indian spiritual teachings, and has increa recently tied this into his own curriculum. Yes, he is an old white guy and today he is talking to us about being awareness. He is a character. Today we're talking about what awareness and consciousness is. Awareness or consciousness is everything seen or unseen, he tells us, gesturing to the crowd and telling us how to access the divine within us, spirit that exists in us. You know, spiritualists believe in God sort of, but not that judgmental, punitive God that most of them grew up with. They believe in a loving and forgiving God who moves the energy of spirit around the earth and through us all. So how do we access it? It strays into a combination of Eastern, Western and Gwyneth Paltrow e philosophy. It's about ditching the ego of the lower self and accessing the egoists present higher self. Reverend Dr Don says, your lower consciousness ego personality is living in the three dimen sational world and has nothing to do with the divine within you. He's extremely charismatic, and I had to know who he was before he came to Cassadega. He's got a weird journey and not saying something here. Don ZENI first learned about Spiritualism at the lily Dale Camp. Zangi is from the Buffalo area himself, and he had worked locally at the Zoo in the Museum of Science before starting a longer career at the Eric County Juvenile Detention Center. Being around troubled youth motivated Zenki to found a martial arts and self defense school, with the idea being that kids needed a way to get out physical anger and aggression in a controlled space with discipline and structure. This was a huge success and he had two schools with hundreds of students and to this day is in the Black Belt Hall of Fame of Filipino Martial Arts in Manila in the Philippines. Just a quick aside, yes, this reverend doctor is also a sense and we just need to accept that. Okay. Let that in since a dawn and become reverend doctor down And on one night in he went to a Spiritualist message service in lily Dale, the same kind of service that I would be attending in Cassadega. At each message service, mediums approached the podium, point at someone in the crowd and give them a message from spirit right on the spot. It's pretty incredible, especially when it's done by someone as charismatic as Reverend Doctor down when really since dawn, Like many in his generation, he'd been raised Roman Catholic, but spiritualism spoke to him and he found himself in Cassadega by and never laughed up until recently. The Reverend Doctor has run Sunday lyceums in Cassadega, essentially an adult Sunday school for spiritualists that he curated guest speakers for anyone can attend for free, and all of the lessons and talks are on YouTube, and the curation reflected Don zaying Ki's journey as well. Topics included spiritualism, comparative religions, natural law, and parapsychology, and touched on Zangi's transformative experiences meeting in Indian guru named Satpaul G. Maharaj who visited Cassadega in two thousand and eight and profoundly affected the sense A. Reverend Doctor zank You went on to become a devotee of the Guru and has visited Egypt, India and Machu Picchu since, and he still remains a major proponent of incorporating more Eastern ideas into spiritualism as it exists today. When he took a step back from lyceum in to focus on his classes, he told a local paper this our group is not a religion again, it's the teachings and experiences from what all religions have risen. I find that the teachings of spiritualism and the teachings of the Guru are not incompatible to me. They are part of greater whole. His students, both in Cassadega and at a nearby ashram where they could sit for a weekend sat song where one listens to truth teachings, are all about Reverend Dr Don. This man is so fast, like does he ever wear his black belt during class? I have so many questions, but Don Zangy is too busy telling me about being awareness. His advice is rooted in spiritualism, but it's basically a rehash of that billion dollar piece of advice, be fucking present for once in your life and develop a deeper understanding of consciousness. Man Zangy expands on this by using a Hindu philosophical term called turia, a phrase which here means pure consciousness. He closes by saying, all right, you're awake, well, maybe I put you to sleep, but you're awake, and that is the cult of Reverend Doctor Sense don ZANGI. Another talk I heard at Gala Day was their keynote speaker, another Reverend Doctor Philip DeLong. I'll encounter Reverend Dr Phil again during my stay at Cassadega in a class called Healing one oh one that he was kind enough to let me drop in on at Pastor Debs suggestion. But the first time I hear him speak, he's talking about my spirit team. This is a concept that has actually gone kind of mainstream. You can find it in those YouTube videos I love watching. But it's also a little weird and a little abstract. Your spirit guides are well, I had no idea. There's certainly plenty of groundwork that's been laid here for the concept throughout centuries of religion, but the notion is actually kind of specific here. It reminds me a little of how in scientology you eventually learned that there's aliens. Except this is spiritualism, and so they're not keeping anything from you. Your spirit team is just as normal a concept to them as standing and singing him on a Sunday. Reverend Dr Phil doesn't have the huge personality that Reverend Dr Don does. He's