Episode Transcript
Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.
Use Ctrl + F to search
0:02
I don't try and get anybody to believe
0:04
any you know, I don't care what it's your
0:07
business. For those that believe,
0:09
no proof is necessary. For those that
0:12
don't know, proof is sufficient. I
0:14
can't make you believe something you don't
0:17
want to believe. I can only tell
0:19
you my experience. This
0:21
is my uncle Dennis, the medium.
0:25
My experiences in reading came about
0:27
because through the course of having
0:30
normal jobs working in a warehouse,
0:32
drivn't know for what drop whenever I was doing every
0:35
job I had, you didn't
0:37
last they closed or I was fired,
0:40
and it's thought that I wasn't a good worker. It was just
0:42
that's the way it happened. The
0:45
last job I had, which I plan on staying
0:47
are they closed. And
0:50
at that point in time, I thought to myself,
0:53
you're either gonna do something you enjoy or
0:55
something you can do, or you're going to start
0:57
at the bottom wrong again. And I
0:59
just didn't want to do that. So
1:01
I picked up the Tarot deck, which I had used
1:04
it a long time, and I
1:06
began to realize that, you
1:08
know, people were interesting. He
1:10
learned to read tarot from his mom, who
1:12
learned from her mom, who learned from
1:14
her mom on the face they were averaged,
1:17
low income New Englanders, but in private,
1:19
the family had been working as mediums,
1:21
readers, and psychics everywhere from
1:24
New Age shops to tea rooms.
1:26
Sort of an old, tiny undercover way of saying
1:29
New Age shops and at one point where
1:31
the Boston Police Department cops
1:34
suck, don't do that for
1:36
generations. I got
1:38
to speak with my uncle Dennis a few weeks ago
1:40
while my mom was visiting him and my auntie
1:42
Karen in South Carolina. Mom's
1:45
dad, my grandfather, just passed away,
1:47
and she's down there to be with them and
1:49
remember and hang out. They
1:52
retired there a couple of years ago. But Uncle
1:54
Dennis Dennis Callahan, fourth
1:56
generation hereditary, which according
1:58
to his website, still does do readings.
2:01
He grew up in what used to be a funeral parlor
2:03
in Massachusetts, sorry funeral
2:06
Paula in Massachusetts. That was mean,
2:08
and he tells me that he became sensitive to spirits,
2:11
seeing, hearing, smelling beginning
2:14
around middle school age. He's
2:16
carried on the family tradition as a professional
2:18
medium for decades now and was my first
2:21
connection to spiritual ideas when
2:23
I was really young. Well him
2:25
in a distant aunt named Susie who said
2:27
I was cursed with negativity and wouldn't
2:30
start living until I turned thirty,
2:32
which on the first point kind of true.
2:34
Second point to be determined. I'm
2:36
so fucking young and virile.
2:39
But you know, my parents were a little upset. You know, you
2:41
probably shouldn't tell a ten year old that they're
2:43
cursed. I don't think it's affected
2:47
me though, Just kidding
2:49
anyways, Uncle Dennis, he's
2:51
a medium, except he doesn't
2:54
like that word because it comes with
2:56
all this baggage when
2:58
you people's talk about being a
3:01
medium in a psychic
3:04
I mean, I'm not trying to be mean here, and I'm not saying I'm
3:06
any better than them. I'm not because there are true people
3:08
out there to do that, but very shut These
3:11
people are sort
3:13
of playing on people's emotions,
3:15
and that's what they do. Somebody,
3:17
you know, they lose a son because
3:20
of addiction. They want to talk to this son.
3:22
They'll believe anything. Well, you
3:24
know what, you don't choose who you've talked.
3:27
When spirit comes through, you don't
3:29
know who it's gonna be. And if you don't know
3:31
what you're doing, don't play with it.
3:33
It is not a game by any search of the imagination.
3:36
His current reading room has amazing
3:39
light, these green walls, a
3:41
pentagram area, rug, a small
3:43
table, and his tarot cards
3:45
and ruins. In a separate room
3:47
is a table full of crystal skulls in
3:50
a painting that needs
3:52
to be seen to be believed. It
3:54
was made by one of his long time clients.
3:56
I will try to do it justice. It is
3:58
a painting made of my uncle
4:01
looking very serious, holding
4:03
a black cat and a sword. Below
4:06
him are the phases of the moon. Beside him
4:08
are a honk in crystal and
4:10
a goblet. Above him is saturned
4:13
the stars, a glowing candle,
4:16
and a massive, massive
4:18
ghostly angel over
4:20
his left shoulder, just arms outstretched
4:23
with these big old wings and no
4:26
face at all. It's it's
4:28
terrifying, it's magnificent. You
4:31
gotta see this painting anyways.
4:34
Uncle Dennis was a practicing medium
4:36
and reader in Massachusetts.
4:39
Could you tell that from the accent. I've
4:41
spent years getting rid of that, But
4:43
he's practiced forever there, and
4:45
I'm biased in obvious ways,
4:48
but I can say with certainty that he does
4:50
not abide by anyone's rules
4:52
on how living a spiritual life works
4:55
other than his own. That
4:57
is to say, he talks to ghosts
4:59
but is not a member of ghost Church.
5:02
And of the mediums that I've spoken to, he's
5:05
the most openly skeptical of a
5:07
lot of readers working today.
5:09
Let me show you what I mean. You know, it's
5:11
like the fake psychics. I'm I'm
5:14
sensing the letter and okay,
5:17
I agree, you're a moron. Is your
5:19
employment? Okay? Easily
5:23
most basic tricks that they
5:25
use, and it's like that's I
5:28
used to get very amy because it's like, that's not
5:30
what I do. Okay, I'm I'm
5:32
reading a story. I'm looking at these things
5:34
and putting these things together because
5:36
people because they're gonna hear
5:38
this and they gonna think of terrible people are cheaping the more
5:42
they don't know how to ask a question. I
5:44
would have people coming me and go, what
5:46
colored drash? Sho? I wait to the promp. You're
5:49
gonna sucking ask spiritus what
5:51
colored drash? Get away to the prom
5:54
Yeah, the archangel Michael is sitting there, going, I
5:57
go with a baby blue. I
5:59
come to us. Intellectual split in
6:01
the road. Pretty often, you
6:03
can believe in talking to spirit and
6:07
think a lot of people who claim to speak with spirits
6:09
are opportunistic assholes. Members
6:12
of Cassadega, the spiritualist camp
6:14
that I visited this year, expressed
6:16
similar views on mediumship. Part
6:18
of why the training at Cassadega is
6:21
so thorough without shutting
6:23
the door to the possibility of communication.
6:26
Two things have to be true here. At
6:28
best. I cannot, in good
6:30
conscience tell you that there hasn't
6:32
been a shipload of fraud in this profession.
6:35
Just as and I'll keep reminding
6:37
you of this, every religion
6:39
in existence is burdened with varying
6:42
degrees of frauds who are happy
6:44
to exploit the belief or vulnerability
6:47
of somebody else. One
6:50
thing that's very interesting about American
6:52
spiritualism to me is that it's
6:54
a religion that has existed entirely
6:57
in a time of mass media. To some
6:59
degree, unlike most of
7:01
the big religions, it's a little
7:04
harder to gloss over any incidents
7:06
of fraud or dubiousness because
7:09
they're so well documented. It's not really
7:11
possible to say, well, yeah, everyone
7:13
was on board right away, and anyone who
7:15
wasn't was probably wrong. But
7:18
in spite of the history of spiritualism,
7:20
being available in the public sense. Most
7:23
of it is associated with sensation
7:25
and scandal, but it's a little
7:27
harder to nail down the specifics
7:30
of what spiritualists actually believe.
7:33
Yes, death is merely a transformation
7:35
of energy, but there's more than that. There's
7:38
moving tables and spirit teams
7:41
and divination tools and things
7:43
that aren't immediately obvious in neat
7:45
cliffs notes of their story.
