Speaker 1: We all want to believe. And there are many things
Speaker 1: in this life and in this world that we will
Speaker 1: not understand. There are things that have happened to me
Speaker 1: that I can't explain. I have seen things, and do
Speaker 1: I see shadows? Why sea goes? Yes? Does it scan
Speaker 1: the living? Be Jesus out of me every time? Yes?
Speaker 1: I ship my kids. Jesus. What the fun was that?
Speaker 1: Of course he's back, Baby, he had to be back.
Speaker 1: That's my uncle Dennis. He is a medium and reader
Speaker 1: originally from Massachusetts who now practices in the Carolinas. He
Speaker 1: was my introduction to spiritualism. And there's no one I
Speaker 1: trust more to take me on a journey through spiritualism
Speaker 1: to reach its logical end. I'm not one of these
Speaker 1: people it says, do we talk to the dead? See,
Speaker 1: That's where I divert because I don't necessarily think we
Speaker 1: talked to that as much as they can send us messages,
Speaker 1: and one of the best ways to do that is
Speaker 1: to be aware of the message that this setting. You
Speaker 1: have to be aware of the kinds of messages that
Speaker 1: are sent to you. And that's all I'm really doing.
Speaker 1: When you read taro or anybody reads tarot and Like
Speaker 1: I said, I don't know who's going to hear this,
Speaker 1: but I know you're gonna get a lot of hate mail,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, because I really don't give a fuck. Um.
Speaker 1: It's a question of understanding and taking away this mystique
Speaker 1: so that people can start to help themselves and use
Speaker 1: these things. A good reader will never tell you what
Speaker 1: to do. They'll present information. That's all they're gonna do.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the final episode of ghost Church for now.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to take a step back and take
Speaker 1: a look at some bloose ends in Cassadega, in spiritualism,
Speaker 1: and with you and me, of course, the little paras
Speaker 1: social devil relationship we've formed. There are people out there,
Speaker 1: they pretend to do what they're doing. And I've done parties,
Speaker 1: and I've done a lot of different things. And what
Speaker 1: I'll do with a party is I'll say to somebody
Speaker 1: who's who thinks they're the least psychic person here, you know,
Speaker 1: and everybody, okay, whoever, and I'll have them stand up
Speaker 1: in front of these people and I'll say, I'll whisper
Speaker 1: in there, this is what you're gonna say. That's what
Speaker 1: you're gonna say. You have five people in front of you.
Speaker 1: You're sensing the letter on You never said a name,
Speaker 1: you never said it was male, you never said it
Speaker 1: was female. You're sensing the letter. It's almost guaranteed that's
Speaker 1: somebody in that audience and says, oh, my father's name
Speaker 1: was Richard. Well, thank you, because I never said it
Speaker 1: was your father. I never said it was male, and
Speaker 1: I never said her name was Richard. You must be
Speaker 1: the fucking psychic, as you gave me all the information
Speaker 1: so you can say just about anything. And one of
Speaker 1: the favorite things is somebody has a piece of jewelry.
Speaker 1: You know how easy it is to expand on this time.
Speaker 1: This is why I get angry because you're playing on people.
Speaker 1: You using these these tricks, if you will. I'm not
Speaker 1: using tricks at all. I'm laying down a card and
Speaker 1: I'm saying to you, this is what the CAD means,
Speaker 1: this is what the number means, the slip civil means.
Speaker 1: I like my uncle Dennis's attitude towards spiritualism. It really
Speaker 1: has informed my own as I've worked on this show.
Speaker 1: He holds this core belief in life after death with
Speaker 1: a desire to sniff out bullshit that's hurting people, because
Speaker 1: that's the problem, right, the stuff that hurts people, the
Speaker 1: stuff I can't prove that brings people peace in a
Speaker 1: way that they have some control over. Hell, yeah, go
Speaker 1: for it. But one thing it's hard to not understand
Speaker 1: is why there's so much frustration around the idea of
Speaker 1: mediums and psychics in general, because there are some dark roads.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking particularly of psychics that capitalize on the grief
Speaker 1: of others, grieving parents, grieving siblings, grieving children, who collude
Speaker 1: with the police and make big entertainment deals. I lost
Speaker 1: my boyfriend tragically um a few years ago. They have
Speaker 1: found I've had such a hut time since everything. The
Speaker 1: reason why you didn't find him this because he didn't
Speaker 1: water and find him in water. It's like the girl
Speaker 1: is missing in a Ruba. You can't find somebody. It
Speaker 1: was September eleven, there was he was a fireman. But
Speaker 1: does this girl look familiar to you? Know? She does?
Speaker 1: I worked this case. This is a girl who you
Speaker 1: said was beaten and killed. Okay, this little girl is
Speaker 1: me and you told somebody that she's dead. Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: you didn't disappear. I'm right here. Well that's interesting, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Somebody was known either for working with alcohol or they
Speaker 1: had a problem with it. The brother that died, okay,
Speaker 1: how don't you guys want to four? Oh? Yes, okay.
Speaker 1: And out of the four of you, three are similar,
Speaker 1: one is different. Yes. Yes, your son Brian is calling
Speaker 1: your mother bitch. Yes, I don't have a Brian. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, these psychics are not spiritualists or officially
Speaker 1: affiliated with the American spiritualist movement, but your mediumship plays
Speaker 1: and is publicly interpreted very similarly respectively. Those mediums were
Speaker 1: Sylvia Brown, author of over forty titles. Millionaire famously told
Speaker 1: the mother of a missing child that her child had died,
Speaker 1: something that proved to be false, but the mother died
Speaker 1: believing it was true. The second person you heard was
Speaker 1: Laurie Macquarie, who was advised on over five hundred cases
Speaker 1: in her career. The third was John Edward, who will
Speaker 1: We'll get to in a moment. These are some of
Speaker 1: the meanest people in the world. I absolutely agree. They
Speaker 1: approached the grieving, not the other way around. They promised results,
Speaker 1: they promised specificity, and they promise it now in a
Speaker 1: way that most spiritualist mediums I've met would completely disagree with.
