Speaker 1: When I get on the bus that goes from Tallahassee
Speaker 1: to Orlando, Florida, I don't think I've been inside a
Speaker 1: church in eight years. And just to put your mind
Speaker 1: at ease from the jump, this isn't a show about
Speaker 1: my journey to religion. But I am taking the bus
Speaker 1: to Orlando on a late January morning this year, headed
Speaker 1: for one of the only spiritualist camps in the American South,
Speaker 1: And in my head, I'm calling it Ghost Church. Oh,
Speaker 1: name of the show already getting spicy. The coach bus
Speaker 1: I'm on costs a little too much money, but it's
Speaker 1: only four hours and it's pretty quiet, and no one
Speaker 1: sits next to me, so it's fine. I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone else on this bus is going to Ghost Church,
Speaker 1: strictly based on the fact that the bus driver himself
Speaker 1: praise before we get on the bus. He said, is
Speaker 1: this so if you couldn't hear, he's saying, Amen, ride
Speaker 1: the bus, Mr Gregory, ride the bus, And so we do.
Speaker 1: We ride the bus all the way to the tourist
Speaker 1: capital of the world, along with a camp of mystics
Speaker 1: about a half hour off. The camp um heading to
Speaker 1: is called Cassadega. It's just outside of Orlando and is
Speaker 1: a spiritualist camp, a place where mediums commune with the
Speaker 1: dead and have developed their own community since the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. The people around them find it to be
Speaker 1: the devil's work or at best a little weird. The
Speaker 1: tourists find it intriguing, and I want to know who
Speaker 1: ends up in a place like this and why. I
Speaker 1: was brought up between many religions and we kind of
Speaker 1: believed in this stuff, but not completely. It's definitely not
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that Mr Gregory would approve of.
Speaker 1: The religion and called Spiritualism, occasionally referred to as American Spiritualism,
Speaker 1: has been around in the official sense beginning in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty eight, although it's central concept that the dead don't
Speaker 1: die has been around for centuries. Their newer idea is
Speaker 1: this that wanting to communicate with the dead is a
Speaker 1: good thing. So in this show, I'm taking you on
Speaker 1: two different trips. The first is how spiritualism got to
Speaker 1: where it is now as a religion that came up
Speaker 1: with the Shakers and the Mormons, but never really caught
Speaker 1: on in a meaningful way due to repeated scandal or
Speaker 1: a religion that was begun completely by accident by two
Speaker 1: preteen sisters, as either divine intervention or, as many, including
Speaker 1: the sisters themselves, have suggested, a prank that turned into
Speaker 1: one of the only ways that an unmarried, lower middle
Speaker 1: class woman could make a name for herself. The second
Speaker 1: journey is the one I took to Cassadega this year,
Speaker 1: where I got a chance to meet people in person,
Speaker 1: interview them, get to know what it's like to be
Speaker 1: a medium, and figure out what the funk is going
Speaker 1: on there and how in the short history of American
Speaker 1: spiritualism so much has changed, And of course I get
Speaker 1: to talk to the ghost. What I will disclaim at
Speaker 1: the beginning of all of this is that I don't
Speaker 1: not believe in the concept of spirit. It's called spirit
Speaker 1: in the West, or chi or sock t in the East.
Speaker 1: I'm open to it. So this podcast isn't an endorsement,
Speaker 1: but I do find it important in my work and
Speaker 1: in my life in general to be open to things
Speaker 1: and take them seriously and report what I'm seeing and
Speaker 1: noticing and feeling as I go through that process. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of ship I don't like about spiritualism,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of ship that I do, and
Speaker 1: most of it I want to just present to you
Speaker 1: to draw your own conclusions. I don't particularly care what
Speaker 1: you believe, and I won't force or harp anything that
Speaker 1: I believe on you or don't. This is a show
Speaker 1: about an endangered American legion, how it came to exist,
Speaker 1: who's drawn to it, and whether there's really any chance
Speaker 1: that will stick around. If you don't like it, you
Speaker 1: can take it up with the ghosts. Oh no, do
Speaker 1: I believe in ghosts? The show is starting good. That
Speaker 1: closes o for reasons I don't completely understand myself. All
Speaker 1: roads have been pulling me to Florida for months, and
Speaker 1: when one is pulled to Florida, it's natural to want
Speaker 1: to pull back. There's this feeling of are you fucking
Speaker 1: kidding me? That's not very nice? Have I not suffered
Speaker 1: enough in this life? But the thing is, the places
Speaker 1: that are a common punchline in the way that Florida
Speaker 1: is are usually pretty interesting places with pretty fucked up people,
Speaker 1: and not for nothing, almost always have free popcorn in
Speaker 1: their bars. I'm from a place like that too. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: for Death and for Florida, it was in just a
Speaker 1: funked up enough headspace to consider going. So let's get
Speaker 1: started with some ground rules. What is spiritualism and what
Speaker 1: isn't spiritualism. I've been to Cassadego once before with my
Speaker 1: mom in It's not something I would talk about much
Speaker 1: where I live in Los Angeles, and in part because
Speaker 1: it's such a Southern California cliche, and in part because
Speaker 1: it is the best way to start a conversation with
Speaker 1: someone extremely frustrating. I try not to be self conscious
Speaker 1: about it. You know, it's my It's my personal belief
Speaker 1: that as long as you don't literally run your life
Speaker 1: by tarot cards and crystals, they're really no more harmful
Speaker 1: than a hobby like journaling or video games, or my
Speaker 1: favorite toxic trait that you're not allowed to say anything
Speaker 1: about having a lot of guitar pedals. I like a
Speaker 1: level with you. I've spent way too much money about
Speaker 1: once a year getting my cards read, sometimes by someone
Speaker 1: who I felt was really attuned to me, and more
Speaker 1: often a failed actor aggressively pivoting into their new method
Speaker 1: role of being fine with it. There's even years I've
Speaker 1: gone twice. If I'm going through a breakup, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll go twice. There's something comforting about it about imagining
