Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.
(00:24):
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
(00:44):
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
(01:04):
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
(01:25):
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
(01:48):
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
(02:10):
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
(02:32):
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.
(02:53):
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
(03:15):
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
(03:36):
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
(03:56):
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
(04:18):
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
(04:42):
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.
(05:04):
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
(05:26):
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
(05:48):
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,
(06:08):
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
(06:31):
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
(06:51):
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
(07:12):
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
(07:33):
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
(07:55):
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
(08:18):
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
(08:38):
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
(08:59):
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
(09:22):
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.
(09:43):
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
(10:08):
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
(10:31):
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
(10:55):
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
(11:30):
course we look the fair every word love happen down.
(12:03):
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
(12:25):
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
(12:46):
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
(13:11):
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
(13:35):
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,
(13:59):
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
(14:21):
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
(14:43):
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
(15:06):
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
(15:28):
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,
(15:49):
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,
(16:09):
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.
(16:33):
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
(16:55):
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
(17:16):
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
(17:38):
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,
(18:01):
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
(18:21):
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
(18:42):
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
(19:03):
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
(19:24):
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
(19:46):
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
(20:07):
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
(20:28):
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
(20:51):
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
(21:14):
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
(21:36):
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.
(21:59):
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
(22:19):
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
(22:43):
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
(23:20):
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
(23:40):
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
(24:01):
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
(24:21):
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,
(24:45):
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.
(25:07):
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
(25:30):
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
(25:53):
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
(26:15):
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
(26:38):
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,
(26:59):
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
(27:19):
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
(27:43):
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.
(28:04):
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
(28:26):
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.
(28:48):
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
(29:12):
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
(29:33):
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.
(29:54):
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
(30:16):
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
(30:38):
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
(31:00):
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
(31:20):
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.
(31:41):
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
(32:05):
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,
(32:27):
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
(32:48):
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.
(33:13):
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.
(33:36):
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
(33:58):
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
(34:20):
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
(34:42):
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
(35:05):
less seem alive. That's flive, that's awesome, Thank you. Things
are changing in Cassadega. Spiritualism is a movement that may
(35:42):
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
(36:02):
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
(36:24):
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
(36:47):
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
(37:09):
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
(37:33):
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
(37:54):
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
(38:15):
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
(38:38):
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.
(39:00):
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
(39:21):
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,
(39:44):
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
(40:04):
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
(40:28):
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,
(40:50):
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
(41:11):
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
(41:34):
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
(41:56):
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
(42:18):
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
(42:39):
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
(43:00):
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,
(43:20):
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
(43:41):
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
(44:03):
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
(44:24):
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
(44:46):
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
(45:09):
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,
(45:31):
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,
(45:54):
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
(46:16):
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?
(46:37):
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
(47:00):
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.
(47:21):
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
(47:43):
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
(48:05):
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,
(48:26):
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,
(48:48):
and let's play that theme song one more time, get
(49:11):
and we hap one last huge shout out to the
(49:47):
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
(50:09):
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
(50:30):
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.
(50:51):
Thank you so much to the mediums of Cassadega, Florida
by six