Speaker 1: These types of mediums play into the popular idea of mediums,
Speaker 1: ones that can get anyone to come through at will
Speaker 1: with the exact information you want. There's no hit and
Speaker 1: there's no miss, just good edits and good hair and
Speaker 1: good information. I grew up watching mediums like this on TV,
Speaker 1: and at the time, my mom and I were very
Speaker 1: into it. I used to watch this medium called John Edward,
Speaker 1: who's still working now. I've listened to a few of
Speaker 1: his audiobooks to prepare for this show. Over the years,
Speaker 1: he's been busted many times. He's been accused of both
Speaker 1: hot and cold reading extensively, but speaking to the pit
Speaker 1: in my stomach that started with him. Check this anecdote
Speaker 1: out shortly after nine eleven, when his show Crossing Over
Speaker 1: a Staple with the Loftest Women was at an all
Speaker 1: time high in popularity on Basic Cable, Edwards producers famously
Speaker 1: convinced grieving families of the victims of nine eleven to
Speaker 1: come on to the show in order to boost ratings.
Speaker 1: During sweeps. Edward claimed to have no idea, only for
Speaker 1: a trade magazine to indicate otherwise, and the special was pulled.
Speaker 1: He was and is a hustler who spent a good
Speaker 1: portion of the book I read for this podcast, two
Speaker 1: thousand and four's crossing over simply defending himself against the
Speaker 1: huge slew of expose that had come in, especially a
Speaker 1: damning one in Time magazine. He tries to play it cool,
Speaker 1: as if they're all haters, saying I feel myself getting
Speaker 1: less and less angry at the cynics and more and
Speaker 1: more I feel sorry for them. Okay, Well, if there's
Speaker 1: one thing I've learned from Ghost Church, a lot of
Speaker 1: smoke usually means something, especially when the medium is heavily profiting.
Speaker 1: And this was a guy who draws the line basically nowhere.
Speaker 1: When it comes to this kind of medium, there's no
Speaker 1: moral ambiguity. Fuck these people absolutely fun opportunists who prey
Speaker 1: on people, charge thousands of dollars, and then feel the
Speaker 1: need to put on a highly publicized show in order
Speaker 1: to justify their behavior. But here is the complicated thing.
Speaker 1: Most mediums at Cassadega would completely agree with you on that.
Speaker 1: So without getting all hashtag not all mediums for this
Speaker 1: last episode, stop asking yourself whether you believe in communication
Speaker 1: with the dead or not Honestly, I don't care what
Speaker 1: you think about that. What I think matters more are
Speaker 1: the ethics and the emotions being taken into consideration when
Speaker 1: someone believes that is happening, which, for all their faults,
Speaker 1: I think is a pretty strong element of modern spiritualism,
Speaker 1: at least as I've experienced it. Because the impulse to
Speaker 1: want to find a way to contact the dead as
Speaker 1: a way of grieving is a human impulse. It's just
Speaker 1: as human as the impulse that some of the people
Speaker 1: you just heard speaking have had to exploit that grief
Speaker 1: for money and clout. It's the same instinct that's inspired
Speaker 1: artists and writers and filmmakers to explore how death could look.
Speaker 1: There's a bajillion famous movies and plays and TV about
Speaker 1: the dead returning with purpose and love and a lot
Speaker 1: of confusion. Your king Hamlets, your Caspers, your unaired ABC
Speaker 1: pilot from the late eighties, Pocchinsky. Peter Boyle is a tough,
Speaker 1: ill mannered cop who was run down. I'm a lot
Speaker 1: to do that, but that's not the end of his story.
Speaker 1: Now now he's reincarnated surprise as a street wise bulldog
Speaker 1: in Pocinsky, What are you Gonna do now. Well, first
Speaker 1: I'm going to try licking myself, and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to catch my kila. I think the closest thing I've
Speaker 1: received to a divine gift during the production of this
Speaker 1: show was someone showing me Pucchynsky but speaking to this
Speaker 1: human impulse to want to explore life after death. American
Speaker 1: spiritualism very much belongs in that conversation. We've tackled a
Speaker 1: lot in this series. It's intersection with industrialism, with feminism,
Speaker 1: with science, with colonialism. American spiritualism boils down to an
Speaker 1: attempt to understand what happens to literally everyone, and the
Speaker 1: ideas behind it aren't going to work for everyone, and
Speaker 1: today's spiritualists kind of expand their reach beyond the classics
Speaker 1: of seances and speaking with the dead. During my time
Speaker 1: in Cassadega, I received messages about relationships with living people,
Speaker 1: about the future, about spirit guides about where I'll live,
Speaker 1: where I won't live. Need we remind of business and
Speaker 1: state of Florida. I'm not going to kick him out
Speaker 1: of business here do you live here? Well, geez, Florida,
Speaker 1: What did I ever do to your good? Just like
Speaker 1: taking get me causing sad shapen st and we goof
Speaker 1: course we look the fair every word love happen down.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, Pacceynsky's to our last Lauridian communion with the dead.
Speaker 1: Or now, now that we've healthily established that a cab
Speaker 1: includes psychic detectives, let's return to the land of the
Speaker 1: people's mediums over in Cassadega. It's a place where things
Speaker 1: are changing. The last major shift at the camp came
Speaker 1: when the Boomers arrived during the Vietnam War era, bringing
Speaker 1: new spiritual ideas and a less rigid commitment to the
Speaker 1: Christian adjacent nous of it all that defined early American spiritualism.