Speaker 1: your life in an order. Oh no, here's the tower
Speaker 1: cards sudden of people. But okay, here's the Star card
Speaker 1: that's renewal and and rest. You're right, I should go
Speaker 1: across the street to the place where they serve eggs
Speaker 1: like that. It's what the card said. During my last breakup,
Speaker 1: I found going to online videos of cards read by
Speaker 1: these upbeat young women who are cheering you on was
Speaker 1: really comforting. They kind of sound like this, this is
Speaker 1: Aso Taro. And in today's pick a card reading, we
Speaker 1: are going to be looking at how your person is
Speaker 1: currently feeling about you. And so by your person, I
Speaker 1: mean ideally the person that you are thinking of. You
Speaker 1: might find another person comes through, or you might find
Speaker 1: I'm describing your feelings. Okay, fine, that's maybe maybe it's
Speaker 1: a little embarrassing, but you need it sometimes to cope,
Speaker 1: you know. But none of this is spiritualism. I want
Speaker 1: to be clear on that the general woo woo of
Speaker 1: it all intersects with spiritualism, but I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: something that broad because the idea has sort of spiraled
Speaker 1: out in the last several decades. It's to the point
Speaker 1: where the phrase I'm more spiritual than religious is kind
Speaker 1: of a line that you hear from lapsed Catholics, but
Speaker 1: spiritualism itself is actually very specific. This series will address
Speaker 1: some of the cultures and ideas they pull from, going
Speaker 1: back hundreds of thousands of years, the lore behind seances,
Speaker 1: the appropriation of indigenous culture. The camp that I'm going
Speaker 1: to considers itself uniquely American. Whether you consider that a
Speaker 1: pejorative or not is up to you. I well, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to put my opinions in this list, but obviously
Speaker 1: it is. My name is Jamie Loftus, and I love
Speaker 1: a freaky little American corner to wedge myself into. I
Speaker 1: grew up between a lot of different religions. I was
Speaker 1: baptized Catholic in a way that felt pretty mandatory, being
Speaker 1: raised by two lapsed Catholics in New England. And well,
Speaker 1: actually I've been sorting through my archives recently. This is
Speaker 1: what it sounds like to be baptized in New England.
Speaker 1: I'm glad to you, becker Father. Okay, who is this, Jamie, Jamie,
Speaker 1: that's right, come right in, Please come right in, reach out,
Speaker 1: all right, and this is Jamie Bethany. Jamie Bethany, I
Speaker 1: baptize you in the name of the Father, and of
Speaker 1: the Son and of the Holy Spirit. But by the
Speaker 1: time I was forming sentient memories, we had already switched.
Speaker 1: My dad left the church in the weekly sense when
Speaker 1: his dad passed away, or transitioned to spirit in the
Speaker 1: terms of spiritualism of ghost Church. So my mom and
Speaker 1: I sort of hop scotched over to a Protestant Congregational
Speaker 1: church that my cousins went to, and I liked it there.
Speaker 1: It was one of the only churches in town where
Speaker 1: queer people were welcome, where there was a gay priest.
Speaker 1: It was fun, everyone was nice. I asked my mom
Speaker 1: as she liked our church more than the one she
Speaker 1: grew up in once and she sort of sighed and
Speaker 1: was like, at least they have the lights on here
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, which I think is the second most two
Speaker 1: thousands eras scathing takedown of the Catholic church in Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: second only to Spotlight. But after about a decade of that,
Speaker 1: we were bored, and my preteen frustration with the concept
Speaker 1: of a confirmation class happened to line up with my
Speaker 1: mom's midlife crisis where she got a tattoo and more relevant,
Speaker 1: wanted to start exploring the spiritualist ideas that her childhood
Speaker 1: best friend, my Annie Karen, had been exploring for years
Speaker 1: with her husband, my uncle Dennis. I love my Auntie
Speaker 1: and uncle. They had a house with a backyard that
Speaker 1: just kind of smelled really good, and they had tarot
Speaker 1: cards and runs and this huge cabinet that was carved
Speaker 1: to look like a wizard. And these ideas were just
Speaker 1: so different from anything that I'd ever heard about religion
Speaker 1: or faith. And so once a year for my birthday,
Speaker 1: I would get to go see my uncle Dennis and
Speaker 1: get a reading. Sometimes he'd use runs, sometimes he'd use cards,
Speaker 1: and I would sit quietly, like you do with relatives
Speaker 1: you only see once a year, and I would just
Speaker 1: listen to what each card meant and what that had
Speaker 1: to do with what the fifth grade was going to
Speaker 1: be like. One time we went to a pagan church
Speaker 1: that they recommended that was outside. There were these rituals
Speaker 1: that were led by women who talked to trees. And
Speaker 1: maybe it was the harsh way that your eyes have
Speaker 1: to kind of adjust from a completely dark church where
Speaker 1: God is mad at you to standing outside where the
Speaker 1: trees are giving you advice about middle school. But it
Speaker 1: was a little overwhelming and we only went once and
Speaker 1: after that we quit church altogether. But around this time,
Speaker 1: in the mid two thousands, something was going on in
Speaker 1: the US. There was this sudden increased interest in the
Speaker 1: concept called spirit, the idea that we didn't die permanently
Speaker 1: like atheist thought, but we also didn't go to heaven
Speaker 1: or hell or were born into sin like the Catholic
Speaker 1: Church said. The alternative was that after you die, you
Speaker 1: sort of stay local. You watched the people you cared
Speaker 1: about in life, you guide the living. There's a possibility
Speaker 1: that you could even live again, take some time off,
Speaker 1: and then live again and again and again. There were
Speaker 1: suddenly these celebrity psychics, big names like James Van Prague
Speaker 1: that it materialized in the late nineties, followed by your
Speaker 1: TV personalities like Sylvia Brown and for me, John Edward
Speaker 1: and crossing Over brought a medium from Long Island, not
Speaker 1: to be confused with the Long Island medium into our
Speaker 1: living room via this guy in a tight sweater and
Speaker 1: glasses telling women who looked like my mom that the
Speaker 1: dead aren't dead and that it's not scary. In pop culture,
Speaker 1: the idea of spirit was kind of all over the place.
