Speaker 1: I'm going to try something a little different, and by
Speaker 1: something a little different, I do mean go to a
Speaker 1: haunted museum. The library at Cassadega offered a number of
Speaker 1: interesting offerings when it came to spiritualist literature, but not
Speaker 1: much in the way of cultures existing outside of the
Speaker 1: white metal class in the nineteenth and twentieth century. So
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that Sea Green's Haunted History House and Museum
Speaker 1: will be better. It's in this little purple building near
Speaker 1: the teeny tiny post office that's almost always closing, and
Speaker 1: it looks and sounds like a bit of a tourist trap.
Speaker 1: But I happen to know that it used to be
Speaker 1: a Cassadega History museum before being rebranded to be a
Speaker 1: little more pop culture touristy, and I hope there's still
Speaker 1: some of that inside. It's not like an official part
Speaker 1: of the camp and is not claimed or vetted by
Speaker 1: the mediums. So you'd think that Sea Greens can get
Speaker 1: a little loosey goosey punk rock with how they present
Speaker 1: their history. Ten bucks later, I'm in. Actually, I did
Speaker 1: have to gently reject the manager who was trying to
Speaker 1: sell me a haunted doll for twenty dollars on the
Speaker 1: way in. Like, look, I have twenty dollars, but I
Speaker 1: just don't want a haunted doll. I'm flying spirit airlines
Speaker 1: on the way home. Do you really think we can
Speaker 1: afford the risk? We cannot. But I'm in the museum,
Speaker 1: and as I suspected, a lot of newspaper clippings and
Speaker 1: primary resources around Cassadega and twentieth century spiritualism are still here.
Speaker 1: It's really just a matter of finding them among the
Speaker 1: many framed movie posters, and my favorite, a full sized
Speaker 1: jigsaw doll on a little tricycle jigsaw from Saw. Actually,
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen Saw, stop the podcast right now
Speaker 1: and go watch Saw. At least Saw one. Some of
Speaker 1: the best sociological storytelling of our lifetimes is contained in
Speaker 1: James Wand's Saw Saga. Actually, on one of my first
Speaker 1: dates with the guy that I eventually lost my virginity too,
Speaker 1: on August two ten, we watched five Saw movies in
Speaker 1: one sitting. Did not take a peabreak, did not kiss,
Speaker 1: should have married him, didn't became a comedian. You know
Speaker 1: where that gets you? You start doing some gonzo stuff,
Speaker 1: Where does that get you? I'll tell you where that
Speaker 1: gets you Central Florida in the middle of the day
Speaker 1: in a haunted museum, sitting next to a jigsaw doll
Speaker 1: the size of a human three year old. Not too bad.
Speaker 1: I have no regrets. To quote a hot Dog Bun
Speaker 1: I saw in Toledo last summer, we wear the chains
Speaker 1: we forge in life, which I agree with the spirit
Speaker 1: of There's other factors at play, for sure, but I
Speaker 1: see where the hot Dog Bun was going with it.
Speaker 1: Where are we We're at a haunted museum, and honestly,
Speaker 1: there's more useful information here than I was expecting. There's
Speaker 1: acknowledgement of the Fox sisters, for example, including the fact
Speaker 1: that they had claimed at one time that spiritualism was
Speaker 1: a hoax. The museum also includes the admission that spiritualism
Speaker 1: had experienced a decline in the late nineteenth century, something
Speaker 1: you would not catch the camp sanctioned mediums fessing up to.
Speaker 1: There are some references to indigenous culture, but they're about
Speaker 1: on par as anywhere else in the camp. There's this
Speaker 1: small room right past the entrance that references Native culture.
Speaker 1: They certainly have more books than the library did on
Speaker 1: the subject. But the twist is you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: touch the books. Here there's this little laser jet printed
Speaker 1: sign with a drawing of the girl from the movie
Speaker 1: The Ring, the one who crawls out of the TV
Speaker 1: seven Days to Live. The sign says this, please don't
Speaker 1: touch books. Some are so old they will fall apart.
Speaker 1: Some are haunted. Either way, it won't work out well
Speaker 1: for you. Thanks management and the indigenous imagery they do
Speaker 1: use in the room ranges from innocuous to outright offensive.
Speaker 1: There's this flickering red light bulb to set the tone
Speaker 1: for the haunted museum. There's a couple of figurines depicting
Speaker 1: Native life. There's the first of many scary mannequins scattered
Speaker 1: throughout the building that the owners dressed in iParty costumes
Speaker 1: to fit the theme of any given room, and make
Speaker 1: no mistake, I love the haunted mannequins, but the haunted
Speaker 1: mannequin in the Indigenous History room does seem to be
Speaker 1: wearing a costume that was left over from Disney's Pocahontas,
Speaker 1: so not great representation wise. In a different room, there's
Speaker 1: a mention of voodoo practices in New Orleans, but it's
Speaker 1: only in passing. Mostly just a couple of tourist posters
Speaker 1: for other places in New Orleans. But even this is
Speaker 1: more acknowledgment of other spiritual idea as in cultures. Then
Speaker 1: most areas of the camp will do. I need to
Speaker 1: get back to these mannequins for a second. The second
Speaker 1: mannequin you encounter at Sea Green's haunted History House and
Speaker 1: Museum has been attempted to be dressed as the Cassadega
Speaker 1: Camp founder George Colby. Now the management must know they're
Speaker 1: not dressing the mannequins very convincingly. This one, for example,
Speaker 1: is a female coated mannequin wearing a Mark Twain wig,
Speaker 1: complete with handlebar mustache and a suit that is at
Speaker 1: least two sizes too large, So you can only tell
Speaker 1: who the mannequin is intended to be by the sticky
Speaker 1: hello my name is George name tag they've attached to
Speaker 1: the lapel. But even around this silly mannequin, there are
Speaker 1: some little historical documents. In this case. Newspaper articles from
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties headlines like Cassadega mediums have the
Speaker 1: right spirit, spiritualists converse with the dead and living tourists
Speaker 1: and a very optimistic Cassadega springing back after a period
Speaker 1: of decline. There's also some esoteric history I've never heard
Speaker 1: about until coming here. One exhibit shows letters between President
Speaker 1: Harry Truman and a d o J employee named William Underhill,
Speaker 1: who was a spiritualist and at one time managed the
Speaker 1: Cassadega Hotel. So it has its problems, but Sea Green's
Speaker 1: Haunted History House and Museum is iconic. They get all
Speaker 1: of the history out of the way in their first
Speaker 1: couple of rooms and then just make a hard mostly
Speaker 1: irrelevant to spiritualism, pivot into ghostie pop culture and media.
Speaker 1: After that. Instead of, for example, a room full of
Speaker 1: information on spiritism and a spiritismo, there's a whole wall
Speaker 1: of framed pictures of those neckbeards on the Sci Fi
Speaker 1: channel who claimed to hunt ghosts. There are brief, factually
Speaker 1: questionable explainers on things like tarot cards, reading tea leaves, palmistry, astrology,
Speaker 1: a pile of Jack Skellington toys. Why not, and not
Speaker 1: to go back to the mannequins again, But since I
Speaker 1: know you're curious, here are my top three mannequins. At
Speaker 1: the first is a woman dressed as a pilgrim who
Speaker 1: has my haircut, and her name tag reads hello, my
Speaker 1: name is Priscilla, the Puritan Queen of the desk Okay.
