We all want to believe. And there are many things in this life and in this world that we will not understand. There are things that have happened to me that I can't explain. I have seen things, and do I see shadows? Why sea goes? Yes? Does it scan the living? Be Jesus out of me every time? Yes? I ship my kids. Jesus. What the fun was that? Of course he's back, Baby, he had to be back. That's my uncle Dennis. He is a medium and reader originally from Massachusetts who now practices in the Carolinas. He was my introduction to spiritualism. And there's no one I trust more to take me on a journey through spiritualism to reach its logical end. I'm not one of these people it says, do we talk to the dead? See, That's where I divert because I don't necessarily think we talked to that as much as they can send us messages, and one of the best ways to do that is to be aware of the message that this setting. You have to be aware of the kinds of messages that are sent to you. And that's all I'm really doing. When you read taro or anybody reads tarot and Like I said, I don't know who's going to hear this, but I know you're gonna get a lot of hate mail, Thank you very much, because I really don't give a fuck. Um. It's a question of understanding and taking away this mystique so that people can start to help themselves and use these things. A good reader will never tell you what to do. They'll present information. That's all they're gonna do. Welcome to the final episode of ghost Church for now. Today we're going to take a step back and take a look at some bloose ends in Cassadega, in spiritualism, and with you and me, of course, the little paras social devil relationship we've formed. There are people out there, they pretend to do what they're doing. And I've done parties, and I've done a lot of different things. And what I'll do with a party is I'll say to somebody who's who thinks they're the least psychic person here, you know, and everybody, okay, whoever, and I'll have them stand up in front of these people and I'll say, I'll whisper in there, this is what you're gonna say. That's what you're gonna say. You have five people in front of you. You're sensing the letter on You never said a name, you never said it was male, you never said it was female. You're sensing the letter. It's almost guaranteed that's somebody in that audience and says, oh, my father's name was Richard. Well, thank you, because I never said it was your father. I never said it was male, and I never said her name was Richard. You must be the fucking psychic, as you gave me all the information so you can say just about anything. And one of the favorite things is somebody has a piece of jewelry. You know how easy it is to expand on this time. This is why I get angry because you're playing on people. You using these these tricks, if you will. I'm not using tricks at all. I'm laying down a card and I'm saying to you, this is what the CAD means, this is what the number means, the slip civil means. I like my uncle Dennis's attitude towards spiritualism. It really has informed my own as I've worked on this show. He holds this core belief in life after death with a desire to sniff out bullshit that's hurting people, because that's the problem, right, the stuff that hurts people, the stuff I can't prove that brings people peace in a way that they have some control over. Hell, yeah, go for it. But one thing it's hard to not understand is why there's so much frustration around the idea of mediums and psychics in general, because there are some dark roads. I'm thinking particularly of psychics that capitalize on the grief of others, grieving parents, grieving siblings, grieving children, who collude with the police and make big entertainment deals. I lost my boyfriend tragically um a few years ago. They have found I've had such a hut time since everything. The reason why you didn't find him this because he didn't water and find him in water. It's like the girl is missing in a Ruba. You can't find somebody. It was September eleven, there was he was a fireman. But does this girl look familiar to you? Know? She does? I worked this case. This is a girl who you said was beaten and killed. Okay, this little girl is me and you told somebody that she's dead. Wait a minute, you didn't disappear. I'm right here. Well that's interesting, isn't it. Somebody was known either for working with alcohol or they had a problem with it. The brother that died, okay, how don't you guys want to four? Oh? Yes, okay. And out of the four of you, three are similar, one is different. Yes. Yes, your son Brian is calling your mother bitch. Yes, I don't have a Brian. Now, to be clear, these psychics are not spiritualists or officially affiliated with the American spiritualist movement, but your mediumship plays and is publicly interpreted very similarly respectively. Those mediums were Sylvia Brown, author of over forty titles. Millionaire famously told the mother of a missing child that her child had died, something that proved to be false, but the mother died believing it was true. The second person you heard was Laurie Macquarie, who was advised on over five hundred cases in her career. The third was John Edward, who will We'll get to in a moment. These are some of the meanest people in the world. I absolutely agree. They approached the grieving, not the other way around. They promised results, they promised specificity, and they promise it now in a way that most spiritualist mediums I've met would completely disagree with. These types of mediums play into the popular idea of mediums, ones that can get anyone to come through at will with the exact information you want. There's no hit and there's no miss, just good edits and good hair and good information. I grew up watching mediums like this on TV, and at the time, my mom and I were very into it. I used to watch this medium called John Edward, who's still working now. I've listened to a few of his audiobooks to prepare for this show. Over the years, he's been busted many times. He's been accused of both hot and cold reading extensively, but speaking to the pit in my stomach that started with him. Check this anecdote out shortly after nine eleven, when his show Crossing Over a Staple with the Loftest Women was at an all time high in popularity on Basic Cable, Edwards producers famously convinced grieving families of the victims of nine eleven to come on to the show in order to boost ratings. During sweeps. Edward claimed to have no idea, only for a trade magazine to indicate otherwise, and the special was pulled. He was and is a hustler who spent a good portion of the book I read for this podcast, two thousand and four's crossing over simply defending himself against the huge slew of expose that had come in, especially a damning one in Time magazine. He tries to play it cool, as if they're all haters, saying I feel myself getting less and less angry at the cynics and more and more I feel sorry for them. Okay, Well, if there's one thing I've learned from Ghost Church, a lot of smoke usually means something, especially when the medium is heavily profiting. And this was a guy who draws the line basically nowhere. When it comes to this kind of medium, there's no moral ambiguity. Fuck these people absolutely fun opportunists who prey on people, charge thousands of dollars, and then feel the need to put on a highly publicized show in order to justify their behavior. But here is the complicated thing. Most mediums at Cassadega would completely agree with you on that. So without getting all hashtag not all mediums for this last episode, stop asking yourself whether you believe in communication with the dead or not Honestly, I don't care what you think about that. What I think matters more are the ethics and the emotions being taken into consideration when someone believes that is happening, which, for all their faults, I think is a pretty strong element of modern spiritualism, at least as I've experienced it. Because the impulse to want to find a way to contact the dead as a way of grieving is a human impulse. It's just as human as the impulse that some of the people you just heard speaking have had to exploit that grief for money and clout. It's the same instinct that's inspired artists and writers and filmmakers to explore how death could look. There's a bajillion famous movies and plays and TV about the dead returning with purpose and love and a lot of confusion. Your king Hamlets, your Caspers, your unaired ABC pilot from the late eighties, Pocchinsky. Peter Boyle is a tough, ill mannered cop who was run down. I'm a lot to do that, but that's not the end of his story. Now now he's reincarnated surprise as a street wise bulldog in Pocinsky, What are you Gonna do now. Well, first I'm going to try licking myself, and then I'm going to catch my kila. I think the closest thing I've received to a divine gift during the production of this show was someone showing me Pucchynsky but speaking to this human impulse to want to explore life after death. American spiritualism very much belongs in that conversation. We've tackled a lot in this series. It's intersection with industrialism, with feminism, with science, with colonialism. American spiritualism boils down to an attempt to understand what happens to literally everyone, and the ideas behind it aren't going to work for everyone, and today's spiritualists kind of expand their reach beyond the classics of seances and speaking with the dead. During my time in Cassadega, I received messages about relationships with living people, about the future, about spirit guides about where I'll live, where I won't live. Need we remind of business and state of Florida. I'm not going to kick him out of business here do you live here? Well, geez, Florida, What did I ever do to your good? Just like taking get me causing sad shapen st and we goof course we look the fair every word love happen down. Welcome back, Pacceynsky's to our last Lauridian communion with the dead. Or now, now that we've healthily established that a cab includes psychic detectives, let's return to the land of the people's mediums over in Cassadega. It's a place where things are changing. The last major shift at the camp came when the Boomers arrived during the Vietnam War era, bringing new spiritual ideas and a less rigid commitment to the Christian adjacent nous of it all that defined early American spiritualism. So after the turbulence of the early decades at the camp, the fire that nearly destroyed the hotel, Cassadega in moving it into private hands. Spiritualisms barely surviving wave after wave of skepticism, the Camp took another decisive step in asserting themselves as an