Speaker 1: There were these more benevolent spirits. You know, you've got
Speaker 1: Devin Sawa showing up to your dance at the end
Speaker 1: of cal for with this vaguely Christian unfinished business, or
Speaker 1: you've got the Catholic interpretation of spirit just absolute scumspewing
Speaker 1: possession movies where your head turns around three hundred sixty
Speaker 1: degrees and you yell at a poor Catholic priest, what
Speaker 1: did they ever do? Well? Uh, you can google that.
Speaker 1: In the religions I grew up around, the dead would
Speaker 1: be judged and God was piste off. They tend to
Speaker 1: view children as being born into sin and compel them
Speaker 1: to spend their whole lives pulling themselves out of it.
Speaker 1: But spiritualism takes the opposite tack. According to them, children
Speaker 1: are born into infinite potential and love, and his potential
Speaker 1: is only helped or harmed through their own actions in life.
Speaker 1: So what is Ghost Church? That's what I wanted to
Speaker 1: learn going into this series. What I knew is that
Speaker 1: it's a religion, and it's a small all religion and
Speaker 1: one that combines more elements of Christianity than I realized.
Speaker 1: I was surprised to hear that, lacking a seminal text
Speaker 1: of their own, spiritualists list the Bible ever heard of
Speaker 1: her as their text. But most importantly, spiritualists don't believe
Speaker 1: in heaven or hell. According to them, the dead remain
Speaker 1: among us, rejoining the energetic flow of the universe that
Speaker 1: surround us, and spiritualist mediums and healers are able to
Speaker 1: see clairvoyance here Clare audience feel Clare Touch. I love
Speaker 1: that one. It sounds like just like a cartoon character,
Speaker 1: Claire touch and receive mental messages from spirit. They do
Speaker 1: believe that Jesus existed, but not that he was a god. Instead,
Speaker 1: he's repeatedly referenced as one of history's great spiritual healers
Speaker 1: and mediums, referencing biblical canon like his returning to Earth
Speaker 1: in spirit, is, ability to communicate with angels and ghosts,
Speaker 1: and the very concept of the Holy Spirit as proof
Speaker 1: that their religion is a part of the Christian expanded universe.
Speaker 1: You may not be surprised to hear that a lot
Speaker 1: of Christians are really not thrilled to hear this, but
Speaker 1: as it evolved, American spiritualism went beyond diet Christianity minus
Speaker 1: heaven and help plus ghosts. Nowadays, spiritualists come to the
Speaker 1: religion from all kinds of religious backgrounds. Since the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: Eastern religions have influenced modern spiritualists and slowly introduced reincarnation concepts,
Speaker 1: with at least one medium working at Cassadaga now who
Speaker 1: converted from Hinduism. There's also the New Age movement that
Speaker 1: layers onto spiritualism very well, and that's an important thing.
Speaker 1: The vast majority of spiritualists came from other religions, ones
Speaker 1: that they were either traumatized by or didn't incorporate the
Speaker 1: way they saw the afterlife, or didn't believe in mediumship.
Speaker 1: I'll be talking to a number of mediums and community
Speaker 1: members who range from lifelong former Atheists to former hardcore
Speaker 1: Southern Baptists and what that transition looked like for them.
Speaker 1: Spiritualism doesn't tend to be multigenerational. It's just as individual
Speaker 1: and experience as the individual spirits that come through after
Speaker 1: they're fascinatingly Christian feelings Sunday services. And yet they also
Speaker 1: insist that there is a scientific basis for the religion
Speaker 1: when I'm still trying to wrap my head around. This
Speaker 1: is a quote from the National Spiritualist Association of Churches
Speaker 1: Spiritualist manual quote. Spiritualism is a science because it investigates, analyzes,
Speaker 1: and classifies facts and manifestations demonstrated from the spirit side
Speaker 1: of life. Unquote. Ghost church is a holdover from the
Speaker 1: industrial illusition in nearly every way. It has one foot
Speaker 1: in classical religious ideas, the other in aspirational sort of
Speaker 1: half proven scientific ideas. There's something about it that's optimistic
Speaker 1: and a little half baked all at once. Okay, so
Speaker 1: what isn't ghost church? Because when you bring up spirits
Speaker 1: and you bring up a small community in Florida, the
Speaker 1: first reaction you're going to get from most people is, well,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a cult. And stay with me here.
Speaker 1: It's not a cult, or at least not any more
Speaker 1: of a cult than any other religion. And honestly, if
Speaker 1: spiritualism was a cult, they'd probably be doing better numbers
Speaker 1: in terms of membership and income. Spiritualism is a fringe religion,
Speaker 1: and I hear you cult cult, It's not a cult.
Speaker 1: I hear you again saying not a cult. Means cult,
Speaker 1: and usually you'll be right. But Spiritualism is not a cult,
Speaker 1: although it's formal numbers are small cult sized, one could
Speaker 1: say small enough in fact, that the manual I was
Speaker 1: just reading from admits on one of its first pages
Speaker 1: that there aren't a lot of people involved, and that
Speaker 1: there's really no concerted effort going on to change that.