a little shyer, more soft oaken, still with an old man hat, but has a low gray ponytail and a soft voice. He has a full hour to talk to us and wants to use us to tell us how to meet our spirit guides. He shares a little bit about his journey to spiritualism. He had a near death experience that pulled him into the religion. He is something called a crystal skull caretaker. He grew up Catholic. He was formally ordained by the International Association of Metaphysics. This is all very interesting to me, but what I'm more curious about is what people did before they became spiritualists, something that he is a little less worthcoming about than others I talked to. Reverend Doctor Phil tells us that there are extremely specific categories of spirit guides to learn from. Our guides are with us all the time, but the Reverend Doctor tells us that they do not interfere with our free will. There is the master Guide, the spiritual Guide, the emotional guide, and the mental guide. Reverend Doctor Phil says this we appoint them, but it is all toward our spiritual development how we treat our guides, and it is very powerful how you treat your guide. So okay, it's most important to meet your master guide first. I default to what I think of as a master which is a woman who is a little taller than me and clothes that fit her really well, and she has like this spine that looks good from every angle. When I think of master guide, I think of a woman who can really really pull off a hat, a woman who would not have spoken to me in high school. But Reverend Dr Phil says that the master guide is actually a very specific vision. Your master guide, he says, will appear to you in a cape. A cape, but okay, a spirit in a cape without exception. They got to be wearing a cape and they're your master guide. Reverend Doctor Phil says this, some of you will be scared when you first see this guide, but remember, fear is the opposite of love. I promise myself I will not fear the spirit in the cape when he comes. No way, everyone has a master teacher, and every master teacher has mastered life and death. The next guide that we're introduced to is our doctor guide. When he refers to as the physician. This is the spirit guide that looks over your physical health. This guide is counterbalanced by the material doctor or the philosopher. This guide oversees our career and finances, and we call upon them to direct our decision making and blending our spiritual and personal lives. Essentially the vibes doctor. I would love to get in touch with the vibes doctor because my life is so funked up right now. The material doctor is the guy who handles all the law of attraction stuff the secret. But Reverend Dr Phil warns us, don't be too specific in your manifestations or you'll always be disappointed and get your material doctor's ass. And a little twist, and he mentioned a karma teacher. I'm paraphrasing here because the spiritualists in CASCADEGA were not able to export this zoom call like they said they could because they are old and they live in Florida. But Reverend Dr Phil says something like this instant karma does not exist. Forgiveness plays a part in the lesson the Karma teacher gives, and it's here that he moves to an element of spiritualism and the spirit team that I take the most issue with the concept of the Native American or a Native protector guide. This is one of the most major red flags of spiritualist rhetoric that hasn't changed at all in the over century and a half that the religion has existed, and it's a topic that I'll be getting into in much further detail in future episodes. In short, this majority white religion frequently invokes images of a blend of tropes that are levied against Indigenous Americans as guides and magical beings intended to guide them a white colonizer and assumed protagonist. Given that there is a notable lack of Indigenous members of the religion and that Cassadega itself exists on seminal ground, this is tone deafness at best, an act of perpetuation of stereotypes at the expense of the Indigenous community. At worst, It's worth mentioning that the volume of Indigenous imagery that American spiritualism invokes at Cassadega never references the violence committed toward that same community on the ground where spiritualism now struggles to survive. And we will be circling back to this in more depth and future episodes. But I mean my God. Reverend Dr Phil does expand the idea of a native teacher to be a spirit from anyone's country of origin. He said that if you are from England, this could be a druid spirit or a Viking, and on and on, and it's this guide's duty to be a protective guide or to give you strength and quote courage to speak the spoken truth unquote, as well as healing. More indigenous tropes pop up here. He says that quote, they are close to nature. They work with the plant, animal, and mineral kingdom, and they use animal guides and totems unquote. He arbitrarily says that you can have as many as nine spirits with you at a time, and I'm starting to honestly get claustrophobic to think of this many ghosts in a room with me at any given time. He takes a moment here to address the idea of spirit guides conceptually and how they might chafe with tenets of other religions, especially the Catholicism he grew up with. He said that he grew up with an imaginary friend who he later learned was a spirit guide, a little boy named and plays bear with me here Tommy Tommy chustle Fire, who immigrated from