independent organization. In a critical moment came for the Camp, Cassadega broke from the oldest spiritualist organization in the country, the National Spiritualist Association of Churches the n s a C. In the book Cassadega the South's oldest spiritualist camp. The Camp historians stated that the main reason this was decided was because of differences and opinions on how to certify a medium. This is an understandable eternal issue within spiritualism. To this day. You'll find spiritualists on their guard about what constitutes a legitimate medium, how one's abilities needs to be witnessed and acknowledged and honed over a period of years. Given the background of spiritualism and of the people during the two major moments for the religion in the mid nineteenth century and the nine twenties, this makes sense. The religion was so thoroughly roasted in the press that other religions with similar beliefs were formed, not as much because of a difference in opinion, but because of a desire to not be involved in all of that. Investigators like Harry Houdini then felt strongly that most mediums were attention seeking frauds, and it's a baggage that the religion carries to this day. So yes, there is a pretty direct line you can draw from the Harry Houdini's of the world dedicating their skills to undercutting the mediums of their day. To Pastor dub of Cassadega, calling me in the airport terminal right before I leave on a plane to Florida to say just so I know, I haven't actually been approved by the press board of the camp, and I would be informed of how the mediums felt about me two weeks later. And so you have to understand it surprised me when a long time medium with the camp approached me after my botched adventure to learn more in Cassadega's library and invited me to dinner. At this point of my trip, I had learned a lot about spiritualism, but I felt extremely isolated and almost certain that the camp would not approve of the press request I was making and had already invested a ton of time into. So when a medium who first came to Cassadega in the nineties came up to me and asked if I was hungry, I said, fuck it, I've been eating at a gas station for four days and I don't think these people like me very much. Let's go out to eat, and I got in the car. We end up at a Perkins restaurant. It's my first time there. If you've never been, it's kind of got Floridian Denny's vibes, but with a hell of a pie menu highly recommend. The medium I'm with is a regular here, knows everyone by name, everyone knows them. When we sit down, they recommend the soup, sandwich, pie combo. And I'm so fucking hungry that I would eat all three of those things, throw it back up and baby bird it back to myself. And as hungry as I am, it occurs to me that this could be an ambush, because while the mediums in Cassadega had been cordial to me during this visit, I was definitely walking on eggshells for the duration. Cassadega mediums do not like press, or rather the risk of negative press. There are a religion that has been brought to their knees over and over by this kind of press. So while it doesn't feel great, I sort of understand why. So after I order my soup, I go over the possibilities. Maybe I've been brought here to be gently scolded and warned to back off, to be told they're not hurting anybody here, so go away instead. By my second cup of coffee, because I cannot stop eating or drinking this whole meal the dry mouth I have from four days of gas station food is excruciating. I realized that I've been brought here to just listen to what this person has to say, not to the history book Cassadega treatment that I've gotten on the phone and in real life several times over now, not the skeptics perspective that you can find all over YouTube, but just listen to someone who has watched and lived inside of a spiritualist camp for over a quarter century. I kind of can't believe my luck. What would the boards say. The medium starts by saying this, they don't want to talk politics or personality or anything like that. They'll let me suce that out for myself. Instead, they tell me about their background, one that shares parallels with a few other mediums at the camp. They were once a big corporate success story in another region of the country. They were responsible for millions of dollars of revenue. They had hundreds of employees back in the eighties and nineties, the whole Reagan opulence game. They make themselves kind of sound like a character in Wall Street. At one point, refer to themselves as Daddy Warbucks, and it's hard to not hear a little bit of nostalgia for it as we're eating our six dollar Perkins sandwiches. They say they had top agents go to Hawaii for ten days at a time in the best hotels, parties at the best country clubs, until all of a sudden things took a turn. Their business flopped, their marriage of several decades fell apart, and the medium ended up a shell of themselves with little more consistency in their life than a certificate in practicing raiki. They don't practice raiki and Cassadega much, the medium was told, but they could get trained in spiritual physical healing if they have some time to kill. At this point, they had nothing but time, and so when a family member fell ill in Florida, the medium came to Cassadega and never went back. Stories like this are echoed throughout the camp in different ways. There are a couple of mediums who flunked out of corporate America during this same era and seemed to hope spiritualism would provide shelter from their prior life and beliefs. There are other mediums and community members who were seeking validation and energy after a life of skepticism. I always think of Selena, the bookstore manager, who was raised by two skeptic NASA parents. There are other members in Cassadega who are recovering from a life in fundamentalist religion, like the events coordinator Jamie, who has raised Southern Baptist and was Southern Baptist well into her adult life. Some of these people stay close with their families. Others find it harder to do. But in Cassadega, you're welcome to come and go as you please. And that's the best and worst thing about the camp. The medium reminds me as shiny, happy people plays softly in the background. God no one is wearing a mask in Florida, and the elderly keep bragging about it, like it's this amazing thing ing. But the medium wants to tell me that this freeness to come and go is part of the problem. Young people don't want to get drained in Cassadega. They want instant gratification on everything, not like the old days. I don't have the heart to tell them what kinds of things young people are preoccupied with these days. But once the medium starts talking, they don't seem to want to stop, and they tell me all about their twenty five years in Cassadega, about the books that got them excited when they first moved there, the channel texts that inspired them, people they had connected with, their medical malpractice lawsuit pending, a huge artistic dream they have that they're asking spirit to manifest for them this coming summer. They discussed the types of people they've met in Cassadega, lowering their voice when they categorize them, the healers who stay, the healed who leave, and the ones who get addicted to a sense of power and control. They shouldn't be telling me this, they say, but they can't. Seemed to help themselves and keep talking. Those people who own the overpriced shops outside the camp, they say, laughing, are imperfect, perfect children of God. Jamie, Okay, I shouldn't say that, the medium says again. But as long as there's pile on the table, it's nice to be talking to someone for both of us. I hadn't realized how lonely I had felt this whole week and also a month and year. For all the ghosts swirling around, it's very easy to feel lonely in Cassadeca. Families don't come there It's almost a running joke. People come on their own when they need to be healed for something. The medium takes a long look at me and asks a question I've never been asked before, and I hope no one ever asks me again. They say, Jamie, do you believe that you are a perfect child of God? I reply, I think I know the correct answer, but no. I bearly went to Catholic Church as a kid. But I guess it's just kind of an inherited degenerative disease that you can get second hand. Like am I more damaged from my dad smoking Winston's inside or by being raised by lapsed Catholics? Not doing that? That problem not today. The medium laughs and says, don't worry, I am a perfect child of God. In spiritualism, children are born with infinite potential, and even when you go astray, you still hold that infinite potential and through you infinite intelligence their God can be channeled and exist. They tell me they like their job, They like making people feel better. It's not about money for them anymore, or at least it shouldn't be. Things were a little precarious for the medium maybe, but they seemed pretty zen about it. They seemed sure that it would work out. They felt that it was better that they were in this life in Florida than their last one as Daddy Warbucks, and then northeast. The check comes and we drive back into the vortex h Later that night, I fall asleep listening to the terror readers at the hotel Cassadega, having a glass of wine on the patio above my room, Room one, and I draft a text to send to the medium the next morning, like I've just gone on a date, which I definitely have not. But I type out, I hope you have a good week if we don't cross paths before I leave tomorrow, very cool, and I prep my green text to send the next morning. The answer comes back very quickly, so quickly, in fact, that I feel agist for being shocked. It says, are you hungry? Oh my god? What? And ten minutes later I'm back in the car and we're headed to breakfast. This friendship ends up being about sixty hours total, but it's this gentle and really kind one. At breakfast, when we run out of things to talk about, Cassadega, I tell the medium about myself, the kind of work I do, my family, my uncle Dennis. We get dinner at Perkins, we get breakfast somewhere else. They take me on a tour of their home where they do readings. Really old house, high ceiling, this slice of Northeastern architecture on seminole Land. There were framed paintings of their mentors and their spirit guides. Honestly, if I came anywhere close to finding a spirit guide in Cassadega, it was this medium, someone who led me directly to a b LT and two over easy eggs when I needed them the most. And after a day or so hanging out getting recommendations of what to look at at the camp, where to meditate, where to just stand and try to collect my thoughts before leaving. The