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Speaker 1: I would ask you if you believed in ghosts, but

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Speaker 1: every time I do that, there's like a swarm of

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Speaker 1: angry redditors that descend on me like wasps. So I'll

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Speaker 1: ask you this instead. Have you heard of ghost Church?

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Speaker 1: My name is Jamie Loftus, the creator behind the Lida podcast,

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Speaker 1: my year in Mensa, and a bunch of other stuff,

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Speaker 1: and I love a freaky niche American experience. So what

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Speaker 1: if I told you there are camps across the US

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Speaker 1: dedicated to communing with the dead. What if I told

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Speaker 1: you the religion behind these camps had attracted the likes

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Speaker 1: of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Frederick Douglas, Mary Todd Lincoln,

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Speaker 1: Queen Victoria dan Ackroyd, and the first woman to run

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Speaker 1: for the U S presidency. No, but what if I

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Speaker 1: told you I've been there and I've seen it myself.

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Speaker 1: American Spiritualism is a religion I've been tangentially aware of

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Speaker 1: for years. But it wasn't until I went to the

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Speaker 1: religion's largest surviving camp in Cassadega, Florida, that I started

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Speaker 1: to learn out the US as bizarre and somewhat tortured

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Speaker 1: relationship with the spirit communication The assumptions that come along

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Speaker 1: with it are expected. Is it a cult? Are they witches? No,

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Speaker 1: and relax. But the reality of how the religion came together,

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Speaker 1: how it was blown apart, and how it's managed to

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Speaker 1: mostly survive for nearly two centuries undetected is fascinating. My

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Speaker 1: new series Ghost Church follows this uniquely American religion from

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Speaker 1: its origin to a week of n sweating in Florida,

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Speaker 1: listening to medium's drunk gossiping at a karaoke night, trying

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Speaker 1: to make ends meet. I went to spiritualist churches post

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Speaker 1: churches across the country to find out how a religion

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Speaker 1: that was started as a prank by two preteen sisters

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Speaker 1: in upstate New York snowballed into a movement that consumed

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Speaker 1: the final years of Harry Houdini's life. It's not a cult,

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Speaker 1: They're not witches. But the history of American spiritualism intersects

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Speaker 1: with the history of the industrial era, of the rise

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Speaker 1: of science, of the backlash to first wave feminism and abolition,

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Speaker 1: and today with the billion dollar New Age movement that

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Speaker 1: the religion hasn't managed to capitalize on. I'll be taking

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Speaker 1: a look at this entire Bizarro history on our impulse

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Speaker 1: to debunk systems of belief at the celebrity psychics that

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Speaker 1: have watered down and jacked up prices on access to spirit,

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Speaker 1: and take you on my own journey through a week

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Speaker 1: communing with the mediums of Cassadega, Florida. Taking a class

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Speaker 1: where a table would connect you with the dead spirit

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Speaker 1: of your pets, to services where reverence tell you about

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Speaker 1: ghosts you didn't know we're standing right behind you, to

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Speaker 1: rivalries between mediums and psychics who are neighbors. I'm not

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Speaker 1: asking you to believe or disbelieve anything. I'll be interviewing

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Speaker 1: mediums from the camp and skeptics alike. I'm just asking

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Speaker 1: you to get in the spirit circle with an open mind.

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Speaker 1: Let's see what comes through. You can listen to Ghost

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Speaker 1: Church by me Jamie Loftus starting on April on the

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Speaker 1: i Heeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

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Speaker 1: your podcast Sage