Speaker 1: So after the turbulence of the early decades at the camp,
Speaker 1: the fire that nearly destroyed the hotel, Cassadega in moving
Speaker 1: it into private hands. Spiritualisms barely surviving wave after wave
Speaker 1: of skepticism, the Camp took another decisive step in asserting
Speaker 1: themselves as an independent organization. In a critical moment came
Speaker 1: for the Camp, Cassadega broke from the oldest spiritualist organization
Speaker 1: in the country, the National Spiritualist Association of Churches the
Speaker 1: n s a C. In the book Cassadega the South's
Speaker 1: oldest spiritualist camp. The Camp historians stated that the main
Speaker 1: reason this was decided was because of differences and opinions
Speaker 1: on how to certify a medium. This is an understandable
Speaker 1: eternal issue within spiritualism. To this day. You'll find spiritualists
Speaker 1: on their guard about what constitutes a legitimate medium, how
Speaker 1: one's abilities needs to be witnessed and acknowledged and honed
Speaker 1: over a period of years. Given the background of spiritualism
Speaker 1: and of the people during the two major moments for
Speaker 1: the religion in the mid nineteenth century and the nine twenties,
Speaker 1: this makes sense. The religion was so thoroughly roasted in
Speaker 1: the press that other religions with similar beliefs were formed,
Speaker 1: not as much because of a difference in opinion, but
Speaker 1: because of a desire to not be involved in all
Speaker 1: of that. Investigators like Harry Houdini then felt strongly that
Speaker 1: most mediums were attention seeking frauds, and it's a baggage
Speaker 1: that the religion carries to this day. So yes, there
Speaker 1: is a pretty direct line you can draw from the
Speaker 1: Harry Houdini's of the world dedicating their skills to undercutting
Speaker 1: the mediums of their day. To Pastor dub of Cassadega,
Speaker 1: calling me in the airport terminal right before I leave
Speaker 1: on a plane to Florida to say just so I know,
Speaker 1: I haven't actually been approved by the press board of
Speaker 1: the camp, and I would be informed of how the
Speaker 1: mediums felt about me two weeks later. And so you
Speaker 1: have to understand it surprised me when a long time
Speaker 1: medium with the camp approached me after my botched adventure
Speaker 1: to learn more in Cassadega's library and invited me to dinner.
Speaker 1: At this point of my trip, I had learned a
Speaker 1: lot about spiritualism, but I felt extremely isolated and almost
Speaker 1: certain that the camp would not approve of the press
Speaker 1: request I was making and had already invested a ton
Speaker 1: of time into. So when a medium who first came
Speaker 1: to Cassadega in the nineties came up to me and
Speaker 1: asked if I was hungry, I said, fuck it, I've
Speaker 1: been eating at a gas station for four days and
Speaker 1: I don't think these people like me very much. Let's
Speaker 1: go out to eat, and I got in the car.
Speaker 1: We end up at a Perkins restaurant. It's my first
Speaker 1: time there. If you've never been, it's kind of got
Speaker 1: Floridian Denny's vibes, but with a hell of a pie
Speaker 1: menu highly recommend. The medium I'm with is a regular here,
Speaker 1: knows everyone by name, everyone knows them. When we sit down,
Speaker 1: they recommend the soup, sandwich, pie combo. And I'm so
Speaker 1: fucking hungry that I would eat all three of those things,
Speaker 1: throw it back up and baby bird it back to myself.
Speaker 1: And as hungry as I am, it occurs to me
Speaker 1: that this could be an ambush, because while the mediums
Speaker 1: in Cassadega had been cordial to me during this visit,
Speaker 1: I was definitely walking on eggshells for the duration. Cassadega
Speaker 1: mediums do not like press, or rather the risk of
Speaker 1: negative press. There are a religion that has been brought
Speaker 1: to their knees over and over by this kind of press.
Speaker 1: So while it doesn't feel great, I sort of understand why.
Speaker 1: So after I order my soup, I go over the possibilities.
Speaker 1: Maybe I've been brought here to be gently scolded and
Speaker 1: warned to back off, to be told they're not hurting
Speaker 1: anybody here, so go away instead. By my second cup
Speaker 1: of coffee, because I cannot stop eating or drinking this
Speaker 1: whole meal the dry mouth I have from four days
Speaker 1: of gas station food is excruciating. I realized that I've
Speaker 1: been brought here to just listen to what this person
Speaker 1: has to say, not to the history book Cassadega treatment
Speaker 1: that I've gotten on the phone and in real life
Speaker 1: several times over now, not the skeptics perspective that you
Speaker 1: can find all over YouTube, but just listen to someone
Speaker 1: who has watched and lived inside of a spiritualist camp
Speaker 1: for over a quarter century. I kind of can't believe
Speaker 1: my luck. What would the boards say. The medium starts
Speaker 1: by saying this, they don't want to talk politics or
Speaker 1: personality or anything like that. They'll let me suce that
Speaker 1: out for myself. Instead, they tell me about their background,
Speaker 1: one that shares parallels with a few other mediums at
Speaker 1: the camp. They were once a big corporate success story
Speaker 1: in another region of the country. They were responsible for
Speaker 1: millions of dollars of revenue. They had hundreds of employees
Speaker 1: back in the eighties and nineties, the whole Reagan opulence game.
Speaker 1: They make themselves kind of sound like a character in
Speaker 1: Wall Street. At one point, refer to themselves as Daddy Warbucks,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to not hear a little bit of
Speaker 1: nostalgia for it as we're eating our six dollar Perkins sandwiches.
Speaker 1: They say they had top agents go to Hawaii for
Speaker 1: ten days at a time in the best hotels, parties
Speaker 1: at the best country clubs, until all of a sudden
Speaker 1: things took a turn. Their business flopped, their marriage of
Speaker 1: several decades fell apart, and the medium ended up a
Speaker 1: shell of themselves with little more consistency in their life
Speaker 1: than a certificate in practicing raiki. They don't practice raiki
Speaker 1: and Cassadega much, the medium was told, but they could
Speaker 1: get trained in spiritual physical healing if they have some
Speaker 1: time to kill. At this point, they had nothing but time,
Speaker 1: and so when a family member fell ill in Florida,
Speaker 1: the medium came to Cassadega and never went back. Stories
Speaker 1: like this are echoed throughout the camp in different ways.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of mediums who flunked out of
Speaker 1: corporate America during this same era and seemed to hope
Speaker 1: spiritualism would provide shelter from their prior life and beliefs.
