0:00

I'm going to try something a little

0:03

different, and by something a

0:05

little different, I do mean go

0:07

to a haunted museum.

0:14

The library at Cassadega offered

0:16

a number of interesting offerings

0:19

when it came to spiritualist literature,

0:22

but not much in the way of cultures

0:24

existing outside of the white

0:27

metal class in the nineteenth and twentieth

0:29

century. So I'm hoping that

0:31

Sea Green's Haunted History House

0:34

and Museum will be better.

0:37

It's in this little purple building near

0:39

the teeny tiny post office that's almost

0:41

always closing, and it looks

0:43

and sounds like a bit of a tourist

0:45

trap. But I happen to know that

0:48

it used to be a Cassadega History

0:50

museum before being rebranded to be

0:53

a little more pop culture touristy,

0:55

and I hope there's still some of that inside.

0:58

It's not like an official part of the camp

1:00

and is not claimed or vetted by

1:03

the mediums. So you'd think that

1:05

Sea Greens can get a little loosey

1:07

goosey punk rock with how they present their

1:09

history. Ten bucks later, I'm

1:12

in. Actually, I

1:14

did have to gently reject the

1:16

manager who was trying to sell me a haunted

1:18

doll for twenty dollars on the way in. Like,

1:21

look, I have twenty dollars, but I just

1:23

don't want a haunted doll. I'm

1:25

flying spirit airlines on the way home. Do you

1:27

really think we can afford the

1:29

risk? We cannot. But

1:31

I'm in the museum, and as I

1:33

suspected, a lot of newspaper

1:36

clippings and primary resources around

1:38

Cassadega and twentieth century spiritualism

1:41

are still here. It's really

1:43

just a matter of finding them among the many

1:45

framed movie posters, and my

1:48

favorite, a full sized jigsaw

1:50

doll on a little tricycle jigsaw

1:54

from Saw. Actually, if you haven't seen Saw,

1:57

stop the podcast right now and go watch

1:59

Saw. At least Saw

2:01

one. Some of the best sociological

2:04

storytelling of our lifetimes

2:07

is contained in James Wand's Saw

2:09

Saga. Actually, on one

2:11

of my first dates with the guy that I eventually

2:13

lost my virginity too, on August

2:16

two ten, we watched five

2:18

Saw movies in one sitting. Did

2:21

not take a peabreak, did not kiss,

2:23

should have married him, didn't became

2:25

a comedian. You know where that gets you?

2:28

You start doing some gonzo stuff, Where does that

2:30

get you? I'll tell you where that gets you Central

2:32

Florida in the middle of the day in a haunted

2:35

museum, sitting next to a jigsaw

2:37

doll the size of a human three

2:39

year old. Not too bad. I

2:41

have no regrets. To quote a hot

2:43

Dog Bun I saw in Toledo last summer,

2:46

we wear the chains we forge

2:48

in life, which I

2:51

agree with the spirit of There's other factors

2:53

at play, for sure, but I see where the hot

2:55

Dog Bun was going with it. Where

2:58

are we We're at a haunted museum, and honestly,

3:00

there's more useful information here than I was

3:02

expecting. There's acknowledgement

3:05

of the Fox sisters, for example,

3:07

including the fact that they had claimed

3:09

at one time that spiritualism

3:11

was a hoax. The museum

3:13

also includes the admission that spiritualism

3:16

had experienced a decline in

3:18

the late nineteenth century, something you

3:20

would not catch the camp sanctioned

3:22

mediums fessing up to. There are

3:25

some references to indigenous

3:27

culture, but they're about on par as

3:29

anywhere else in the camp. There's this small

3:31

room right past the entrance that references

3:34

Native culture. They certainly have more

3:36

books than the library did on the subject.

3:39

But the twist is you're not

3:41

allowed to touch the books. Here there's

3:43

this little laser jet printed sign with

3:45

a drawing of the girl from the movie

3:47

The Ring, the one who crawls out

3:49

of the TV seven Days to Live. The sign

3:52

says this, please don't touch books.

3:54

Some are so old they will fall apart. Some

3:56

are haunted. Either way, it won't work

3:59

out well for you. Thanks management

4:02

and the indigenous imagery they do use

4:04

in the room ranges from innocuous

4:07

to outright offensive. There's

4:09

this flickering red light bulb to set

4:11

the tone for the haunted museum.

4:13

There's a couple of figurines depicting

4:16

Native life. There's the first of many

4:18

scary mannequins scattered throughout the

4:20

building that the owners dressed in

4:22

iParty costumes to fit the

4:24

theme of any given room,

4:27

and make no mistake, I love

4:29

the haunted mannequins, but the haunted

4:32

mannequin in the Indigenous History room

4:34

does seem to be wearing a costume that was

4:36

left over from Disney's Pocahontas,

4:40

so not great representation

4:43

wise. In a different room, there's

4:45

a mention of voodoo practices

4:48

in New Orleans, but it's only

4:50

in passing. Mostly just a couple of tourist

4:52

posters for other places in New Orleans.

4:55

But even this is more acknowledgment

4:58

of other spiritual idea as in cultures.

5:01

Then most areas of the camp will

5:03

do. I need to get back to these mannequins

5:05

for a second. The second mannequin

5:07

you encounter at Sea Green's haunted

5:10

History House and Museum has

5:12

been attempted to be dressed as

5:14

the Cassadega Camp founder George Colby.

5:17

Now the management must know

5:20

they're not dressing the mannequins very convincingly.

5:23

This one, for example, is a female

5:25

coated mannequin wearing a Mark Twain

5:28

wig, complete with handlebar mustache

5:30

and a suit that is at least two sizes

5:32

too large, So you can only tell

5:35

who the mannequin is intended to be by

5:37

the sticky hello my name is

5:39

George name tag they've attached

5:41

to the lapel. But even around

5:43

this silly mannequin, there are some

5:46

little historical documents. In

5:48

this case. Newspaper articles from

5:50

the eighties and nineties headlines like

5:52

Cassadega mediums have the right spirit,

5:55

spiritualists converse with the dead

5:57

and living tourists and

5:59

a very optimistic Cassadega

6:02

springing back after a period of decline.