Speaker 1: It says, quote, this manual is designed to be a
Speaker 1: handbook for ministers, speakers, and students. It is hoped that
Speaker 1: spiritualists generally will find it helpful in presenting the teachings
Speaker 1: of spiritualism, and that in sections of our country where
Speaker 1: there are few spiritualists and no mediums or speakers, it
Speaker 1: will be an aid to willing workers in holding regular
Speaker 1: meetings or other services. Unquote, this rhetoric is just too
Speaker 1: chill to be a cult, but you don't need to
Speaker 1: take my word for it. In her Cultish, Amanda Montell
Speaker 1: breaks down the mechanics of language and classical recruiting techniques
Speaker 1: of cult like atmospheres, religious or otherwise, ranging in severity
Speaker 1: from really intense peloton instructors and multi level marketing schemes
Speaker 1: all away to Jonestown and Heaven's Gate and she narrows
Speaker 1: down these classic cult red flags, including things like quote
Speaker 1: unquote truth telling, ceremonies to give the leaders as much
Speaker 1: information about each individual as possible, complete immersion in the cult,
Speaker 1: no clear time when rituals have begun or ended, behavioral
Speaker 1: control think sleep deprivation, diet changes, schedule, dictation, the whole
Speaker 1: nine yards. A charismatic central leader, usually a man, and
Speaker 1: usually attracting young white women to the fold, where spiritualism doesn't.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of white ladies, but there's no young
Speaker 1: people really at all. Doomsday rhetoric when a leader's power
Speaker 1: starts to slip, withholding information by minimizing or discouraging access
Speaker 1: to non cult information, threats or forced isolation if one
Speaker 1: tries to leave, and all of these emotions, stopping techniques
Speaker 1: to suppress any doubt, and whether the ghost aspect of
Speaker 1: all of this freaks you out or not. None of
Speaker 1: these red flags really apply to Spiritualism at all, so
Speaker 1: verdict not occult. There's a world in which I could
Speaker 1: see them becoming a cult. I mean, after all, we're
Speaker 1: kind of in this cultural moment where interest in communicating
Speaker 1: with the dead, with mysticism, with pick a card, tero
Speaker 1: readings on YouTube are at an all time high, and
Speaker 1: the spiritualists who commune all over the country, mostly in
Speaker 1: lily Dale, New York, and Cassadega, Florida, tick literally all
Speaker 1: of these boxes. Spiritualism even blends a combination of religions
Speaker 1: and buzzwords that should mean it's thriving. They borrow Eastern
Speaker 1: principles like chakras, indigenous ideas like spirit guides on this
Speaker 1: bedrock of diet, Christianity, and a belief in Jesus. Granted,
Speaker 1: they don't use many of these beliefs particularly well, but
Speaker 1: their batting average isn't any worse than a Gwyneth Paltrow type.
Speaker 1: But as it is, Spiritualism has no interest in being
Speaker 1: a cult, and they don't really have the runway to
Speaker 1: make it that way anyways. A lot of the mediums
Speaker 1: in Cassadega have day jobs. Most of them live in
Speaker 1: the community but regularly leave to see outside family and friends,
Speaker 1: go shopping, see movies, move about the world as regular people.
Speaker 1: They don't have much of an alternative. There's no food
Speaker 1: store in Cassadega, and the only restaurant there is open
Speaker 1: four and a half days out of the week. Something
Speaker 1: that becomes very problematic during my time. They're mediums make
Speaker 1: their own schedules, and for regular attendees of the Spiritualist temple,
Speaker 1: the parameters of when they are on and off ritual
Speaker 1: wise are pretty clear. They go to weekly services, they
Speaker 1: go to individual readings or scheduled classes. Members of the
Speaker 1: church tend to join and leave the religion pretty often.
Speaker 1: At one spiritualist church in Massachusetts, a vice president of
Speaker 1: a dwindling congregation was the first to comfortably admit that
Speaker 1: the people who come to our church tend to float
Speaker 1: in during a difficult time in their lives, often when
Speaker 1: they are a loved one, are struggling with illness mental
Speaker 1: or physical, or while they're struggling with a loss, and
Speaker 1: then they tend to leave, sometimes never heard from by
Speaker 1: the church again. And so you got kind of the
Speaker 1: opposite of a cult. You get a religion that appears
Speaker 1: to be on a very slow decline. Those most involved
Speaker 1: in spiritualism are the mediums themselves. In Cassadega, this means
Speaker 1: taking part in a three to four year education process
Speaker 1: that can't be done remotely. It means establishing yourself in
Speaker 1: the community consistently for at least a year before qualifying
Speaker 1: to live on campgrounds. It means demonstrating healing or mediumship
Speaker 1: capabilities in public under supervision. They don't make it easy
Speaker 1: to have this job, and so the majority of mediums
Speaker 1: are either local to Florida with some free time after
Speaker 1: work or around their families, or, as I would soon learn,
Speaker 1: had left their previous lives to become mediums. A job
Speaker 1: that here doesn't result much in the way of financial
Speaker 1: stability or cultural acceptance. So why do people do it?
Speaker 1: It's a question that I have had a somewhat difficult
Speaker 1: time getting answered because for a small community, Cassadega is
Speaker 1: very protective of their members from the press, meaning me.
Speaker 1: There's this pr screening team that seems to consist of
Speaker 1: basically everybody in town, all of whom must approve of
Speaker 1: your presence before they will talk to you. I contacted
Speaker 1: the camp several weeks in advance, and by the time
Speaker 1: I was getting on a plane to Florida, they had
Speaker 1: yet to decide whether they wanted me to come at
Speaker 1: all or not. I was sitting at the airport eating
Speaker 1: a very sad looking donut the week before Valentine's Day
Speaker 1: to indicate yeah, things are going great, and my phone rings,
Speaker 1: and for the first but not the last time, I
Speaker 1: have this nervous response to see an area code from Florida.
Speaker 1: On the other line is Pastor Deb, a woman from Jacksonville, Florida,
Speaker 1: who serves as in this order, a pastor in Cassadega,
Speaker 1: the head of public relations for the Cassadega Spiritualist Camp,
Speaker 1: and an I T specialist in Jacksonville who looks after
Speaker 1: her elderly mother. We've been emailing back and forth for
Speaker 1: around two weeks. Hi, I'm Jamie. I'm going to be
Speaker 1: visiting the camp in early February. Would it be possible
Speaker 1: to speak with someone? The answer was somewhat ambiguous. Can
Speaker 1: I call you? Um? Sure, and so Deb calls me
Speaker 1: twenty minutes before I get on a plane. She has
Speaker 1: a thick but kind Southern accent, one that comes from Louisville, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: where she grew up, not Florida. Mediums in Cassadega are
Speaker 1: kind of like struggling character actors in Los Angeles, Like
Speaker 1: barely any of them are from their most of them
Speaker 1: moved with a desire to completely turn their lives around,
Speaker 1: and they all kind of give the area this like
Speaker 1: weird reputation. Deb is sweet but firm when she gives
Speaker 1: me the rundown. Getting approval at Cassadega is not going
Speaker 1: to be easy, which is an amazing thing to hear
Speaker 1: when you're literally about to get on a plane. I
Speaker 1: put my phone on mute and deep throughout the rest
Speaker 1: of the brownie batter doughnut while she gives me the
Speaker 1: standard rundown of who she is and where she is.