England to the United States and the mid eighteen hundreds and was both kidnapped and raised by an indigenous tribe. I just so Tommy, Tommy chessel Fire returned to Phil as a crystal guide. And my head is about to explode hearing this weird racist story. When Reverend Dr Phil drops another bomb and says that one of his spirit guides is JP Morgan. Like the something interesting is that the more I get used to spending time with spiritualists, I hear one hundred things like this a day that removed my brain from my spinal cord. He said that his spirit guide was JP Morgan and doesn't give anyone the opportunity to ask a single question and to round them off. You've got your nurse guide and your joy guide, and mercifully, that's the whole team. That's a that's a lot of guys. The Master and the physician are your most important guides. But holy sh it, that's a lot of guides. But the Reverend Doctor isn't just there to tell us who these guides are. His speech is on how to work with them. He guides us through this fifteen minute guided meditation to meet someone. Taking us through a pretty standard meditation, You're filled with divine light and close your eyes and walk down to a dune beach where you're joined by your spirit animal. You walk to the beach and your spirit guide pops out of a fire. You ask them a question, they give you an answer, and I'm happy to play along with this. I close my eyes, I go down to the beach and I see my grandma and the fire. I asked her how she is, and in my mind she looks so happy and very beautiful. She asks me how my dad is, and I say he's good. And then Reverend Dr Phil instructs the spirit guide to go back into the flame on the beach that doesn't exist, and so she does. The meditation has you walk away from the beach, back up the stairs and into the temple. You open your eyes and Reverend Dr Phil says to keep talking to our spirit guides. Ask them questions and be patient and observant as they answer them over the course of weeks and months. He says, to ask them for what you want. He says, to ask them what their names are, and for all of the freaky, weird stuff and the Tommy Tommy Chestil fire and the JP Morgan of it all. That night I put my feet on the ground and ask my freaky caped master spirit what their name is before going to sleep in the chlorine stained sheets of a Super eight in Orlando. I'm going to drink the kool aid. All right, We are vaulting back in time. We're getting into our little hot tub time machine, people, and we're going back to where the first spiritualists, as it were. The Fox sisters are two mediums. Kate Fox middle schooler and Maggie Fox high schooler, are met with their eldest thirtysomething sister, Leah Fox, who's just arrived at the family home where her siblings are said to be speaking with spirits. By April of eighteen forty eight, things had really started to pop off in Hydesville, New York. Every day Maggie and Kate would bring through new information from the spirit doing the wrappings. It claimed to be the spirit of a shoe peddler killed over the five dollars to his name, and these answers started to yield day after day information that reflected the house's previous tenant. So there had been a renter of the Fox Home named John Bell, just as the spirit had said, The spirit revealed that his name was either Charles b Rosna or Rosma, depending on the source, and for the record, Charles b Rosna or Rosma has never been confirmed as e sting at least by this name. It said that John Bell had once hired a shoe peddler, but for your reference, a Rosma never materialized in official records, But locals were captivated by him, and it's not surprising why the majority of people assembled at the Fox Home would have had a lot in common with Charles Rosna Rosma. They were working class people themselves, often subjected to the John Bell's of the world, getting fucked over by those with more money than they had. What was unfortunate, and would become one of spiritualism's first real ethical knots, was that John Bell was a real person who was being accused of murder by a spirit whose name no one could verify as a person who would ever existed. Later in her life, Maggie Fox reflected on this in a book written by Harry Houdini. Did I mention that Harry Houdini, the world most famous magician, would later develop a vested interest in disproving spiritual is um did I mention that he did that because he had an even more vested interest in undercutting the work of his former best friend, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who, before you start banging your head against the table, is indeed the author of Sherlock Holmes, because yeah, man, spiritualism is real. Weird. We haven't even gotten to the part where Frederick Douglas shows up. But Maggie Fox describes this first week of visits later in life, deflecting a little bit and saying that the discovery of John Bell was completely a notion of her neighbors. The firsthand accounts at the time chafed with this a little bit, but as you'll continue to learn, everyone's got their own story. Here, Maggie says, quote, they the neighbors, were convinced that someone had been murdered in the house. They asked the spirits through us about it, and we would wrap one for the spirit answer yes, not three, as we did. Afterward. The murder, they concluded, must have been committed in the house. They went over the whole surrounding country trying to get the names of people who had formerly lived in the house. Finally