6:04

There's also some esoteric history

6:06

I've never heard about until coming here.

6:09

One exhibit shows letters between

6:11

President Harry Truman and a d

6:13

o J employee named William Underhill,

6:16

who was a spiritualist and at

6:18

one time managed the Cassadega

6:20

Hotel. So it has

6:23

its problems, but Sea Green's Haunted

6:25

History House and Museum is iconic.

6:28

They get all of the history out of the

6:30

way in their first couple of rooms

6:32

and then just make a hard mostly

6:35

irrelevant to spiritualism, pivot into

6:37

ghostie pop culture and media. After

6:39

that. Instead of, for example,

6:41

a room full of information on

6:44

spiritism and a spiritismo,

6:46

there's a whole wall of framed pictures of

6:48

those neckbeards on the Sci Fi channel

6:50

who claimed to hunt ghosts. There

6:52

are brief, factually questionable

6:55

explainers on things like tarot

6:57

cards, reading tea leaves, palmistry,

7:00

astrology, a pile of Jack Skellington

7:02

toys. Why not, and not to go

7:04

back to the mannequins again, But since I know

7:06

you're curious, here are my top three mannequins.

7:09

At the first is a woman dressed

7:11

as a pilgrim who has my haircut, and

7:13

her name tag reads hello,

7:16

my name is Priscilla, the Puritan

7:19

Queen of the desk Okay.

7:21

Coming in at number two. Male mannequin dressed

7:23

in iParty griffin door robes. His

7:25

name tag says hello, my

7:28

name is Neville. Then my bottom is not that

7:30

long? Horrible. Finally,

7:33

a mannequin that is also a

7:36

huge gorilla wearing sunglasses,

7:39

a hat from disney World and a

7:41

Pride bandanna with a name tag

7:43

that says, and you're not ready for this? Hello,

7:46

my name is George. There's two.

7:48

George is the founder of the

7:50

camp and also a gay

7:52

gorilla. Amazing. No notes

7:55

if you don't want to visit this museum at this point,

7:57

I don't know how else to sell you on. The

8:00

history here is minimal. For

8:02

sure. There's no reason a history

8:04

museum needs a wall full of clown masks,

8:07

or a wall full of dead baby dolls, or

8:10

a whole room dedicated to things that are

8:12

just vaguely scary.

8:15

I couldn't get a read for the theme on this room.

8:17

It's madness, it's anarchy.

8:19

But it's also the

8:21

only place you see even an

8:23

attempt to touch on other spiritually

8:26

based religions. However poorly

8:28

done. And it's poorly done. So

8:30

this week on Ghoest Church, I want to create

8:33

a little audio room for two religious

8:35

movements that were heavily influenced

8:37

by American spiritualism,

8:40

A Spiritismo and the Black

8:42

spiritual Churches of America. So

8:45

hop on your tricycle, my little

8:47

jigsaw, because the

8:49

theme song is I'm

8:51

bailing on It. I'm bailing on It. Music playing

9:00

us jash

9:13

and good look.

9:50

Welcome back to my little slice

9:52

of central Floridian paradise

9:55

where I'm returning to my hot waterless

9:58

hotel room at the Hotel CASTI day go

10:00

to sit through the notes I took away from the library

10:03

the evening before. It was

10:05

a weird night in more

10:07

ways than one, but there's no time to

10:09

think about that right now. Instead,

10:12

I flipped through the pictures I took on my phone

10:14

of book pages that stuck out to

10:17

me in the moment, and I asked my

10:19

spirit guides, which I'm remembering

10:21

correctly, is a guy named

10:24

Dawn, a lady named Helen,

10:26

a swan, and two archangels.

10:30

I asked them to show me something.

10:33

Here's what I know. Spiritualism

10:36

was far from the only white dominant

10:38

religion to make their way on stolen

10:40

land in Florida during the late nineteenth

10:43

century. Baptists and Methodists

10:45

came to the area less than twenty years

10:48

before, and Protestants only had

10:50

a twenty three year head start on

10:52

the Spiritualists in forming a permanent

10:54

presence in Volutia County. I

10:57

wasn't aware of the majority of the

10:59

actual history behind the land

11:01

that Cassadega was settled on when I arrived

11:04

at the library in town for my two

11:06

hour cram session. I wanted

11:08

to sort of experiment and see how much

11:10

the library would teach me and

11:13

how vested the spiritualists who lived there

11:15

now are in acknowledging any

11:17

history that isn't directly taken

11:20

from the mouths of settlers who got

11:22

them started. As you know by now,

11:24

there wasn't too much. One of the books

11:27

had caught my attention from across the

11:29

room. Had had this bright blue cover

11:32

a little older and in gold script

11:34

it said what is spiritualism

11:37

and who are these spiritualists?

11:39

And I thought, yeah, exactly,

11:42

I should call my podcast that I

11:44

want to know. So I opened the book

11:47

the page eight and there is a

11:49

prominent heading that reads spiritualism

11:53

is not spiritism,

11:55

So let me be the first to say yes,

11:59

m no, they are not the same

12:01

systems of belief, but, like their

12:04

names would indicate, there is

12:06

a lot of shared history and ideas

12:08

between these movements. But this book

12:11

is pretty aggressive in distancing

12:13

spiritism. Page eight reads

12:15

this spiritualism must

12:18

be differentiated from spiritism. The

12:20

terminologies of the two words absolutely

12:23

necessitate, as every scholar

12:25

knows entirely different meanings. Chinese

12:28

Indians and Utah Mormons are spiritists

12:30

believing in present spirit communications.