Speaker 1: Coming in at number two. Male mannequin dressed in iParty
Speaker 1: griffin door robes. His name tag says hello, my name
Speaker 1: is Neville. Then my bottom is not that long? Horrible. Finally,
Speaker 1: a mannequin that is also a huge gorilla wearing sunglasses,
Speaker 1: a hat from disney World and a Pride bandanna with
Speaker 1: a name tag that says, and you're not ready for this? Hello,
Speaker 1: my name is George. There's two. George is the founder
Speaker 1: of the camp and also a gay gorilla. Amazing. No
Speaker 1: notes if you don't want to visit this museum at
Speaker 1: this point, I don't know how else to sell you on.
Speaker 1: The history here is minimal. For sure. There's no reason
Speaker 1: a history museum needs a wall full of clown masks,
Speaker 1: or a wall full of dead baby dolls, or a
Speaker 1: whole room dedicated to things that are just vaguely scary.
Speaker 1: I couldn't get a read for the theme on this room.
Speaker 1: It's madness, it's anarchy. But it's also the only place
Speaker 1: you see even an attempt to touch on other spiritually
Speaker 1: based religions. However poorly done. And it's poorly done. So
Speaker 1: this week on Ghoest Church, I want to create a
Speaker 1: little audio room for two religious movements that were heavily
Speaker 1: influenced by American spiritualism, A Spiritismo and the Black spiritual
Speaker 1: Churches of America. So hop on your tricycle, my little jigsaw,
Speaker 1: because the theme song is I'm bailing on It. I'm
Speaker 1: bailing on It. Music playing us jash and good look.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to my little slice of central Floridian paradise
Speaker 1: where I'm returning to my hot waterless hotel room at
Speaker 1: the Hotel CASTI day go to sit through the notes
Speaker 1: I took away from the library the evening before. It
Speaker 1: was a weird night in more ways than one, but
Speaker 1: there's no time to think about that right now. Instead,
Speaker 1: I flipped through the pictures I took on my phone
Speaker 1: of book pages that stuck out to me in the moment,
Speaker 1: and I asked my spirit guides, which I'm remembering correctly,
Speaker 1: is a guy named Dawn, a lady named Helen, a swan,
Speaker 1: and two archangels. I asked them to show me something.
Speaker 1: Here's what I know. Spiritualism was far from the only
Speaker 1: white dominant religion to make their way on stolen land
Speaker 1: in Florida during the late nineteenth century. Baptists and Methodists
Speaker 1: came to the area less than twenty years before, and
Speaker 1: Protestants only had a twenty three year head start on
Speaker 1: the Spiritualists in forming a permanent presence in Volutia County.
Speaker 1: I wasn't aware of the majority of the actual history
Speaker 1: behind the land that Cassadega was settled on when I
Speaker 1: arrived at the library in town for my two hour
Speaker 1: cram session. I wanted to sort of experiment and see
Speaker 1: how much the library would teach me and how vested
Speaker 1: the spiritualists who lived there now are in acknowledging any
Speaker 1: history that isn't directly taken from the mouths of settlers
Speaker 1: who got them started. As you know by now, there
Speaker 1: wasn't too much. One of the books had caught my
Speaker 1: attention from across the room. Had had this bright blue
Speaker 1: cover a little older and in gold script it said
Speaker 1: what is spiritualism and who are these spiritualists? And I thought, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: I should call my podcast that I want to know.
Speaker 1: So I opened the book the page eight and there
Speaker 1: is a prominent heading that reads spiritualism is not spiritism,
Speaker 1: So let me be the first to say yes, m no,
Speaker 1: they are not the same systems of belief, but, like
Speaker 1: their names would indicate, there is a lot of shared
Speaker 1: history and ideas between these movements. But this book is
Speaker 1: pretty aggressive in distancing spiritism. Page eight reads this spiritualism
Speaker 1: must be differentiated from spiritism. The terminologies of the two
Speaker 1: words absolutely necessitate, as every scholar knows entirely different meanings.
Speaker 1: Chinese Indians and Utah Mormons are spiritists believing in present
Speaker 1: spirit communications. Most of the African tribes of the Dark
Speaker 1: Continent worshiped demons believe in spirit converse, but certainly they
Speaker 1: are not intelligent religious spiritualists. Holy shit. In addition to
Speaker 1: being outwardly racist, most of this information is wrong, and
Speaker 1: so to any current practicing spiritualists that denies a history
Speaker 1: of racism within the religion, that's your book, you guys.
Speaker 1: It's likely that spiritism specific glee as being singled out
Speaker 1: here because of its popularity among people in Puerto Rico, Cuba,
Speaker 1: and Brazil. So this library does mention spiritism, sure, but
Speaker 1: not in a kind way, which is a shame, because
Speaker 1: spiritism is inherently influenced by spiritualism and is the core
Speaker 1: of Espiritismo, possibly the widest practiced version of spiritualism today.
Speaker 1: So a quick history, So how do you get from
Speaker 1: spiritualism to a spiritismo? In short, Hydesville and the Fox
Speaker 1: Sisters led to spiritualism. In the eighteen forties, Spiritualism inspired
Speaker 1: a French guy named Alan Cardick. Alan Cardeck did some
Speaker 1: investigations of spiritualist phenomena and modified the beliefs to call
Speaker 1: it spiritism. Cardick writes a book that arrives in Latin
Speaker 1: America and is a huge hit. In Latin America, there
Speaker 1: were large amounts of people from Africa brought and enslaved
Speaker 1: by colonizers, which led to blending their spiritual traditions with
Speaker 1: cardex ideas that were popping off in the area. And
Speaker 1: this is approximately how a spiritusm began, a variation on
Speaker 1: American spiritualism, whose exact beliefs and rituals vary with some
Speaker 1: significance depending on the region it's being practiced in. The
Speaker 1: most popular areas include Brazil, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, and
Speaker 1: each branch is influenced by some degree by the indigenous
Speaker 1: cultures of these countries and indigenous African spirituality. So to start,
Speaker 1: who is Alan Cardik? First things first, that's not his
Speaker 1: real name. His real name sounds expensive. It's hippolyte Leon
Speaker 1: de nizard reveil Okay King Mr. Four names. Was raised
Speaker 1: in France as a Roman Catholic the early eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: and didn't develop an interest in even the concept of
Speaker 1: the seance until he was in his fifties and encountered spiritualism,
Speaker 1: so he became interested in the movement the Fox Sisters
Speaker 1: had began around the same time a lot of people did,
Speaker 1: but he approached examining spiritualist phenomena with the mind of
Speaker 1: an academic kind of skeptically, and so upon investigating on
Speaker 1: his own terms, he was quick to dismiss Franz Mesmer's
Speaker 1: theory of animal magnetism and stated on many occasions that
Speaker 1: there was a high likelihood that there was some fraudulence
Speaker 1: at play with a lot of the medium's working, particularly
Speaker 1: those that were doing the really spectacular physical stuff, but
Speaker 1: he didn't think it was all bullshit. Alan Cardick did
Speaker 1: not claim or endorse the full spectrum of spiritualist phenomena
Speaker 1: and all of its spirit photography habitet acts, spirit hands,
Speaker 1: and ectoplasm. And I know I still have to tell
Speaker 1: you about ectoplasm, but it's not going to happen this week.