they found a man by the name of Bell, and they said that this poor innocent man had committed a murder in the house, and that the noises had come from a spirit of the murdered person. Poor Bell was shunned and looked upon by the whole community as a murderer unquote. Tough break for John Bell, but there were many in the community that discredited the Fox sisters from the start for this reason alone. But the draw of spirit was too much for most people to ignore. By the time their sister Leah arrived in the first week of April, hundreds were coming to the Fox home every day to witness the wrappings, in a move that was foreshadow where American spiritualism was headed. The neighbors wanted to know more from the spirit than what had happened to the deceased. They wanted to know about themselves or confirmed things about the great beyond that they already knew or wished was true. This would eventually evolved into people seeking out they're dead in particular, but in these first weeks, Hidesville neighbors were happy to quiz Charles Rosna Rosma on the specifics of their own lives. Communicating with the Spirit became a bizarrow community building activity. Neighbors would quiz the Spirit on how many children, they had, how old they were, their full names. They were almost definitely learning about each other as the Spirit relaid the information. The questions were yes or no at first, but the girls quickly developed a somewhat more sophisticated system, with the Spirit having it wrap. When certain letters were called, the Spirit attempted to lead a neighbor with a candle to the seller where they were buried, but digging hadn't begun before Margaret took the girls from the house for good, going to their neighbor's house for their own protection. During this time, the Spirit also made its religious leanings known. It made no noise when asked if it believed in the Universalist doctrine, then made a strong noise when asked about Methodism. It may not be a coincidence that Maggie and Kate's father, John, was a devoted Methodist. A week after the girls first called their mom to their room, half the population of Arcadia County, a few hundred people came to the Hydesville house one night. It was the Fox sister's first big crowd, but definitely not their last. The immediate community tried to guard the house and its spiritual integrity, all of a week old, from the masses that wanted to go inside and ask the spirit questions. At this time, Maggie and Kate were surrounded by the spectrum of what it could mean to be a woman in a time where the definition of women in society was changing. In one sense, they were about to bear witness to the Seneca Falls Convention and the fight for women's right going mainstream. On the other end, there was still the reality of day to day. Their options were to get married like their sisters Elizabeth than Maria had. They could work in one of these new fangled factories, or they could become a teacher in the way that their oldest sister Leah had to support herself and her daughter. Back at the house, Maggie and Kid's older brother David took charge of continuing the investigation of where Charles Rosma's spirit claimed his body was buried. After digging three feet, he hit an underground stream, stalling progress and tried for days to get further, but weren't really able to. Even as the crowds of hundreds continued to show up, and show up, and show up. Mary Redford, the neighbor, now convinced of the spirit's authenticity, started asking it bigger questions. Still, She told the local reporter that she quote asked if there was a heaven to attain and got three raps unquote, an affirmative from the spirit and an interesting one, as this would be significantly course corrected in the years to come, as it's understood now spiritualists fully in they continuity of life and not a Christian heaven or hell. Still, the neighbor received a different answer and pressed the spirit on what had become of a child who she'd lost. Almost right away, the locals were more invested in their own stories than what happened to some random shoe peddler who may or may not have existed five years ago, and the shoe peddler spirit was happy to oblige. The community continued to attempt to identify where the wrappings were coming from, and many suspected fraud. By April twelve, local papers were fully engaged in the sensation. A paper called The Western Argus reported, quote, the good people of Arcadia, we learn, are in quite a fever in consequence of the discovery of an underground ghost or some unaccountable noise. Picks and bats were at once brought into requisition, and on digging down about four feet, a stream of pure water gushed forth and filled the ghost hole unquote, not the ghost hole. The room where the spirits were wrapping in the Fox house remained dark, and Maggie and Kate remained on the bed where they had first called their mother. Their family physician was summoned to the house by their father when Kate was said to have gotten sick, at which point the doctor reported that there had been quote great commotion in the room of his patient, snapping, cracking noises all about the bed. As fast as he changed places, the raps would do the same unquote. He also mentions that he thought that Kate maybe quote, in some way manipulating the joints or muscles of the fingers, toes and knees unquote, put a pin in that or a bone crack. Manifesting spirit wraps by dislocating their joints and muscles is a charge