7:47
So today we return to Cassadega
7:49
for a gala day and for my
7:52
first spirit message service, and
7:54
we check in with the founding Fox Sisters,
7:57
first brush with modern celebrity,
8:00
all before hitting the eighth grade. All
8:02
right, let's get the theme going. Actually,
8:05
you know what, one more word from
8:07
my uncle Dennis. And I always tell people
8:10
if somebody was an asshole in life, they
8:12
were an asshole when they're a spirit. Okay,
8:15
I'm not going to suddenly die and be a nice person.
8:17
Oh I'm dead, I'd better be nice, Thank
8:20
you, Uncle Dennis. Okay. Theme
8:22
Songka.
9:21
The day I arrive at Cassadega, I am
9:23
fresh off a sleepless night spent
9:25
at a Super eight on the outskirts of Orlando
9:27
that was wedged between this mini golf
9:30
course that had live baby
9:32
Gators. Is that legal? I
9:34
guess it's legal. And an outlet
9:36
mall where you can buy an absolute goblin
9:39
of a knockoff Mickey Mouse toy. That's
9:42
another thing about the Cassadega community
9:44
that has a clear bearing on the sorts of
9:46
people who come to visit. It's only
9:48
a half hour from one of the most synthetic
9:51
tourist capitals on the planet, just
9:53
an uber ride from disney World, the kind
9:55
of place that crops up in books with ridiculous
9:57
fonts that say weird floor and
10:00
attract curious families on a budget
10:02
between draining financially punishing
10:05
days at corporate theme parks. Now,
10:07
Cassadega pre dates all of
10:10
this Floridian excess. It
10:12
was first founded in eighteen ninety four to
10:14
disney Worlds seventy one,
10:17
but there's no denying that in the current sense
10:19
it exists in the same financial ecosystem
10:22
as the cursed mini mall you can buy a
10:24
t shirt at that says tinker Bell
10:26
is My Home girl. Oh my God. And
10:29
this is one of the main differences between Cassadega
10:32
and their sister camp in lily Dale,
10:34
New York, which was founded in the eighteen
10:36
seventies in the Rochester and Buffalo
10:38
area and the same camp where the Fox
10:41
House was relocated as a historical
10:43
monument for a time before, like
10:45
most spiritualist landmarks do, for some
10:47
reason, it burned down under mysterious
10:50
circumstances. The lily Dale
10:52
Camp is its own organization, but is very
10:54
close to Cassadega and how it operates.
10:57
Mediums live on site, they provide
10:59
session ends and hold services. They
11:01
often attract upstate New Yorkers on weekend
11:04
trips, but not quite the tourist
11:06
ilk that their southern sister camp does.
11:09
Cassadega exists in an area
11:11
of infinity tourists in an
11:14
area where there's pretty low oversight
11:16
as it pertains to uh
11:18
COVID safety. Remember
11:20
this is the land of Governor Ron De Santis
11:23
and an environmental climate where they can
11:26
be open year round where they often
11:28
called lily Dale can't. On
11:30
the Sunday I get to Cassadega. The mediums
11:32
are exhausted. The previous
11:34
day was their quarterly Gala Day,
11:37
a fundraising event where camp mediums and
11:39
community members give talks on their area
11:41
of expertise and provide quick readings
11:44
on the sidelines to raise money and keep
11:46
the camp open. When I tell you this
11:48
is not a religion of means, I'm
11:50
not kidding. This event raised
11:52
them about six thousand dollars and
11:55
they're over the moon about it. I mean
11:57
they're struggling to keep their post office open.
11:59
It all feel very Mickey Rooney, let's
12:01
go in a barn and save the local whatever
12:03
kind of vibe. I wasn't able
12:05
to attend, but I do watch all of these
12:07
Gala Day talks on Zoom on the bus
12:10
from Tallahassee, and two mediums
12:12
talks stand out to me in particular, in
12:15
part because they have kind of the same old
12:17
man boomer haircut, but also because
12:19
the ideas that they're expressing are completely
12:22
abstract and yet important
12:24
to spiritualism. I want
12:26
to tell you about them. The first is
12:28
by Reverend Dr Don
12:31
Zangi, presenting a talk called
12:34
Being Awareness. Reverend
12:36
Dr Don is another long time
12:38
cassadegga convert sharing more
12:40
than a name with a main cast member of
12:42
the show Oz. Yes, I did
12:44
pick that up, Like what but anyways,
12:47
Reverend Doctor Don Zanki approaches
12:49
the podium in a dan flash is
12:52
great print, just an absolute
12:54
dizzying vomit of patterns,
12:57
and he also wears this Indiana Jones
12:59
hat, reminding everyone that he'll be preaching
13:01
tomorrow as well. A lot of his students
13:03
are there. Don's students seem more
13:06
fervent and loyal than any other group
13:08
that I see on the campgrounds, and he's got
13:10
one of the nicer houses that a medium lives
13:13
into. That's something that I come
13:15
to know. You need to be a member of the
13:17
community to own a house in the area,
13:19
which requires not only the training,
13:22
but approval from the board.
13:24
There's a lot of things that involve approval
13:27
from the board, including uh
13:29
me. Some of the houses in
13:31
Cassadega are in pretty bad shape because
13:33
mediums don't make a ton of money for
13:35
people who are consistently labeled as
13:38
capitalist frauds. But the Reverend
13:40
Doctor Don's house is tall, it's bright
13:42
purple, It's got this golden metallic
13:44
sun hanging on the side. It's
13:46
bigger than most of the houses, more inviting,
13:49
and again constantly open to
13:51
and brimming with students. He's
13:53
also extremely influenced by Eastern
13:56
specifically Indian spiritual teachings,
13:59
and has increa recently tied this into his
14:01
own curriculum. Yes, he
14:03
is an old white guy and today he
14:05
is talking to us about being awareness.
14:08
He is a character. Today
14:12
we're talking about what awareness and consciousness
14:15
is. Awareness or consciousness
14:17
is everything seen or unseen,
14:19
he tells us, gesturing to the crowd
14:21
and telling us how to access the divine
14:23
within us, spirit that exists
14:25
in us. You know, spiritualists
14:28
believe in God sort of, but
14:30
not that judgmental, punitive God
14:32
that most of them grew up with. They
14:34
believe in a loving and forgiving God
14:36
who moves the energy of spirit around
14:39
the earth and through us all. So
14:41
how do we access it? It strays
14:43
into a combination of Eastern, Western
14:45
and Gwyneth Paltrow e philosophy.
14:48
It's about ditching the ego of the lower
14:50
self and accessing the egoists
14:52
present higher self. Reverend
14:54
Dr Don says, your lower consciousness
14:57
ego personality is living in
14:59
the three dimen sational world and has nothing
15:01
to do with the divine within you. He's
15:04
extremely charismatic, and
15:06
I had to know who he was before he came
15:08
to Cassadega. He's got
15:10
a weird journey and not saying something here. Don
15:13
ZENI first learned about Spiritualism at
15:16
the lily Dale Camp. Zangi is
15:18
from the Buffalo area himself, and
15:20
he had worked locally at the Zoo in
15:22
the Museum of Science before starting a
15:24
longer career at the Eric County
15:26
Juvenile Detention Center. Being
15:29
around troubled youth motivated Zenki
15:31
to found a martial arts and self
15:33
defense school, with the idea
15:35
being that kids needed a way to get out physical
15:38
anger and aggression in a controlled space
15:40
with discipline and structure. This
15:42
was a huge success and he had two
15:44
schools with hundreds of students and to
15:46
this day is in the Black Belt Hall
15:49
of Fame of Filipino Martial Arts in
15:51
Manila in the Philippines. Just
15:53
a quick aside, yes, this reverend
15:56
doctor is also a sense and
15:58
we just need to accept that. Okay.