Speaker 1: I think it's going to happen next week, So relax. Hell.
Speaker 1: After investigating Alan Cardick boiled down his beliefs to the
Speaker 1: following simple statements. True mediums could provide information that they
Speaker 1: couldn't have known at the beginning of a reading. True
Speaker 1: mediums could demonstrate the skills a spirit had that they
Speaker 1: themselves didn't possess. I think a specific handwriting, speaking the
Speaker 1: language they didn't know. All that good stuff. And finally,
Speaker 1: true mediums were able to communicate or even mimic the
Speaker 1: personality of a specific individual that had died. Cardiac called
Speaker 1: his scale back belief system Spiritism Original tent out of ten,
Speaker 1: and he published his first and most successful book on
Speaker 1: the subject, which was basically five hundred or so question
Speaker 1: and answers on what spiritism did and did not endorse
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty seven. And if you thought the belief
Speaker 1: system sounded like a ripoff of spiritualism, wait till you
Speaker 1: hear the name of his book. It is the Spirit's Book. Wow.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, he was an academic. He was not
Speaker 1: an artiste. Not everyone to think of an incredible name
Speaker 1: like ghost Church, which I did not think of. My
Speaker 1: producer Sophie thought of it, so thank you Sophie. Anyways,
Speaker 1: as creative genius Alan Cardiac explained it, spiritism was about
Speaker 1: uniting three of the main interests of the nineteenth century together,
Speaker 1: those being science, philosophy, and religion under a singular belief system.
Speaker 1: In some ways, it was much easier to buy into
Speaker 1: Spiritism because of its clarity. The Fox sisters had assembled
Speaker 1: the belief system of Spiritualism kind of in real time
Speaker 1: in this chaotic way, and didn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: control over dictating what they did and did not think
Speaker 1: was real. In the case of Cardec and Spiritism, the
Speaker 1: Spirit's Book was far better equipped to serve as a
Speaker 1: sort of alleged scientific endorsement to mediumship as well as
Speaker 1: I viewing the moralistic ideas that tend to define religion,
Speaker 1: and for its time, it's a pretty progressive text. It
Speaker 1: endorses the idea of evolution, a theory that some public
Speaker 1: schools still won't teach, and at the time Darwin's theory
Speaker 1: had been published less than twenty years before Cardek started writing.
Speaker 1: The book also incorporated Eastern reincarnative ideas in a way
Speaker 1: that spiritualism proper always skewed a little too Christian to
Speaker 1: commit to. Many branches of a spiritismo uses Cardek's work
Speaker 1: heavily influenced by spiritualism as sort of the foundation. In general,
Speaker 1: a spiritismo requires belief in an omnipotent God and belief
Speaker 1: in the spirit realm. Like American spiritualism's sexy signature blend
Speaker 1: of a non wrathful but still basically Christian God without
Speaker 1: all of the heaven, hell and brimstone. A spiritismo believes
Speaker 1: that spirits inhabiting our bodies can evolve over time in
Speaker 1: their morality, and that communication with a spiritistas or mediums
Speaker 1: basically will help facilitate this process of growth. Other shared
Speaker 1: practices include trans mediumship, or a medium's ability to become
Speaker 1: possessed by a spirit and completely change their voice and
Speaker 1: mannerisms in the process. You might remember this phenomena when
Speaker 1: I shared a clip of Reverend Dr Louis Keith channeling Lucerne.
Speaker 1: You pick your time of us down to the very
Speaker 1: second of your all time. You pick your time when
Speaker 1: you enter this aspect and you pick your birthdage months day.
Speaker 1: You pick your name long before you get here, whether
Speaker 1: you like it or not. Another blend of indigenous traditions
Speaker 1: combining with spiritualist ideas was the a spiritus most spin
Speaker 1: on the seance, the mesa or mass that required practitioners
Speaker 1: gather around a mesa or table, often with additional rituals
Speaker 1: or embellished altars that could include goblets of water flowers,
Speaker 1: small statues and figurines, tobacco and candles. Music can be
Speaker 1: integral to the experience. In her paper Spiritist mediumship as
Speaker 1: historical mediation African American pasts, Black ancestral presence, and Afro
Speaker 1: Cuban religions. Researcher Elizabeth Perez described lyrics that maybe understood
Speaker 1: as products of the Cuban and Puerto Rican histories from
Speaker 1: which they emerged, rich in the experiences of women, persons
Speaker 1: of African descent, and those from the lower classes, excluded
Speaker 1: from the official histories, yet still resonant to day. Unlike
Speaker 1: spiritualists in Cassadega, those practicing a spiritismo tend towards group sciences,
Speaker 1: not the one on one sessions that are commonly practiced
Speaker 1: in Lily Dale, Cassadega, and other camps. So Alan Cardix book.
Speaker 1: The Spirits Book became very popular in several countries that
Speaker 1: were in a state of physically and intellectually violent colonial
Speaker 1: flux throughout the nineteenth century, and the branches that develop
Speaker 1: tend to be very specific to the culture, history, and
Speaker 1: moment of the area they existed in. I wanted to
Speaker 1: give examples of a few different branches here, including Puerto
Speaker 1: rican A Spiritismo, a Spiritismo de cardon A, Spiritismo Cruisal,
Speaker 1: and Santa Rismo, each having very unique traditions. Let's start
Speaker 1: in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico had been colonized by Spain
Speaker 1: back in the fifteen hundreds. Spain brought disease and religion
Speaker 1: and kidnapped enslaved people, and like most imperialists and express
Speaker 1: desire to quash the indigenous cultures and practices that predated
Speaker 1: their invasion. Many African enslaved people, forcibly brought to the
Speaker 1: region were from the Yoruba land region of Africa that
Speaker 1: includes what is now Nigeria, the Binian Republic, and Toba.
Speaker 1: Their beliefs included spirit communication and many different gods and goddesses,
Speaker 1: just as different indigenous American groups slowly pooled their ideas
Speaker 1: with other groups, tribes, and often escaped slaves taking refuge
Speaker 1: in Spanish Florida, a new system of beliefs began to emerge,
Speaker 1: what is now known as Puerto Rican espiritismo. This combination
Speaker 1: of Yoruba practices and that of indigenous Puerto Rican people
Speaker 1: known as Tanos, also brought in the concept of metaphysical
Speaker 1: healing and the use of some physical mediumship meaning tobacco spells, etcetera,
Speaker 1: and even some Spanish folk medicine found its way into
Speaker 1: the evolving spiritual culture. The concept of healing was a
Speaker 1: significant part of a spiritismo, to the point where an
Speaker 1: entire branch, a Spiritismo di Cordon, was built around the concept.