that will haunt the Fox sisters, unbeknownst to them now, for the next forty years of their life, and will haunt the religion until right now. But even with light pushback from local residents and press, the local interest in the sisters and their spirit rappings steadily increased and gained credibility. When the family who had lived in the house before the Fox family came forward with similar charges, they told the press they had also heard the raps. Local reporter E. E. Lewis writes, quote, hundreds have been there. Skeptics have first carefully examined the premises, have gone into the ghostly presence, still incredulous and disposed to treat the affair with levity, have held converse with the unknown one until the cold sweat oozing from every poor has coursed down their limbs, and they have been compelled to acknowledge that they felt themselves in the presence of one from the spirit country unquote. For good measure, he included a petition signed by more than forty of the real life John Bell's supporters, who insisted that he was not a murderer. But for all his thorough work, one thing Lewis never did was interview Maggie or Kate Fox. Barbara Weisberg in her biography, it mentions an interesting through line about the Fox women, that being that they suffered from intense migraines their whole lives. Some suggest this led to an increased sensitivity to the supernatural, and others had other opinions, but Wiseberg says that this manifests as a quote pain that can create a sense of standing outside oneself, of not being oneself but another person altogether unquote. Leah arrived and witnessed her youngest siblings working with spirit and saw how terrified her parents were and how her brother David was struggling to hold everything together. She suggested that the girls be separated. She would take Kate back to Rochester and Maggie would remain in Hydesville, and they would see if the spirit followed. It did follow them both. By the end of summer eight, the Fox sisters were notorious and had already left their father back in Hydesville, beginning to entangle with the progressive literati of Rochester. They were considered extraordinary, potentially leaders of science or religion, or both, and they were young women forging their own weird path in a way that may not have been possible even ten or fifteen years before. And Leah kind or fifteen years older saw her younger sisters, saw the changing times, and saw an opportunity. All it was going to take was one little white lie to get the girls on board, and that lie was that everything was going to be okay, okay. Back to the present, or I guess the recent post past services in Cassadega take place at Colby Temple, named for the camp's founder. Colby Temple is the five billionth thing to be named for the formal founder of Spiritualism. A big beige cement in wood church with the same wooden cabin interior that defines every camp building. It was first built shortly after the camp was established, at first an octagonal building where Colby himself, a well known trans medium, would conduct services and seances. This was later rebuilt into the pale sand brick structure it is today not too pretty from the outside, but has a cozy congregational church vibe on the inside. There are about forty people at the service on the morning I attend, and we're handed the same Xerox programs, blue hardcover hymnals and sit in the same creaky pews as boomers talk too loudly that I associate the church I went to as a kid, but of course there are differences. Healing is already taking place in the back of the church when I sit alone with my program and my hymnal. There are a number of students from the community who will be evaluated on their healing performance, and they're all lined up as those attending service sit with their eyes closed. A healing looks like someone slowly waving their hands methodically energy healing while the recipient reacts everywhere from nervous twitching, not being sold on it, or appearing deeply meditative and healed. Depending on what they write on the little yellow slips they'll be handed for the complimentary service afterward, a student could get one step closer or further from being recognized as a Cassadega healer, the process that takes about three years. I flipped through the program and I'm shocked at how familiar it is to the services I grew up attending. There is an invocation. There are candle slit for mind, body, and Spirit. Instead of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I mean health. The ceremony opens with a singing of Amazing Grace, a moment for the spiritualist hymnel. It is this fascinating blend of Christian hymns that do not reference have for nor health, the two things spiritualism does not recognize. But you'd be surprised there's a lot of diet Christianity at play here. The service frequently invokes Jesus in the context of being a great spiritual healer. It does not shy away from the Christian hits, but it also sprinkles in a number of Spiritualist hymn originals that lean more heavily on the idea of the religion, specifically lines like y oh boy, the singing is the singing is running the service today. Is the first person I spoke with connected with Cassadaga, Pastor Debt, who encouraged me to visit the camp in spite of my not being quite cleared by the press board yet, and whose kindness extends through my trip and into the present. She is very, very familiar and kind in person. She wears a cross around her