{"id":52693,"date":"2017-08-24T17:28:32","date_gmt":"2017-08-25T00:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=52693"},"modified":"2017-08-24T17:28:32","modified_gmt":"2017-08-25T00:28:32","slug":"spirits-lily-dale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2017\/08\/spirits-lily-dale\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spirits of Lily Dale"},"content":{"rendered":"
The following is an article from Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>Since 1879, residents of a quaint town in upstate New York have mediated conversations between loved ones\u2014parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. What\u2019s so special about that? These mediators connect the living\u2026with the dead.<\/em><\/p>\n

TRAPPED IN TIME<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pastel-painted Victorian homes line the streets of Lily Dale, New York, leftovers from the town\u2019s golden age at the dawn of the 20th century. It\u2019s been called Silly Dale, Spookdale, and\u2014in a 1997 New York Times<\/em> article\u2014\u201cNew York\u2019s own corner of the twilight zone.\u201d In winter, Lily Dale is as quiet as the ghosts rumored to walk its streets. But when summer rolls around, this town\u2019s population blossoms\u2014from a few hundred to around 22,000.<\/p>\n

This gated community, founded by members of the Spiritualist church beside a picturesque lake in western New York state, was set apart in its original corporate charter as a place \u201cfor the discerning of the spirits.\u201d When tens of thousands of true believers stream through the gates each summer, it\u2019s not the lake or the Victorian homes they\u2019re coming to see: it\u2019s the women (and a few men) who claim to be able to deliver messages from beyond the grave.<\/p>\n

EARLY AMERICAN RAPPERS<\/strong><\/p>\n

This particular Spiritualism got its start in 1848 in nearby Hydesville, New York, when unexplained rapping sounds in the night turned out to be the spirit of a peddler murdered and buried in the cellar of a farmhouse\u2014or so the daughters of the house claimed. Fifteen-year-old Margaret Fox and her twelve-year-old sister, Kate, convinced thousands that communication between the dead and the living was possible. That belief started a movement\u2014and then a \u201creligion\u201d called Spiritualism.<\/p>\n

Spiritualists believe that death is simply \u201ca transition from a physical entity into a nonphysical one.\u201d In its heyday (the second half of the 19th century), Spiritualism had as many as 10 million followers. The movement included many of the era\u2019s \u201cfree thinkers,\u201d such as women\u2019s rights advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton, shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, writer Arthur Conan Doyle, newspaper publisher Horace Greeley, and even\u2014some sources claim\u2014Abraham Lincoln.<\/p>\n

Early Spiritualists attended s\u00e9ances where mediums purported to deliver messages from the deceased to friends and family members. In the earliest days of the movement, mediums asked spirits to rap \u201cyes\u201d or \u201cno\u201d to answer questions. Later, they moved on to spelling out longer messages with a series of raps corresponding to the 26 letters of the alphabet. Disembodied voices spoke to those around the table, and voices might be \u201cchanneled\u201d through the medium\u2019s own lips. Haunting music sometimes flowed from ghostly trumpets that hung in the air. Lights floated across the room, glowing hands appeared, and flowers materialized, as if the dead were nearby, waiting to connect with the living.<\/p>\n

SUCKERS OR SCIENCE?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If this all sounds foolish to modern ears, remember that the mid-1800s was a time of scientific marvels. If Samuel Morse could send \u201cdisembodied\u201d messages with his telegraph consisting of nothing but electrical signals traveling over wires, why couldn\u2019t disembodied spirits send messages through a \u201cspiritual telegraph\u201d such as Margaret Fox? Millions believed they could.<\/p>\n

In 1849, a committee of skeptics\u2014men of science, skilled at exposing fraud\u2014conducted a battery of public \u201ctests\u201d at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, in an attempt to expose Margaret Fox as a fraud. Fox was stripped naked by a group of \u201csour-faced women\u201d in a back room. They checked her clothes for anything that might cause the raps that often accompanied her readings. Once reclothed, Fox made her way to the stage, where the male examiners tied her skirt tightly around her ankles. One of them held her feet to the floor so she couldn\u2019t move them. Finally, a handkerchief was tied around her mouth.<\/p>\n

Despite these preventive measures, when the audience posed questions, ghostly raps gave answers. Skeptics howled in protest, but believers were not dissuaded in the least.<\/p>\n

THE SPIRITED SEX<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nineteenth-century American women were little more than second-class citizens, marginalized and silenced by their fathers and then by their husbands. From the beginning, Spiritualism gave these women something they\u2019d never had before: voices in the public sphere. Female mediums delivered messages that would have been scandalous if they were voiced by women who were not in trances. From the safety of their \u201ctrances,\u201d mediums made pronouncements about everything from social justice to sexuality: \u201cForcing women to have unwanted sex interferes with the evolution of the human race,\u201d one medium revealed. \u201cMen who force their wives to have sex risk the wrath of the spirit world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Messages from \u201cthe other side\u201d played a role in the early women\u2019s rights movement and advanced the causes of social justice, including the abolition of slavery. Spiritualists at a convention in Providence, Rhode Island, promoted \u201cthe abrogation of all oppression, civil inequality, domestic tyranny or mental or spiritual despotism, because freedom is the birthright of all, and the instinctive demand of every growing spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Female mediums of the time spoke with authority on almost any subject, from politics to science to economics. How did they get away with it? Women\u2014as the \u201clogical\u201d men of the time maintained\u2014could not possibly speak authoritatively due to an innate lack of intelligence. Therefore, they must be speaking for the dead.<\/p>\n