next morning, it's my last night in Cassadega. My new friend, the medium isn't available for dinner, but after days of waiting, I finally have a food option in the area. On Wednesday nights, Sinatra's restaurante at the Hotel Cassadega is open, so I invite my only other friend in the entire state of Florida, the girl I knew from unionizing, who had come to a table tipping class less than a week before a lifetime ago, before I knew which old medium specialized in physical healing, and which was a skilled channeller, and which was just basically overcharging. It feels so good to see my friend and just someone from the outside world in general. We order Sinatra's Marinera sauce pasta and it's not great. It's hard to hear each other because there's this hired pianist blaring music of the Night from Phantom of the Opera as regulars, mostly middle aged couples from Florida, order refills of wine and sing it Volume five million. In spite of everything, it's super fun. And of course, after a week, she wanted to know what had I learned? Is it real or not? I don't know how to answer the question. And while I'm trying to think of how my phone buzzes with another green text, the medium is offering me a ride to the commuter rail that almost gets you to the Orlando airport at four thirty am the next morning. I think about it a little more and I tell her I'm not sure and maybe going to one more message service will clear it up. We part ways and I walked back down the street to Colby Temple one more time to attend to Cassadega Wednesday night message service. I've been to a message service before. It's when a medium stands in front of a group of around forty people and channels spirit by approaching people and saying, hey, I have a message for you, and then they begin to describe a ghost or a traumatic event that has happened to you, and either it resonates or it doesn't. A man is presiding over this message service. He's got a great reputation in Cassadega. I really enjoy hearing him speak, and on this night he's kind of on fire. There's three different people who break into tears when Joy comes to them and describes a lost parent, lost grandparent, and in a particularly stirring case, someone's lost son. But when he comes to me, nothing is connecting. It doesn't make sense. No, I'm not a scientist. No, I don't even understand the scientific language. No, I've never had a little white dog. No, neither of my parents are sick right now. It's not always going to be a hit. But I leave discouraged. And when a couple in the lobby of the Hotel Cassadega who recognized me from the service say hey, Doug girl, what do you think is this real? We came from Daytona. Should we like get a reading tomorrow at the hotel? I tell them between you and me, They say, the real ships across the street, but it's your forty. I go to bed all packed, listening to the card readers arguing about the same exact guy as last night, but a little bit louder this time. The next morning, before the sun comes up, the medium is outside the hotel Cassadega waiting for me with a hot coffee and a bear claw from the gas station. We drive to the train station and talk about the rest of our week, and as we pull into the commuter rail car park, the medium kind of hesitates and asks if I have time to wait for the next train and a half hour. I do, and I also want to know why they're asking. Is it finally my time? I'm way overdue to be killed by a stranger, but it's not my time. Instead, we park and they hand me this green folder with a message written on the tab to Jamie from the medium, love and hugs on your journey. Inside this folder is a tight document that spells out the medium's philosophy on life on Cassadega, on the Veiled American Experiment, on a lot of stuff. I don't want to call it a manifesto, but it's kind of a manifesto. It's like a friendly manifesto. The document was titled and I do feel the need to say this person is white. You'll see why I have to clarify that in just a moment. The document was titled I Too have a dream. Uh. Anyways, the Medium and I talk a little bit more about a failed small business on the finger legs, about wishing they saw their grandkids more, and eventually the next train comes. They give me a hug and say I'll always have a friend in Cassadega, and I'm going back to floor next week. So I wonder if it's true. I've not heard from the Medium since. But ever since returning from Cassadega in February and commencing work on this show, I've tried to keep up watching the official live streamed Sunday services and lyceums, that educational talkback portion that comes before the main service. For the most part, I enjoy them. It's pretty calming background noise, and for a long time up until For over thirty years, the Cassadega Lyceum has been run by a guy named Reverend Dr Don Zangy formerly like the Medium and Upstate New York business owner, but Reverend Dr don Zangi's business was a martial arts studio. He is a fascinating guy, easily in my top two reverend doctors, and I don't like to play favorites with my reverend doctors. His fashion sense absolutely reflects the fact that he used to own a martial arts studio, and although he's no longer the formal lyceum director, he's there quite a bit and always seems to be a welcome presence. He's a bit of a rarity at Cassadega. Reverend Dr don is more open to incorporating other religious ideas into his brand of spiritualism. He's studied under gurus. He's encouraged students to learn more about Buddhist principles, to test and challenge themselves and their beliefs. No real rules. His talks tend to be pretty chaotic and fun, and so I was surprised to see that this past Sunday he announced that he was leaving Cassadega. His house had already been sold. He was moving to Mexico in the middle of July and was starting his next chapter. Things are changing in Cassadega, and his reflections on the camp, where it had been, where it was going. We're really humbling to hear so here they are from Reverend Dr Don's mouth himself. But as many of you know, will probably be my SPANSNG as I'm making plans to leave camp, sold the house and Paul goes well, moving to Mexico, so I don't know they'll be around much much longer. Now. I meet a lot of people in camp you can mention over the years and somebody said, oh, this is my first time here, you better be careful my first time Father's Day, and I never left now. For many people spiritualism in general. Here in Cassadaga, they stay focused on the tradition and the science, bossing religion and spiritualism. I'm all in favor of it. Those are some of the best people, some of the best teachers, some best mediums. I love it. Others like me tend to go out and still searching for all kinds and the stuff still centered in Cassadega Spiritualism. That's just my nature. I did in martial arts, I studied with the master, I studied you ever the understo all kinds of other things to add to my base information. It is a It can be a huge door opener to worlds that people out there up there I'm never going to tell you about, because they don't even know it. If they do know, if they're gonna tell you it's bad, it's able. Well we've heard that more than a few times. Lassa has been a favorite thing of mine. Why everything here is I'm sitting here telling you thirty one years and wonderful, difficult, all but wonderful unless it was in my deal. I did it for so long to helpen the finally one day the part, so I just give it the title of director. But I don't care whatever questions that and Dr Don ends up falling back into his normal pet subjects. He goes on about the natural laws of the universe for a while. He reflects on his time getting to know people through the Lyceum program, but at the end he says his time in Cassadega is done, and so he's leaving. It's kind of that simple to put it in the medium's terms. He is healed, and he is leaving. It's quiet for a second, and then someone in the room speaks out, thank you for being a wonderful teacher. I really appreciate you and I'm going to miss you tremendously. And then he says goodbye to a room full of mediums who he's been a part of daily life for for over three decades, doing your best at all times. I don't know how else to end it. I don't want to plank everyone for being here. I'll wanta start crying. We thank for you, pastors back there in the board for room, you've been less seem alive. That's flive, that's awesome, Thank you. Things are changing in Cassadega. Spiritualism is a movement that may always be in financial peril, but even when specific camps are struggling with membership, with money, with generational conflict, the popularity of spiritual ideas and messages from the beyond are not going anywhere, whether you like it or not. And it's such a massive world to explore that there was a lot I wasn't able to fit into just nine episodes after months of research. Helena Blovotsky's Theosophy and All the issues therein other Spiritualist camps in the US, including the one nearest where I live in Escondido, California, where a healing service in the sun brought me the closest I've ever been to believing in everything. There was my day at the Arthur Findlay Institute, a college in England funded by Jay Arthur Findlay, a former president of the Spiritualist National Union in the eighteen seventies. It's the only Spiritualist university that is still operating regularly and it runs courses on site and on Zoom. Today. I took a course with them called Communicating with Spirits and it was absolutely packed, mostly with the casually curious the internet spirituals. How can I learn about my aura? Are the tools they use on TV? Real? Or can I go intuitive? I discovered there had been a Spiritualist church founded in my hometown in the late eighteen hundreds and sent my dad to where it's currently located and is struggling. There are the YouTubers that channels spirit through crystals and taro in a way that can be maybe a little amateurish at times, but is also an example of how to bring spiritual ideas to a massive young audience in an accessible way for free. These videos tend to be calming, encouraging, body positive, pro mental health. They're not hardline spiritualism as it was founded in eighteen forty. It's not particularly Christian adjacent. They use cards, there's no four to six years of training. But the ideas in these videos and in these courses reflect what spiritualism always claimed to be about, about self acceptance and connecting on this plane and whatever the funk else plane of guidance and self improvement and generally feeling less alone. So we're going to go ahead and take a look at what comforting, loving message Spirit wants to give you. So