neck, she has these gold bauble earrings, short haircut, long blue navy sleeves. Very pastoral. You know, you can tell she grew up Christian and you can tell that she very, very firmly believes in spiritualism. At the front of the room. She leads us in a hallmark of a spiritualist church ritual, a moment in which the congregation recites the tenets of the church, which explains the core ideas of the religion more clearly than I ever could on my own. So let's let them explain themselves. We recite in unison. We believe in intelligence. We believe that the phenomenon of nature, both physical and spiritual, or the expression non infinite intelligence. We affirm that a correct understanding of such expression, and living in importance therewith, constitutes true religion. We affirm that the existence and personal identity of the individual continue to change. Called death, we affirm that communication with the so called dead is capt scientifically proven by the phenomena of spiritualism. We believe that the highest morality is contained in the Golden Room. Whatsoever he would that others should do unto you, do you also unto them. We affirm the moral responsibility of the individual, and that he makes his own happiness or unhappiness as he obeys or disobeys nature's physical and spirituals. We affirmed that the doorway in a reformation is never closed against any human soul. Here or hereafter we have for recepts of prophecy and healing, invading the Bible our divine attributes through mediumship. Then we read the prayer of spiritual healing from the back of our hymnal because, in another nod to Christianity, spiritualists do remote healing for congregation members who expressed interest, in the same way that Christians often pray remotely, especially during COVID times. I request healing from my immediate family who I love, and for my haters who are very lost. Healers sanitize their hands between healings while the rest of us are guided by Pastor Dub in a guided meditation. Her voice is calming, assured, bringing energy in and out as a body. As a dull music plays in the background, the vague humming of something spiritual happening. We sing another hymn and it's rough spiritualists or not singers or organists, but it brings us to the speaker of the day. It's your boy, Reverend Dr don Zangi. He has Pastor deb drop into his intro that yes, he's been to Machu Picchu, okay, And he takes the podium and yet another incredible outfit. My man's wearing a black sweat band around his bald head. My son says, got a cross around his neck. He's wearing a purple button down. He's got a burgundeed pastor quote whatever this is called the draping thing unquote. I'll let him explain himself. So we talked about spiritualism. That's such a big subject. The characteristics of spiritualism go back way before when consciousness first dawned on humans. They starting to realize themselves as humans. They realized that there were something bigger than themselves, and today we call it spiritualism. So yes, I've been here a long time. As long as Jerry and I came here. I'd like to say it was a blame slate. I'm not even sure I wasn't a slate and know nothing about anhing. We're all seeking something higher and better than ourselves, and for many of us, it starts with what spiritualism is about. And so yes, I've traveled, have done some things that involved in many other spiritual endeavors, but it starts with we don't die. That is basically to all auso teric and metaphysical teachings. It starts with that and the only place I know they can prove that. The spiritualism in this place, I hear because we're you're to be here before the truth of what I'm talking about becomes evident. I've seen it, I've heard it. I don't believe it, I know it to be true. The spirit comes through. Well, there's still a message you're reading, and you can't deny with spirit manifest in physical ways that you can't deny with spiritual healing helps you and perhaps no one else and nothing else can. Your consciousness begins to open up heels like. It's pretty anti capitalist. Mr. King of the Dojo. He criticizes other religions Pensiant for taking taking taking money from its congregation instead of enriching their lives. Cradle Rave got cost of something. But again, there's this element of Christianity included this. I don't love Christianity, but I'm not a big Bible thumper, but there's wonderful teachings in there, if you know how to look. I kind of love Reverend Dr Don honestly. He has these phrases. He'll use stuff like I've got three thousand books and another one coming in the mail, and he describes the feeling of true faith in spirit of certainty, you know what I mean. He's a proponent of continual learning, of looking at other religions to see what is valuable about them to add to your own spiritual journey. He describes his spirit guides and how they change over time because people grow and change over time. Several times he puts God in quotation marks when talking about it. The service ends and we're encouraged to go to the message service down at the Andrew Jackson Davis Building, the bookshop meeting hall hybrid and I trickle down with the crowd. It's a solid half tourist, half regular crowd that heads back down the street and into the gift shop, where I flipped through a copy of a book called Is Mother Nature Mad? Before heading through the double doors to my first spiritualist message service. Here's how it works. There are five mediums and forty