THE PRICE OF BOOS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Messages from the dead aren\u2019t free. In 1860, a 14-year-old medium named Tennessee Claflin could be consulted for $1. (For an extra $2, her father would throw in a bottle of Miss Tennessee\u2019s Magnetic Life Elixir, a potent mix of alcohol and opium.) (You can read more about this fascinating young lady and her sister here: Equal Rights and Free Love- The Remarkable Story of the First Female U.S. Presidential Candidate<\/a>) \u201cThe sad part about Spiritualism for me is that it used to be so easy\u2014and still would be so easy\u2014to fake,\u201d says Susan Glasier, executive director of today\u2019s Lily Dale Assembly.<\/p>\n

Even Maggie, the elder of the famed Fox sisters whose ghostly raps gave rise to the religion, eventually recanted. The raps, she told the New York World<\/em> in 1888, were faked by popping bones in her toes. Then she took off her shoes and popped away to prove it. Fox was broke at the time, and the World paid her $1,500 (about $40,000 today) for the exclusive interview.<\/p>\n

But a 2012 Smithsonian<\/em> magazine article reported that money wasn\u2019t her only motivation. The leading Spiritualists of the day had called her little sister Kate a drunk. They were advocating for Kate\u2019s two children to be taken from her. Margaret wasn\u2019t going to let that happen to her little sister, and she would take down the whole religion to prevent it, if she had to. It worked. The press called Maggie\u2019s admission a \u201cdeath blow\u201d to the movement, though it wasn\u2019t the end of the Fox sisters\u2019 story. A year after the World<\/em> interview, Maggie recanted her recant and went back to working as a rapping medium. (Her spirit guides urged her to do so.)<\/p>\n

TRY BEFORE YOU BUY<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lily Dale\u2019s mediums claim the days of defrauding people for money are long past. The National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC) calls Spiritualism \u201ca science, a philosophy, and a religion.\u201d On the \u201cscience\u201d side, the church reviews data before deciding whether someone claiming the ability to contact the dead can actually do so. Mediums wanting to set up shop in Lily Dale have to prove themselves. They must give private readings to three of the corporation\u2019s board members. If that goes well, they give public readings in front of the entire board. The board tests at least a dozen mediums every year, but only about 40 have passed the tests to become certified Lily Dale mediums.<\/p>\n

A sign in the lobby of the town\u2019s Maplewood Hotel reads: NO READINGS, HEALINGS, CIRCLES, OR S\u00c9ANCES IN THIS AREA, PLEASE. Not to worry. Anyone who wants to talk to spirits will find all of the above inside the town\u2019s gates. Favorite first stop: the town\u2019s \u201choliest\u201d spot, Inspiration Stump. At one time, mediums stood on the stump to deliver the words of the dead. After one of them toppled over stone dead, the townspeople decided the stump\u2019s energy was too strong and put a stop to stump speaking.<\/p>\n

Public demonstrations of mediumship take place three times a day during the summer season. Those are included in the town\u2019s $15 gate fee (free for active military and visitors age 80 and older). What ghostly messages do Lily Dale\u2019s mediums reveal in public demos? One puzzled medium told a crowd that she was seeing images of Tootsie Rolls and Schlitz beer. \u201cThat\u2019s my grandmother!\u201d yelled a woman in the crowd. Visitors looking for one-on-one readings with Lily Dale mediums will pay between $40 and $75 for a half-hour session.<\/p>\n

LAST GASP<\/strong><\/p>\n

The NSAC calls Spiritualism a \u201ccommon sense religion,\u201d but today it\u2019s just a ghost of its former self. Membership hovers somewhere around the 14,000 mark, rather than the millions it once boasted. Given that this is an age where satellites orbit the Earth and robots rove across Mars, the fact that Spiritualism thrives is somewhat surprising. Perhaps British writer G. K. Chesterton explained its endurance best: \u201cNo conceivable number of forged bank-notes can disprove the existence of the Bank of England.\u201d By the same logic, Chesterton asserts, \u201cNo conceivable number of false mediums affects the probability of the existence of real mediums one way or the other.\u201d As long as people knock on their doors, Lily Dale\u2019s mediums will keep the tradition of mediating between the living and the dead\u2026alive.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>This article is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Uncanny Bathroom Reader<\/a><\/em>. This groundbreaking series has been imitated time and time again but never equaled. And Uncanny<\/i> is the Bathroom Readers\u2019 Institute at their very best. Covering a wide array of topics\u2014incredible origins, forgotten history, weird news, amazing science, dumb crooks, and more\u2014readers of all ages will enjoy these 512 pages of the best stuff in print.<\/p>\n

Since 1987, the Bathroom Readers\u2019 Institute<\/a> has led the movement to stand up for those who sit down and read in the bathroom (and everywhere else for that matter). With more than 15 million books in print, the Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader series is the longest-running, most popular series of its kind in the world.<\/p>\n

If you like Today I Found Out<\/a>, I guarantee you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books, so check them out<\/a>!<\/p>\n<\/div>\nExpand for Image Source<\/span>

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Image Source<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is an article from Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader Since 1879, residents of a quaint town in upstate New York have mediated conversations between loved ones\u2014parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. What\u2019s so special about that? These mediators connect the living\u2026with the dead. TRAPPED IN TIME Pastel-painted Victorian homes line the streets of Lily Dale, New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":52694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-i-found-out","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52693"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52696,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52693\/revisions\/52696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}