first and foremost, I see the card that jumped out to me is sole family. Somebody has really backed you into a corner and made you feel silly for believing what you believe. But what Spirit is saying is that you're actually at a point right now where your sole family is coming together. I hate the argument of who cares about spiritualism because it's not real. Yeah, most religion and spiritual practice isn't real dip shit, but its effect on people is I think the only yardstick worth using here is whether it hurts people or not, and spiritualism certainly has over the years at the deeply imperfect movement with a complicated legacy. Without it, we wouldn't have great things like young Gie and dream analysis, or some of the basis of therapy, essentially a mental medium. Without spiritualism, we also wouldn't have the burden of celebrity medium scanners, nor the appropriation of Native American culture that does nothing to properly acknowledge or include Indigenous people. On the other hand, without spiritualism, we wouldn't have Ghostbusters, but it would have spared us from theosophy the pros and cons are infinite. American spiritualism came in a moment defined by forward momentum and all these ideas catching at the cross wires, at a time where science and magic could coexist, where women could be leaders, but black and Indigenous women could still be subjugated, where the laws of nature did not apply, but if you turned the light on just enough, the laws of nature sometimes did apply. I said in the first episode of the show that I've been mourning my grandfather who passed away a few months into the research for this show, in a week before it started airing. I haven't heard from him. I don't know that I will. And don't get me wrong, I've listened very closely to all the referenced doctors, but no spirit guide in a cape has come for me yet. Do you want to take one more walk with me? I have one more place in Cassadega. I really want to show you a place that is as silly as it is sincere, and it captures, if not proof that spiritualism is real, proof of how it makes people feel. It's called the Ferry Trail. It's right next door to the library and two doors down from where the Reverend doctor Lewis Gates practices. So come on one more walk. The Ferry Trail is another site around the camp that the mediums are understandably frustrated with the optics of. It is, for all intents and purposes, an overly sincere selfie trap, a place where casual and mostly younger tourists come to take photographs in front of the highly instagram morble painted fairy wings. Another trap, one I have taken a picture in myself is a pastel painted winged fairy throne. There's a fairy trellis maybe lounge on the fairy Bench and have your boyfriend take a picture of you there. The Fairy Trail is goofy. It's somewhat aesthetically pleasing, and it's an anarchically curated area of the woods that I kind of can't help but love. The mediums think it's all a little beside the point, and they're not wrong. The Fairy Trail has nothing to do with the religion, but I really love it. It's such a showing of raw sincerity and emotion and even a desperateness for magic to be real and communication with the dead to be authentic. But the people who come to the Fairy Trail go deeper than that. They go there to resurrect lost love, to leave anonymous please, to mend friendships, believe toldem's from themselves, or people who died that they loved. Some people even leave mixtape, send c d s of their shitty music, or tape their half rained on anime drawings to trees. What I am describing to you is a pile of garbage in the woods, but it's very sincerely curated garbage, so it also qualifies as a free outdoor museum. The camp fruitlessly tries to hold back the flood of sincerely offered garbage with polite but firm signs things like take only memories, leave only footprints, Please do not clutter or deface the park or its structures. Good fucking luck, folks. The teenagers and mother daughter teams I see carving their names into tree bark and leaving wet envelopes begging their husbands to come back to life on stumps when I visit each day, have more time and more determination and more sincerity than any underpaid medium at the camp. On my way out, I passed a polaroid of two teenage girls with an arrow pointing to one that says r I p of large rocks that have been turned into symbolic headstones, names and dates, and quotes a poem about the death of a friendship that went from one. I'll always cherish the warmth you put in my heart. You were my best friend till three thousand and five Do we part. There's hair ties, there's crystals, there's seashells, there's crosses. There's graffiti reading love me back, please. There's a street lamp that doesn't work. There's a height marker going from three to seven ft where visitors have marked themselves and their children's height with dates, initials and messages. There's of course a minion toy no shit, and pictures and pictures and pictures of dead Lauridians. I go to the Ferry Trail at least once a day when I am visiting Cassadega. It has the least to do with the camp, and yet it is the best part. The crickets are screaming at the top of their little insect lungs as tourists chatter and walk past the library. I dream about the Faery Trail all the time, and in every dream, I'm just walking through, looking at things and reading things, and walking right past the library. I'm going back to my hotel room where I ask my spirit guides to help me sleep. And that's ghost Church. I hope you've enjoyed it. I don't make stuff to tell people what to believe and what not to believe. There are plenty of shows where you can be told what to believe and why you're an asshole if you want to believe it, or why you're a genius if you don't believe it. The spiritualists have not always practiced what they preach. There have been oversights and exclusions that reflect very poorly on the religion and the national culture. That the religion sometimes rebelled against and was empowered by. It's uniquely American, and that it calls itself American but heavily borrows from other cultures. It's uniquely American based on the fact that it's so shaped and defined by how the media received it. It was formed partially in response to the rigid Christian values that are shaping the decisions of the Supreme Court, more so now than ever so. In their fight against American religious indoctrination, Spiritualism failed, buried by its contemporaries in still relevant movements like Mormonism. Like the medium said, spiritualists aren't really recruiting and never really have been. They'll take you to dinner, they'll take you to breakfast, they'll take you to the airport, they'll tell you what your dead grandma's up to, and they'll never even listen to the podcast you spent months making about them. They're both bothered and unbothered, and yet they are still there. Over a hundred, twenty five years later, they are still there. In Cassadeca, Florida, in Lily Dill, New York in Lake Pleasant, Massachusetts, surviving on others curiosity and on their own belief in spear are It. As the medium told me, most people don't want to commit to the lifestyle, the years of training, the burden of proof, the occasional press circus, the Florida of it all. I know I couldn't, but I also know how much comfort I take in difficult moments with the little spiritual practices and routines that they taught me. So if you're the sort of person to dump on people who believe in spiritualism or spiritual ideas, ask yourself, why is it hurting anyone? Sometimes the answer will be yes, but often it won't be is it bringing someone peace? If it is and it's not hurting anyone, what are you mad about? And Babe, have you checked in with the man in the cave that follows you around all the time. I hear he's pretty smart, Uncle Dennis. Take it home. Your mind and your body will tell you what you need. You just need to listen to it. And that's what spirituality is. It's not about aim to a deity. It's not about doing a certain ritual. It's not about being a certain way. It's about the fact that you understand that you were born as a manifest creature and you were born with a soul. That soul is your spirituality. You just have to remind yourself that you're that spiritual person. Because we're not taught to do that. How can we Okay, we're thrown into a world of manifest it's what we eat, what we taste, touch, felc. We're in a dated daily So I would say, do you listen to everybody? I tell you, God, let's go to these go to these things. Listen to these people and understand that them are full of ship, not because they're being cruel, and they may very well believe what they're telling you. But the bottom line is there is no one way. You have to figure out what's best for yourself. That's how I arrived to where I am. I don't need to wear caps, I don't need to wear all the trapping is that prove to people who I am. I am who I am because it from inside me. It's who I am, what I believe, and nobody can ever take that away from you. Take everything, even what I say with a grain of salt. You have to find is one thing in life that's up back. You have to find you a path by yourself. And it's not a path you can walk with anybody, and it is not a path that anybody can take you down. They can help you that you've better find it for yourself, and that's why people don't like me. So to conclude, the world is on fucking fire, So don't exploit anyone and talk to as many ghosts as you want, and whatever you do, do not come back to life as a dog cop bad Pacynski. Thank you so much for listening, and let's play that theme song one more time, get and we hap one last huge shout out to the amazing team of Ghost Church, our producer Sophie Lichtman, absolute legend, the best. Shout out to Robert Evans of cool Zone Media. Gigantic shout out to to my incredible editor Ian Johnson, who also did voices on the show and it's just an all around incredibly talented and patient person. Shout out to our amazing fact checker, Mary Stephen Hagen be everyone who has contributed their voice, and of course to Speedy Ortiz who wrote that amazing theme song that you just heard. Shout out to my spirit guides Don and Helen. This show is dedicated to my grandfather and he would have hated it. As for me. You can listen to my other podcasts, My Year in Mensa, the Lead a Podcast, or ac Cast. I have a weekly podcast called The Bechdel Past, and other than that. You can buy my book about hot dogs called raw Dog that comes out next year. Because follow me on social media and I hope I don't have a mental breakdown and find me. Thank you so much to the mediums of Cassadega, Florida by six