people, all of us sitting in the hall at a long, wooden cafeteria style table. It's kind of summer camp meets night class at twelve thirty in the afternoon, and we're surrounded by cassadaga paraphernalia. It wouldn't sign declaring where we are a framed copy of the Spiritualist Principles, framed black and white prints of their founders, photos from the one hundred twenty five year celebration that took place a couple of years ago. A few paltry cups of coffee that were room temperature long before we got here. How are you going to have a thriving religion without halfway decent coffee? I mean, guys, get it together. The room hushes as the events organizer introduces the service. This is the time where mediums come to the front podium like auctioneers, point at one of us and say, yes, Spirit has a message for you. Then spends the next two minutes describing what the spirit looks like, what their relationship to you is, what their messages, all while tacitly confirming that it is resonating through nods of yes or no from the person listening. The yes and no is important. We'll get there and each medium gets a turn. The room hushes as the first pastor takes the podium and begins. It's here where I start to put some general observations on how different mediums read differently. It has just as much to do with personal style as any other public speaking or art form does this. First Pastor is gentle but direct in her delivery. Pastor deb comes up and her voice is musical, and she's very descriptive. It's kind of great how much description she gives. Oh, there's an old woman standing behind you with her hand on her shoulder. Do you know who I'm talking about. There's a lot of older women who show up in these readings of spirit because statistically it's who you're most likely to be looking for. Grandmothers. For the younger set, of which there are not many. The only people are in their twenties, have come with her parents, or they're me, and old women appear as deceased mothers. For the more middle aged people who are trying to make contact and send of the people who raised them and then disappeared one day, it's during this session that if you made it through the ghost church service proper, your belief in what the spiritualists do is truly tested. Sure, you can say the tenants, but when someone comes to you with a spirit message, do you believe it or not? The reaction in the room about forty people, again mostly but not all white and middle aged, About half tourists and half regulars. Is generally positive, but definitely mixed. You can tell when someone wants to be there to receive a message. They kind of lean forward in their seat a little. They're quick to answer the yes or no questions of whether it's resonating. They usually seem to have some sort of idea of who they want to contact. You can also tell when a skeptic is a believer's plus one, whether it's their friend, their spouse, their kids, their friend from college that is maybe curious but sits back legs crossed, takes a little more time to answer, or questions show me what you fucking got kind of energy. Sometimes they seem impressed with the specificity of who or what comes through, and other times their eyebrows rise a little if the message isn't resonating or appears too vague for their liking. Here are some of the spirits that come through at the message service. One says, I'm seeing an old woman behind you. She's a little sexy. One says, I'm seeing an older woman behind you. She's tall and looks all about business. Someone says, I'm seeing a man behind you and he's a soldier. He came up in the military and was served well by his experience in the military. Another says, I'm seeing a medium sized dog running around and this makes someone burst into tears right away. Someone else says he looks kind of like gill Again, does everyone know who Gilligan is? And the spirits aren't just described either. When you receive a standard message like this, the recipient will first get a description of the person in question, and then a mess from them directly, stuff like this. One says, he's saying, you're all play and no work. Do you have a job because you live for pleasure And it's not pleasure that's hurting anyone, it's bringing joy, So keep doing it. Another message I liked. They're telling me that you're not finished. There's a new venture and you need a big open sky and space, maybe some sort of trip. Some people cry at least one really really wants to understand but can't quite get there. How tall was the man standing there? She asks? How old was he? Who's a child with him? Well it could be this guy, but well, no, that doesn't match up with the height you described. And no, I don't have any kids and haven't lost any kids close to me. There are people who want to connect the can't, and the earnestness with which one medium tries to meet her in the middle is interesting. When a message hits it's exciting, and when it doesn't, it pings a little skeptic in my own brain. We were told at the beginning of the service to switch our phones off so as not to introduce whatever cell phone waves into the air and interrupt spirit. But the mediums don't turn their phones off at all. They're on their phones while their peers are at the podium the whole time, like their stand ups waiting to go on stage. Two of them show each other memes on their phones and giggle softly while a woman who came with her college friends receives the spirit message from a dead brother across