12:33

Most of the African tribes of the Dark Continent

12:35

worshiped demons believe in spirit

12:37

converse, but certainly they are not

12:39

intelligent religious spiritualists. Holy

12:42

shit. In addition to

12:44

being outwardly racist, most

12:47

of this information is wrong, and

12:49

so to any current practicing spiritualists

12:52

that denies a history of racism within

12:54

the religion, that's your book, you

12:56

guys. It's likely that

12:58

spiritism specific glee as being singled

13:01

out here because of its popularity

13:03

among people in Puerto Rico, Cuba,

13:06

and Brazil. So this library

13:08

does mention spiritism, sure,

13:11

but not in a kind way, which

13:13

is a shame, because spiritism is inherently

13:16

influenced by spiritualism and

13:19

is the core of Espiritismo,

13:22

possibly the widest practiced

13:25

version of spiritualism today.

13:28

So a quick history, So how do

13:30

you get from spiritualism to

13:33

a spiritismo? In short,

13:35

Hydesville and the Fox Sisters led

13:38

to spiritualism. In the eighteen forties,

13:41

Spiritualism inspired a French

13:43

guy named Alan Cardick. Alan

13:45

Cardeck did some investigations

13:48

of spiritualist phenomena and modified

13:50

the beliefs to call it spiritism.

13:53

Cardick writes a book that arrives in Latin

13:55

America and is a huge hit.

13:58

In Latin America, there were large

14:00

amounts of people from Africa brought

14:03

and enslaved by colonizers,

14:05

which led to blending their spiritual

14:07

traditions with cardex

14:09

ideas that were popping off in the area.

14:12

And this is approximately how

14:14

a spiritusm began, a

14:16

variation on American spiritualism,

14:19

whose exact beliefs and rituals vary

14:21

with some significance depending on

14:23

the region it's being practiced in. The

14:25

most popular areas include Brazil,

14:28

Cuba, and Puerto Rico, and each

14:30

branch is influenced by some degree

14:33

by the indigenous cultures of these

14:36

countries and indigenous African

14:38

spirituality. So to

14:40

start, who is Alan Cardik? First

14:43

things first, that's not his real name. His

14:45

real name sounds expensive.

14:49

It's hippolyte Leon

14:51

de nizard reveil Okay

14:54

King Mr. Four names.

14:57

Was raised in France as a Roman

14:59

Catholic the early eighteen hundreds and

15:01

didn't develop an interest in even the concept

15:04

of the seance until he was in his

15:06

fifties and encountered spiritualism,

15:09

so he became interested in the movement the Fox

15:11

Sisters had began around the same time

15:14

a lot of people did, but he approached

15:16

examining spiritualist phenomena

15:19

with the mind of an academic kind

15:21

of skeptically, and so upon

15:23

investigating on his own terms,

15:26

he was quick to dismiss Franz Mesmer's

15:28

theory of animal magnetism and

15:31

stated on many occasions that there

15:33

was a high likelihood that there

15:35

was some fraudulence at play with a lot

15:37

of the medium's working, particularly

15:40

those that were doing the really spectacular

15:43

physical stuff, but he

15:45

didn't think it was all bullshit.

15:48

Alan Cardick did not claim or

15:51

endorse the full spectrum of

15:53

spiritualist phenomena and all of

15:55

its spirit photography habitet

15:57

acts, spirit hands, and ectoplasm.

16:01

And I know I still have to tell you about

16:03

ectoplasm, but it's not going to happen

16:05

this week. I think it's going to happen next week,

16:08

So relax. Hell.

16:11

After investigating Alan Cardick

16:14

boiled down his beliefs to

16:16

the following simple statements. True

16:19

mediums could provide information that

16:21

they couldn't have known at the beginning of a

16:23

reading. True mediums could demonstrate

16:26

the skills a spirit had that they

16:29

themselves didn't possess. I

16:31

think a specific handwriting,

16:33

speaking the language they didn't know. All

16:35

that good stuff. And finally, true

16:38

mediums were able to communicate

16:41

or even mimic the personality

16:43

of a specific individual that

16:46

had died. Cardiac called

16:48

his scale back belief system Spiritism

16:51

Original tent out of ten, and

16:54

he published his first and most successful

16:56

book on the subject, which was basically five

16:58

hundred or so question and answers on what

17:01

spiritism did and did not endorse

17:04

in eighteen fifty seven. And if

17:06

you thought the belief system sounded

17:09

like a ripoff of spiritualism, wait

17:11

till you hear the name of his book. It

17:14

is the Spirit's Book. Wow. I

17:16

mean, look, he was an academic. He was not

17:18

an artiste. Not everyone to

17:20

think of an incredible name like ghost

17:23

Church, which I did

17:25

not think of. My producer Sophie thought of it, so

17:27

thank you Sophie. Anyways,

17:30

as creative genius Alan Cardiac

17:32

explained it, spiritism was

17:34

about uniting three of the main

17:37

interests of the nineteenth century together,

17:40

those being science, philosophy,

17:43

and religion under a singular

17:45

belief system. In some ways, it

17:48

was much easier to buy into Spiritism

17:50

because of its clarity. The Fox

17:53

sisters had assembled the belief system

17:55

of Spiritualism kind of in real

17:57

time in this chaotic way, and

18:00

didn't have a lot of control over dictating

18:03

what they did and did not think was real.