Speaker 1: These sounds like rituals would generally consist of a circle
Speaker 1: of people chanting, swinging their arms and beating the floor
Speaker 1: until a hypnotic trance state was achieved. It's said to
Speaker 1: be a very intense ritual mentally, physically, emotionally, with no
Speaker 1: real leadership system except for a head medium who would
Speaker 1: purify the room to protect others from bad spirits before
Speaker 1: a ritual began. What I also think is really interesting
Speaker 1: is that these ceremonies tend to have a very open
Speaker 1: door policy. This particular branch blended elements of Catholicism, Kardecian
Speaker 1: Spiritism which does sound like star Trek, and Tana religious rituals,
Speaker 1: implementing dances called aratos. Alan Cardick's work became popular among
Speaker 1: different classes in different ways. Different classes tended to practice
Speaker 1: with different ceremonies, and the upper class remained most engaged
Speaker 1: in espiritismo during wartime. A good example of this is
Speaker 1: the Ten Years War, a conflict that began in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight in which Cuba fought Spain for their independence
Speaker 1: and were supported by Puerto Rican, Mexican, and Dominican volunteer
Speaker 1: troops who shared their struggle. This was the most engaged
Speaker 1: the middle class had ever been with the movement, as
Speaker 1: they began to lose soldiers who they knew. This is
Speaker 1: very similar to what was happening in the Continental US
Speaker 1: with the Civil War around the same time. Because of
Speaker 1: the variety of blended cultures and political tensions, even war
Speaker 1: branches of a spiritismo developed in Puerto Rico. One leaned
Speaker 1: further into cardex work and was called White Table a
Speaker 1: Spiritismo for the seance table, while others used American spiritualisms
Speaker 1: increasing popularity as a means to practice their indigenous religion
Speaker 1: that had been deemed uncivilized by the imperialists, such as
Speaker 1: the Congo religion. Over in Cuba, losses from the Ten
Speaker 1: Years War increased a spiritis most popularity and spiritual beliefs
Speaker 1: brought by an increasing number of enslaved African people helped
Speaker 1: shape the ideas further. For the record, slavery was not
Speaker 1: abolished in this area until eighteen eighty six. This particular
Speaker 1: offshoot was called a spiritismo cruise Ou, which pulled from
Speaker 1: some Catholicism and another African diasporic religion called Palo that
Speaker 1: developed among enslaved people in Cuba. They would use Palo
Speaker 1: cauldrons and others significant objects while still observing Catholic saints.
Speaker 1: Because this branch was innovated and frequently observed by enslaved people,
Speaker 1: spirits channeled would often be deceased enslaved people who spoke
Speaker 1: Bosol Spanish, which was a dialect that was developed out
Speaker 1: of necessity that combined the colonizing enslaver's language with ki Congo,
Speaker 1: a Bantu language spoken by enslaved people who were originally
Speaker 1: from the Congo. This branch of the spiritismo is alter heavy.
Speaker 1: I think photos of the dead candles to summon their
Speaker 1: specific spirit. And finally, there was Santa Rismo, a blend
Speaker 1: of you guest it Spiritismo and Santoria, which was one
Speaker 1: of the most popular religions innovated in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: in Cuba. Santoria is an African diasporic religion that combines
Speaker 1: elements of the Yoruba religion from West Africa, Roman Catholicism,
Speaker 1: and spiritism. As written by Kardak in their prod Do,
Speaker 1: says mediums can communicate with spirits while themselves possessed by
Speaker 1: the dead. Leaders include the Godfather and Godmother Awesome aka
Speaker 1: the Padrino and Madrina, who conduct mediumship sessions around a
Speaker 1: table and play or sing Afro Cuban chants and prayers
Speaker 1: to attract good spirits. Rituals would sometimes end with a
Speaker 1: ceremony called sahumerio, a purification ritual that uses charcoal, garlic,
Speaker 1: and herbs to extract evil spirits and wash them away
Speaker 1: with blessed water. A Spiritismo at large became extremely popular
Speaker 1: and outlived the American spiritualism craze in the continental US,
Speaker 1: which had pretty thoroughly wound down by the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: Even though a Spiritismo was banned during the Cuban Revolution
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties, the movement didn't die out. It
Speaker 1: was just forced underground, and there are plenty still practicing
Speaker 1: in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil now, with Brazil aiming
Speaker 1: nearly four million practicing members as of two thousand ten.
Speaker 1: Spiritismo and if many forms tells the story of forced enslavement,
Speaker 1: of imperialism, of an underclass combining multiple systems of belief
Speaker 1: for their circumstances. Should any of it had to have happened, No,
Speaker 1: these circumstances were born of oppression, which makes it particularly
Speaker 1: relevant that a spiritismo and spiritualism are enmeshed in this optimism,
Speaker 1: the idea that what is coming next will be better
Speaker 1: than what you're experiencing now. So I decided to ask
Speaker 1: an expert. Dr Carlos Camacho is a sociologist whose dissertation
Speaker 1: is called Navigating Ocha LGBT Practitioners, Participation and Navigation of Lukumi.
Speaker 1: There's a section of this paper that focuses on spirit
Speaker 1: communication and a spiritismo entirely. He's also an alumnus of
Speaker 1: the Bechtel cast. But we're not here to talk teenage
Speaker 1: mutant ninja to today. We're here to talk religion. Here's
Speaker 1: a bit of our conversation. So Alan Cardick heard about
Speaker 1: and started saw this wave of spiritualism that was spreading
Speaker 1: in the Americas and in Europe, and wanted to create
Speaker 1: his own more quote unquote scientific approach to this um
Speaker 1: and so that version got really popular in Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: and in Cuba where UM. The reason it's relevant to
Speaker 1: my research interests is that when the enslaved peoples from
Speaker 1: West Africa were brought to the Caribbean, the Yoruba people specifically,
Speaker 1: there were lots of parts of their religion that were
Speaker 1: left behind, and so one of the things that they
Speaker 1: had in Nigeria, um what is today known as Nigeria,
Speaker 1: was the Agun society, which was their way of connecting
Speaker 1: with ancestral spirits and the dead, and that didn't come
Speaker 1: over in mass in the same way. And so as
Speaker 1: part of the process of recotification of the religion in Cuba,
Speaker 1: there was a bringing in of certain parts of other traditions,
Speaker 1: including the particular brand of diesel or spiritism that became
Speaker 1: really popular in the Caribbean, especially in the Spanish speaking Caribbean.
Speaker 1: That then when Locumi sent thatia came to the United States,
Speaker 1: it came um here with the waves of Cuban, Puerto
Speaker 1: Rican and other migrants bringing the traditions. In the studies,
Speaker 1: a lot of Camacho's research traced how and why Cardix
Speaker 1: ideas were implemented into the existing spiritual practices of displaced
Speaker 1: African people and groups indigenous to Puerto Rico and Cuba.