Speaker 1: There are other mediums and community members who were seeking
Speaker 1: validation and energy after a life of skepticism. I always
Speaker 1: think of Selena, the bookstore manager, who was raised by
Speaker 1: two skeptic NASA parents. There are other members in Cassadega
Speaker 1: who are recovering from a life in fundamentalist religion, like
Speaker 1: the events coordinator Jamie, who has raised Southern Baptist and
Speaker 1: was Southern Baptist well into her adult life. Some of
Speaker 1: these people stay close with their families. Others find it
Speaker 1: harder to do. But in Cassadega, you're welcome to come
Speaker 1: and go as you please. And that's the best and
Speaker 1: worst thing about the camp. The medium reminds me as shiny,
Speaker 1: happy people plays softly in the background. God no one
Speaker 1: is wearing a mask in Florida, and the elderly keep
Speaker 1: bragging about it, like it's this amazing thing ing. But
Speaker 1: the medium wants to tell me that this freeness to
Speaker 1: come and go is part of the problem. Young people
Speaker 1: don't want to get drained in Cassadega. They want instant
Speaker 1: gratification on everything, not like the old days. I don't
Speaker 1: have the heart to tell them what kinds of things
Speaker 1: young people are preoccupied with these days. But once the
Speaker 1: medium starts talking, they don't seem to want to stop,
Speaker 1: and they tell me all about their twenty five years
Speaker 1: in Cassadega, about the books that got them excited when
Speaker 1: they first moved there, the channel texts that inspired them,
Speaker 1: people they had connected with, their medical malpractice lawsuit pending,
Speaker 1: a huge artistic dream they have that they're asking spirit
Speaker 1: to manifest for them this coming summer. They discussed the
Speaker 1: types of people they've met in Cassadega, lowering their voice
Speaker 1: when they categorize them, the healers who stay, the healed
Speaker 1: who leave, and the ones who get addicted to a
Speaker 1: sense of power and control. They shouldn't be telling me this,
Speaker 1: they say, but they can't. Seemed to help themselves and
Speaker 1: keep talking. Those people who own the overpriced shops outside
Speaker 1: the camp, they say, laughing, are imperfect, perfect children of God. Jamie, Okay,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say that, the medium says again. But as
Speaker 1: long as there's pile on the table, it's nice to
Speaker 1: be talking to someone for both of us. I hadn't
Speaker 1: realized how lonely I had felt this whole week and
Speaker 1: also a month and year. For all the ghosts swirling around,
Speaker 1: it's very easy to feel lonely in Cassadeca. Families don't
Speaker 1: come there It's almost a running joke. People come on
Speaker 1: their own when they need to be healed for something.
Speaker 1: The medium takes a long look at me and asks
Speaker 1: a question I've never been asked before, and I hope
Speaker 1: no one ever asks me again. They say, Jamie, do
Speaker 1: you believe that you are a perfect child of God?
Speaker 1: I reply, I think I know the correct answer, but no.
Speaker 1: I bearly went to Catholic Church as a kid. But
Speaker 1: I guess it's just kind of an inherited degenerative disease
Speaker 1: that you can get second hand. Like am I more
Speaker 1: damaged from my dad smoking Winston's inside or by being
Speaker 1: raised by lapsed Catholics? Not doing that? That problem not today.
Speaker 1: The medium laughs and says, don't worry, I am a
Speaker 1: perfect child of God. In spiritualism, children are born with
Speaker 1: infinite potential, and even when you go astray, you still
Speaker 1: hold that infinite potential and through you infinite intelligence their
Speaker 1: God can be channeled and exist. They tell me they
Speaker 1: like their job, They like making people feel better. It's
Speaker 1: not about money for them anymore, or at least it
Speaker 1: shouldn't be. Things were a little precarious for the medium maybe,
Speaker 1: but they seemed pretty zen about it. They seemed sure
Speaker 1: that it would work out. They felt that it was
Speaker 1: better that they were in this life in Florida than
Speaker 1: their last one as Daddy Warbucks, and then northeast. The
Speaker 1: check comes and we drive back into the vortex h
Speaker 1: Later that night, I fall asleep listening to the terror
Speaker 1: readers at the hotel Cassadega, having a glass of wine
Speaker 1: on the patio above my room, Room one, and I
Speaker 1: draft a text to send to the medium the next morning,
Speaker 1: like I've just gone on a date, which I definitely
Speaker 1: have not. But I type out, I hope you have
Speaker 1: a good week if we don't cross paths before I
Speaker 1: leave tomorrow, very cool, and I prep my green text
Speaker 1: to send the next morning. The answer comes back very quickly,
Speaker 1: so quickly, in fact, that I feel agist for being shocked.
Speaker 1: It says, are you hungry? Oh my god? What? And
Speaker 1: ten minutes later I'm back in the car and we're
Speaker 1: headed to breakfast. This friendship ends up being about sixty
Speaker 1: hours total, but it's this gentle and really kind one.
Speaker 1: At breakfast, when we run out of things to talk about, Cassadega,
Speaker 1: I tell the medium about myself, the kind of work
Speaker 1: I do, my family, my uncle Dennis. We get dinner
Speaker 1: at Perkins, we get breakfast somewhere else. They take me
Speaker 1: on a tour of their home where they do readings.
Speaker 1: Really old house, high ceiling, this slice of Northeastern architecture
Speaker 1: on seminole Land. There were framed paintings of their mentors
Speaker 1: and their spirit guides. Honestly, if I came anywhere close
Speaker 1: to finding a spirit guide in Cassadega, it was this medium,
Speaker 1: someone who led me directly to a b LT and
Speaker 1: two over easy eggs when I needed them the most.
Speaker 1: And after a day or so hanging out getting recommendations
Speaker 1: of what to look at at the camp, where to meditate,
Speaker 1: where to just stand and try to collect my thoughts
Speaker 1: before leaving. The next morning, it's my last night in Cassadega.