We all want to believe. And there are many things in this life and in this world that we will not understand. There are things that have happened to me that I can't explain. I have seen things, and do I see shadows? Why sea goes? Yes? Does it scan the living? Be Jesus out of me every time? Yes? I ship my kids. Jesus. What the fun was that? Of course he's back, Baby, he had to be back. That's my uncle Dennis. He is a medium and reader originally from Massachusetts who now practices in the Carolinas. He was my introduction to spiritualism. And there's no one I trust more to take me on a journey through spiritualism to reach its logical end. I'm not one of these people it says, do we talk to the dead? See, That's where I divert because I don't necessarily think we talked to that as much as they can send us messages, and one of the best ways to do that is to be aware of the message that this setting. You have to be aware of the kinds of messages that are sent to you. And that's all I'm really doing. When you read taro or anybody reads tarot and Like I said, I don't know who's going to hear this, but I know you're gonna get a lot of hate mail, Thank you very much, because I really don't give a fuck. Um. It's a question of understanding and taking away this mystique so that people can start to help themselves and use these things. A good reader will never tell you what to do. They'll present information. That's all they're gonna do. Welcome to the final episode of ghost Church for now. Today we're going to take a step back and take a look at some bloose ends in Cassadega, in spiritualism, and with you and me, of course, the little paras social devil relationship we've formed. There are people out there, they pretend to do what they're doing. And I've done parties, and I've done a lot of different things. And what I'll do with a party is I'll say to somebody who's who thinks they're the least psychic person here, you know, and everybody, okay, whoever, and I'll have them stand up in front of these people and I'll say, I'll whisper in there, this is what you're gonna say. That's what you're gonna say. You have five people in front of you. You're sensing the letter on You never said a name, you never said it was male, you never said it was female. You're sensing the letter. It's almost guaranteed that's somebody in that audience and says, oh, my father's name was Richard. Well, thank you, because I never said it was your father. I never said it was male, and I never said her name was Richard. You must be the fucking psychic, as you gave me all the information so you can say just about anything. And one of the favorite things is somebody has a piece of jewelry. You know how easy it is to expand on this time. This is why I get angry because you're playing on people. You using these these tricks, if you will. I'm not using tricks at all. I'm laying down a card and I'm saying to you, this is what the CAD means, this is what the number means, the slip civil means. I like my uncle Dennis's attitude towards spiritualism. It really has informed my own as I've worked on this show. He holds this core belief in life after death with a desire to sniff out bullshit that's hurting people, because that's the problem, right, the stuff that hurts people, the stuff I can't prove that brings people peace in a way that they have some control over. Hell, yeah, go for it. But one thing it's hard to not understand is why there's so much frustration around the idea of mediums and psychics in general, because there are some dark roads. I'm thinking particularly of psychics that capitalize on the grief of others, grieving parents, grieving siblings, grieving children, who collude with the police and make big entertainment deals. I lost my boyfriend tragically um a few years ago. They have found I've had such a hut time since everything. The reason why you didn't find him this because he didn't water and find him in water. It's like the girl is missing in a Ruba. You can't find somebody. It was September eleven, there was he was a fireman. But does this girl look familiar to you? Know? She does? I worked this case. This is a girl who you said was beaten and killed. Okay, this little girl is me and you told somebody that she's dead. Wait a minute, you didn't disappear. I'm right here. Well that's interesting, isn't it. Somebody was known either for working with alcohol or they had a problem with it. The brother that died, okay, how don't you guys want to four? Oh? Yes, okay. And out of the four of you, three are similar, one is different. Yes. Yes, your son Brian is calling your mother bitch. Yes, I don't have a Brian. Now, to be clear, these psychics are not spiritualists or officially affiliated with the American spiritualist movement, but your mediumship plays and is publicly interpreted very similarly respectively. Those mediums were Sylvia Brown, author of over forty titles. Millionaire famously told the mother of a missing child that her child had died, something that proved to be false, but the mother died believing it was true. The second person you heard was Laurie Macquarie, who was advised on over five hundred cases in her career. The third was John Edward, who will We'll get to in a moment. These are some of the meanest people in the world. I absolutely agree. They approached the grieving, not the other way around. They promised results, they promised specificity, and they promise it now in a way that most spiritualist mediums I've met would completely disagree with. These types of mediums play into the popular idea of mediums, ones that can get anyone to come through at will with the exact information you want. There's no hit and there's no miss, just good edits and good hair and good information. I grew up watching mediums like this on TV, and at the time, my mom and I were very into it. I used to watch this medium called John Edward, who's still working now. I've listened to a few of his audiobooks to prepare for this show. Over the years, he's been busted many times. He's been accused of both hot and cold reading extensively, but speaking to the pit in my stomach that started with him. Check this anecdote out shortly after nine eleven, when his show Crossing Over a Staple with the Loftest Women was at an all time high in popularity on Basic Cable, Edwards producers famously convinced grieving families of the victims of nine eleven to come on to the show in order to boost ratings. During sweeps. Edward claimed to have no idea, only for a trade magazine to indicate otherwise, and the special was pulled. He was and is a hustler who spent a good portion of the book I read for this podcast, two thousand and four's crossing over simply defending himself against the huge slew of expose that had come in, especially a damning one in Time magazine. He tries to play it cool, as if they're all haters, saying I feel myself getting less and less angry at the cynics and more and more I feel sorry for them. Okay, Well, if there's one thing I've learned from Ghost Church, a lot of smoke usually means something, especially when the medium is heavily profiting. And this was a guy who draws the line basically nowhere. When it comes to this kind of medium, there's no moral ambiguity. Fuck these people absolutely fun opportunists who prey on people, charge thousands of dollars, and then feel the need to put on a highly publicized show in order to justify their behavior. But here is the complicated thing. Most mediums at Cassadega would completely agree with you on that. So without getting all hashtag not all mediums for this last episode, stop asking yourself whether you believe in communication with the dead or not Honestly, I don't care what you think about that. What I think matters more are the ethics and the emotions being taken into consideration when someone believes that is happening, which, for all their faults, I think is a pretty strong element of modern spiritualism, at least as I've experienced it. Because the impulse to want to find a way to contact the dead as a way of grieving is a human impulse. It's just as human as the impulse that some of the people you just heard speaking have had to exploit that grief for money and clout. It's the same instinct that's inspired artists and writers and filmmakers to explore how death could look. There's a bajillion famous movies and plays and TV about the dead returning with purpose and love and a lot of confusion. Your king Hamlets, your Caspers, your unaired ABC pilot from the late eighties, Pocchinsky. Peter Boyle is a tough, ill mannered cop who was run down. I'm a lot to do that, but that's not the end of his story. Now now he's reincarnated surprise as a street wise bulldog in Pocinsky, What are you Gonna do now. Well, first I'm going to try licking myself, and then I'm going to catch my kila. I think the closest thing I've received to a divine gift during the production of this show was someone showing me Pucchynsky but speaking to this human impulse to want to explore life after death. American spiritualism very much belongs in that conversation. We've tackled a lot in this series. It's intersection with industrialism, with feminism, with science, with colonialism. American spiritualism boils down to an attempt to understand what happens to literally everyone, and the ideas behind it aren't going to work for everyone, and today's spiritualists kind of expand their reach beyond the classics of seances and speaking with the dead. During my time in Cassadega, I received messages about relationships with living people, about the future, about spirit guides about where I'll live, where I won't live. Need we remind of business and state of Florida. I'm not going to kick him out of business here do you live here? Well, geez, Florida, What did I ever do to your good? Just like taking get me causing sad shapen st and we goof course we look the fair every word love happen down. Welcome back, Pacceynsky's to our last Lauridian communion with the dead. Or now, now that we've healthily established that a cab includes psychic detectives, let's return to the land of the people's mediums over in Cassadega. It's a place where things are changing. The last major shift at the camp came when the Boomers arrived during the Vietnam War era, bringing new spiritual ideas and a less rigid commitment to the Christian adjacent nous of it all that defined early American spiritualism. So after the turbulence of the early decades at the camp, the fire that nearly destroyed the hotel, Cassadega in moving it into private hands. Spiritualisms barely surviving wave after wave of skepticism, the Camp took another decisive step in asserting themselves as an