Speaker 1: He unpacks that process and the controversy that surrounds it
Speaker 1: in academia here. So, when the peoples were brought over
Speaker 1: Um to be enslaved in the America's, one of the
Speaker 1: groups that came first arguably in popularity in Cuba was
Speaker 1: the Eco and Go or Congo people um and so
Speaker 1: they brought their traditions that today we would call Balo
Speaker 1: boombe Um balomonte Um, which is a Gongo religion that
Speaker 1: was similar to Lucumi and Santia recodified in the in
Speaker 1: Cuba and then spread to the Americas. When the Oruba
Speaker 1: people came over the way, they engaged with religion was
Speaker 1: that they were willing to bring in other factors, and
Speaker 1: so they were able to bring people in, which from
Speaker 1: a certain perspective makes sense. You have something that works,
Speaker 1: we're going to bring you in and we're going to
Speaker 1: use it. And so one of the things that is
Speaker 1: at times theoretically fraught. Various academics have different perspectives on
Speaker 1: what the process was, but the gist of it is
Speaker 1: that when the europa people came, you could not practice
Speaker 1: the religion in the same ways in the Americas the
Speaker 1: way it was practiced in Africa and Nigeria. In Uruba land,
Speaker 1: you had the Ocean people living in the Ocean Village,
Speaker 1: and so all the priests lived there. If you needed
Speaker 1: to do something with Oshan, you would go to the
Speaker 1: Ocean village. If you were a Shango priest, you lived
Speaker 1: with the Shango people, and so these things were very
Speaker 1: separate and distinct. Priests were initiated into one priest that
Speaker 1: was not tenable for the enslaved peoples in Cuba, and
Speaker 1: so part of that recodification was initiating each other into
Speaker 1: the mysteries of various arisia too maintain the religion, to
Speaker 1: keep the spirits alive in the Americans because you couldn't
Speaker 1: do it the old way, so you had to create
Speaker 1: a new way. Part of that the Egogun society did
Speaker 1: not make it to um the America's in the same
Speaker 1: way at the time, and so it spitted these more
Speaker 1: as it got popular with the whites in Cuba and
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico. It worked, and so they were able to
Speaker 1: then use it and bring it into their practice with
Speaker 1: their own flavor to then communicate with their ancestors. And
Speaker 1: so one of the things that was interesting is that
Speaker 1: and this is this part is very um between believers
Speaker 1: and academics and scholar practitioners. There's a lot of um
Speaker 1: in fighting about some of the specifics of this UM,
Speaker 1: but that in your Ruba land, you had your ancestors.
Speaker 1: It was one collective group of people. It was just
Speaker 1: your people. Once you bring the Americans into play, you
Speaker 1: have the native peoples that are on the islands who
Speaker 1: are in various stages of a genocide per the European
Speaker 1: expansionist imperialists UM forces UM and so there's different types
Speaker 1: of dead spirits walking around that has to be engaged
Speaker 1: with because now you're on someone else's sacred land. And
Speaker 1: so there was an incorporation of certain classes of spirits
Speaker 1: that then began to be part of this reformulation. And
Speaker 1: so there were certain things that became more popular in
Speaker 1: Cuba that now are sort of standard, like use of
Speaker 1: tobacco to engage with spirits that wasn't necessarily something that
Speaker 1: would have been done by the people in Yurubu land
Speaker 1: before enslavement. And so there was a lot of these
Speaker 1: shifting um and changing forces, and so it's spited these
Speaker 1: minds of practice. While not indigenous to the Ruba people,
Speaker 1: the Gmo people, or the native people's of the islands,
Speaker 1: it served a function to fill the gap that um
Speaker 1: was stolen the enslavement, that they weren't able to continue
Speaker 1: to practice. And so one of the things that my
Speaker 1: godfather often talks about is that it has to make sense,
Speaker 1: and for them, it made sense to have this new
Speaker 1: practice that might have some Christian um overlays, like you
Speaker 1: start um spiritual nsis with the our Father, but once
Speaker 1: you get the spirits in the room, it's a very
Speaker 1: non Christian conversation and there's a lot of non Christian
Speaker 1: things happening. And because he's been listening to the show
Speaker 1: Brag Carlos brought up an important distinction between spiritualism at
Speaker 1: present and a spiritismo then and now, the tendency spiritualists
Speaker 1: have to channel the odd dead famous person, whether it
Speaker 1: be Benjamin Franklin or JP Morgan just spitball in here.
Speaker 1: Camacho makes the following distinction and spoke on the changes
Speaker 1: he's noticed following the history of a spiritismo. There are
Speaker 1: really famous spirits that, as far as I'm aware, are
Speaker 1: commonplace in a spiritismo. Um. What you do see is
Speaker 1: you'll find um native spirits and enslaved spirits that are
Speaker 1: around trying to help their descendants to improve given their experiences,
Speaker 1: to not have that be replicated in the current generation. Uh,
Speaker 1: which is an interesting phenomenon in a variety of different levels.
Speaker 1: But you also see a very clear given the politics
Speaker 1: of certain parts of the Lukami community being very sort
Speaker 1: of pro black, very sort of um pro people of color,
Speaker 1: um anti imperial, given that there are some of those
Speaker 1: political dynamics, the way spirits communicate and are translated is
Speaker 1: a little different. So in Alan Cardis spiritualism, the way
Speaker 1: it's sort of the classes of spirits are understood, like
Speaker 1: you do have the Native, you have the African you
Speaker 1: have these very rigid stereotypical caricatures, but in practice, given
Speaker 1: how some spirits do not identify themselves in that way,
Speaker 1: there has been a movement away from that in that
Speaker 1: at least the last thirty forty years. And I think
Speaker 1: that's also shifting socio political dynamics. In the United States.
Speaker 1: The religion Lukumi came to the US in the sixties,
Speaker 1: and so you had Black nationalists, you have the Young Lords,
Speaker 1: you have all of these distinct socio political movements, and
Speaker 1: then you have this religion that was kept alive by
Speaker 1: enslaved people's So there's a particular politic that some in
Speaker 1: the religion today sort of maintained to shift some of
Speaker 1: those dynamics and relationships with spirit. Thank you again to
Speaker 1: the wonderful Dr. Carlos Camancho. You can find out more
Speaker 1: about him and his work at the links in the
Speaker 1: description of this episode. The final area of spiritualism that
Speaker 1: it's difficult to find acknowledgment of in Cassadega are volumes
Speaker 1: on black spiritualism in America. Now, that is not to
Speaker 1: say that there are no black spiritualists, but for a
Speaker 1: religion that was founded on the ideas of abolition and
Speaker 1: found an early supporter and none other than Frederick Douglas.
Speaker 1: Some may find the persistent whiteness of spiritualism confusing. In fact,
Speaker 1: my opinion is that the Cassadega Spiritualist camp right now
Speaker 1: excuse less progressive than when it was founded. Many of
Speaker 1: the spiritualists I talked to in Florida are center left
Speaker 1: politically or libertarian and straight up Republican in more cases
Speaker 1: than one, pretty far from their somewhat radical origins. It
Speaker 1: didn't feel awesome, and it made me question how early
Speaker 1: spiritualists had characterized themselves. And upon further investigation, reports that
Speaker 1: early Spiritualists in Cassadega had been extremely welcoming of the
Speaker 1: black community, many of whom were freed slaves, may have
Speaker 1: been exagg rated at the time. It's an exaggeration that
Speaker 1: follows Cassadega to this day, as suggested by a trip
Speaker 1: Advisor review I found from a black couple in that
Speaker 1: declared the camp quote the most racist place in Florida,
Speaker 1: and that's got to be a real contest. Here's how
Speaker 1: the spiritualists put it. I'm taking this from the current
Speaker 1: definitive Cassadega history book, or the one that's still in print,
Speaker 1: called Cassadega the sounds oldest Spiritualist community. This is a
Speaker 1: section on the Camp's earliest relations with the black community.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they Camp
Speaker 1: made an effort to reach out and touch the African
Speaker 1: American community in the vicinity. Even so, most blacks initially
Speaker 1: shied away from Cassadega. They disappeared from the streets after sunset,
Speaker 1: mused to one observer, and watched the spiritualists attending the
Speaker 1: meetings with much reticence. According to a local white spiced account,
Speaker 1: African Americans evidently feared Northern spiritualists as ghosts or goblins.