16:01
Let that in since a dawn and
16:03
become reverend doctor down And
16:05
on one night in he went
16:08
to a Spiritualist message
16:10
service in lily Dale, the same kind
16:12
of service that I would be attending in Cassadega.
16:15
At each message service, mediums
16:17
approached the podium, point at
16:19
someone in the crowd and give them a message
16:22
from spirit right on the spot. It's
16:24
pretty incredible, especially when it's done by
16:27
someone as charismatic as Reverend Doctor
16:29
down when really since dawn, Like
16:32
many in his generation, he'd been raised Roman
16:34
Catholic, but spiritualism spoke to
16:36
him and he found himself in Cassadega
16:38
by and never laughed
16:41
up until recently. The Reverend Doctor has
16:43
run Sunday lyceums in Cassadega,
16:46
essentially an adult Sunday school for spiritualists
16:49
that he curated guest speakers for anyone
16:52
can attend for free, and all of the lessons
16:54
and talks are on YouTube, and the curation
16:56
reflected Don zaying Ki's journey as well.
16:59
Topics included spiritualism,
17:01
comparative religions, natural
17:03
law, and parapsychology, and
17:06
touched on Zangi's transformative
17:08
experiences meeting in Indian
17:10
guru named Satpaul G. Maharaj
17:13
who visited Cassadega in two thousand and
17:15
eight and profoundly affected
17:17
the sense A. Reverend Doctor zank
17:20
You went on to become a devotee of the Guru
17:22
and has visited Egypt, India and
17:24
Machu Picchu since, and he still
17:27
remains a major proponent of
17:29
incorporating more Eastern ideas
17:31
into spiritualism as it exists today.
17:34
When he took a step back from lyceum in to
17:36
focus on his classes, he told a local
17:39
paper this our group
17:41
is not a religion again,
17:43
it's the teachings and experiences from
17:45
what all religions have risen. I
17:48
find that the teachings of spiritualism and
17:50
the teachings of the Guru are not incompatible
17:53
to me. They are part of greater whole.
17:56
His students, both in Cassadega and at
17:58
a nearby ashram where they could sit for a
18:00
weekend sat song where one listens
18:03
to truth teachings, are all
18:05
about Reverend Dr Don. This
18:08
man is so fast, like does he ever wear
18:10
his black belt during class? I have so many
18:12
questions, but Don Zangy is too busy telling
18:14
me about being awareness.
18:17
His advice is rooted in spiritualism,
18:19
but it's basically a rehash
18:22
of that billion dollar piece of advice,
18:25
be fucking present for once
18:27
in your life and develop a deeper
18:29
understanding of consciousness. Man
18:33
Zangy expands on this by using a Hindu
18:35
philosophical term called turia,
18:38
a phrase which here means pure
18:40
consciousness. He closes by saying,
18:43
all right, you're awake, well,
18:45
maybe I put you to sleep, but you're awake,
18:48
and that is the cult of Reverend
18:50
Doctor Sense don ZANGI. Another
18:54
talk I heard at Gala Day was
18:56
their keynote speaker, another
18:58
Reverend Doctor Philip DeLong.
19:01
I'll encounter Reverend Dr Phil again during
19:03
my stay at Cassadega in a class called
19:06
Healing one oh one that he was kind enough to let
19:08
me drop in on at Pastor Debs suggestion.
19:11
But the first time I hear him speak, he's talking
19:13
about my spirit team.
19:16
This is a concept that has actually gone kind of mainstream.
19:18
You can find it in those YouTube videos I
19:21
love watching. But it's also a
19:23
little weird and a little abstract.
19:25
Your spirit guides are well,
19:28
I had no idea. There's certainly
19:30
plenty of groundwork that's been laid here
19:32
for the concept throughout centuries of
19:34
religion, but the notion is actually
19:36
kind of specific here. It reminds
19:38
me a little of how in scientology you
19:40
eventually learned that there's aliens. Except
19:43
this is spiritualism, and so they're not keeping
19:45
anything from you. Your spirit team
19:47
is just as normal a concept to them as
19:49
standing and singing him on a Sunday.
19:52
Reverend Dr Phil doesn't have the huge
19:55
personality that Reverend Dr Don does.
19:58
He's a little shyer, more soft oaken,
20:00
still with an old man hat, but has a
20:02
low gray ponytail and a soft voice.
20:05
He has a full hour to talk to us
20:08
and wants to use us to tell us how
20:10
to meet our spirit guides. He
20:13
shares a little bit about his journey to spiritualism.
20:16
He had a near death experience that pulled
20:18
him into the religion. He is something called
20:20
a crystal skull caretaker. He
20:23
grew up Catholic. He was formally ordained
20:25
by the International Association of
20:27
Metaphysics. This is all very interesting
20:30
to me, but what I'm more curious about is
20:32
what people did before they became spiritualists,
20:35
something that he is a little less worthcoming
20:37
about than others I talked to. Reverend
20:40
Doctor Phil tells us that there are extremely
20:42
specific categories of spirit guides
20:45
to learn from. Our guides are with us
20:47
all the time, but the Reverend Doctor tells us
20:49
that they do not interfere with our free will.
20:52
There is the master Guide, the
20:54
spiritual Guide, the emotional
20:56
guide, and the mental guide. Reverend
20:59
Doctor Phil says this we appoint
21:02
them, but it is all toward our spiritual
21:04
development how we treat our guides,
21:07
and it is very powerful how you treat
21:09
your guide. So okay,
21:12
it's most important to meet your master guide
21:14
first. I default to what I
21:16
think of as a master which is a woman who
21:18
is a little taller than me and clothes that fit
21:20
her really well, and she has like this spine
21:23
that looks good from every angle. When
21:25
I think of master guide, I think of a woman who can really
21:27
really pull off a hat, a woman who
21:30
would not have spoken to me in high school. But
21:32
Reverend Dr Phil says that the master
21:34
guide is actually a very
21:36
specific vision. Your master
21:39
guide, he says, will appear to you in
21:41
a cape. A cape, but
21:44
okay, a spirit in a cape
21:46
without exception. They got to be wearing a cape
21:49
and they're your master guide. Reverend
21:51
Doctor Phil says this, some of you
21:53
will be scared when you first see this guide,
21:55
but remember, fear is
21:57
the opposite of love. I
22:00
promise myself I will not fear
22:02
the spirit in the cape when he comes. No
22:04
way, everyone has a master
22:06
teacher, and every master teacher
22:08
has mastered life and death.
22:11
The next guide that we're introduced to is
22:13
our doctor guide. When he refers
22:15
to as the physician. This
22:18
is the spirit guide that looks over your physical
22:20
health. This guide is counterbalanced
22:22
by the material doctor or
22:25
the philosopher. This guide
22:27
oversees our career and finances, and we
22:29
call upon them to direct our decision
22:31
making and blending our spiritual and personal
22:34
lives. Essentially the vibes doctor.
22:36
I would love to get in touch with the vibes doctor because
22:38
my life is so funked up right now.