18:06

In the case of Cardec and Spiritism,

18:08

the Spirit's Book was far better equipped

18:10

to serve as a sort of alleged

18:13

scientific endorsement to mediumship

18:15

as well as I viewing the moralistic

18:18

ideas that tend to define religion,

18:21

and for its time, it's a pretty progressive

18:23

text. It endorses the idea

18:25

of evolution, a theory that some

18:28

public schools still won't teach,

18:31

and at the time Darwin's theory

18:33

had been published less than twenty years

18:35

before Cardek started writing. The

18:37

book also incorporated Eastern

18:40

reincarnative ideas in a way that

18:42

spiritualism proper always skewed

18:45

a little too Christian to commit

18:47

to. Many branches of a spiritismo

18:50

uses Cardek's work heavily influenced

18:53

by spiritualism as sort

18:55

of the foundation. In general,

18:57

a spiritismo requires belief in

19:00

an omnipotent God and belief

19:02

in the spirit realm. Like American spiritualism's

19:05

sexy signature blend of a

19:07

non wrathful but still basically Christian

19:10

God without all of the heaven, hell

19:12

and brimstone. A spiritismo

19:14

believes that spirits inhabiting

19:16

our bodies can evolve over time

19:19

in their morality, and that communication

19:22

with a spiritistas or mediums

19:25

basically will help facilitate this

19:27

process of growth. Other shared

19:29

practices include trans mediumship,

19:32

or a medium's ability to become

19:34

possessed by a spirit and completely

19:37

change their voice and mannerisms in

19:39

the process. You might remember this

19:41

phenomena when I shared a clip

19:43

of Reverend Dr Louis Keith channeling

19:47

Lucerne. You pick your time

19:49

of us down to the very

19:52

second of your all time. You pick your time

19:55

when you enter this aspect and

19:57

you pick your birthdage months

20:00

day. You pick your

20:02

name long before you get here, whether you like

20:04

it or not. Another blend

20:06

of indigenous traditions combining

20:09

with spiritualist ideas was

20:11

the a spiritus most spin on the seance,

20:14

the mesa or mass that required

20:17

practitioners gather around a mesa

20:20

or table, often with additional

20:22

rituals or embellished altars

20:24

that could include goblets of water

20:27

flowers, small statues and figurines,

20:30

tobacco and candles. Music

20:32

can be integral to the experience. In

20:35

her paper Spiritist mediumship

20:37

as historical mediation African

20:39

American pasts, Black ancestral presence,

20:42

and Afro Cuban religions. Researcher

20:44

Elizabeth Perez described lyrics

20:47

that maybe understood as products

20:49

of the Cuban and Puerto Rican histories from which

20:51

they emerged, rich in the experiences of women,

20:53

persons of African descent, and those from

20:56

the lower classes, excluded from the official

20:58

histories, yet still resonant to day. Unlike

21:01

spiritualists in Cassadega, those

21:03

practicing a spiritismo tend towards

21:06

group sciences, not the one

21:08

on one sessions that are commonly practiced

21:10

in Lily Dale, Cassadega, and other camps.

21:13

So Alan Cardix book. The Spirits

21:15

Book became very popular in several

21:18

countries that were in a state of physically

21:20

and intellectually violent colonial

21:23

flux throughout the nineteenth century,

21:25

and the branches that develop tend to be

21:28

very specific to the culture, history,

21:30

and moment of the area they existed

21:33

in. I wanted to give examples of a few

21:35

different branches here, including

21:38

Puerto rican A Spiritismo, a

21:40

Spiritismo de cardon A, Spiritismo

21:43

Cruisal, and Santa Rismo,

21:46

each having very unique traditions.

22:00

Let's start in Puerto Rico. Puerto

22:02

Rico had been colonized by Spain

22:04

back in the fifteen hundreds. Spain

22:07

brought disease and religion and

22:09

kidnapped enslaved people, and

22:12

like most imperialists and express

22:14

desire to quash the indigenous cultures

22:17

and practices that predated their invasion.

22:20

Many African enslaved people, forcibly

22:22

brought to the region were from the Yoruba

22:25

land region of Africa that includes

22:27

what is now Nigeria, the Binian

22:29

Republic, and Toba. Their

22:32

beliefs included spirit communication

22:34

and many different gods and goddesses,

22:37

just as different indigenous American groups

22:40

slowly pooled their ideas with other groups,

22:42

tribes, and often escaped slaves

22:45

taking refuge in Spanish Florida,

22:47

a new system of beliefs began to

22:50

emerge, what is now known as Puerto

22:52

Rican espiritismo. This combination

22:55

of Yoruba practices and that of

22:57

indigenous Puerto Rican people known

23:00

as Tanos, also brought in the concept

23:02

of metaphysical healing and the use of

23:04

some physical mediumship meaning

23:07

tobacco spells, etcetera, and

23:09

even some Spanish folk medicine found

23:11

its way into the evolving spiritual culture.

23:14

The concept of healing was a significant

23:17

part of a spiritismo, to the point where

23:19

an entire branch, a Spiritismo

23:22

di Cordon, was built around

23:24

the concept. These sounds like

23:26

rituals would generally consist of a

23:28

circle of people chanting, swinging

23:30

their arms and beating the floor until

23:33

a hypnotic trance state was achieved.

23:36

It's said to be a very intense

23:38

ritual mentally, physically, emotionally,

23:41

with no real leadership system except

23:44

for a head medium who would purify

23:46

the room to protect others from bad spirits

23:49

before a ritual began. What

23:51

I also think is really interesting is that these

23:53

ceremonies tend to have a very open

23:56

door policy. This particular

23:58

branch blended elements of Catholicism,

24:01

Kardecian Spiritism which does sound

24:03

like star Trek, and Tana religious

24:05

rituals, implementing dances called

24:08

aratos. Alan Cardick's

24:10

work became popular among different

24:12

classes in different ways. Different

24:16

classes tended to practice with different

24:18

ceremonies, and the upper class

24:20

remained most engaged in espiritismo

24:24

during wartime. A good example

24:26

of this is the Ten Years War, a

24:28

conflict that began in eighteen sixty eight

24:31

in which Cuba fought Spain for their

24:33

independence and were supported by

24:35

Puerto Rican, Mexican, and Dominican

24:37

volunteer troops who shared their struggle.