Speaker 1: In however, Professor William F. Peck addressed a large delegation
Speaker 1: of blacks and told them that the spirit world had
Speaker 1: been chiefly instrumental in bringing slavery to an end. So
Speaker 1: this account is loaded and extremely biased, almost completely ignoring
Speaker 1: the general politics of the American South in the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Because regardless of what they considered to be
Speaker 1: a progressive community, it's understandable that local black residents would
Speaker 1: not have been interested in fraternizing with a mostly white
Speaker 1: Northern frene religious group that was already attracting a lot
Speaker 1: of controversy and speculation because this was an area that,
Speaker 1: at different points in history was literally run by the KKK.
Speaker 1: And while Professor Peck's actions flew in the face of
Speaker 1: racial taboos of the time by lecturing to a black
Speaker 1: audience at all, it's safe to say that the most
Speaker 1: potent years of diversity and cooperation within Spiritualism had already
Speaker 1: passed by the time Cassadega opened in the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1: Spiritualism was always a woman dominated movement, even when male
Speaker 1: mediums began to crop up with some success, and several
Speaker 1: black women were involved in its formative years. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons this is is because close allies of the
Speaker 1: Fox Sisters, a white couple named Amy and Isaac Post,
Speaker 1: Isaac Post going on to become a medium and write
Speaker 1: some early Spiritualist texts, where radical Quaker abolitionists who were
Speaker 1: known for their left wing politics in upstate New York
Speaker 1: and would harbor fugitive enslaved people in their home as
Speaker 1: they were getting into spiritualism. It was this group of
Speaker 1: Quakers that first brought abolitionist, suffragist and all around legend
Speaker 1: Sojourner Truth into the spiritualist fold beginning in the mid
Speaker 1: eighteen fifties, after Truth gave a speech on abolition in
Speaker 1: the area. She bought a home in Harmonia, Michigan, and
Speaker 1: became associated with the Battle Creek Spiritualist community. This was
Speaker 1: considered to be one of the early spiritualist utopias that
Speaker 1: eventually fell to make way for wait for it, a
Speaker 1: training center for the U. S. Army during World War One. However,
Speaker 1: it's not known whether Truth ever formally joined the community,
Speaker 1: but spiritualism has certainly laid its claim that she did.
Speaker 1: Sojourner Truth was unquestionably the most famous alleged black spiritualist
Speaker 1: of her era, but far from the only well known
Speaker 1: black woman to early spiritualism. There was also Harriet Jacobs,
Speaker 1: a formerly enslaved woman who fled her abuser in the
Speaker 1: early days of spiritualism and met with none other than
Speaker 1: Amy Post, who encouraged Jacobs to write on her experience.
Speaker 1: Under the pseudonym Linda Brent, Jacobs wrote a seminal nineteenth
Speaker 1: century memoir called Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
Speaker 1: As a writer who had lived on both sides of slavery,
Speaker 1: Jacobs leveraged her belief and abilities to place emphasis on
Speaker 1: the pain and suffering that black people had endured in America. But,
Speaker 1: like Sojourner, truth spiritualists lay claim to Jacob's unequivocally, but
Speaker 1: scholars aren't convinced that she was a converted believer. Aaron
Speaker 1: Eve Forbes wrote in her paper do Black Ghosts Matter?
Speaker 1: Harriet Jacob's spiritualism? As she does with the slave narratives
Speaker 1: and domestic fiction, Jacob's quickly masters the discourse of spiritualism,
Speaker 1: using it to gain for herself a voice in the
Speaker 1: social debates of her day, while at the same time
Speaker 1: subtly and carefully reworking that discourse to suit her own ends.
Speaker 1: Writer Harriet E. Wilson was a novelist and a successful
Speaker 1: practicing trans medium of her time. She debuted in Boston
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy six and became one of the first
Speaker 1: black spiritualists to lecture in what would normally be segregated
Speaker 1: spaces in New England. She channeled spirit as well as
Speaker 1: messages on abolition and intersectional feminism. There was also Rebecca
Speaker 1: Cox Jackson born in sevent who experienced the relatively common
Speaker 1: spiritualist awakening visions and interactions with Spirit as a child,
Speaker 1: but being born a free black woman in Pennsylvania, could
Speaker 1: only credit her reading and writing skills to Spirit. Being
Speaker 1: barred from a formal education herself, Jackson would go on
Speaker 1: to establish a popular science circle in her home, which
Speaker 1: didn't only offer an opportunity to include more Black Americans
Speaker 1: in the movement, but centered them and gave an opportunity
Speaker 1: to speak with their dead. Jackson became a local legend
Speaker 1: in a culture where Black Americans, specifically black women, had
Speaker 1: perspectives that were frequently disrespected or outright ignored. Spiritualism and
Speaker 1: mediumship was an opportunity to not just center there often
Speaker 1: ignored experiences, but explain them in their own words, with
Speaker 1: significance and an emphasis that was nothing short of religious.
Speaker 1: So what happened? Why aren't there far more black spiritualists
Speaker 1: living in and lecturing at Cassadega with regularity? You might
Speaker 1: be able to guess. While there had been successful black
Speaker 1: mediums working in the early years of the religion, white
Speaker 1: spiritualists weren't always as committed to equality as they may
Speaker 1: have sounded on paper. A perfect example of this came
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety three, one year pre Cassadega, when the
Speaker 1: National Spiritualist Association of Churches, originally called the National Spiritualist
Speaker 1: Association literally the n s a was founded. Now, for
Speaker 1: the record, Cassadega was affiliated with the n s a
Speaker 1: C for a long time, but has since struck out
Speaker 1: as an individual entity all its own. But this was
Speaker 1: not the case in the late nineteenth century. In the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century, virtually all of American society was still
Speaker 1: racially segregated, and the n s a C was no exception.
Speaker 1: While black people were a part of the religion, black
Speaker 1: members would be placed in quote colored auxiliary society is
Speaker 1: unquote within spiritualism. Unsurprisingly, this insistence on segregation in an
Speaker 1: allegedly progressive religion led to increased tension, and many black
Speaker 1: spiritualists saw a need to design similar religious organizations in
Speaker 1: which they could be leaders, not auxiliary appendages. This came
Speaker 1: to blows in a big way around World War One.
Speaker 1: The n s a C decided that there was a
Speaker 1: need for a completely separate, all black Spiritualist organization and
Speaker 1: installed Joseph P. Whitwell, a white spiritualist leader, to lead
Speaker 1: a meeting in Cleveland in April of This resulted in
Speaker 1: a significant protest. Six out of twenty delegates requested to attend,
Speaker 1: Withdrew furious that this historically equality touting religion was still
Speaker 1: insisting on segregation. It was popularized by abolitionists. It's so bizarre.
Speaker 1: The fourteen remaining delegates formed the National Colored Spiritualist Association
Speaker 1: of Churches, still appointing some white spiritualists as their leaders.
Speaker 1: The organization was not long for this world. The next year,
Speaker 1: the n c s a C formally adopted the same
Speaker 1: declaration of principles you still here at the beginning of
Speaker 1: Cassadega today, including we believe that the highest morality is
Speaker 1: contained in the Golden Rule. Whatsoever he would that others
Speaker 1: should do onto you, do you also onto them the brainworms.