Speaker 1: She has past her deb She has been in Cassadega
Speaker 1: since two thousand and six, she became a certified medium
Speaker 1: in and she's currently vetting three different press requests. So
Speaker 1: she apologizes for the delay and getting back to me.
Speaker 1: Who am I? What am I doing? Comedian? Interesting? How
Speaker 1: does that factor into things? The camp, she says, is
Speaker 1: run by volunteers. They have a library, but it's only
Speaker 1: open two hours a week. The camp doesn't want to
Speaker 1: give anyone ongoing support with their little spiritualism project, thank
Speaker 1: you very much. And there's a whole public relations committee
Speaker 1: that doesn't meet until four days after I leave. So
Speaker 1: there's absolutely no way that I will be approved to
Speaker 1: talk to anybody or experience anything on the record at
Speaker 1: this time. Essentially, I'm fucked. So Pastor deb gently sets
Speaker 1: some ground rules with me. Of course, she can't prevent
Speaker 1: me from visiting, but the mediums at the camp want
Speaker 1: to get a better feeling of who I am before
Speaker 1: they approve my presence whole sale. She encourages me to
Speaker 1: experience Cassadega, meditate in Seneca Park, get a few readings
Speaker 1: of the record. Of course, walk the historical path through
Speaker 1: Colby Alderman Park, where the state of Florida recently installed
Speaker 1: historical landmarks to tell the partial story of American spiritualism.
Speaker 1: Take their historical tour, meet tourists in the nighttime spiritual
Speaker 1: Encounter or photography tour real Thing, see Colby Lake at sunrise.
Speaker 1: She's very passionate about her religion and tells me in
Speaker 1: this amazing soft voice, continuity of life, connecting with spirit
Speaker 1: is very important to us. Did I know that this
Speaker 1: weekend was their Gala day fundraiser and that there would
Speaker 1: be mediums speaking on everything from ghosts to self esteem
Speaker 1: to a lighthearted recap of the Chinese New Year? I
Speaker 1: assure her I do know this, and then I'll be
Speaker 1: watching on zoom while a shuttle bus takes me from
Speaker 1: a talk in Tallahassee to the Super Eight in Orlando.
Speaker 1: I'll be staying at the night before visiting her church.
Speaker 1: She seems gently optimistic about me. It doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of journalists looking to report on the
Speaker 1: camp in a positive sense with an open mind, But
Speaker 1: her recommendations are all made to me very much at
Speaker 1: arm's length, generously. Her message was this, have a nice trip.
Speaker 1: We're watching you. Good luck. I don't wish the experience
Speaker 1: of feeling that your character is being quietly judged by
Speaker 1: a group of psychics, healers and mediums who buy their
Speaker 1: very job description, believe that they know whether your intentions
Speaker 1: are good or not, and based on my initial reception,
Speaker 1: it's unclear if Spirit is sending them the message that
Speaker 1: I am. Pastor. Dub doesn't think of this as psychic surveillance,
Speaker 1: though she assures me that the experience will be a
Speaker 1: very relaxing one. She says, this will give you an
Speaker 1: opportunity to just be well sure being under light surveillance
Speaker 1: is still being technically, we do that all the time.
Speaker 1: I want to circle back to one of the important
Speaker 1: distinctions that keeps American spiritualism from being a cult that
Speaker 1: lack of charismatic central leader, again ranging in harm from
Speaker 1: the terrifying the Jim Joneses is the Keith rn aias
Speaker 1: the Donald Trump's or in the non death cult sense,
Speaker 1: your peloton instructor millionaires, you'r Gwyneth Paltrow's, your Bezos is
Speaker 1: your Elon Musks. There is no real central figure in
Speaker 1: modern spiritualism, which is unusual. Most major religions have central
Speaker 1: figures and founders, and the crop of religion that Spiritualism
Speaker 1: came up with. You've got Joseph Smith of the Mormons,
Speaker 1: Elder White of the Seventh day Adventists, and Lee of
Speaker 1: the Shakers, and on and on into today. Most religions
Speaker 1: still have a top brass figure, whether that's the literal
Speaker 1: pulpe of the Catholic Church, the chairman of the board
Speaker 1: in scientology, the Dalai Lama. The list goes on. Spiritualism
Speaker 1: has its founders, but no current leader, and that is
Speaker 1: something that is very deliberately done. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: figures that had a hand in making American spiritualism the
Speaker 1: media frenzy turned religious fad, turned public joke turned low
Speaker 1: key ghost church. It is now, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: start with its two most central figures, Maggie and Kate Fox.
Speaker 1: Here's how spiritualists acknowledge these figures. According to the National
Speaker 1: spirit List Association of Churches, Spiritualist manual quote, spiritualism has
Speaker 1: no beginning. Infinite intelligence is eternal, without beginning or end unquote.
Speaker 1: But then they say this quote. We are gathered here
Speaker 1: to celebrate a most important event that happened in a
Speaker 1: humble cottage in the obscure village of Hydesville in the
Speaker 1: state of New York, on the thirty one of March
Speaker 1: in the year eighty eight, an event that was the
Speaker 1: beginning of the now worldwide religious and scientific movement known
Speaker 1: as modern spiritualism. It was on this day and in
Speaker 1: this home, as you well know, that intelligent communication was
Speaker 1: established between the young Fox sisters, who were mediums and
Speaker 1: who were then living in this cottage with their parents,
Speaker 1: and the discarnate spirit of a man who some years
Speaker 1: before was murdered there unquote. And here's the real story
Speaker 1: with less generalization and more citations. Huge shout out to
Speaker 1: Barbara Weissberg here, author of the wonderful book Talking to
Speaker 1: the Dead, The definitive Biography of Maggie and Kate Fox.