independent organization. In a critical moment came for the Camp, Cassadega broke from the oldest spiritualist organization in the country, the National Spiritualist Association of Churches the n s a C. In the book Cassadega the South's oldest spiritualist camp. The Camp historians stated that the main reason this was decided was because of differences and opinions on how to certify a medium. This is an understandable eternal issue within spiritualism. To this day. You'll find spiritualists on their guard about what constitutes a legitimate medium, how one's abilities needs to be witnessed and acknowledged and honed over a period of years. Given the background of spiritualism and of the people during the two major moments for the religion in the mid nineteenth century and the nine twenties, this makes sense. The religion was so thoroughly roasted in the press that other religions with similar beliefs were formed, not as much because of a difference in opinion, but because of a desire to not be involved in all of that. Investigators like Harry Houdini then felt strongly that most mediums were attention seeking frauds, and it's a baggage that the religion carries to this day. So yes, there is a pretty direct line you can draw from the Harry Houdini's of the world dedicating their skills to undercutting the mediums of their day. To Pastor dub of Cassadega, calling me in the airport terminal right before I leave on a plane to Florida to say just so I know, I haven't actually been approved by the press board of the camp, and I would be informed of how the mediums felt about me two weeks later. And so you have to understand it surprised me when a long time medium with the camp approached me after my botched adventure to learn more in Cassadega's library and invited me to dinner. At this point of my trip, I had learned a lot about spiritualism, but I felt extremely isolated and almost certain that the camp would not approve of the press request I was making and had already invested a ton of time into. So when a medium who first came to Cassadega in the nineties came up to me and asked if I was hungry, I said, fuck it, I've been eating at a gas station for four days and I don't think these people like me very much. Let's go out to eat, and I got in the car. We end up at a Perkins restaurant. It's my first time there. If you've never been, it's kind of got Floridian Denny's vibes, but with a hell of a pie menu highly recommend. The medium I'm with is a regular here, knows everyone by name, everyone knows them. When we sit down, they recommend the soup, sandwich, pie combo. And I'm so fucking hungry that I would eat all three of those things, throw it back up and baby bird it back to myself. And as hungry as I am, it occurs to me that this could be an ambush, because while the mediums in Cassadega had been cordial to me during this visit, I was definitely walking on eggshells for the duration. Cassadega mediums do not like press, or rather the risk of negative press. There are a religion that has been brought to their knees over and over by this kind of press. So while it doesn't feel great, I sort of understand why. So after I order my soup, I go over the possibilities. Maybe I've been brought here to be gently scolded and warned to back off, to be told they're not hurting anybody here, so go away instead. By my second cup of coffee, because I cannot stop eating or drinking this whole meal the dry mouth I have from four days of gas station food is excruciating. I realized that I've been brought here to just listen to what this person has to say, not to the history book Cassadega treatment that I've gotten on the phone and in real life several times over now, not the skeptics perspective that you can find all over YouTube, but just listen to someone who has watched and lived inside of a spiritualist camp for over a quarter century. I kind of can't believe my luck. What would the boards say. The medium starts by saying this, they don't want to talk politics or personality or anything like that. They'll let me suce that out for myself. Instead, they tell me about their background, one that shares parallels with a few other mediums at the camp. They were once a big corporate success story in another region of the country. They were responsible for millions of dollars of revenue. They had hundreds of employees back in the eighties and nineties, the whole Reagan opulence game. They make themselves kind of sound like a character in Wall Street. At one point, refer to themselves as Daddy Warbucks, and it's hard to not hear a little bit of nostalgia for it as we're eating our six dollar Perkins sandwiches. They say they had top agents go to Hawaii for ten days at a time in the best hotels, parties at the best country clubs, until all of a sudden things took a turn. Their business flopped, their marriage of several decades fell apart, and the medium ended up a shell of themselves with little more consistency in their life than a certificate in practicing raiki. They don't practice raiki and Cassadega much, the medium was told, but they could get trained in spiritual physical healing if they have some time to kill. At this point, they had nothing but time, and so when a family member fell ill in Florida, the medium came to Cassadega and never went back. Stories like this are echoed throughout the camp in different ways. There are a couple of mediums who flunked out of corporate America during this same era and seemed to hope spiritualism would provide shelter from their prior life and beliefs. There are other mediums and community members who were seeking validation and energy after a life of skepticism. I always think of Selena, the bookstore manager, who was raised by two skeptic NASA parents. There are other members in Cassadega who are recovering from a life in fundamentalist religion, like the events coordinator Jamie, who has raised Southern Baptist and was Southern Baptist well into her adult life. Some of these people stay close with their families. Others find it harder to do. But in Cassadega, you're welcome to come and go as you please. And that's the best and worst thing about the camp. The medium reminds me as shiny, happy people plays softly in the background. God no one is wearing a mask in Florida, and the elderly keep bragging about it, like it's this amazing thing ing. But the medium wants to tell me that this freeness to come and go is part of the problem. Young people don't want to get drained in Cassadega. They want instant gratification on everything, not like the old days. I don't have the heart to tell them what kinds of things young people are preoccupied with these days. But once the medium starts talking, they don't seem to want to stop, and they tell me all about their twenty five years in Cassadega, about the books that got them excited when they first moved there, the channel texts that inspired them, people they had connected with, their medical malpractice lawsuit pending, a huge artistic dream they have that they're asking spirit to manifest for them this coming summer. They discussed the types of people they've met in Cassadega, lowering their voice when they categorize them, the healers who stay, the healed who leave, and the ones who get addicted to a sense of power and control. They shouldn't be telling me this, they say, but they can't. Seemed to help themselves and keep talking. Those people who own the overpriced shops outside the camp, they say, laughing, are imperfect, perfect children of God. Jamie, Okay, I shouldn't say that, the medium says again. But as long as there's pile on the table, it's nice to be talking to someone for both of us. I hadn't realized how lonely I had felt this whole week and also a month and year. For all the ghosts swirling around, it's very easy to feel lonely in Cassadeca. Families don't come there It's almost a running joke. People come on their own when they need to be healed for something. The medium takes a long look at me and asks a question I've never been asked before, and I hope no one ever asks me again. They say, Jamie, do you believe that you are a perfect child of God? I reply, I think I know the correct answer, but no. I bearly went to Catholic Church as a kid. But I guess it's just kind of an inherited degenerative disease that you can get second hand. Like am I more damaged from my dad smoking Winston's inside or by being raised by lapsed Catholics? Not doing that? That problem not today. The medium laughs and says, don't worry, I am a perfect child of God. In spiritualism, children are born with infinite potential, and even when you go astray, you still hold that infinite potential and through you infinite intelligence their God can be channeled and exist. They tell me they like their job, They like making people feel better. It's not about money for them anymore, or at least it shouldn't be. Things were a little precarious for the medium maybe, but they seemed pretty zen about it. They seemed sure that it would work out. They felt that it was better that they were in this life in Florida than their last one as Daddy Warbucks, and then northeast. The check comes and we drive back into the vortex h Later that night, I fall asleep listening to the terror readers at the hotel Cassadega, having a glass of wine on the patio above my room, Room one, and I draft a text to send to the medium the next morning, like I've just gone on a date, which I definitely have not. But I type out, I hope you have a good week if we don't cross paths before I leave tomorrow, very cool, and I prep my green text to send the next morning. The answer comes back very quickly, so quickly, in fact, that I feel agist for being shocked. It says, are you hungry? Oh my god? What? And ten minutes later I'm back in the car and we're headed to breakfast. This friendship ends up being about sixty hours total, but it's this gentle and really kind one. At breakfast, when we run out of things to talk about, Cassadega, I tell the medium about myself, the kind of work I do, my family, my uncle Dennis. We get dinner at Perkins, we get breakfast somewhere else. They take me on a tour of their home where they do readings. Really old house, high ceiling, this slice of Northeastern architecture on seminole Land. There were framed paintings of their mentors and their spirit guides. Honestly, if I came anywhere close to finding a spirit guide in Cassadega, it was this medium, someone who led me directly to a b LT and two over easy eggs when I needed them the most. And after a day or so hanging out getting recommendations of what to look at at the camp, where to meditate, where to just stand and try to collect my thoughts before