Speaker 1: It requires for your segregated group to claim the Golden
Speaker 1: Rule as a part of your religion is just I
Speaker 1: hate America. It's extremely difficult to find records of the
Speaker 1: n s a C, but it is said to have
Speaker 1: existed until the nineteen seventies. It's possible that after the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights movement there was no more social precedent for
Speaker 1: segregating spiritualism. But during this stretch of a half century,
Speaker 1: there became many other spiritual options for Black Americans that
Speaker 1: didn't require operating as an auxiliary for a white religion,
Speaker 1: most popularly the movement of independent Black spiritual churches, many
Speaker 1: of which still exist today. Dr Margharita Simon Guillory wrote
Speaker 1: on the history of black spiritualist churches in her wonderful
Speaker 1: book Social and Spiritual Transformation in African American Spiritual Churches,
Speaker 1: in which she unpacks this crossover between early black and
Speaker 1: white spiritualists and examines the ways in which Black spirituality
Speaker 1: is to this day often overlooked in religious history. Her
Speaker 1: primary research was done in New Orleans, where she described
Speaker 1: the Black spiritual culture in an interview with the Religious
Speaker 1: Studies Project in Spiritual Churches, the African American Spiritual churches
Speaker 1: um that that I researched are a blended religious group,
Speaker 1: and I like that term blendedness and what they've done.
Speaker 1: And they have conjoined all of the various elements from
Speaker 1: institutionalized religions, and I'll talk about that in just the moment,
Speaker 1: and they've created their own unique religion, specifically the spiritual
Speaker 1: churches in New Orleans. They've conjoined Protestant traditions with the
Speaker 1: focus on Pentecostalism, they pulled from their worship style. Catholicism
Speaker 1: is a major bedrock in spiritual churches in New Orleans
Speaker 1: just because Catholic religion, Catholicism is the predominant is still
Speaker 1: today the predominant religion. That's that's practice in New Orleans
Speaker 1: and particular in Louisiana in general. They also incorporate American spiritualism,
Speaker 1: the ability to communicate with the dead that was birthed
Speaker 1: in Western New York in Highsville, New York. They also
Speaker 1: sort of conjoined and mix into their faith who do
Speaker 1: and voodoo and this this notion of voodoo is derived
Speaker 1: directly from Haitian voodoom. So and when you look at
Speaker 1: sort of their belief system in their ritual practices, you
Speaker 1: could see a little of all of these religions. Guillory's
Speaker 1: research was primarily done in pre Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans,
Speaker 1: and I highly recommend her work. She breaks down the
Speaker 1: religious intersections, of which spiritualism is just one that defined
Speaker 1: these religions that were dominated by black women. She also
Speaker 1: gets into how environmental racism has destroyed or weakened the
Speaker 1: Black spiritual church movement. Following her Kane Katrina, a number
Speaker 1: of churches were destroyed and then reclaimed by the city
Speaker 1: as eminent domain, drastically reducing the number of spiritual churches
Speaker 1: in the area. The ways in which the changing landscape
Speaker 1: around spiritual churches we can tell a lot. If you
Speaker 1: look at the change in landscape of spiritual churches, it
Speaker 1: tells us a lot about other landscapes and shifting landscapes
Speaker 1: in New Orleans, demographically escapes, social landscapes, economic landscapes, political landscapes.
Speaker 1: If you just focus on the spiritual churches, we could
Speaker 1: see all of these sort of dynamics that are going
Speaker 1: on post Katrina. About seventeen of the fifty plus churches
Speaker 1: that were in New Orleans or operating in New Orleans
Speaker 1: pre Katrina were located in the ninth ward um, so
Speaker 1: they were destroyed. And the last chapter of my book
Speaker 1: sort of talks about that the ways in which not
Speaker 1: only did they not only were some of them structurally destroyed,
Speaker 1: but because of some very deliberate economical and political and
Speaker 1: structural changes that occurred in post Katrina New Orleans, they
Speaker 1: were sort of the lands in which these churches, even
Speaker 1: if they were in a position where they could have
Speaker 1: you restored the church they were taken and they were
Speaker 1: converted to green spaces. I'll be linking to more of
Speaker 1: Guileleris work in the description of this episode. But by
Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century or so, the spiritualist religion as
Speaker 1: it had been founded by the Fox Sisters had lost
Speaker 1: many black spiritualists to independent spiritual churches and other movements.
Speaker 1: And based on this history, it's no wonder why and
Speaker 1: so what we see is a religion that was popularized
Speaker 1: by abolitionists that by the early twentieth century was still
Speaker 1: proving hostile to black spiritualists. In the case of Cassadega,
Speaker 1: this issue appears to be compounded by the even more
Speaker 1: intense racial inequality in the American South once that affected
Speaker 1: the Cassadega area immeasurably in the early twentieth century. By November,
Speaker 1: the ku Klux Klan was holding open parades in nearby Daytona, Florida,
Speaker 1: in an attempt to intimidate local black voters out of
Speaker 1: voting at all. To stage essentially a complete political coup
Speaker 1: of the area. The KKK burned to black theaters in
Speaker 1: Daytona as well beat people and when completely unpunished by
Speaker 1: law enforcement who were deeply invested in looking the other way.
Speaker 1: Clan candidates virtually swept judicial, municipal and legislative office primaries
Speaker 1: in something called the Clan Vocation was held in an
Speaker 1: event that attempted to declare Florida as a quote self
Speaker 1: governing realm in the invisible Empire unquote. This is just
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago, and this deeply racist terrorism literally
Speaker 1: surrounded the Cassadega community. But the KKK never came to Cassadega.
Speaker 1: Maybe a relief for the camp, But the books I
Speaker 1: consulted indicate no record of the majority white religion being
Speaker 1: public allies to Black Americans as they had been in
Speaker 1: the early days of the Spiritualist movement. One would think
Speaker 1: if they had been, the KKK may showed up. The
Speaker 1: history book Cassadega, the sounds oldest Spiritualist community treats this
Speaker 1: as something of a mystery, talking around the issue like this,
Speaker 1: Cassadega escaped the clan's wrath during the nineteen twenties. The
Speaker 1: terrorist group did not so much as burn across in
Speaker 1: the Spiritualist community. Defies explanation considering the crimes committed by
Speaker 1: the clan and the victims who suffered their drubbings. The
Speaker 1: revived KKK of the twenties fantasized of a cultural purity
Speaker 1: that is one Americanism. One could speculate that because Cassadega
Speaker 1: went dry before either state or national prohibition became law,
Speaker 1: and since the Spiritualist manifested a strong sense of patriotism,
Speaker 1: the clan looked elsewhere for more appealing targets to terrorize.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the Spiritualists seemed too ordinary to typically American to
Speaker 1: attempt the clan. If the town's progressive ideas on race
Speaker 1: and gender coupled with its unorthodox faith, bid Cassadega sitting
Speaker 1: duck for the clan. What saved the tiny community from
Speaker 1: the clan ends abuse remains a mystery, even if you're
Speaker 1: willing to put this writer's dog whistle of too ordinary
Speaker 1: and too typically American as a way of describing middle
Speaker 1: class white people. It is at least true that Spiritualists
Speaker 1: in Cassadega proudly displayed the American flag and historically celebrated
Speaker 1: patriotic holidays with regularity, And it may have been this
Speaker 1: jingoistic tilt that protected the majority white religion and deterred
Speaker 1: Black and Indigenous people from wanting any part of it.