Speaker 1: So let's get into it. There's a ton of information
Speaker 1: available on the Fox Sisters, which is already a massive
Speaker 1: feat for women of their time, or rather girls of
Speaker 1: their time, because the founders of spiritualism were both very
Speaker 1: young when the religion took off, because they weren't trying
Speaker 1: to start the religion that would grow, consume, and destroy
Speaker 1: their lives. The more showy, more money driven Spiritualism of
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds once claimed over seven hundred thousand publicly
Speaker 1: associated members. For reference, there's around four thousand in the
Speaker 1: u S today. Prominent members included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
Speaker 1: Mary Todd Lincoln, Horace Greeley, and those who interacted ranged
Speaker 1: from Henry Butler Yeats to Frederick Douglas to Harriet Beecher
Speaker 1: Stowe to Harry Houdini. The Fox Sisters, who all of
Speaker 1: these cultural figures would have known and many knew personally,
Speaker 1: aren't brought up by New American spirituals very often, and
Speaker 1: it's with good reason. By many they're remembered as irredeemable frauds.
Speaker 1: The original debunked celebrity mediums. Maggie Fox full name Margaretta
Speaker 1: was born in October of eighteen thirty three, and Kate
Speaker 1: Fox full named Catherine in March of eighteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: so fourteen and a few days shy of eleven on
Speaker 1: March thirty one, eighty eight. They were the youngest of
Speaker 1: six born in Canada and recently having moved back to
Speaker 1: the US. In the small community of Hydesville, New York,
Speaker 1: a suburb of Rochester that no longer even exists, they
Speaker 1: were staying in temporary housing while their father, John and
Speaker 1: older brother David worked on constructing a permanent home nearby.
Speaker 1: Maggie and Kate were the product of a second act
Speaker 1: in their parents marriage. Their four older siblings, Leah, Maria, Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: and David were all adults with families of their own.
Speaker 1: Their parents, John David Fox and the sweet and eccentric
Speaker 1: Margaret Smith then Fox, had had their first four children
Speaker 1: between eighteen thirteen and eighteen twenty, later separating when John's drinking, gambling,
Speaker 1: and philandering pushed Margaret to the edge and she left him.
Speaker 1: She moved back in with her sister and continued to
Speaker 1: raise the kids, telling them about their grandmother's seeing power.
Speaker 1: Maggie and Kaith's Grandma was said to have slept walk
Speaker 1: often in the middle of the night to stock spirits
Speaker 1: she saw in a graveyard nearby, and was sometimes followed
Speaker 1: by her husband. While Margaret raised the kids, John began
Speaker 1: the work of trying to get his family back. The
Speaker 1: kids all moved away as they aged into adulthood one
Speaker 1: by one, but their father remained in touch and eventually
Speaker 1: returned as a sober, disciplined, and enthusiastic Methodist, essentially an
Speaker 1: intense Bible Christian with an emphasis on reformation and sobriety.
Speaker 1: His effort at self improvement worked and Margaret took him back.
Speaker 1: She had originally really regretted getting married as a teenager,
Speaker 1: but she was impressed with the work that John had
Speaker 1: done on himself, and the two moved across the border
Speaker 1: from upstate New York to a small farm in Canada,
Speaker 1: where they had two last children, Maggie and Kate. The
Speaker 1: farm failed and the family moved back, leaving one of
Speaker 1: their children, now married, Elizabeth Fox, behind in Canada. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth also claimed that she had second sight and is
Speaker 1: said to have correctly predicted that she would die at
Speaker 1: only seven. Although in the eighteen forties how big of
Speaker 1: a swing is that really? Anyways, Back in New York,
Speaker 1: the kids were thrilled to be living near their older siblings,
Speaker 1: their brother David, who had a wife and kids, their
Speaker 1: sister Maria, who had married a cousin because eighteen forties,
Speaker 1: and their oldest sister Leah, a single mom in her
Speaker 1: mid thirties with a teenage daughter named Lizzie living nearby
Speaker 1: in Rochester. It's kind of funny how siblings can have
Speaker 1: the same parents but also have completely different experiences of them.
Speaker 1: Leah was over a decade and a half older than
Speaker 1: Maggie and Kate and had grown up with a single
Speaker 1: parent and an absent alcoholic father, while Maggie and Kate
Speaker 1: had grown up in a stable, sober, nuclear unit. But
Speaker 1: their parents are the same people, just in very different
Speaker 1: phases of their lives, and this same decade and a
Speaker 1: half was marked by slow but steady social progress in
Speaker 1: the historically progressive Rochester area. Leah had gotten married and
Speaker 1: pregnant at fourteen, the age Maggie was in eighteen forty eight,
Speaker 1: but the interceding years had made it socially acceptable for
Speaker 1: kids to be kids longer, with more of an emphasis
Speaker 1: on education and less of an emphasis on getting married young.
Speaker 1: The Fox family was close and would remain us for
Speaker 1: a long time, but it was complicated. They were lower
Speaker 1: middle class. They were able to survive, but really only
Speaker 1: check to check. And Maggie and Kate had this level
Speaker 1: of education, stability, curiosity, and confidence that their older siblings
Speaker 1: just hadn't had access to. So Maggie and Kate are
Speaker 1: at the house on March one. The weather is bad,
Speaker 1: the kids are bored, and one night their mom has
Speaker 1: woken up by the girls crying out that there was
Speaker 1: a spirit in the room. She believed what her daughter
Speaker 1: had said about second sight, but she understandably treated her
Speaker 1: youngest kids with some skepticism. After all, it was the
Speaker 1: night before April Fool's Day. But the girls wouldn't let up,
Speaker 1: saying that there was a spirit in the room with
Speaker 1: them who had been banging on their walls and floorboards
Speaker 1: in these sharp wraps. The raps were disorganized and inconsistent,
Speaker 1: but scary, and Maggie and Kate said that this spirit
Speaker 1: had replied to them when asked questions in this Morse
Speaker 1: code like way. It didn't take long for Margaret to
Speaker 1: become convinced that they were telling the truth, and John
Speaker 1: quickly was too. I always think this part is funny
Speaker 1: because it's a it's a risk to call your neighbors
Speaker 1: over so soon after moving to a new town about
Speaker 1: there being a ghost upstairs. But the Foxes, they're just
Speaker 1: built different. They don't care. They're going to call you.