22:41
The material doctor is the guy who
22:43
handles all the law of attraction
22:45
stuff the secret. But Reverend
22:48
Dr Phil warns us, don't
22:50
be too specific in your manifestations
22:53
or you'll always be disappointed and get
22:55
your material doctor's ass. And a little
22:57
twist, and he mentioned
23:00
a karma teacher. I'm paraphrasing
23:02
here because the spiritualists in CASCADEGA
23:04
were not able to export this zoom
23:07
call like they said they could because
23:09
they are old and they live in Florida. But
23:13
Reverend Dr Phil says something like this
23:15
instant karma does not exist. Forgiveness
23:18
plays a part in the lesson the Karma
23:21
teacher gives, and it's here that he
23:23
moves to an element of spiritualism
23:25
and the spirit team that I take the most
23:27
issue with the concept of
23:29
the Native American or a Native
23:31
protector guide. This is
23:34
one of the most major red flags
23:36
of spiritualist rhetoric that hasn't changed
23:38
at all in the over century and a half
23:40
that the religion has existed, and it's
23:42
a topic that I'll be getting into in much
23:45
further detail in future episodes. In
23:47
short, this majority white religion
23:50
frequently invokes images of a
23:52
blend of tropes that are levied against
23:54
Indigenous Americans as guides
23:57
and magical beings intended to
23:59
guide them a white colonizer
24:02
and assumed protagonist. Given
24:04
that there is a notable lack of Indigenous
24:07
members of the religion and that Cassadega
24:09
itself exists on seminal ground,
24:12
this is tone deafness at best, an
24:15
act of perpetuation of stereotypes
24:17
at the expense of the Indigenous community.
24:19
At worst, It's worth mentioning
24:21
that the volume of Indigenous imagery
24:24
that American spiritualism invokes at
24:26
Cassadega never references
24:28
the violence committed toward that same
24:30
community on the ground where spiritualism
24:33
now struggles to survive. And
24:35
we will be circling back to this in more depth
24:37
and future episodes. But I
24:39
mean my God. Reverend
24:42
Dr Phil does expand the idea
24:44
of a native teacher to be a spirit
24:46
from anyone's country of origin. He
24:49
said that if you are from England, this could
24:51
be a druid spirit or a Viking, and
24:53
on and on, and it's this guide's
24:55
duty to be a protective guide
24:58
or to give you strength and quote
25:00
courage to speak the spoken truth unquote,
25:03
as well as healing. More
25:05
indigenous tropes pop up here. He
25:08
says that quote, they are close to nature. They
25:10
work with the plant, animal, and mineral
25:12
kingdom, and they use animal guides
25:14
and totems unquote. He
25:17
arbitrarily says that you can have as many as nine
25:19
spirits with you at a time, and I'm starting
25:21
to honestly get claustrophobic to think of
25:23
this many ghosts in a room with me at
25:25
any given time. He
25:27
takes a moment here to address the idea
25:30
of spirit guides conceptually and
25:32
how they might chafe with tenets of
25:34
other religions, especially the Catholicism
25:37
he grew up with. He said that he grew
25:39
up with an imaginary friend who he later
25:41
learned was a spirit guide, a
25:43
little boy named and plays
25:45
bear with me here Tommy Tommy
25:48
chustle Fire, who immigrated from
25:50
England to the United States and the mid eighteen
25:52
hundreds and was both kidnapped
25:54
and raised by an indigenous
25:57
tribe. I just so
26:01
Tommy, Tommy chessel Fire returned
26:03
to Phil as a crystal guide. And
26:06
my head is about to explode hearing
26:08
this weird racist story. When
26:11
Reverend Dr Phil drops another
26:13
bomb and says that one of
26:15
his spirit guides is JP
26:18
Morgan. Like the
26:20
something interesting is that the more I get used to
26:23
spending time with spiritualists, I hear
26:26
one hundred things like this a day
26:28
that removed my brain from my spinal cord.
26:30
He said that his spirit guide was
26:32
JP Morgan and doesn't
26:34
give anyone the opportunity to ask
26:37
a single question and to round
26:39
them off. You've got your nurse guide
26:42
and your joy guide, and mercifully,
26:45
that's the whole team. That's a that's
26:47
a lot of guys. The Master and the
26:49
physician are your most important guides. But
26:51
holy sh it, that's a lot of guides. But
26:54
the Reverend Doctor isn't just there to tell us
26:56
who these guides are. His speech
26:58
is on how to work with them. He guides
27:00
us through this fifteen minute guided
27:03
meditation to meet someone.
27:05
Taking us through a pretty standard meditation,
27:09
You're filled with divine light and
27:11
close your eyes and walk down to
27:13
a dune beach where you're joined by
27:15
your spirit animal. You walk
27:18
to the beach and your spirit guide pops
27:20
out of a fire. You ask them a question,
27:23
they give you an answer, and I'm
27:25
happy to play along with this. I
27:27
close my eyes, I go down to the
27:29
beach and I see my
27:32
grandma and the fire. I asked
27:34
her how she is, and in
27:36
my mind she looks so happy
27:38
and very beautiful. She asks
27:41
me how my dad is, and I say he's good.
27:44
And then Reverend Dr Phil instructs
27:46
the spirit guide to go back into
27:48
the flame on the beach that doesn't exist,
27:51
and so she does. The meditation
27:53
has you walk away from the beach, back
27:56
up the stairs and into the temple. You
27:59
open your eyes and Reverend Dr Phil
28:01
says to keep talking to our spirit
28:03
guides. Ask them questions and be
28:05
patient and observant as they answer
28:07
them over the course of weeks and months.
28:10
He says, to ask them for what you want. He
28:12
says, to ask them what their names are,
28:15
and for all of the freaky,
28:17
weird stuff and the Tommy Tommy
28:19
Chestil fire and the JP Morgan
28:22
of it all. That night I put
28:24
my feet on the ground and ask
28:26
my freaky caped master spirit
28:29
what their name is before going to sleep
28:31
in the chlorine stained sheets of a Super
28:33
eight in Orlando. I'm going to
28:35
drink the kool aid. All
28:46
right, We are vaulting back
28:48
in time. We're getting into our little
28:51
hot tub time machine, people,
28:53
and we're going back to where
28:56
the first spiritualists, as it
28:59
were. The Fox sisters are
29:01
two mediums. Kate Fox middle
29:03
schooler and Maggie Fox high
29:05
schooler, are met with their eldest
29:08
thirtysomething sister, Leah Fox, who's
29:10
just arrived at the family home where
29:13
her siblings are said to be speaking
29:15
with spirits. By
29:18
April of eighteen forty eight, things had
29:20
really started to pop off in Hydesville,
29:22
New York. Every day Maggie and Kate
29:24
would bring through new information from the spirit
29:27
doing the wrappings. It claimed to be
29:29
the spirit of a shoe peddler killed over
29:31
the five dollars to his name, and
29:33
these answers started to yield day after
29:35
day information that reflected
29:37
the house's previous tenant. So
29:40
there had been a renter of the Fox
29:42
Home named John Bell, just as
29:44
the spirit had said, The spirit revealed
29:46
that his name was either Charles
29:49
b Rosna or Rosma,
29:52
depending on the source, and for
29:54
the record, Charles b Rosna or
29:57
Rosma has never been confirmed
29:59
as e sting at least by this name.
30:02
It said that John Bell had once hired
30:04
a shoe peddler, but for your reference,
30:07
a Rosma never materialized
30:09
in official records, But locals
30:12
were captivated by him, and it's not surprising
30:14
why the majority of people assembled
30:17
at the Fox Home would have had a lot in common
30:19
with Charles Rosna Rosma.
30:22
They were working class people themselves,
30:25
often subjected to the John Bell's
30:27
of the world, getting fucked over by
30:29
those with more money than they had. What
30:31
was unfortunate, and would become one
30:34
of spiritualism's first real ethical
30:36
knots, was that John Bell was
30:38
a real person who was being accused
30:40
of murder by a spirit whose name
30:42
no one could verify as a person who would
30:45
ever existed. Later
30:47
in her life, Maggie Fox reflected
30:49
on this in a book written by Harry
30:51
Houdini. Did I mention that
30:53
Harry Houdini, the world most famous
30:56
magician, would later develop a vested
30:58
interest in disproving spiritual is
31:00
um did I mention that he did
31:02
that because he had an even more vested
31:04
interest in undercutting the work of his former
31:07
best friend, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who,
31:09
before you start banging your head against the table,
31:12
is indeed the author of Sherlock
31:14
Holmes, because yeah,
31:17
man, spiritualism is real. Weird. We
31:19
haven't even gotten to the part where Frederick Douglas
31:22
shows up. But Maggie Fox
31:24
describes this first week of visits later
31:26
in life, deflecting a little bit
31:28
and saying that the discovery of John
31:30
Bell was completely a notion
31:33
of her neighbors. The firsthand
31:35
accounts at the time chafed with this a little
31:37
bit, but as you'll continue to learn, everyone's
31:40
got their own story. Here, Maggie
31:42
says, quote, they the neighbors,
31:45
were convinced that someone had been murdered
31:47
in the house. They asked the spirits
31:49
through us about it, and we would wrap
31:51
one for the spirit answer yes, not three,
31:53
as we did. Afterward. The murder,
31:55
they concluded, must have been committed in the house.