24:40

This was the most engaged the middle

24:42

class had ever been with the movement,

24:45

as they began to lose soldiers who

24:47

they knew. This is very similar

24:49

to what was happening in the Continental

24:51

US with the Civil War around the

24:53

same time. Because of the variety

24:56

of blended cultures and political tensions,

24:59

even war branches of a spiritismo

25:01

developed in Puerto Rico. One

25:04

leaned further into cardex work and

25:06

was called White Table a Spiritismo

25:09

for the seance table, while others

25:11

used American spiritualisms increasing

25:13

popularity as a means to practice

25:16

their indigenous religion that had been

25:18

deemed uncivilized by the imperialists,

25:21

such as the Congo religion. Over

25:24

in Cuba, losses from the Ten Years

25:26

War increased a spiritis most

25:29

popularity and spiritual beliefs

25:31

brought by an increasing number of enslaved

25:34

African people helped shape

25:36

the ideas further. For the record,

25:38

slavery was not abolished in this area

25:41

until eighteen eighty six. This

25:43

particular offshoot was called a

25:46

spiritismo cruise Ou, which

25:48

pulled from some Catholicism and

25:50

another African diasporic religion called

25:53

Palo that developed among enslaved

25:56

people in Cuba. They would use Palo

25:58

cauldrons and others significant

26:00

objects while still observing Catholic

26:02

saints. Because this branch was innovated

26:05

and frequently observed by enslaved

26:07

people, spirits channeled would often

26:10

be deceased enslaved people who

26:12

spoke Bosol Spanish, which

26:14

was a dialect that was developed out of necessity

26:17

that combined the colonizing enslaver's

26:19

language with ki Congo, a

26:21

Bantu language spoken by enslaved

26:23

people who were originally from the

26:26

Congo. This branch of the spiritismo

26:28

is alter heavy. I think photos

26:31

of the dead candles to summon

26:33

their specific spirit. And finally,

26:36

there was Santa Rismo, a

26:38

blend of you guest it Spiritismo

26:41

and Santoria, which was one of the most

26:43

popular religions innovated in the

26:45

nineteenth century in Cuba. Santoria

26:48

is an African diasporic religion

26:51

that combines elements of the Yoruba

26:53

religion from West Africa, Roman

26:55

Catholicism, and spiritism.

26:57

As written by Kardak in their prod

27:00

Do, says mediums can communicate with spirits

27:02

while themselves possessed by the dead.

27:05

Leaders include the Godfather

27:07

and Godmother Awesome aka

27:10

the Padrino and Madrina, who

27:12

conduct mediumship sessions around

27:14

a table and play or sing

27:16

Afro Cuban chants and prayers to

27:18

attract good spirits. Rituals

27:21

would sometimes end with a ceremony called

27:23

sahumerio, a purification

27:25

ritual that uses charcoal, garlic,

27:27

and herbs to extract evil spirits

27:30

and wash them away with blessed water.

27:33

A Spiritismo at large became extremely

27:36

popular and outlived the American

27:38

spiritualism craze in the continental

27:40

US, which had pretty thoroughly

27:42

wound down by the nineteen twenties.

27:45

Even though a Spiritismo was banned

27:48

during the Cuban Revolution in the nineteen fifties,

27:50

the movement didn't die out. It was just

27:52

forced underground, and there are plenty

27:55

still practicing in Cuba, Puerto

27:57

Rico, and Brazil now, with Brazil

28:00

aiming nearly four million practicing

28:02

members as of two thousand ten. Spiritismo

28:06

and if many forms tells the story

28:08

of forced enslavement, of imperialism,

28:12

of an underclass combining multiple systems

28:14

of belief for their circumstances. Should

28:17

any of it had to have happened, No,

28:20

these circumstances were born of oppression,

28:22

which makes it particularly relevant

28:24

that a spiritismo and spiritualism

28:27

are enmeshed in this optimism,

28:29

the idea that what is coming next

28:32

will be better than what you're experiencing

28:34

now. So I decided to ask

28:37

an expert. Dr Carlos

28:39

Camacho is a sociologist whose

28:41

dissertation is called Navigating

28:43

Ocha LGBT Practitioners,

28:46

Participation and Navigation of Lukumi.

28:48

There's a section of this paper that focuses

28:51

on spirit communication and a spiritismo

28:54

entirely. He's also an alumnus

28:56

of the Bechtel cast. But we're not here to

28:58

talk teenage mutant ninja to today. We're

29:01

here to talk religion. Here's

29:03

a bit of our conversation. So Alan

29:05

Cardick heard about and started

29:08

saw this wave of spiritualism

29:10

that was spreading in the Americas and in Europe,

29:13

and wanted to create his own more quote

29:16

unquote scientific approach

29:18

to this um and so that version

29:20

got really popular in Puerto Rico

29:23

and in Cuba where UM. The

29:25

reason it's relevant to my research

29:28

interests is that when the

29:30

enslaved peoples from West Africa

29:32

were brought to the Caribbean, the Yoruba

29:35

people specifically, there were lots of

29:37

parts of their religion that were left behind, and

29:39

so one of the things that they had in

29:42

Nigeria, um what is today

29:44

known as Nigeria, was the Agun

29:46

society, which was their way of connecting with ancestral

29:49

spirits and the dead, and that

29:51

didn't come over in mass in the same

29:53

way. And so as part of the process

29:56

of recotification of the religion in

29:58

Cuba, there was a

30:00

bringing in of certain parts

30:02

of other traditions, including the particular

30:04

brand of diesel or spiritism

30:07

that became really popular in

30:10

the Caribbean, especially in the Spanish speaking

30:12

Caribbean. That then when Locumi

30:14

sent thatia came to the United States, it

30:17

came um here with the waves

30:19

of Cuban, Puerto Rican and other migrants

30:23

bringing the traditions. In the studies, a

30:25

lot of Camacho's research traced

30:27

how and why Cardix ideas

30:30

were implemented into the existing

30:32

spiritual practices of displaced

30:34

African people and groups indigenous

30:37

to Puerto Rico and Cuba. He

30:39

unpacks that process and the controversy

30:42

that surrounds it in academia here.

30:44

So, when the peoples

30:47

were brought over Um to

30:50

be enslaved in the America's, one

30:52

of the groups that came first

30:55

arguably in popularity in Cuba

30:58

was the Eco and Go or Congo people

31:01

um and so they brought their traditions

31:04

that today we would call Balo

31:06

boombe Um balomonte

31:09

Um, which is a Gongo

31:12

religion that was similar to Lucumi

31:14

and Santia recodified in the

31:18

in Cuba and then spread to the Americas.