Speaker 1: So they call their neighbor Mary over to get her
Speaker 1: opinion on whether there is or is not a ghost
Speaker 1: haunting their teen girls. The neighbors were, to put it, kindly,
Speaker 1: not into it. Maybe this all sounds a little weird
Speaker 1: and old timing, you know, sure, people in the eighteen
Speaker 1: forties in a rural area believing in ghosts. But we're
Speaker 1: talking about a very specific moment in history here. We're
Speaker 1: in up state New York, three months and mere miles
Speaker 1: from where the Seneca Falls convention is going to take place,
Speaker 1: becoming the seminal moment in starting the first wave of
Speaker 1: feminism in the US with all of the white feminist
Speaker 1: problems that came along with it. In this year, slavery
Speaker 1: was still legal in the American South, and many in
Speaker 1: Rochester were advocating for abolition, and Frederick Douglas would start
Speaker 1: his paper The North Star. It was a time where
Speaker 1: science was becoming a more normalized part of life, and
Speaker 1: inventions like sewing machines and ice cream, and ideas that
Speaker 1: had less staying power and objective truth behind it, like
Speaker 1: the skull measuring eugenic scam that is, phrenology, and the
Speaker 1: concept of electromagnetic fluid, a new theory about how spirit
Speaker 1: could exist within your own blood and create all of
Speaker 1: the matter that surrounds you. And at this same time,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of religious changes going on. New
Speaker 1: religions like Shakerrism, Mormon as a and Christian science became
Speaker 1: popular during a second Great Religious Reformation in the US.
Speaker 1: The concept of spirit communication had been in the popular
Speaker 1: consciousness here and there, particularly through the idea of Mesmerism,
Speaker 1: a concept developed by a man named Anton Mesmer that
Speaker 1: leaned into the electromagnetic fluid theory and life after death,
Speaker 1: and was popular enough during the eighteen forties that it's
Speaker 1: likely that the Fox Sisters would have encountered this idea.
Speaker 1: It was this dual time of progress and extreme anxiety
Speaker 1: in the Rochester area. Religious enthusiasts were worried that science
Speaker 1: would undercut faith, and scientists worried that religion would resist
Speaker 1: empirical evidence over traditional ideas and values, and spirit communication
Speaker 1: became this rare opportunity to marry these two. It wasn't
Speaker 1: quite a religion, and it had the possibility to intrigue
Speaker 1: the scientific community as they were trying to figure out
Speaker 1: exactly what was going on in place. Is like the foxhouse,
Speaker 1: So the neighbor Mary comes over and is like, guys,
Speaker 1: Maggie and Kate are bored. It's a rainy day, and
Speaker 1: they're fucking with you. But upon getting there, she is
Speaker 1: genuinely struck by how scared the girls seem. When she
Speaker 1: comes upstairs, Mary humors them and is a little freaked
Speaker 1: out when she does hear the raps herself. She asks
Speaker 1: the spirit if it knows how old she is, and
Speaker 1: it wraps out the correct answer, thirty three knocks in
Speaker 1: a row. She later told a local journalist quote, By
Speaker 1: this time I became much interested unquote. Redfield invited her
Speaker 1: husband Charles over to investigate as well, and focused on
Speaker 1: calming the girls, who seemed afraid that the spirit speaking
Speaker 1: with them wanted to hurt them and thought that they
Speaker 1: had done something wrong. In a statement that would inform
Speaker 1: the direction of the religion would go in. Mary told
Speaker 1: the girls that they've done nothing wrong by speaking with
Speaker 1: the spirit, and that it didn't want to hurt them,
Speaker 1: a far less scary interpretation than religions that push that
Speaker 1: children are born into sin and have to pull themselves
Speaker 1: out of it. Mary later described one of the girls
Speaker 1: as replying, quote, we're innocent. How good it is to
Speaker 1: have a clear conscience unquote. In the Fox Sisters biography
Speaker 1: by Barbara Weisberg, the author makes special note of another
Speaker 1: contributing factor that would have been a motivator for the sisters,
Speaker 1: the fact that death was a far more common reality
Speaker 1: of daily life than than it is for modern Americans.
Speaker 1: Life expectancy hovered somewhere around forty About half of the
Speaker 1: children born didn't survive to their first birthday, and illnesses
Speaker 1: like typhus, malaria, yellow fever, infections, accidents, and on and on.
Speaker 1: These were the olden times. On it people were dropping
Speaker 1: like flies, and the industrial revolution creating jobs and factories
Speaker 1: brought progress and shared ideas, and yeah, a bunch of
Speaker 1: new ways to die very unpleasantly. The spirit rappings continued
Speaker 1: through Kate Fox's eleventh birthday and the whole neighborhood grew curious.
Speaker 1: Their brother David began staying at the house to keep
Speaker 1: the growing crowds outside. The Fox home at Bay, and
Speaker 1: the sisters heard rappings nearly every single night. As attention
Speaker 1: expanded in the community, some writers and locals agreed that
Speaker 1: maybe this was an April Fool's prank, but much of
Speaker 1: the neighborhood held the line because at this point they
Speaker 1: had heard the rappings. Insisted that the girls weren't manifesting
Speaker 1: the noises on their own, and that Maggie and Kate
Speaker 1: had been terrified by what was happening for too many
Speaker 1: nights for the prank juice to be worth the prank squeeze.
Speaker 1: Dozens of people began gathering at the house every day
Speaker 1: to hear the rappings from the young girls themselves. The
Speaker 1: situation hovered somewhere between local sensation and free sideshow act
Speaker 1: in a sleepy town where nothing really ever happened. Within
Speaker 1: the week, local reporter E. E. Lewis had taken it
Speaker 1: on himself to chronicle and distribute first and accounts of
Speaker 1: what was going on, producing a forty page pamphlet called
Speaker 1: A Report of the Mysterious Noises Heard in the house
Speaker 1: of Mr John D. Fox in Hydesville, Arcadia, Wayne County,
Speaker 1: authenticated by the certificates and confirmed by the statements of
Speaker 1: the citizens of that place and vicinity. Come on, we've
Speaker 1: got to get a better title. Louis spoke quite a
Speaker 1: bit to Margaret Fox, the girl's mother, who was characteristically flustered, enthusiastic,
Speaker 1: and defensive of her youngest children. Here's how Margaret described
Speaker 1: what was happening in her home. Quote. The first night
Speaker 1: we heard the wrapping, we all got up and laid
Speaker 1: a candle and searched all over the house. It was
Speaker 1: not very loud, yet it produced a jar on the
Speaker 1: bedsteads and chairs, one that could be felt by placing
Speaker 1: our hands on the chair or while we were in bed.