Speaker 1: My new friend, the medium isn't available for dinner, but
Speaker 1: after days of waiting, I finally have a food option
Speaker 1: in the area. On Wednesday nights, Sinatra's restaurante at the
Speaker 1: Hotel Cassadega is open, so I invite my only other
Speaker 1: friend in the entire state of Florida, the girl I
Speaker 1: knew from unionizing, who had come to a table tipping
Speaker 1: class less than a week before a lifetime ago, before
Speaker 1: I knew which old medium specialized in physical healing, and
Speaker 1: which was a skilled channeller, and which was just basically overcharging.
Speaker 1: It feels so good to see my friend and just
Speaker 1: someone from the outside world in general. We order Sinatra's
Speaker 1: Marinera sauce pasta and it's not great. It's hard to
Speaker 1: hear each other because there's this hired pianist blaring music
Speaker 1: of the Night from Phantom of the Opera as regulars,
Speaker 1: mostly middle aged couples from Florida, order refills of wine
Speaker 1: and sing it Volume five million. In spite of everything,
Speaker 1: it's super fun. And of course, after a week, she
Speaker 1: wanted to know what had I learned? Is it real
Speaker 1: or not? I don't know how to answer the question.
Speaker 1: And while I'm trying to think of how my phone
Speaker 1: buzzes with another green text, the medium is offering me
Speaker 1: a ride to the commuter rail that almost gets you
Speaker 1: to the Orlando airport at four thirty am the next morning.
Speaker 1: I think about it a little more and I tell
Speaker 1: her I'm not sure and maybe going to one more
Speaker 1: message service will clear it up. We part ways and
Speaker 1: I walked back down the street to Colby Temple one
Speaker 1: more time to attend to Cassadega Wednesday night message service.
Speaker 1: I've been to a message service before. It's when a
Speaker 1: medium stands in front of a group of around forty
Speaker 1: people and channels spirit by approaching people and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I have a message for you, and then they begin
Speaker 1: to describe a ghost or a traumatic event that has
Speaker 1: happened to you, and either it resonates or it doesn't.
Speaker 1: A man is presiding over this message service. He's got
Speaker 1: a great reputation in Cassadega. I really enjoy hearing him speak,
Speaker 1: and on this night he's kind of on fire. There's
Speaker 1: three different people who break into tears when Joy comes
Speaker 1: to them and describes a lost parent, lost grandparent, and
Speaker 1: in a particularly stirring case, someone's lost son. But when
Speaker 1: he comes to me, nothing is connecting. It doesn't make sense. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not a scientist. No, I don't even understand the
Speaker 1: scientific language. No, I've never had a little white dog. No,
Speaker 1: neither of my parents are sick right now. It's not
Speaker 1: always going to be a hit. But I leave discouraged.
Speaker 1: And when a couple in the lobby of the Hotel
Speaker 1: Cassadega who recognized me from the service say hey, Doug girl,
Speaker 1: what do you think is this real? We came from Daytona.
Speaker 1: Should we like get a reading tomorrow at the hotel?
Speaker 1: I tell them between you and me, They say, the
Speaker 1: real ships across the street, but it's your forty. I
Speaker 1: go to bed all packed, listening to the card readers
Speaker 1: arguing about the same exact guy as last night, but
Speaker 1: a little bit louder this time. The next morning, before
Speaker 1: the sun comes up, the medium is outside the hotel
Speaker 1: Cassadega waiting for me with a hot coffee and a
Speaker 1: bear claw from the gas station. We drive to the
Speaker 1: train station and talk about the rest of our week,
Speaker 1: and as we pull into the commuter rail car park,
Speaker 1: the medium kind of hesitates and asks if I have
Speaker 1: time to wait for the next train and a half hour.
Speaker 1: I do, and I also want to know why they're asking.
Speaker 1: Is it finally my time? I'm way overdue to be
Speaker 1: killed by a stranger, but it's not my time. Instead,
Speaker 1: we park and they hand me this green folder with
Speaker 1: a message written on the tab to Jamie from the medium,
Speaker 1: love and hugs on your journey. Inside this folder is
Speaker 1: a tight document that spells out the medium's philosophy on
Speaker 1: life on Cassadega, on the Veiled American Experiment, on a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. I don't want to call it a manifesto,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of a manifesto. It's like a friendly manifesto.
Speaker 1: The document was titled and I do feel the need
Speaker 1: to say this person is white. You'll see why I
Speaker 1: have to clarify that in just a moment. The document
Speaker 1: was titled I Too have a dream. Uh. Anyways, the
Speaker 1: Medium and I talk a little bit more about a
Speaker 1: failed small business on the finger legs, about wishing they
Speaker 1: saw their grandkids more, and eventually the next train comes.
Speaker 1: They give me a hug and say I'll always have
Speaker 1: a friend in Cassadega, and I'm going back to floor
Speaker 1: next week. So I wonder if it's true. I've not
Speaker 1: heard from the Medium since. But ever since returning from
Speaker 1: Cassadega in February and commencing work on this show, I've
Speaker 1: tried to keep up watching the official live streamed Sunday
Speaker 1: services and lyceums, that educational talkback portion that comes before
Speaker 1: the main service. For the most part, I enjoy them.
Speaker 1: It's pretty calming background noise, and for a long time
Speaker 1: up until For over thirty years, the Cassadega Lyceum has
Speaker 1: been run by a guy named Reverend Dr Don Zangy
Speaker 1: formerly like the Medium and Upstate New York business owner,
Speaker 1: but Reverend Dr don Zangi's business was a martial arts studio.
Speaker 1: He is a fascinating guy, easily in my top two
Speaker 1: reverend doctors, and I don't like to play favorites with
Speaker 1: my reverend doctors. His fashion sense absolutely reflects the fact
Speaker 1: that he used to own a martial arts studio, and
Speaker 1: although he's no longer the formal lyceum director, he's there
Speaker 1: quite a bit and always seems to be a welcome presence.