31:21

When the Oruba people came over the

31:24

way, they engaged with religion

31:27

was that they were willing to bring in

31:29

other factors, and so they were

31:32

able to bring people in, which

31:34

from a certain perspective makes sense. You have

31:37

something that works, we're going to bring

31:39

you in and we're going to use it. And so one

31:42

of the things that is at

31:44

times theoretically fraught.

31:47

Various academics have different perspectives on what

31:50

the process was, but

31:52

the gist of it is that when the europa people

31:55

came, you could not practice the

31:57

religion in the same ways

31:59

in the Americas the way it was

32:01

practiced in Africa and Nigeria.

32:04

In Uruba land, you

32:06

had the Ocean people living in

32:09

the Ocean Village, and so all

32:11

the priests lived there. If you needed to do something

32:14

with Oshan, you would go to the Ocean

32:16

village. If you were a Shango

32:19

priest, you lived with the Shango people, and

32:21

so these things were very separate

32:24

and distinct. Priests were initiated

32:27

into one priest that

32:29

was not tenable for the enslaved

32:31

peoples in Cuba, and so part

32:34

of that recodification was initiating

32:37

each other into the mysteries of various

32:39

arisia too maintain

32:43

the religion, to keep the spirits alive

32:46

in the Americans because you couldn't

32:48

do it the old way, so you had to create

32:50

a new way. Part of that the

32:53

Egogun society did not make it

32:55

to um the America's

32:57

in the same way at the time, and

33:00

so it spitted these more as it got popular with

33:02

the whites in Cuba and Puerto

33:04

Rico. It worked,

33:07

and so they were able to then use it and

33:09

bring it into their practice with their own flavor

33:11

to then communicate with their ancestors.

33:14

And so one of the things that was interesting

33:17

is that and this is this

33:19

part is very um between

33:21

believers and academics and scholar practitioners.

33:24

There's a lot of um in fighting about

33:26

some of the specifics of this UM,

33:29

but that in your Ruba land, you

33:31

had your ancestors. It was one collective

33:34

group of people. It was just your people. Once

33:37

you bring the Americans into play, you

33:39

have the native peoples that are

33:41

on the islands who are in

33:44

various stages of a genocide

33:47

per the European expansionist

33:49

imperialists UM forces

33:53

UM and so there's different types

33:55

of dead spirits walking around

33:57

that has to be engaged with because now you're

34:00

on someone else's sacred

34:02

land. And so there was an incorporation

34:05

of certain classes of spirits that

34:07

then began to be part

34:09

of this reformulation. And so there were

34:11

certain things that became more popular

34:14

in Cuba that now are sort of standard,

34:16

like use of tobacco to engage with

34:18

spirits that wasn't necessarily something

34:21

that would have been done by the people

34:23

in Yurubu land before enslavement.

34:26

And so there was a lot of these shifting

34:29

um and changing forces, and so it's spited

34:31

these minds of practice. While not indigenous

34:34

to the Ruba people, the Gmo people,

34:37

or the native people's

34:40

of the islands, it served a function

34:42

to fill the gap that um

34:45

was stolen the enslavement, that

34:47

they weren't able to continue to practice. And

34:49

so one of the things that my

34:51

godfather often talks about is that it has

34:53

to make sense, and for them, it made sense

34:56

to have this new practice that might

34:58

have some Christian um overlays,

35:01

like you start um spiritual nsis

35:04

with the our Father, but once you get

35:06

the spirits in the room, it's a very non

35:08

Christian conversation and there's

35:10

a lot of non Christian things happening.

35:14

And because he's been listening to the show

35:17

Brag Carlos brought

35:19

up an important distinction between spiritualism

35:21

at present and a spiritismo

35:24

then and now, the tendency spiritualists

35:27

have to channel the odd dead

35:29

famous person, whether it be Benjamin

35:32

Franklin or JP Morgan just

35:34

spitball in here. Camacho makes

35:36

the following distinction and spoke on the

35:38

changes he's noticed following the history

35:41

of a spiritismo. There are really

35:43

famous spirits that, as far as

35:45

I'm aware, are commonplace

35:47

in a spiritismo. Um. What you do

35:50

see is you'll find um

35:53

native spirits and enslaved

35:55

spirits that are around

35:58

trying to help their descendants to

36:00

improve given their experiences,

36:03

to not have that be replicated in the current

36:05

generation. Uh, which

36:08

is an interesting phenomenon

36:10

in a variety of different levels. But

36:13

you also see a very clear given

36:16

the politics of certain parts of

36:18

the Lukami community being very sort of

36:20

pro black, very sort of

36:23

um pro people

36:25

of color, um anti imperial,

36:29

given that there are some of those political dynamics,

36:31

the way spirits communicate and are translated

36:35

is a little different. So in

36:38

Alan Cardis spiritualism,

36:40

the way it's sort of the classes of spirits

36:42

are understood, like you do have the Native,

36:44

you have the African you have these

36:47

very rigid stereotypical

36:49

caricatures, but in practice,

36:53

given how some spirits do not identify

36:55

themselves in that way, there has been

36:57

a movement away from that in that

37:00

at least the last thirty forty

37:03

years. And I think that's also

37:05

shifting socio political dynamics.

37:07

In the United States. The religion Lukumi

37:10

came to the US in the sixties, and so you had

37:13

Black nationalists, you have the Young Lords,

37:15

you have all of these distinct socio

37:17

political movements, and then you have this religion

37:19

that was kept alive by enslaved people's

37:22

So there's a particular politic

37:24

that some in the religion today

37:27

sort of maintained to shift some of those dynamics

37:29

and relationships with spirit. Thank

37:32

you again to the wonderful Dr.

37:34

Carlos Camancho. You can find out

37:36

more about him and his work at the links

37:38

in the description of this episode. The

37:54

final area of spiritualism that it's

37:56

difficult to find acknowledgment of in Cassadega

37:59

are volumes on black spiritualism

38:02

in America. Now, that is not to

38:04

say that there are no black spiritualists,

38:07

but for a religion that was founded on

38:09

the ideas of abolition and

38:11

found an early supporter and none other than Frederick

38:14

Douglas. Some may find the persistent

38:16

whiteness of spiritualism confusing.