31:58
They went over the whole surrounding
32:00
country trying to get the names of people who
32:02
had formerly lived in the house. Finally
32:05
they found a man by the name of Bell, and
32:07
they said that this poor innocent man
32:10
had committed a murder in the house, and
32:12
that the noises had come from a spirit
32:14
of the murdered person. Poor Bell
32:16
was shunned and looked upon by the whole community
32:19
as a murderer unquote. Tough
32:21
break for John Bell, but there were many
32:23
in the community that discredited the Fox
32:26
sisters from the start for this reason alone.
32:29
But the draw of spirit was too
32:31
much for most people to ignore. By
32:34
the time their sister Leah arrived in the first
32:36
week of April, hundreds were
32:38
coming to the Fox home every day
32:40
to witness the wrappings, in
32:42
a move that was foreshadow where American
32:45
spiritualism was headed. The neighbors
32:47
wanted to know more from the spirit than what had
32:49
happened to the deceased. They
32:51
wanted to know about themselves
32:54
or confirmed things about the great
32:56
beyond that they already knew or wished
32:58
was true. This would eventually evolved
33:00
into people seeking out they're
33:02
dead in particular, but in these first
33:05
weeks, Hidesville neighbors were happy
33:07
to quiz Charles Rosna Rosma
33:10
on the specifics of their own lives.
33:12
Communicating with the Spirit became a
33:15
bizarrow community building activity.
33:17
Neighbors would quiz the Spirit on
33:20
how many children, they had, how old
33:22
they were, their full names. They
33:24
were almost definitely learning about each other
33:26
as the Spirit relaid the information. The
33:29
questions were yes or no at first,
33:31
but the girls quickly developed a somewhat
33:33
more sophisticated system, with the Spirit
33:36
having it wrap. When certain letters
33:38
were called, the Spirit attempted
33:40
to lead a neighbor with a candle to the seller
33:42
where they were buried, but digging hadn't
33:44
begun before Margaret took the girls from
33:47
the house for good, going to their neighbor's
33:49
house for their own protection. During
33:51
this time, the Spirit also made its religious
33:53
leanings known. It made no noise
33:56
when asked if it believed in the Universalist
33:58
doctrine, then made a strong
34:00
noise when asked about Methodism.
34:03
It may not be a coincidence that
34:05
Maggie and Kate's father, John, was
34:08
a devoted Methodist. A
34:10
week after the girls first called their mom to
34:12
their room, half the population of
34:14
Arcadia County, a few hundred
34:17
people came to the Hydesville house
34:19
one night. It was the Fox sister's
34:21
first big crowd, but definitely not
34:23
their last. The immediate community
34:26
tried to guard the house and its spiritual
34:28
integrity, all of a week old, from
34:30
the masses that wanted to go inside and
34:32
ask the spirit questions. At
34:35
this time, Maggie and Kate were surrounded
34:37
by the spectrum of what it could mean to be
34:39
a woman in a time where the definition
34:41
of women in society was
34:43
changing. In one sense,
34:46
they were about to bear witness to the Seneca
34:48
Falls Convention and the fight for women's right
34:50
going mainstream. On the other
34:53
end, there was still the reality
34:55
of day to day. Their options were
34:57
to get married like their sisters Elizabeth
35:00
than Maria had. They could work
35:02
in one of these new fangled factories,
35:04
or they could become a teacher in the way that their
35:06
oldest sister Leah had to support
35:09
herself and her daughter. Back
35:11
at the house, Maggie and Kid's older brother
35:13
David took charge of continuing
35:15
the investigation of where Charles
35:18
Rosma's spirit claimed his body
35:20
was buried. After digging three
35:22
feet, he hit an underground stream,
35:25
stalling progress and tried for
35:27
days to get further, but weren't really
35:29
able to. Even as the crowds
35:31
of hundreds continued to show up,
35:34
and show up, and show up.
35:36
Mary Redford, the neighbor, now convinced
35:39
of the spirit's authenticity, started
35:41
asking it bigger questions. Still, She
35:43
told the local reporter that she quote
35:46
asked if there was a heaven to attain and
35:48
got three raps unquote, an
35:51
affirmative from the spirit and an
35:53
interesting one, as this would be significantly
35:56
course corrected in the years to come, as
35:58
it's understood now spiritualists
36:00
fully in they continuity of life
36:03
and not a Christian heaven or hell. Still,
36:06
the neighbor received a different answer and
36:08
pressed the spirit on what had become
36:11
of a child who she'd lost. Almost
36:14
right away, the locals were more invested
36:16
in their own stories than what happened
36:18
to some random shoe peddler who may or
36:20
may not have existed five years ago,
36:22
and the shoe peddler spirit was happy
36:24
to oblige. The community
36:27
continued to attempt to identify where
36:29
the wrappings were coming from, and many
36:31
suspected fraud. By April
36:33
twelve, local papers were fully
36:35
engaged in the sensation. A
36:37
paper called The Western Argus
36:40
reported, quote, the good people
36:42
of Arcadia, we learn, are in quite a
36:44
fever in consequence of the discovery
36:46
of an underground ghost or
36:48
some unaccountable noise. Picks
36:51
and bats were at once brought into requisition,
36:53
and on digging down about four feet, a
36:55
stream of pure water gushed forth and
36:57
filled the ghost hole unquote,
37:00
not the ghost hole. The room
37:02
where the spirits were wrapping in the Fox
37:04
house remained dark, and Maggie
37:06
and Kate remained on the bed where they had first
37:08
called their mother. Their family physician
37:11
was summoned to the house by their father when Kate
37:13
was said to have gotten sick, at which point
37:15
the doctor reported that there had been quote
37:18
great commotion in the room of his patient, snapping,
37:21
cracking noises all about the bed. As
37:23
fast as he changed places, the raps would
37:25
do the same unquote. He also
37:27
mentions that he thought that Kate maybe
37:30
quote, in some way manipulating
37:32
the joints or muscles of the fingers,
37:34
toes and knees unquote,
37:37
put a pin in that or a bone crack.
37:40
Manifesting spirit wraps by dislocating
37:43
their joints and muscles is a charge that
37:45
will haunt the Fox sisters, unbeknownst
37:47
to them now, for the next forty
37:50
years of their life, and will haunt
37:52
the religion until right
37:54
now. But even with light pushback
37:56
from local residents and press, the
37:58
local interest in the sisters and their spirit
38:01
rappings steadily increased and gained
38:03
credibility. When the family who had lived
38:05
in the house before the Fox family came
38:07
forward with similar charges, they
38:10
told the press they had also heard
38:12
the raps. Local reporter E.
38:14
E. Lewis writes, quote,
38:17
hundreds have been there. Skeptics have first
38:19
carefully examined the premises, have gone
38:21
into the ghostly presence, still incredulous
38:24
and disposed to treat the affair with levity,
38:26
have held converse with the unknown one until
38:29
the cold sweat oozing from every poor
38:31
has coursed down their limbs, and they have been
38:33
compelled to acknowledge that they felt themselves
38:35
in the presence of one from the spirit country
38:38
unquote. For good measure,
38:40
he included a petition signed by more than
38:42
forty of the real life John Bell's supporters,
38:45
who insisted that he was not a murderer.