Speaker 1: It was a feeling of a tremulous motion, more than
Speaker 1: a sudden jar. The girls who slept in the other
Speaker 1: bed in the room heard the noise and tried to
Speaker 1: make a similar noise by snapping their fingers. The youngest
Speaker 1: girl is about twelve years old. She's the one who
Speaker 1: made her hand go As fast as she made the
Speaker 1: noise with her hands or fingers. The sound was followed
Speaker 1: up in the room. It made the same number of
Speaker 1: noises that the girl did. The other girl, who was
Speaker 1: in her fifteenth year, then spoke in sport and said,
Speaker 1: now do this just as I do. Count one, two, three, four,
Speaker 1: et cetera, striking one hand and the other at the
Speaker 1: same time. The blows which she made were repeated as before.
Speaker 1: It appeared to answer her by repeating every blow she made.
Speaker 1: She then began to be startled unquote. At this time
Speaker 1: it appeared that it was the same spirit returning to
Speaker 1: the Fox house every single night, a spirit that the
Speaker 1: family didn't know, but who seemed to know plenty about them.
Speaker 1: And yet he didn't seem angry in the way that
Speaker 1: your average movie Poltergeist would be. He was trying to
Speaker 1: tell them something, and it seemed important. What materialized in
Speaker 1: the communication over the next days was that the spirit
Speaker 1: had been murdered. He'd been killed by a man named Mr.
Speaker 1: Bell on a Tuesday at midnight. He was a man
Speaker 1: whose throat had been cut. He'd been taken down to
Speaker 1: the cellar and not buried until the next night, when
Speaker 1: he was buried ten ft below. Margaret Fox continued telling
Speaker 1: the local reporter quote. I then asked if it was
Speaker 1: a human being that was making the noise, and if
Speaker 1: it was to manifest it by the same noise. There
Speaker 1: was no noise. I then asked if it was a
Speaker 1: spirit and if it was to manifest it by two sounds.
Speaker 1: I heard two sounds as soon as the words were spoken, unquote.
Speaker 1: By the first week of April, word had reached the
Speaker 1: other Fox siblings, not through letters from their family, but
Speaker 1: by the press and popular discussion. Leah Fox caught wind
Speaker 1: of what her little sisters in Rochester were up to
Speaker 1: via one of her piano students, and she canceled the
Speaker 1: lessons that she had scheduled for the week, and so
Speaker 1: she told her teen daughter and two friends that they
Speaker 1: were going to go to Hydesville and see what the
Speaker 1: hell was going on. Full disclosure, I had this episode
Speaker 1: almost ready to go when less than two weeks than
Speaker 1: this series began, my grandfather died. I really loved my grandfather.
Speaker 1: Um he was a real pain in the ass of
Speaker 1: a person, and for all of his faults, he really
Speaker 1: loved us. We didn't have a service. There's this thing
Speaker 1: with nineties some things where everyone they know is already dead,
Speaker 1: and if you make it far enough, you might just
Speaker 1: want to have your family spend that money paying off
Speaker 1: your medical bills. But I went home and I saw
Speaker 1: my family because I just wanted to be with them
Speaker 1: and talk about him. And there are all these things
Speaker 1: you can learn about your dead grandfather when you go
Speaker 1: to Chile's with your family. Did you know that he
Speaker 1: was a shipyard engineer for thirty years? Uh? Honest to God,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. It's been a strange and painful time,
Speaker 1: in part because he didn't believe that anything happened to
Speaker 1: you once you die. It was his feeling one that
Speaker 1: was shaped by being a prisoner of war and growing
Speaker 1: up without religion himself. The times that were good were earned,
Speaker 1: not divinely given, and after the first three decades of
Speaker 1: his life were shaped by poverty and struggle in life
Speaker 1: in a cage, he didn't think that there was anyone
Speaker 1: really looking out for us when he died. That was
Speaker 1: it is what my papa thought, and continued to think
Speaker 1: even after he wasn't in full control of his own thoughts.
Speaker 1: His younger brother died a few years before he did,
Speaker 1: and every day he would tell people how much he
Speaker 1: missed him and that he didn't think that he would
Speaker 1: see him again. When he died. The show has been
Speaker 1: hard for me to put together because of how things
Speaker 1: are right now. You know, things are moving really quickly.
Speaker 1: People are being thrown back into the world without any
Speaker 1: quality control of who you meet, who you talked to,
Speaker 1: who you get to be after being lucky enough to
Speaker 1: have survived the plague. For now, I don't know what
Speaker 1: I believe in most days, but today, when I'm recording
Speaker 1: this my bedroom, I can tell you for sure that
Speaker 1: I really hope that my grandfather was wrong, and that
Speaker 1: hope is what Ghost Church is built on. And so,
Speaker 1: to quote a very phrase, now, more than ever, I
Speaker 1: want to give Ghost Church a chance. This season, we're
Speaker 1: going to be taking a look at all of it.
Speaker 1: The rise and fall of the Fox Sisters, the scientific
Speaker 1: movement behind spirit communication, the founding of Cassadeica, rivalries among mediums,
Speaker 1: the uncanny number of celebrities who became involved in the movement,
Speaker 1: being whisked away in the night to a Perkins restaurant,
Speaker 1: and why people are willing to sometimes give up their family,
Speaker 1: their friends, and their former life to communicate with spirit.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I believe, but I know that
Speaker 1: I would like to understand, and so I will see
Speaker 1: you next week. Ghost Church is a Cool Zone Media
Speaker 1: production created, written, and hosted by me Jamie Loftus. The
Speaker 1: show is produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Ian Johnson.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Speedy or Tease That's Sadie
Speaker 1: du Qui, Andy Moholt, Audrey Z Whitesides and Jolly Dubeck
Speaker 1: and music is by Zoe Flade