38:20

In fact, my opinion is that the

38:22

Cassadega Spiritualist camp right now

38:25

excuse less progressive than when

38:27

it was founded. Many of the spiritualists

38:30

I talked to in Florida are center left

38:32

politically or libertarian

38:34

and straight up Republican in more cases

38:36

than one, pretty far from

38:38

their somewhat radical origins.

38:41

It didn't feel awesome, and it made me question

38:43

how early spiritualists had characterized

38:46

themselves. And upon further investigation,

38:49

reports that early Spiritualists in Cassadega

38:52

had been extremely welcoming of

38:54

the black community, many of whom

38:57

were freed slaves, may have been

38:59

exagg rated at the time. It's

39:01

an exaggeration that follows Cassadega

39:04

to this day, as suggested by a

39:06

trip Advisor review I found from a

39:08

black couple in that

39:10

declared the camp quote the most

39:13

racist place in Florida,

39:15

and that's got to be a real contest. Here's

39:18

how the spiritualists put it. I'm taking

39:20

this from the current definitive

39:22

Cassadega history book, or the one

39:24

that's still in print, called Cassadega

39:27

the sounds oldest Spiritualist community.

39:30

This is a section on the Camp's earliest

39:32

relations with the black community. In

39:34

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,

39:38

they Camp made an effort to reach out and touch

39:40

the African American community in the vicinity.

39:43

Even so, most blacks initially shied

39:45

away from Cassadega. They disappeared

39:47

from the streets after sunset, mused to one observer,

39:50

and watched the spiritualists attending the meetings

39:52

with much reticence. According to

39:54

a local white spiced account, African Americans

39:57

evidently feared Northern spiritualists

39:59

as ghosts or goblins. In

40:02

however, Professor William F. Peck addressed

40:04

a large delegation of blacks and told them

40:06

that the spirit world had been chiefly instrumental

40:09

in bringing slavery to an end. So

40:11

this account is loaded and extremely

40:14

biased, almost completely ignoring the

40:16

general politics of the American South

40:18

in the late nineteenth century. Because

40:20

regardless of what they considered to be

40:22

a progressive community, it's

40:25

understandable that local black residents

40:27

would not have been interested in fraternizing

40:29

with a mostly white Northern frene religious

40:32

group that was already attracting a lot

40:34

of controversy and speculation because

40:36

this was an area that, at different points in history

40:39

was literally run by the KKK.

40:42

And while Professor Peck's actions flew in the face

40:45

of racial taboos of the time by lecturing

40:47

to a black audience at all, it's

40:49

safe to say that the most potent years of

40:52

diversity and cooperation within Spiritualism

40:55

had already passed by the time Cassadega

40:57

opened in the eighteen nineties. Spiritualism

41:01

was always a woman dominated movement,

41:03

even when male mediums began to crop

41:06

up with some success, and several

41:08

black women were involved in its formative

41:10

years. One of the reasons this is

41:13

is because close allies of the Fox Sisters,

41:15

a white couple named Amy and Isaac Post,

41:18

Isaac Post going on to become a medium

41:20

and write some early Spiritualist texts,

41:23

where radical Quaker abolitionists

41:25

who were known for their left wing politics

41:27

in upstate New York and would harbor

41:30

fugitive enslaved people in their home

41:32

as they were getting into spiritualism.

41:35

It was this group of Quakers that first

41:38

brought abolitionist, suffragist

41:40

and all around legend Sojourner

41:42

Truth into the spiritualist fold

41:45

beginning in the mid eighteen fifties, after

41:48

Truth gave a speech on abolition in the area.

41:50

She bought a home in Harmonia, Michigan, and

41:53

became associated with the Battle

41:55

Creek Spiritualist community. This

41:58

was considered to be one of the early spiritualist

42:01

utopias that eventually fell

42:03

to make way for wait for

42:05

it, a training center for the

42:07

U. S. Army during World War One. However,

42:11

it's not known whether Truth ever

42:13

formally joined the community, but

42:15

spiritualism has certainly laid its claim

42:18

that she did. Sojourner Truth was

42:20

unquestionably the most famous alleged

42:23

black spiritualist of her era, but

42:25

far from the only well known black woman

42:27

to early spiritualism. There was

42:29

also Harriet Jacobs, a formerly

42:32

enslaved woman who fled her abuser in

42:34

the early days of spiritualism and

42:36

met with none other than Amy

42:38

Post, who encouraged Jacobs

42:40

to write on her experience. Under

42:43

the pseudonym Linda Brent, Jacobs

42:45

wrote a seminal nineteenth century memoir

42:48

called Incidents in the Life of

42:50

a Slave Girl. As a writer

42:52

who had lived on both sides of slavery,

42:55

Jacobs leveraged her belief and abilities

42:57

to place emphasis on the pain and suffering

43:00

that black people had endured in America.

43:03

But, like Sojourner, truth spiritualists

43:06

lay claim to Jacob's unequivocally,

43:08

but scholars aren't convinced that she was

43:11

a converted believer. Aaron

43:13

Eve Forbes wrote in her paper do

43:16

Black Ghosts Matter? Harriet Jacob's

43:18

spiritualism? As she does with the

43:20

slave narratives and domestic fiction, Jacob's

43:23

quickly masters the discourse of spiritualism,

43:25

using it to gain for herself a voice in

43:28

the social debates of her day, while at the same

43:30

time subtly and carefully reworking

43:32

that discourse to suit her own ends. Writer

43:35

Harriet E. Wilson was a novelist and

43:37

a successful practicing trans medium

43:39

of her time. She debuted in Boston

43:42

in eighteen seventy six and became one

43:44

of the first black spiritualists to lecture

43:46

in what would normally be segregated

43:48

spaces in New England. She

43:51

channeled spirit as well as messages

43:54

on abolition and intersectional feminism.

43:57

There was also Rebecca Cox Jackson

43:59

born in sevent who

44:01

experienced the relatively common

44:04

spiritualist awakening visions

44:06

and interactions with Spirit as a child,

44:09

but being born a free black woman

44:11

in Pennsylvania, could only credit her

44:14

reading and writing skills to Spirit.