38:48
But for all his thorough work, one
38:50
thing Lewis never did was
38:52
interview Maggie or Kate Fox.
38:56
Barbara Weisberg in her biography,
38:58
it mentions an interesting through line about the
39:00
Fox women, that being that they suffered
39:02
from intense migraines their whole lives.
39:05
Some suggest this led to an increased
39:07
sensitivity to the supernatural, and
39:09
others had other opinions,
39:12
but Wiseberg says that this manifests
39:14
as a quote pain that can
39:16
create a sense of standing outside
39:18
oneself, of not being oneself
39:21
but another person altogether unquote.
39:24
Leah arrived and witnessed her youngest
39:26
siblings working with spirit and
39:28
saw how terrified her parents were
39:31
and how her brother David was struggling to
39:33
hold everything together. She suggested
39:35
that the girls be separated. She
39:38
would take Kate back to Rochester and
39:40
Maggie would remain in Hydesville, and they
39:42
would see if the spirit followed. It
39:44
did follow them both. By
39:47
the end of summer eight, the
39:49
Fox sisters were notorious and had already
39:51
left their father back in Hydesville, beginning
39:54
to entangle with the progressive literati
39:56
of Rochester. They were considered
39:58
extraordinary, potentially leaders
40:01
of science or religion, or both,
40:03
and they were young women forging
40:06
their own weird path in a way that
40:08
may not have been possible even ten or
40:10
fifteen years before. And Leah
40:13
kind or fifteen years older saw
40:15
her younger sisters, saw the changing
40:17
times, and saw an opportunity.
40:20
All it was going to take was one little
40:22
white lie to get the girls on board, and
40:24
that lie was that everything was
40:27
going to be okay,
40:39
okay. Back to the present,
40:41
or I guess the recent post past
40:45
services in Cassadega take place
40:47
at Colby Temple, named for the camp's
40:50
founder. Colby Temple is the five
40:52
billionth thing to be named for the formal
40:54
founder of Spiritualism. A big
40:57
beige cement in wood church with the same
40:59
wooden cabin interior that defines
41:01
every camp building. It was
41:03
first built shortly
41:05
after the camp was established, at first
41:08
an octagonal building where Colby
41:10
himself, a well known trans medium,
41:12
would conduct services and seances.
41:15
This was later rebuilt into the pale
41:18
sand brick structure it is today
41:20
not too pretty from the outside, but
41:23
has a cozy congregational church
41:25
vibe on the inside. There are about
41:27
forty people at the service on the morning
41:29
I attend, and we're handed the same
41:31
Xerox programs, blue hardcover
41:34
hymnals and sit in the same creaky
41:36
pews as boomers talk too loudly
41:39
that I associate the church I went to as
41:41
a kid, but of course
41:43
there are differences. Healing
41:45
is already taking place in the back of the church
41:48
when I sit alone with my program and
41:50
my hymnal. There are a number
41:52
of students from the community who will be
41:54
evaluated on their healing performance,
41:56
and they're all lined up as those
41:58
attending service sit with their eyes
42:01
closed. A healing looks
42:03
like someone slowly
42:05
waving their hands methodically
42:08
energy healing while the recipient
42:11
reacts everywhere from nervous
42:13
twitching, not being sold
42:15
on it, or appearing deeply
42:18
meditative and healed. Depending
42:21
on what they write on the little yellow slips they'll
42:23
be handed for the complimentary service
42:25
afterward, a student could get
42:27
one step closer or further from
42:29
being recognized as a Cassadega
42:31
healer, the process that takes
42:34
about three years. I flipped
42:36
through the program and I'm shocked at how familiar
42:38
it is to the services I grew up attending.
42:41
There is an invocation. There are
42:43
candle slit for mind, body,
42:45
and Spirit. Instead of Father, Son
42:47
and Holy Ghost, I mean health. The ceremony
42:50
opens with a singing of Amazing
42:53
Grace, a moment for
42:55
the spiritualist hymnel. It is this
42:57
fascinating blend of Christian hymns that do
42:59
not reference have for nor health, the two things
43:01
spiritualism does not recognize. But
43:04
you'd be surprised there's a lot of diet Christianity
43:06
at play here. The service frequently
43:09
invokes Jesus in the context
43:11
of being a great spiritual healer. It
43:13
does not shy away from the Christian hits,
43:15
but it also sprinkles in a number of
43:17
Spiritualist hymn originals that lean
43:20
more heavily on the idea of the religion,
43:22
specifically lines like y
43:49
oh boy, the singing is the
43:52
singing is running
43:55
the service today. Is the first
43:57
person I spoke with connected with Cassadaga,
44:00
Pastor Debt, who encouraged
44:02
me to visit the camp in spite of my not
44:04
being quite cleared by the press board
44:07
yet, and whose kindness extends
44:09
through my trip and into the present.
44:12
She is very, very familiar
44:14
and kind in person. She wears
44:16
a cross around her neck, she has these
44:19
gold bauble earrings, short
44:21
haircut, long blue navy sleeves.
44:23
Very pastoral. You know, you can tell
44:26
she grew up Christian and you can tell
44:28
that she very, very firmly believes
44:30
in spiritualism. At
44:32
the front of the room. She leads us in a
44:35
hallmark of a spiritualist church ritual,
44:37
a moment in which the congregation recites
44:40
the tenets of the church, which
44:42
explains the core ideas of the religion
44:44
more clearly than I ever could on my own. So
44:47
let's let them explain themselves. We
44:49
recite in unison. We
44:51
believe in intelligence. We
44:54
believe that the phenomenon of nature,
44:57
both physical and spiritual, or
44:59
the expression non infinite intelligence.
45:02
We affirm that a correct understanding
45:04
of such expression, and living
45:07
in importance therewith, constitutes
45:09
true religion. We affirm
45:12
that the existence and personal identity
45:14
of the individual continue
45:17
to change. Called death, we
45:19
affirm that communication with the so
45:22
called dead is capt scientifically
45:24
proven by the phenomena of spiritualism.
45:28
We believe that the highest morality
45:30
is contained in the Golden Room.
45:33
Whatsoever he would that others
45:35
should do unto you, do you
45:37
also unto them. We
45:39
affirm the moral responsibility
45:42
of the individual, and that he
45:44
makes his own happiness or unhappiness
45:47
as he obeys or disobeys nature's
45:49
physical and spirituals. We
45:52
affirmed that the doorway in a reformation
45:55
is never closed against any
45:57
human soul. Here or hereafter
46:00
we have for recepts of prophecy
46:03
and healing, invading the Bible
46:05
our divine attributes through
46:08
mediumship. Then
46:10
we read the prayer of spiritual healing
46:13
from the back of our hymnal because,
46:15
in another nod to Christianity, spiritualists
46:18
do remote healing for congregation members
46:20
who expressed interest, in the same way
46:22
that Christians often pray remotely,
46:25
especially during COVID times. I
46:28
request healing from my immediate family
46:30
who I love, and for my haters
46:32
who are very lost. Healers
46:35
sanitize their hands between healings
46:37
while the rest of us are guided by Pastor
46:39
Dub in a guided meditation. Her
46:42
voice is calming, assured, bringing
46:45
energy in and out as a body.
46:47
As a dull music plays in the background,
46:49
the vague humming of something spiritual
46:52
happening. We sing another hymn
46:55
and it's rough spiritualists
46:58
or not singers or organists,
47:00
but it brings us to the speaker of
47:02
the day. It's your boy, Reverend
47:05
Dr don Zangi. He has
47:07
Pastor deb drop into his intro that yes,
47:10
he's been to Machu Picchu, okay,
47:12
And he takes the podium and yet another
47:15
incredible outfit. My man's wearing a
47:17
black sweat band around his bald
47:19
head. My son says, got a cross around
47:21
his neck. He's wearing a purple button down.