Speaker 1: He's a bit of a rarity at Cassadega. Reverend Dr
Speaker 1: don is more open to incorporating other religious ideas into
Speaker 1: his brand of spiritualism. He's studied under gurus. He's encouraged
Speaker 1: students to learn more about Buddhist principles, to test and
Speaker 1: challenge themselves and their beliefs. No real rules. His talks
Speaker 1: tend to be pretty chaotic and fun, and so I
Speaker 1: was surprised to see that this past Sunday he announced
Speaker 1: that he was leaving Cassadega. His house had already been sold.
Speaker 1: He was moving to Mexico in the middle of July
Speaker 1: and was starting his next chapter. Things are changing in Cassadega,
Speaker 1: and his reflections on the camp, where it had been,
Speaker 1: where it was going. We're really humbling to hear so
Speaker 1: here they are from Reverend Dr Don's mouth himself. But
Speaker 1: as many of you know, will probably be my SPANSNG
Speaker 1: as I'm making plans to leave camp, sold the house
Speaker 1: and Paul goes well, moving to Mexico, so I don't
Speaker 1: know they'll be around much much longer. Now. I meet
Speaker 1: a lot of people in camp you can mention over
Speaker 1: the years and somebody said, oh, this is my first
Speaker 1: time here, you better be careful my first time Father's Day,
Speaker 1: and I never left now. For many people spiritualism in general.
Speaker 1: Here in Cassadaga, they stay focused on the tradition and
Speaker 1: the science, bossing religion and spiritualism. I'm all in favor
Speaker 1: of it. Those are some of the best people, some
Speaker 1: of the best teachers, some best mediums. I love it.
Speaker 1: Others like me tend to go out and still searching
Speaker 1: for all kinds and the stuff still centered in Cassadega Spiritualism.
Speaker 1: That's just my nature. I did in martial arts, I
Speaker 1: studied with the master, I studied you ever the understo
Speaker 1: all kinds of other things to add to my base information.
Speaker 1: It is a It can be a huge door opener
Speaker 1: to worlds that people out there up there I'm never
Speaker 1: going to tell you about, because they don't even know it.
Speaker 1: If they do know, if they're gonna tell you it's bad,
Speaker 1: it's able. Well we've heard that more than a few times.
Speaker 1: Lassa has been a favorite thing of mine. Why everything
Speaker 1: here is I'm sitting here telling you thirty one years
Speaker 1: and wonderful, difficult, all but wonderful unless it was in
Speaker 1: my deal. I did it for so long to helpen
Speaker 1: the finally one day the part, so I just give
Speaker 1: it the title of director. But I don't care whatever
Speaker 1: questions that and Dr Don ends up falling back into
Speaker 1: his normal pet subjects. He goes on about the natural
Speaker 1: laws of the universe for a while. He reflects on
Speaker 1: his time getting to know people through the Lyceum program,
Speaker 1: but at the end he says his time in Cassadega
Speaker 1: is done, and so he's leaving. It's kind of that
Speaker 1: simple to put it in the medium's terms. He is healed,
Speaker 1: and he is leaving. It's quiet for a second, and
Speaker 1: then someone in the room speaks out, thank you for
Speaker 1: being a wonderful teacher. I really appreciate you and I'm
Speaker 1: going to miss you tremendously. And then he says goodbye
Speaker 1: to a room full of mediums who he's been a
Speaker 1: part of daily life for for over three decades, doing
Speaker 1: your best at all times. I don't know how else
Speaker 1: to end it. I don't want to plank everyone for
Speaker 1: being here. I'll wanta start crying. We thank for you,
Speaker 1: pastors back there in the board for room, you've been
Speaker 1: less seem alive. That's flive, that's awesome, Thank you. Things
Speaker 1: are changing in Cassadega. Spiritualism is a movement that may
Speaker 1: always be in financial peril, but even when specific camps
Speaker 1: are struggling with membership, with money, with generational conflict, the
Speaker 1: popularity of spiritual ideas and messages from the beyond are
Speaker 1: not going anywhere, whether you like it or not. And
Speaker 1: it's such a massive world to explore that there was
Speaker 1: a lot I wasn't able to fit into just nine
Speaker 1: episodes after months of research. Helena Blovotsky's Theosophy and All
Speaker 1: the issues therein other Spiritualist camps in the US, including
Speaker 1: the one nearest where I live in Escondido, California, where
Speaker 1: a healing service in the sun brought me the closest
Speaker 1: I've ever been to believing in everything. There was my
Speaker 1: day at the Arthur Findlay Institute, a college in England
Speaker 1: funded by Jay Arthur Findlay, a former president of the
Speaker 1: Spiritualist National Union in the eighteen seventies. It's the only
Speaker 1: Spiritualist university that is still operating regularly and it runs
Speaker 1: courses on site and on Zoom. Today. I took a
Speaker 1: course with them called Communicating with Spirits and it was
Speaker 1: absolutely packed, mostly with the casually curious the internet spirituals.
Speaker 1: How can I learn about my aura? Are the tools
Speaker 1: they use on TV? Real? Or can I go intuitive?
Speaker 1: I discovered there had been a Spiritualist church founded in
Speaker 1: my hometown in the late eighteen hundreds and sent my
Speaker 1: dad to where it's currently located and is struggling. There
Speaker 1: are the YouTubers that channels spirit through crystals and taro
Speaker 1: in a way that can be maybe a little amateurish
Speaker 1: at times, but is also an example of how to
Speaker 1: bring spiritual ideas to a massive young audience in an
Speaker 1: accessible way for free. These videos tend to be calming, encouraging,
Speaker 1: body positive, pro mental health. They're not hardline spiritualism as
Speaker 1: it was founded in eighteen forty. It's not particularly Christian adjacent.
Speaker 1: They use cards, there's no four to six years of training.