leaving. The next morning, it's my last night in Cassadega. My new friend, the medium isn't available for dinner, but after days of waiting, I finally have a food option in the area. On Wednesday nights, Sinatra's restaurante at the Hotel Cassadega is open, so I invite my only other friend in the entire state of Florida, the girl I knew from unionizing, who had come to a table tipping class less than a week before a lifetime ago, before I knew which old medium specialized in physical healing, and which was a skilled channeller, and which was just basically overcharging. It feels so good to see my friend and just someone from the outside world in general. We order Sinatra's Marinera sauce pasta and it's not great. It's hard to hear each other because there's this hired pianist blaring music of the Night from Phantom of the Opera as regulars, mostly middle aged couples from Florida, order refills of wine and sing it Volume five million. In spite of everything, it's super fun. And of course, after a week, she wanted to know what had I learned? Is it real or not? I don't know how to answer the question. And while I'm trying to think of how my phone buzzes with another green text, the medium is offering me a ride to the commuter rail that almost gets you to the Orlando airport at four thirty am the next morning. I think about it a little more and I tell her I'm not sure and maybe going to one more message service will clear it up. We part ways and I walked back down the street to Colby Temple one more time to attend to Cassadega Wednesday night message service. I've been to a message service before. It's when a medium stands in front of a group of around forty people and channels spirit by approaching people and saying, hey, I have a message for you, and then they begin to describe a ghost or a traumatic event that has happened to you, and either it resonates or it doesn't. A man is presiding over this message service. He's got a great reputation in Cassadega. I really enjoy hearing him speak, and on this night he's kind of on fire. There's three different people who break into tears when Joy comes to them and describes a lost parent, lost grandparent, and in a particularly stirring case, someone's lost son. But when he comes to me, nothing is connecting. It doesn't make sense. No, I'm not a scientist. No, I don't even understand the scientific language. No, I've never had a little white dog. No, neither of my parents are sick right now. It's not always going to be a hit. But I leave discouraged. And when a couple in the lobby of the Hotel Cassadega who recognized me from the service say hey, Doug girl, what do you think is this real? We came from Daytona. Should we like get a reading tomorrow at the hotel? I tell them between you and me, They say, the real ships across the street, but it's your forty. I go to bed all packed, listening to the card readers arguing about the same exact guy as last night, but a little bit louder this time. The next morning, before the sun comes up, the medium is outside the hotel Cassadega waiting for me with a hot coffee and a bear claw from the gas station. We drive to the train station and talk about the rest of our week, and as we pull into the commuter rail car park, the medium kind of hesitates and asks if I have time to wait for the next train and a half hour. I do, and I also want to know why they're asking. Is it finally my time? I'm way overdue to be killed by a stranger, but it's not my time. Instead, we park and they hand me this green folder with a message written on the tab to Jamie from the medium, love and hugs on your journey. Inside this folder is a tight document that spells out the medium's philosophy on life on Cassadega, on the Veiled American Experiment, on a lot of stuff. I don't want to call it a manifesto, but it's kind of a manifesto. It's like a friendly manifesto. The document was titled and I do feel the need to say this person is white. You'll see why I have to clarify that in just a moment. The document was titled I Too have a dream. Uh. Anyways, the Medium and I talk a little bit more about a failed small business on the finger legs, about wishing they saw their grandkids more, and eventually the next train comes. They give me a hug and say I'll always have a friend in Cassadega, and I'm going back to floor next week. So I wonder if it's true. I've not heard from the Medium since. But ever since returning from Cassadega in February and commencing work on this show, I've tried to keep up watching the official live streamed Sunday services and lyceums, that educational talkback portion that comes before the main service. For the most part, I enjoy them. It's pretty calming background noise, and for a long time up until For over thirty years, the Cassadega Lyceum has been run by a guy named Reverend Dr Don Zangy formerly like the Medium and Upstate New York business owner, but Reverend Dr don Zangi's business was a martial arts studio. He is a fascinating guy, easily in my top two reverend doctors, and I don't like to play favorites with my reverend doctors. His fashion sense absolutely reflects the fact that he used to own a martial arts studio, and although he's no longer the formal lyceum director, he's there quite a bit and always seems to be a welcome presence. He's a bit of a rarity at Cassadega. Reverend Dr don is more open to incorporating other religious ideas into his brand of spiritualism. He's studied under gurus. He's encouraged students to learn more about Buddhist principles, to test and challenge themselves and their beliefs. No real rules. His talks tend to be pretty chaotic and fun, and so I was surprised to see that this past Sunday he announced that he was leaving Cassadega. His house had already been sold. He was moving to Mexico in the middle of July and was starting his next chapter. Things are changing in Cassadega, and his reflections on the camp, where it had been, where it was going. We're really humbling to hear so here they are from Reverend Dr Don's mouth himself. But as many of you know, will probably be my SPANSNG as I'm making plans to leave camp, sold the house and Paul goes well, moving to Mexico, so I don't know they'll be around much much longer. Now. I meet a lot of people in camp you can mention over the years and somebody said, oh, this is my first time here, you better be careful my first time Father's Day, and I never left now. For many people spiritualism in general. Here in Cassadaga, they stay focused on the tradition and the science, bossing religion and spiritualism. I'm all in favor of it. Those are some of the best people, some of the best teachers, some best mediums. I love it. Others like me tend to go out and still searching for all kinds and the stuff still centered in Cassadega Spiritualism. That's just my nature. I did in martial arts, I studied with the master, I studied you ever the understo all kinds of other things to add to my base information. It is a It can be a huge door opener to worlds that people out there up there I'm never going to tell you about, because they don't even know it. If they do know, if they're gonna tell you it's bad, it's able. Well we've heard that more than a few times. Lassa has been a favorite thing of mine. Why everything here is I'm sitting here telling you thirty one years and wonderful, difficult, all but wonderful unless it was in my deal. I did it for so long to helpen the finally one day the part, so I just give it the title of director. But I don't care whatever questions that and Dr Don ends up falling back into his normal pet subjects. He goes on about the natural laws of the universe for a while. He reflects on his time getting to know people through the Lyceum program, but at the end he says his time in Cassadega is done, and so he's leaving. It's kind of that simple to put it in the medium's terms. He is healed, and he is leaving. It's quiet for a second, and then someone in the room speaks out, thank you for being a wonderful teacher. I really appreciate you and I'm going to miss you tremendously. And then he says goodbye to a room full of mediums who he's been a part of daily life for for over three decades, doing your best at all times. I don't know how else to end it. I don't want to plank everyone for being here. I'll wanta start crying. We thank for you, pastors back there in the board for room, you've been less seem alive. That's flive, that's awesome, Thank you. Things are changing in Cassadega. Spiritualism is a movement that may always be in financial peril, but even when specific camps are struggling with membership, with money, with generational conflict, the popularity of spiritual ideas and messages from the beyond are not going anywhere, whether you like it or not. And it's such a massive world to explore that there was a lot I wasn't able to fit into just nine episodes after months of research. Helena Blovotsky's Theosophy and All the issues therein other Spiritualist camps in the US, including the one nearest where I live in Escondido, California, where a healing service in the sun brought me the closest I've ever been to believing in everything. There was my day at the Arthur Findlay Institute, a college in England funded by Jay Arthur Findlay, a former president of the Spiritualist National Union in the eighteen seventies. It's the only Spiritualist university that is still operating regularly and it runs courses on site and on Zoom. Today. I took a course with them called Communicating with Spirits and it was absolutely packed, mostly with the casually curious the internet spirituals. How can I learn about my aura? Are the tools they use on TV? Real? Or can I go intuitive? I discovered there had been a Spiritualist church founded in my hometown in the late eighteen hundreds and sent my dad to where it's currently located and is struggling. There are the YouTubers that channels spirit through crystals and taro in a way that can be maybe a little amateurish at times, but is also an example of how to bring spiritual ideas to a massive young audience in an accessible way for free. These videos tend to be calming, encouraging, body positive, pro mental health. They're not hardline spiritualism as it was founded in eighteen forty. It's not particularly Christian adjacent. They use cards, there's no four to six years of training. But the ideas in these videos and in these courses reflect what spiritualism always claimed to be about, about self acceptance and connecting on this plane and whatever the funk else plane of guidance and self improvement and generally feeling less alone. So we're going to go ahead and take a look at what comforting, loving message Spirit wants to give you. So