47:24
He's got a burgundeed pastor
47:26
quote whatever this is called the draping
47:28
thing unquote. I'll let him explain
47:30
himself. So we talked about
47:33
spiritualism. That's
47:35
such a big subject. The
47:37
characteristics of spiritualism go
47:39
back way before when
47:42
consciousness first dawned on humans.
47:45
They starting to realize themselves
47:47
as humans. They realized that
47:49
there were something bigger than themselves,
47:51
and today we call it spiritualism.
47:54
So yes, I've been here a long time. As
47:57
long as Jerry and
47:59
I came here. I'd like to say it was a
48:01
blame slate. I'm not even
48:03
sure I wasn't a slate and know nothing about anhing.
48:07
We're all seeking something higher and better
48:09
than ourselves, and for many of
48:11
us, it starts with what spiritualism
48:14
is about. And so yes, I've
48:16
traveled, have done some things that
48:19
involved in many other spiritual
48:21
endeavors, but it
48:24
starts with we
48:27
don't die. That
48:29
is basically to all auso
48:31
teric and metaphysical teachings. It starts
48:34
with that and the
48:36
only place I know they
48:39
can prove that. The
48:41
spiritualism in this place, I
48:43
hear because we're you're to be
48:45
here before the
48:47
truth of what I'm talking about becomes
48:51
evident. I've
48:53
seen it, I've heard it. I
48:55
don't believe it, I know it to be
48:58
true. The
49:00
spirit comes through. Well,
49:02
there's still a message you're reading,
49:05
and you can't deny with
49:07
spirit manifest in physical ways
49:10
that you can't deny with
49:13
spiritual healing helps you and
49:16
perhaps no one else and nothing else can. Your
49:19
consciousness begins to open up
49:21
heels like. It's pretty anti capitalist.
49:24
Mr. King of the Dojo. He criticizes
49:26
other religions Pensiant for taking taking
49:29
taking money from its congregation instead
49:31
of enriching their lives. Cradle
49:35
Rave got cost of something. But again,
49:37
there's this element of Christianity included
49:39
this. I don't love Christianity,
49:42
but I'm not a big Bible
49:45
thumper, but there's wonderful teachings in there,
49:47
if you know how to look. I kind of love
49:49
Reverend Dr Don honestly. He has
49:51
these phrases. He'll use stuff
49:53
like I've got three thousand books and another
49:55
one coming in the mail, and he describes
49:58
the feeling of true faith in spirit
50:00
of certainty, you know what I mean.
50:03
He's a proponent of continual learning,
50:05
of looking at other religions
50:08
to see what is valuable about them to add
50:10
to your own spiritual journey. He
50:12
describes his spirit guides and how they change
50:14
over time because people grow and change
50:17
over time. Several times
50:19
he puts God in quotation
50:21
marks when talking about it. The
50:24
service ends and we're encouraged to go
50:26
to the message service down at the Andrew
50:28
Jackson Davis Building, the bookshop
50:30
meeting hall hybrid and I trickle
50:33
down with the crowd. It's a solid
50:35
half tourist, half regular crowd
50:38
that heads back down the street and into the gift
50:40
shop, where I flipped through a copy of a book
50:42
called Is Mother Nature Mad?
50:45
Before heading through the double doors to
50:47
my first spiritualist message
50:49
service. Here's
50:51
how it works. There are five mediums
50:54
and forty people, all of us sitting
50:56
in the hall at a long, wooden cafeteria
50:59
style table. It's kind of summer
51:01
camp meets night class at twelve thirty in the afternoon,
51:03
and we're surrounded by cassadaga
51:05
paraphernalia. It wouldn't sign
51:08
declaring where we are a framed copy
51:10
of the Spiritualist Principles, framed
51:12
black and white prints of their founders,
51:14
photos from the one hundred twenty five year celebration
51:17
that took place a couple of years ago. A
51:19
few paltry cups of coffee that were room
51:21
temperature long before we got
51:24
here. How are you going to have a thriving religion
51:26
without halfway decent coffee? I mean,
51:28
guys, get it together. The room
51:30
hushes as the events organizer introduces
51:33
the service. This is the time where
51:35
mediums come to the front podium like auctioneers,
51:38
point at one of us and say, yes, Spirit
51:41
has a message for you. Then
51:44
spends the next two minutes describing what
51:46
the spirit looks like, what their relationship
51:48
to you is, what their messages, all
51:51
while tacitly confirming that it is resonating
51:53
through nods of yes or no from
51:56
the person listening. The yes
51:58
and no is important. We'll get there and
52:00
each medium gets a turn. The
52:02
room hushes as the first pastor takes
52:05
the podium and begins. It's
52:08
here where I start to put some general observations
52:10
on how different mediums read
52:13
differently. It has just as much
52:15
to do with personal style as any other
52:17
public speaking or art form does this.
52:20
First Pastor is gentle but direct
52:22
in her delivery. Pastor deb comes
52:25
up and her voice is musical, and she's
52:27
very descriptive. It's kind of great how
52:29
much description she gives. Oh, there's
52:31
an old woman standing behind you with her hand
52:33
on her shoulder. Do you know who I'm talking about.
52:36
There's a lot of older women who show
52:38
up in these readings of spirit because statistically
52:42
it's who you're most likely to be looking for.
52:44
Grandmothers. For the younger set, of which
52:46
there are not many. The only people
52:49
are in their twenties, have come with her parents,
52:51
or they're me, and old women
52:54
appear as deceased mothers.
52:56
For the more middle aged people who are trying
52:58
to make contact and send of the people
53:00
who raised them and then disappeared
53:02
one day, it's during this session
53:05
that if you made it through the ghost church
53:07
service proper, your belief
53:09
in what the spiritualists do is
53:12
truly tested. Sure,
53:14
you can say the tenants, but when someone
53:16
comes to you with a spirit message,
53:19
do you believe it or not? The
53:21
reaction in the room about forty
53:23
people, again mostly but not all white
53:25
and middle aged, About half tourists
53:28
and half regulars. Is
53:30
generally positive, but definitely
53:32
mixed. You can tell when someone wants
53:34
to be there to receive a message. They kind
53:37
of lean forward in their seat a little. They're
53:39
quick to answer the yes or no questions
53:41
of whether it's resonating. They usually
53:43
seem to have some sort of idea of who they
53:45
want to contact. You can also
53:47
tell when a skeptic is a believer's
53:49
plus one, whether it's their friend,
53:52
their spouse, their kids, their friend from college
53:54
that is maybe curious but sits
53:56
back legs crossed, takes
53:58
a little more time to answer, or questions show
54:01
me what you fucking got kind of energy.
54:04
Sometimes they seem impressed with the
54:06
specificity of who or what comes
54:08
through, and other times their eyebrows
54:11
rise a little if the message isn't resonating
54:14
or appears too vague for their
54:16
liking. Here are some of the spirits
54:18
that come through at the message service. One
54:20
says, I'm seeing an old woman behind
54:22
you. She's a little sexy. One
54:25
says, I'm seeing an older woman behind
54:27
you. She's tall and looks all about
54:29
business. Someone says, I'm seeing
54:31
a man behind you and he's a soldier. He came
54:34
up in the military and was served well by
54:36
his experience in the military. Another
54:38
says, I'm seeing a medium sized dog
54:41
running around and this makes someone burst
54:43
into tears right away. Someone else
54:45
says he looks kind of like gill Again,
54:48
does everyone know who Gilligan is? And
54:50
the spirits aren't just described either.
54:53
When you receive a standard message like this, the
54:55
recipient will first get a description
54:57
of the person in question, and then a mess
55:00
from them directly, stuff like this.