Speaker 1: But the ideas in these videos and in these courses
Speaker 1: reflect what spiritualism always claimed to be about, about self
Speaker 1: acceptance and connecting on this plane and whatever the funk
Speaker 1: else plane of guidance and self improvement and generally feeling
Speaker 1: less alone. So we're going to go ahead and take
Speaker 1: a look at what comforting, loving message Spirit wants to
Speaker 1: give you. So first and foremost, I see the card
Speaker 1: that jumped out to me is sole family. Somebody has
Speaker 1: really backed you into a corner and made you feel
Speaker 1: silly for believing what you believe. But what Spirit is
Speaker 1: saying is that you're actually at a point right now
Speaker 1: where your sole family is coming together. I hate the
Speaker 1: argument of who cares about spiritualism because it's not real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: most religion and spiritual practice isn't real dip shit, but
Speaker 1: its effect on people is I think the only yardstick
Speaker 1: worth using here is whether it hurts people or not,
Speaker 1: and spiritualism certainly has over the years at the deeply
Speaker 1: imperfect movement with a complicated legacy. Without it, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: have great things like young Gie and dream analysis, or
Speaker 1: some of the basis of therapy, essentially a mental medium.
Speaker 1: Without spiritualism, we also wouldn't have the burden of celebrity
Speaker 1: medium scanners, nor the appropriation of Native American culture that
Speaker 1: does nothing to properly acknowledge or include Indigenous people. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, without spiritualism, we wouldn't have Ghostbusters, but
Speaker 1: it would have spared us from theosophy the pros and
Speaker 1: cons are infinite. American spiritualism came in a moment defined
Speaker 1: by forward momentum and all these ideas catching at the
Speaker 1: cross wires, at a time where science and magic could coexist,
Speaker 1: where women could be leaders, but black and Indigenous women
Speaker 1: could still be subjugated, where the laws of nature did
Speaker 1: not apply, but if you turned the light on just enough,
Speaker 1: the laws of nature sometimes did apply. I said in
Speaker 1: the first episode of the show that I've been mourning
Speaker 1: my grandfather who passed away a few months into the
Speaker 1: research for this show, in a week before it started airing.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard from him. I don't know that I will.
Speaker 1: And don't get me wrong, I've listened very closely to
Speaker 1: all the referenced doctors, but no spirit guide in a
Speaker 1: cape has come for me yet. Do you want to
Speaker 1: take one more walk with me? I have one more
Speaker 1: place in Cassadega. I really want to show you a
Speaker 1: place that is as silly as it is sincere, and
Speaker 1: it captures, if not proof that spiritualism is real, proof
Speaker 1: of how it makes people feel. It's called the Ferry Trail.
Speaker 1: It's right next door to the library and two doors
Speaker 1: down from where the Reverend doctor Lewis Gates practices. So
Speaker 1: come on one more walk. The Ferry Trail is another
Speaker 1: site around the camp that the mediums are understandably frustrated
Speaker 1: with the optics of. It is, for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 1: an overly sincere selfie trap, a place where casual and
Speaker 1: mostly younger tourists come to take photographs in front of
Speaker 1: the highly instagram morble painted fairy wings. Another trap, one
Speaker 1: I have taken a picture in myself is a pastel
Speaker 1: painted winged fairy throne. There's a fairy trellis maybe lounge
Speaker 1: on the fairy Bench and have your boyfriend take a
Speaker 1: picture of you there. The Fairy Trail is goofy. It's
Speaker 1: somewhat aesthetically pleasing, and it's an anarchically curated area of
Speaker 1: the woods that I kind of can't help but love.
Speaker 1: The mediums think it's all a little beside the point,
Speaker 1: and they're not wrong. The Fairy Trail has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the religion, but I really love it. It's
Speaker 1: such a showing of raw sincerity and emotion and even
Speaker 1: a desperateness for magic to be real and communication with
Speaker 1: the dead to be authentic. But the people who come
Speaker 1: to the Fairy Trail go deeper than that. They go
Speaker 1: there to resurrect lost love, to leave anonymous please, to
Speaker 1: mend friendships, believe toldem's from themselves, or people who died
Speaker 1: that they loved. Some people even leave mixtape, send c
Speaker 1: d s of their shitty music, or tape their half
Speaker 1: rained on anime drawings to trees. What I am describing
Speaker 1: to you is a pile of garbage in the woods,
Speaker 1: but it's very sincerely curated garbage, so it also qualifies
Speaker 1: as a free outdoor museum. The camp fruitlessly tries to
Speaker 1: hold back the flood of sincerely offered garbage with polite
Speaker 1: but firm signs things like take only memories, leave only footprints,
Speaker 1: Please do not clutter or deface the park or its structures.
Speaker 1: Good fucking luck, folks. The teenagers and mother daughter teams
Speaker 1: I see carving their names into tree bark and leaving
Speaker 1: wet envelopes begging their husbands to come back to life
Speaker 1: on stumps when I visit each day, have more time
Speaker 1: and more determination and more sincerity than any underpaid medium
Speaker 1: at the camp. On my way out, I passed a
Speaker 1: polaroid of two teenage girls with an arrow pointing to
Speaker 1: one that says r I p of large rocks that
Speaker 1: have been turned into symbolic headstones, names and dates, and
Speaker 1: quotes a poem about the death of a friendship that
Speaker 1: went from one. I'll always cherish the warmth you put
Speaker 1: in my heart. You were my best friend till three
Speaker 1: thousand and five Do we part. There's hair ties, there's crystals,
Speaker 1: there's seashells, there's crosses. There's graffiti reading love me back, please.
Speaker 1: There's a street lamp that doesn't work. There's a height
Speaker 1: marker going from three to seven ft where visitors have
Speaker 1: marked themselves and their children's height with dates, initials and messages.