the room. It's interesting there's this contradiction going on right in front of us. But at the same time, it's kind of fun to watch mediums be friends and show each other memes while someone else talks to a ghost right next to them. And you know who is one of the seven people who does not get a reading in the entire room, listener, It was me, And it's hard not to feel self conscious. About it. I'm sitting right in the front, and I can't tell if I'm being overly cautious by feeling that the mediums already know who I am, given my status of being under consideration by the PR committee, that very well could be in the room with me right now. And I learned moments later. Absolutely is when the service ends. I approached Pastor Deb to introduce myself. As she texts someone, She's got a lot on her plate. She's got an elderly parent, she's got a day job over an hour outside of Cassadega. She's a pastor, she's a girl friend, she's the head of PR. She's tired, but she's incredibly nice to me and is enthusiastic when I shyly introduced myself. This is not my strength in this world. I love people and I love learning about them, but the approach is not my strength. Dev tells me that everyone is exhausted from gala day, and those within earshot agree, but they raised over six thousand dollars. It was a success, and it ties into what she told me on the phone a couple of days before. There is an uptick and interest in the Spiritualist camp and in the last year, potentially due to the mass loss of life with COVID. I want you to keep in mind that six thousand dollars is a big deal for this religion, all but an endangered species. We're standing in a hall that hasn't been updated in nearly fifty years, and there's not enough coffee and styrophone cups or snacks to go around scientology. This is not a religion that can really afford to court new members. This is not I have significant PTSD with moms who have pastor Deb's haircut due to my time in MENSA. You can reflect on that on your own time, thank you very much. But Deb is extraordinarily nice and eager to introduce me to other members of the pr committee who are present a list that is not publicly available. But not everyone here seems to share her enthusiasm for meeting me. There's one volunteer who isn't a medium, that is extremely kind, kind of an alpha type, who is in the middle of sweet talking someone else saying he can talk to me when it's approved, And one who is so nervous about my intentions that she crosses her arm and doesn't shake my hand when I reach out to her. The whole flurry is very quick, and Pastor Dab is on her phone for most of it, and so I try not to let it sink into my bones as the rejection by mediums that it feels like. It's one thing to feel rejected by someone and it doesn't feel good, But it's another thing to be rejected by someone who believes that they are connected with a higher power and know whether your intentions are good or bad. This is an anxiety that will follow me through the entire week. If you're anything but completely skeptical. It's not just a rejection from a Floridian. It's a rejection from a Floridian and the entire fucking ghost realm, ghosts that have their own opinions and ties to infinite intelligence. Over the course of the week, I see a number of mediums donate to Cassadega on their way out of their services where they've just been volunteering. This is a clear community effort. It's the coffee hours of my youth with even less resources, no Dungan, don'tus budget, plus a light smattering of talking to the debt. So now you have a better feel for what Ghost Church is about there are some elements of diet Christianity. Then they hit you with the spirit messages and the spirit teams and all the elements of the religion that are considered to be unusual. But these elements don't come from nowhere. Both the Fox Sisters in the mid nineteenth century and people in Cassadega and other spiritualist sites right now formed their religious practices by pulling from elements of other religions and traditions, and especially from the concept of the seance. So next week we're going to look at what that history is, how the spiritualists interpreted it to make it their own. And yes, I am going to have a full on conversation with a table in Florida. All that, plus I walk forty minutes to a gas station to get some pringles. Next week on Ghost Church. Oh wait, and thank you to my uncle. Then, as Callahan, we will be hearing from him one more time. And I'm not saying that there's a heaven or hell. What I'm saying is there is something more than we are certainly aware. It just doesn't make sense to me that all we have is life. And you know, I love atheist because those are the people that are really screwed because you don't believe in heaven, you don't believe in hell, and when you die, you ain't a fucking no place to go. You know, Well, Mormons, That's that's my biggest feed My biggest fear is that Mormans had it right, because I'll be like standing at the gates of Heaven with an extra large coffee, going, all right, that's enough, see you next week. Ghost Church is a Cool Zone Media production created, written, and hosted by me Jamie Loftus. Guest voices in this episode came from the wonderful Miles Gray and Daniel Goodman. The show is produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Ian Johnson. Our theme song is by Speedy Ortiz, That's c DG Clee, Andy Moholt, Ardres Whiteside and Joey Dubeck. The music is by Zoe Blade h