55:02
One says, he's saying, you're all
55:04
play and no work. Do you have a
55:07
job because you live for pleasure And it's
55:09
not pleasure that's hurting anyone, it's bringing
55:11
joy, So keep doing it. Another
55:13
message I liked. They're telling me that
55:15
you're not finished. There's a new venture
55:18
and you need a big open sky and space,
55:20
maybe some sort of trip. Some
55:23
people cry at least one
55:25
really really wants to understand
55:27
but can't quite get there. How
55:29
tall was the man standing there? She asks?
55:32
How old was he? Who's a child
55:34
with him? Well it could be
55:36
this guy, but well, no, that doesn't match
55:39
up with the height you described. And no,
55:41
I don't have any kids and haven't lost any
55:43
kids close to me. There are people
55:45
who want to connect the can't, and the earnestness
55:48
with which one medium tries to meet her in the middle
55:50
is interesting. When a message hits
55:53
it's exciting, and when it doesn't, it pings
55:55
a little skeptic in my own brain. We
55:57
were told at the beginning of the service to switch
56:00
our phones off so as not to
56:02
introduce whatever cell
56:04
phone waves into the air and interrupt
56:06
spirit. But the mediums don't
56:08
turn their phones off at all. They're on their phones
56:11
while their peers are at the podium the whole time,
56:13
like their stand ups waiting to go on stage.
56:15
Two of them show each other memes on their phones
56:17
and giggle softly while a woman who came
56:19
with her college friends receives the spirit message
56:22
from a dead brother across the room.
56:24
It's interesting there's this contradiction
56:27
going on right in front of us. But
56:29
at the same time, it's kind of fun to watch
56:31
mediums be friends and show each other
56:34
memes while someone else talks to a ghost
56:36
right next to them. And you know who
56:38
is one of the seven people who does not get
56:40
a reading in the entire room,
56:43
listener, It was me, And
56:45
it's hard not to feel self conscious. About it. I'm
56:48
sitting right in the front, and I can't tell if
56:50
I'm being overly cautious by feeling
56:52
that the mediums already know who I am,
56:54
given my status of being under
56:57
consideration by the PR committee,
56:59
that very well could be in the room with me
57:01
right now. And I learned moments
57:03
later. Absolutely is when
57:06
the service ends. I approached Pastor Deb
57:08
to introduce myself. As she texts someone,
57:10
She's got a lot on her plate. She's got an elderly
57:13
parent, she's got a day job over an hour
57:15
outside of Cassadega. She's a pastor,
57:17
she's a girl friend, she's the head of PR.
57:20
She's tired, but she's incredibly
57:22
nice to me and is enthusiastic when
57:25
I shyly introduced myself. This
57:27
is not my strength in this
57:29
world. I love people and I love learning about
57:31
them, but the approach is
57:34
not my strength. Dev tells me that
57:36
everyone is exhausted from gala day,
57:38
and those within earshot agree, but
57:41
they raised over six thousand dollars. It
57:44
was a success, and it ties into what
57:46
she told me on the phone a couple of days before. There
57:49
is an uptick and interest in the Spiritualist
57:51
camp and in the last year, potentially
57:54
due to the mass loss of life with COVID.
57:57
I want you to keep in mind that six thousand
57:59
dollars is a big deal for
58:01
this religion, all but an endangered
58:03
species. We're standing in a hall that
58:05
hasn't been updated in nearly fifty years,
58:07
and there's not enough coffee and styrophone cups
58:10
or snacks to go around scientology.
58:13
This is not a religion that
58:15
can really afford to court new members.
58:18
This is not I have
58:20
significant PTSD with moms who
58:22
have pastor Deb's haircut due to my
58:24
time in MENSA. You can reflect on
58:26
that on your own time, thank you very much. But
58:29
Deb is extraordinarily nice and
58:31
eager to introduce me to other members of
58:33
the pr committee who are present a list
58:36
that is not publicly available. But
58:38
not everyone here seems to share her enthusiasm
58:41
for meeting me. There's one volunteer
58:44
who isn't a medium, that is extremely kind,
58:46
kind of an alpha type, who is in the middle of sweet
58:49
talking someone else saying he can
58:51
talk to me when it's approved, And one
58:53
who is so nervous about my intentions
58:55
that she crosses her arm and doesn't shake
58:58
my hand when I reach out to her. The
59:00
whole flurry is very quick, and
59:02
Pastor Dab is on her phone for most of it, and
59:05
so I try not to let it sink into my bones
59:07
as the rejection by
59:09
mediums that it feels like. It's
59:12
one thing to feel rejected by someone and
59:14
it doesn't feel good, But it's another
59:16
thing to be rejected by someone who believes
59:18
that they are connected with a higher power and
59:20
know whether your intentions are good or
59:22
bad. This is an anxiety that will
59:25
follow me through the entire week. If
59:27
you're anything but completely skeptical.
59:29
It's not just a rejection from a Floridian.
59:32
It's a rejection from a Floridian and
59:34
the entire fucking ghost realm, ghosts
59:37
that have their own opinions and ties to infinite
59:39
intelligence. Over the course of
59:41
the week, I see a number of mediums
59:43
donate to Cassadega on their way out of their
59:45
services where they've just been volunteering.
59:48
This is a clear community effort. It's
59:50
the coffee hours of my youth with even less
59:52
resources, no Dungan, don'tus budget,
59:55
plus a light smattering of talking to
59:57
the debt. So now you have a better
59:59
feel for what Ghost Church
1:00:02
is about there are some elements
1:00:04
of diet Christianity. Then
1:00:07
they hit you with the spirit messages and the spirit
1:00:09
teams and all the elements of the
1:00:11
religion that are considered to be unusual.
1:00:15
But these elements don't come from
1:00:17
nowhere. Both the Fox Sisters
1:00:19
in the mid nineteenth century and people
1:00:22
in Cassadega and other spiritualist
1:00:24
sites right now formed
1:00:26
their religious practices by pulling
1:00:28
from elements of other religions
1:00:30
and traditions, and especially
1:00:33
from the concept of the seance.
1:00:36
So next week we're going to look at what
1:00:38
that history is, how the spiritualists
1:00:41
interpreted it to make it their own.
1:00:43
And yes, I am going
1:00:45
to have a full on conversation with
1:00:48
a table in Florida. All
1:00:50
that, plus I walk forty minutes to
1:00:52
a gas station to get some pringles. Next
1:00:55
week on Ghost Church.
1:00:57
Oh wait, and thank you to my uncle. Then,
1:01:00
as Callahan, we will be hearing from him one more
1:01:02
time. And I'm not saying that there's a heaven
1:01:04
or hell. What I'm saying is there
1:01:07
is something more than we are
1:01:09
certainly aware. It
1:01:11
just doesn't make sense to me that all we have is
1:01:13
life. And you know, I love
1:01:16
atheist because those are the people that are really screwed
1:01:18
because you don't believe in heaven, you don't believe in hell,
1:01:20
and when you die, you ain't a fucking no place
1:01:22
to go. You
1:01:25
know, Well, Mormons, That's that's my
1:01:27
biggest feed My biggest fear is that Mormans
1:01:29
had it right, because I'll be like standing at
1:01:31
the gates of Heaven with an extra large coffee, going,
1:01:34
all right, that's enough, see you next week. Ghost
1:01:37
Church is a Cool Zone Media production created,
1:01:40
written, and hosted by me Jamie
1:01:42
Loftus. Guest voices in this episode
1:01:44
came from the wonderful Miles Gray
1:01:47
and Daniel Goodman. The show is produced
1:01:49
by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Ian
1:01:51
Johnson. Our theme song is by
1:01:53
Speedy Ortiz, That's c DG
1:01:56
Clee, Andy Moholt, Ardres
1:01:58
Whiteside and Joey Dubeck. The music
1:02:01
is by Zoe Blade
1:02:03
h
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More