Speaker 1: There's of course a minion toy no shit, and pictures
Speaker 1: and pictures and pictures of dead Lauridians. I go to
Speaker 1: the Ferry Trail at least once a day when I
Speaker 1: am visiting Cassadega. It has the least to do with
Speaker 1: the camp, and yet it is the best part. The
Speaker 1: crickets are screaming at the top of their little insect
Speaker 1: lungs as tourists chatter and walk past the library. I
Speaker 1: dream about the Faery Trail all the time, and in
Speaker 1: every dream, I'm just walking through, looking at things and
Speaker 1: reading things, and walking right past the library. I'm going
Speaker 1: back to my hotel room where I ask my spirit
Speaker 1: guides to help me sleep. And that's ghost Church. I
Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed it. I don't make stuff to tell
Speaker 1: people what to believe and what not to believe. There
Speaker 1: are plenty of shows where you can be told what
Speaker 1: to believe and why you're an asshole if you want
Speaker 1: to believe it, or why you're a genius if you
Speaker 1: don't believe it. The spiritualists have not always practiced what
Speaker 1: they preach. There have been oversights and exclusions that reflect
Speaker 1: very poorly on the religion and the national culture. That
Speaker 1: the religion sometimes rebelled against and was empowered by. It's
Speaker 1: uniquely American, and that it calls itself American but heavily
Speaker 1: borrows from other cultures. It's uniquely American based on the
Speaker 1: fact that it's so shaped and defined by how the
Speaker 1: media received it. It was formed partially in response to
Speaker 1: the rigid Christian values that are shaping the decisions of
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, more so now than ever so. In
Speaker 1: their fight against American religious indoctrination, Spiritualism failed, buried by
Speaker 1: its contemporaries in still relevant movements like Mormonism. Like the
Speaker 1: medium said, spiritualists aren't really recruiting and never really have been.
Speaker 1: They'll take you to dinner, they'll take you to breakfast,
Speaker 1: they'll take you to the airport, they'll tell you what
Speaker 1: your dead grandma's up to, and they'll never even listen
Speaker 1: to the podcast you spent months making about them. They're
Speaker 1: both bothered and unbothered, and yet they are still there.
Speaker 1: Over a hundred, twenty five years later, they are still there.
Speaker 1: In Cassadeca, Florida, in Lily Dill, New York in Lake Pleasant, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: surviving on others curiosity and on their own belief in
Speaker 1: spear are It. As the medium told me, most people
Speaker 1: don't want to commit to the lifestyle, the years of training,
Speaker 1: the burden of proof, the occasional press circus, the Florida
Speaker 1: of it all. I know I couldn't, but I also
Speaker 1: know how much comfort I take in difficult moments with
Speaker 1: the little spiritual practices and routines that they taught me.
Speaker 1: So if you're the sort of person to dump on
Speaker 1: people who believe in spiritualism or spiritual ideas, ask yourself,
Speaker 1: why is it hurting anyone? Sometimes the answer will be yes,
Speaker 1: but often it won't be is it bringing someone peace?
Speaker 1: If it is and it's not hurting anyone, what are
Speaker 1: you mad about? And Babe, have you checked in with
Speaker 1: the man in the cave that follows you around all
Speaker 1: the time. I hear he's pretty smart, Uncle Dennis. Take
Speaker 1: it home. Your mind and your body will tell you
Speaker 1: what you need. You just need to listen to it.
Speaker 1: And that's what spirituality is. It's not about aim to
Speaker 1: a deity. It's not about doing a certain ritual. It's
Speaker 1: not about being a certain way. It's about the fact
Speaker 1: that you understand that you were born as a manifest
Speaker 1: creature and you were born with a soul. That soul
Speaker 1: is your spirituality. You just have to remind yourself that
Speaker 1: you're that spiritual person. Because we're not taught to do that.
Speaker 1: How can we Okay, we're thrown into a world of
Speaker 1: manifest it's what we eat, what we taste, touch, felc.
Speaker 1: We're in a dated daily So I would say, do
Speaker 1: you listen to everybody? I tell you, God, let's go
Speaker 1: to these go to these things. Listen to these people
Speaker 1: and understand that them are full of ship, not because
Speaker 1: they're being cruel, and they may very well believe what
Speaker 1: they're telling you. But the bottom line is there is
Speaker 1: no one way. You have to figure out what's best
Speaker 1: for yourself. That's how I arrived to where I am.
Speaker 1: I don't need to wear caps, I don't need to
Speaker 1: wear all the trapping is that prove to people who
Speaker 1: I am. I am who I am because it from
Speaker 1: inside me. It's who I am, what I believe, and
Speaker 1: nobody can ever take that away from you. Take everything,
Speaker 1: even what I say with a grain of salt. You
Speaker 1: have to find is one thing in life that's up back.
Speaker 1: You have to find you a path by yourself. And
Speaker 1: it's not a path you can walk with anybody, and
Speaker 1: it is not a path that anybody can take you down.
Speaker 1: They can help you that you've better find it for yourself,
Speaker 1: and that's why people don't like me. So to conclude,
Speaker 1: the world is on fucking fire, So don't exploit anyone
Speaker 1: and talk to as many ghosts as you want, and
Speaker 1: whatever you do, do not come back to life as
Speaker 1: a dog cop bad Pacynski. Thank you so much for listening,
Speaker 1: and let's play that theme song one more time, get
Speaker 1: and we hap one last huge shout out to the
Speaker 1: amazing team of Ghost Church, our producer Sophie Lichtman, absolute legend,
Speaker 1: the best. Shout out to Robert Evans of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: Gigantic shout out to to my incredible editor Ian Johnson,
Speaker 1: who also did voices on the show and it's just
Speaker 1: an all around incredibly talented and patient person. Shout out
Speaker 1: to our amazing fact checker, Mary Stephen Hagen be everyone
Speaker 1: who has contributed their voice, and of course to Speedy
Speaker 1: Ortiz who wrote that amazing theme song that you just heard.
Speaker 1: Shout out to my spirit guides Don and Helen. This
Speaker 1: show is dedicated to my grandfather and he would have
Speaker 1: hated it. As for me. You can listen to my
Speaker 1: other podcasts, My Year in Mensa, the Lead a Podcast,
Speaker 1: or ac Cast. I have a weekly podcast called The
Speaker 1: Bechdel Past, and other than that. You can buy my
Speaker 1: book about hot dogs called raw Dog that comes out
Speaker 1: next year. Because follow me on social media and I
Speaker 1: hope I don't have a mental breakdown and find me.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to the mediums of Cassadega, Florida
Speaker 1: by six