first and foremost, I see the card that jumped out to me is sole family. Somebody has really backed you into a corner and made you feel silly for believing what you believe. But what Spirit is saying is that you're actually at a point right now where your sole family is coming together. I hate the argument of who cares about spiritualism because it's not real. Yeah, most religion and spiritual practice isn't real dip shit, but its effect on people is I think the only yardstick worth using here is whether it hurts people or not, and spiritualism certainly has over the years at the deeply imperfect movement with a complicated legacy. Without it, we wouldn't have great things like young Gie and dream analysis, or some of the basis of therapy, essentially a mental medium. Without spiritualism, we also wouldn't have the burden of celebrity medium scanners, nor the appropriation of Native American culture that does nothing to properly acknowledge or include Indigenous people. On the other hand, without spiritualism, we wouldn't have Ghostbusters, but it would have spared us from theosophy the pros and cons are infinite. American spiritualism came in a moment defined by forward momentum and all these ideas catching at the cross wires, at a time where science and magic could coexist, where women could be leaders, but black and Indigenous women could still be subjugated, where the laws of nature did not apply, but if you turned the light on just enough, the laws of nature sometimes did apply. I said in the first episode of the show that I've been mourning my grandfather who passed away a few months into the research for this show, in a week before it started airing. I haven't heard from him. I don't know that I will. And don't get me wrong, I've listened very closely to all the referenced doctors, but no spirit guide in a cape has come for me yet. Do you want to take one more walk with me? I have one more place in Cassadega. I really want to show you a place that is as silly as it is sincere, and it captures, if not proof that spiritualism is real, proof of how it makes people feel. It's called the Ferry Trail. It's right next door to the library and two doors down from where the Reverend doctor Lewis Gates practices. So come on one more walk. The Ferry Trail is another site around the camp that the mediums are understandably frustrated with the optics of. It is, for all intents and purposes, an overly sincere selfie trap, a place where casual and mostly younger tourists come to take photographs in front of the highly instagram morble painted fairy wings. Another trap, one I have taken a picture in myself is a pastel painted winged fairy throne. There's a fairy trellis maybe lounge on the fairy Bench and have your boyfriend take a picture of you there. The Fairy Trail is goofy. It's somewhat aesthetically pleasing, and it's an anarchically curated area of the woods that I kind of can't help but love. The mediums think it's all a little beside the point, and they're not wrong. The Fairy Trail has nothing to do with the religion, but I really love it. It's such a showing of raw sincerity and emotion and even a desperateness for magic to be real and communication with the dead to be authentic. But the people who come to the Fairy Trail go deeper than that. They go there to resurrect lost love, to leave anonymous please, to mend friendships, believe toldem's from themselves, or people who died that they loved. Some people even leave mixtape, send c d s of their shitty music, or tape their half rained on anime drawings to trees. What I am describing to you is a pile of garbage in the woods, but it's very sincerely curated garbage, so it also qualifies as a free outdoor museum. The camp fruitlessly tries to hold back the flood of sincerely offered garbage with polite but firm signs things like take only memories, leave only footprints, Please do not clutter or deface the park or its structures. Good fucking luck, folks. The teenagers and mother daughter teams I see carving their names into tree bark and leaving wet envelopes begging their husbands to come back to life on stumps when I visit each day, have more time and more determination and more sincerity than any underpaid medium at the camp. On my way out, I passed a polaroid of two teenage girls with an arrow pointing to one that says r I p of large rocks that have been turned into symbolic headstones, names and dates, and quotes a poem about the death of a friendship that went from one. I'll always cherish the warmth you put in my heart. You were my best friend till three thousand and five Do we part. There's hair ties, there's crystals, there's seashells, there's crosses. There's graffiti reading love me back, please. There's a street lamp that doesn't work. There's a height marker going from three to seven ft where visitors have marked themselves and their children's height with dates, initials and messages. There's of course a minion toy no shit, and pictures and pictures and pictures of dead Lauridians. I go to the Ferry Trail at least once a day when I am visiting Cassadega. It has the least to do with the camp, and yet it is the best part. The crickets are screaming at the top of their little insect lungs as tourists chatter and walk past the library. I dream about the Faery Trail all the time, and in every dream, I'm just walking through, looking at things and reading things, and walking right past the library. I'm going back to my hotel room where I ask my spirit guides to help me sleep. And that's ghost Church. I hope you've enjoyed it. I don't make stuff to tell people what to believe and what not to believe. There are plenty of shows where you can be told what to believe and why you're an asshole if you want to believe it, or why you're a genius if you don't believe it. The spiritualists have not always practiced what they preach. There have been oversights and exclusions that reflect very poorly on the religion and the national culture. That the religion sometimes rebelled against and was empowered by. It's uniquely American, and that it calls itself American but heavily borrows from other cultures. It's uniquely American based on the fact that it's so shaped and defined by how the media received it. It was formed partially in response to the rigid Christian values that are shaping the decisions of the Supreme Court, more so now than ever so. In their fight against American religious indoctrination, Spiritualism failed, buried by its contemporaries in still relevant movements like Mormonism. Like the medium said, spiritualists aren't really recruiting and never really have been. They'll take you to dinner, they'll take you to breakfast, they'll take you to the airport, they'll tell you what your dead grandma's up to, and they'll never even listen to the podcast you spent months making about them. They're both bothered and unbothered, and yet they are still there. Over a hundred, twenty five years later, they are still there. In Cassadeca, Florida, in Lily Dill, New York in Lake Pleasant, Massachusetts, surviving on others curiosity and on their own belief in spear are It. As the medium told me, most people don't want to commit to the lifestyle, the years of training, the burden of proof, the occasional press circus, the Florida of it all. I know I couldn't, but I also know how much comfort I take in difficult moments with the little spiritual practices and routines that they taught me. So if you're the sort of person to dump on people who believe in spiritualism or spiritual ideas, ask yourself, why is it hurting anyone? Sometimes the answer will be yes, but often it won't be is it bringing someone peace? If it is and it's not hurting anyone, what are you mad about? And Babe, have you checked in with the man in the cave that follows you around all the time. I hear he's pretty smart, Uncle Dennis. Take it home. Your mind and your body will tell you what you need. You just need to listen to it. And that's what spirituality is. It's not about aim to a deity. It's not about doing a certain ritual. It's not about being a certain way. It's about the fact that you understand that you were born as a manifest creature and you were born with a soul. That soul is your spirituality. You just have to remind yourself that you're that spiritual person. Because we're not taught to do that. How can we Okay, we're thrown into a world of manifest it's what we eat, what we taste, touch, felc. We're in a dated daily So I would say, do you listen to everybody? I tell you, God, let's go to these go to these things. Listen to these people and understand that them are full of ship, not because they're being cruel, and they may very well believe what they're telling you. But the bottom line is there is no one way. You have to figure out what's best for yourself. That's how I arrived to where I am. I don't need to wear caps, I don't need to wear all the trapping is that prove to people who I am. I am who I am because it from inside me. It's who I am, what I believe, and nobody can ever take that away from you. Take everything, even what I say with a grain of salt. You have to find is one thing in life that's up back. You have to find you a path by yourself. And it's not a path you can walk with anybody, and it is not a path that anybody can take you down. They can help you that you've better find it for yourself, and that's why people don't like me. So to conclude, the world is on fucking fire, So don't exploit anyone and talk to as many ghosts as you want, and whatever you do, do not come back to life as a dog cop bad Pacynski. Thank you so much for listening, and let's play that theme song one more time, get and we hap one last huge shout out to the amazing team of Ghost Church, our producer Sophie Lichtman, absolute legend, the best. Shout out to Robert Evans of cool Zone Media. Gigantic shout out to to my incredible editor Ian Johnson, who also did voices on the show and it's just an all around incredibly talented and patient person. Shout out to our amazing fact checker, Mary Stephen Hagen be everyone who has contributed their voice, and of course to Speedy Ortiz who wrote that amazing theme song that you just heard. Shout out to my spirit guides Don and Helen. This show is dedicated to my grandfather and he would have hated it. As for me. You can listen to my other podcasts, My Year in Mensa, the Lead a Podcast, or ac Cast. I have a weekly podcast called The Bechdel Past, and other than that. You can buy my book about hot dogs called raw Dog that comes out next year. Because follow me on social media and I hope I don't have a mental breakdown and find me. Thank you so much to the mediums of Cassadega, Florida by six