Speaker 1: But most of this information I have to find on
Speaker 1: my own time. It's not available on the camp's grounds.
Speaker 1: And I'm very grateful that there are scholars who have
Speaker 1: dedicated their careers to preserving the histories of movements like
Speaker 1: a Spiritisma and the Black Spiritualist Church, ones that are
Speaker 1: so underdiscussed that I didn't know they existed before working
Speaker 1: on this show. And okay, I sort of bear ate
Speaker 1: the lead earlier. Things did get interesting after my night
Speaker 1: at the library in Cassadega, So if you will indulge me,
Speaker 1: let's go back there for a second. My two hours
Speaker 1: were almost up the night I was at the library,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't been able to do much more than
Speaker 1: frantically snap pictures of books that don't exist anywhere else
Speaker 1: and could easily be lost to history forever. If a
Speaker 1: leak sprung in the ceiling, and given how much maintenance
Speaker 1: a lot of buildings in Cassadega need, it's not out
Speaker 1: of the question. The married volunteer librarians from Rhode Island
Speaker 1: continued to talk to the main librarian, Richard, in a
Speaker 1: thick accent that makes me homesick whenever I hear it.
Speaker 1: It's an accent that cannot be reproduced in movies. Matt
Speaker 1: Damon forgot how to do it ten years ago, and
Speaker 1: no one wants to talk about it. But the librarian's
Speaker 1: voice is slow and soothing. He advises the woman from
Speaker 1: Rhode Island to calm her temper in her dealings with spiritualists,
Speaker 1: something her husband is eager to jump on, he says,
Speaker 1: keep telling her to calm down. You know you want
Speaker 1: to be a medium, and you can't be walking around
Speaker 1: getting piste off all the time. I want to ask
Speaker 1: them for more time here, because sure, this place is
Speaker 1: kind of a mess. But between random volumes on World
Speaker 1: War two and sticky ancient doctor filled books, there are
Speaker 1: documents and ideas that might not exist anywhere else. I'm
Speaker 1: flipping through something called a spiritualist solo graph from that
Speaker 1: reads as your galactic father mother, I Liolia, seek to
Speaker 1: warm you with my heart's love and try to fill
Speaker 1: you with the wisdom and understanding which will help you
Speaker 1: find the easy way and the light burn for you
Speaker 1: are my own dearly beloved children. On other book reads,
Speaker 1: was Abraham Lincoln, a spiritualist and the book itself kind
Speaker 1: of feels around in the dark for about eighty pages
Speaker 1: before admitting, no, probably he wasn't. I pick up a
Speaker 1: CD rom on the ground that says the story of
Speaker 1: how the sun has influenced cultures since this start of
Speaker 1: written words, twenty seven minutes of the most important history
Speaker 1: you will ever witness. There's more solographs with illustrations of
Speaker 1: the sun within the sun, a wheel within a wheel,
Speaker 1: the beam within a beam, old volumes of the Journal
Speaker 1: of the American Society of Psychical Research from the nine
Speaker 1: twenties and thirties. But I already know there's no way
Speaker 1: that the library is going to be open a second
Speaker 1: longer than seven o'clock. I can hear the librarian nearly
Speaker 1: counting down the minutes until he can go home with
Speaker 1: his dog, and I know there's no use in asking,
Speaker 1: so I take pictures in the low overhead lighting until
Speaker 1: the minute I can't anymore. My phone gets all hot
Speaker 1: in my hands, like when you're trying to finish an
Speaker 1: argument with your boyfriend before a plane takes off. That's
Speaker 1: to me picking a fight before getting on a Spirit
Speaker 1: Airlines flight. Well, good for you all, So my time
Speaker 1: at the library is up, and the volunteers from Rhode
Speaker 1: Island and the librarians start to pack up, shut off
Speaker 1: the lights behind me. As I leave, I get the
Speaker 1: feeling that a lot of what I managed to capture
Speaker 1: from the library, however frantically documented, won't be much help
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of the spiritualist movement if
Speaker 1: there is one, and scrolling through my phone at the
Speaker 1: Hotel Cassadega later that night, I realized that I was right.
Speaker 1: But something happens as I'm leaving the library that night,
Speaker 1: and I want to be careful to protect this person's identity.
Speaker 1: But what I will say is that I am approached
Speaker 1: by a medium at the camp who I've met before.
Speaker 1: We have a good rapport, and they asked me what
Speaker 1: I've been eating on nights like this, nights like the
Speaker 1: three before this one where the one restaurant in town,
Speaker 1: Sanatra's Restaurante isn't open. And I tell them the truth.
Speaker 1: I have been walking to the gas station a half
Speaker 1: hour away and getting stockpiles of diet gatorade and those
Speaker 1: little fried chicken bites that come in paper cups under
Speaker 1: heat lamps. Pretty good stuff. The medium laughs and asks
Speaker 1: me if I'm here is but I am serious. The
Speaker 1: reason I've been doing this is because a different medium
Speaker 1: implied to me the other day that it would be
Speaker 1: a bad look for a visiting reporter who is still
Speaker 1: seeking out the approval and cooperation of the spiritualists to
Speaker 1: be ordering delivery for dinner, and I took it to heart.
Speaker 1: So the medium I'm talking to laughs and asks me
Speaker 1: to go to dinner with them, and I say yes
Speaker 1: and go to their car. Now does that sound dangerous?
Speaker 1: Sure it does, But I have a policy in these
Speaker 1: kinds of situations where every single instinct is to say no,
Speaker 1: and uh to say yes and see if I die
Speaker 1: or not. So we're on our way to Perkins Restaurant,
Speaker 1: the Dennis of Florida for a four course meal of salad,
Speaker 1: half sandwich, a slice of pie, and better information on
Speaker 1: spiritualism in its current era than any disheveled library could
Speaker 1: have provided. So what I learned at dinner is for
Speaker 1: another time for today. Spiritualism's history is full of these
Speaker 1: kinds of characters. Believers and deniers alike have intense opinions
Speaker 1: and systems of belief, and the influence of the religion
Speaker 1: extends far in spite of their somewhat diminished power today.
Speaker 1: And yes, this extends to its influence on the evolution
Speaker 1: of the Black Spiritualist Church and a Spiritismo. And for
Speaker 1: my money, one of the major failures of Spiritualism to
Speaker 1: this day is to acknowledge issues and their own history
Speaker 1: that i'd wagers still presents a major barrier to entry
Speaker 1: to the religion to this day. And then there are
Speaker 1: conflicts within the religion that are just weird. And next
Speaker 1: week we're gonna look at one of my favorite kinds
Speaker 1: of historical stories, a weird and petty conflict between two
Speaker 1: famous people who you think would have something better to do,
Speaker 1: but they don't. In our penultimate episode of Ghost Church,
Speaker 1: I'll be taking a look at the decades long battle
Speaker 1: between Harry Whodini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for real.
Speaker 1: And yes, I think we actually are going to get
Speaker 1: to ectoglossoms, So look forward to that. That's next week
Speaker 1: on Ghost Church. Wow. Ghost Church is a Cool Zone
Speaker 1: Media production created, written, and hosted by me Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 1: The show is produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Ian Johnson.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Speedy Ortiz that's Sadie Dupley,
Speaker 1: Andy Moholt, Audrey, Zy Whiteside and Joey Dubeck. Music is
Speaker 1: by Zoe Brad