44:16

Being barred from a formal education herself,

44:19

Jackson would go on to establish a popular

44:22

science circle in her home, which

44:24

didn't only offer an opportunity to include

44:26

more Black Americans in the movement, but

44:29

centered them and gave an opportunity

44:31

to speak with their dead. Jackson

44:33

became a local legend in a culture

44:36

where Black Americans, specifically

44:38

black women, had perspectives that were

44:40

frequently disrespected or outright

44:43

ignored. Spiritualism and mediumship

44:45

was an opportunity to not just center

44:48

there often ignored experiences,

44:51

but explain them in their own words, with significance

44:53

and an emphasis that was nothing short

44:56

of religious. So what

44:58

happened? Why aren't there far more

45:00

black spiritualists living in and lecturing

45:03

at Cassadega with regularity? You

45:06

might be able to guess. While there had

45:08

been successful black mediums working in

45:10

the early years of the religion, white

45:12

spiritualists weren't always as committed

45:14

to equality as they may have sounded

45:17

on paper. A perfect example

45:19

of this came in eighteen ninety three, one

45:21

year pre Cassadega, when the National

45:24

Spiritualist Association of Churches,

45:26

originally called the National Spiritualist

45:28

Association literally the n

45:31

s a was founded. Now,

45:33

for the record, Cassadega was affiliated

45:35

with the n s a C for a long time,

45:37

but has since struck out as an individual

45:40

entity all its own. But this was not

45:42

the case in the late nineteenth century. In

45:44

the late nineteenth century, virtually all

45:46

of American society was still racially

45:48

segregated, and the n s a C was

45:51

no exception. While black people

45:53

were a part of the religion, black

45:55

members would be placed in quote

45:58

colored auxiliary society is unquote

46:01

within spiritualism. Unsurprisingly,

46:04

this insistence on segregation in

46:06

an allegedly progressive religion led

46:09

to increased tension, and many

46:11

black spiritualists saw a need to design

46:13

similar religious organizations in which

46:15

they could be leaders, not auxiliary

46:18

appendages. This came to blows

46:20

in a big way around World War One.

46:23

The n s a C decided that there was a need

46:25

for a completely separate, all

46:27

black Spiritualist organization and

46:30

installed Joseph P. Whitwell, a

46:32

white spiritualist leader, to lead

46:34

a meeting in Cleveland in April of This

46:38

resulted in a significant protest.

46:41

Six out of twenty delegates requested to

46:43

attend, Withdrew furious that

46:45

this historically equality touting

46:48

religion was still insisting

46:50

on segregation. It was popularized

46:52

by abolitionists. It's so bizarre.

46:56

The fourteen remaining delegates formed the National

46:58

Colored Spiritualist Association of Churches,

47:01

still appointing some white spiritualists

47:04

as their leaders. The organization

47:06

was not long for this world. The next

47:09

year, the n c s a C formally

47:11

adopted the same declaration of principles

47:14

you still here at the beginning of Cassadega

47:16

today, including we

47:19

believe that the highest morality is

47:21

contained in the Golden Rule. Whatsoever

47:24

he would that others should do onto

47:27

you, do you also onto

47:29

them the brainworms.

47:31

It requires for your segregated

47:33

group to claim the Golden Rule as a part of

47:35

your religion is just I

47:38

hate America. It's extremely

47:40

difficult to find records of the n s

47:43

a C, but it is said to have existed

47:45

until the nineteen seventies. It's

47:48

possible that after the Civil Rights movement

47:50

there was no more social precedent for

47:52

segregating spiritualism. But during

47:55

this stretch of a half century, there

47:57

became many other spiritual options

47:59

for Black Americans that didn't require

48:02

operating as an auxiliary for a white

48:04

religion, most popularly the

48:07

movement of independent Black

48:09

spiritual churches, many of which

48:11

still exist today. Dr Margharita

48:13

Simon Guillory wrote on the history

48:16

of black spiritualist churches in her wonderful

48:19

book Social and Spiritual Transformation

48:22

in African American Spiritual Churches,

48:25

in which she unpacks this crossover

48:28

between early black and white spiritualists

48:30

and examines the ways in which Black

48:32

spirituality is to this day

48:35

often overlooked in religious history.

48:38

Her primary research was done in New

48:40

Orleans, where she described the Black

48:42

spiritual culture in an interview

48:45

with the Religious Studies Project in Spiritual

48:49

Churches, the African American Spiritual

48:51

churches um that that I researched

48:53

are a blended religious

48:56

group, and I like that term blendedness

48:59

and what they've done. And they have

49:01

conjoined all of the various

49:04

elements from institutionalized religions,

49:06

and I'll talk about that in just the moment, and

49:08

they've created their own unique religion,

49:11

specifically the spiritual churches in New Orleans.

49:13

They've conjoined Protestant traditions

49:16

with the focus on Pentecostalism, they

49:18

pulled from their worship style. Catholicism

49:22

is a major bedrock in spiritual

49:24

churches in New Orleans just because Catholic

49:27

religion, Catholicism is the predominant

49:30

is still today the predominant religion. That's that's

49:33

practice in New Orleans and particular

49:35

in Louisiana in general. They

49:38

also incorporate American spiritualism,

49:41

the ability to communicate with the dead

49:43

that was birthed in Western New York in Highsville,

49:45

New York. They also sort of

49:47

conjoined and mix into their

49:50

faith who do and voodoo

49:52

and this this notion of voodoo is

49:54

derived directly from Haitian voodoom.

49:58

So and when you look at sort of their

50:00

belief system in their ritual practices,

50:03

you could see a little of all of these religions.

50:06

Guillory's research was primarily done

50:08

in pre Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans,

50:11

and I highly recommend her work. She

50:13

breaks down the religious intersections,

50:16

of which spiritualism is just one

50:18

that defined these religions that were dominated

50:21

by black women. She also

50:23

gets into how environmental racism

50:25

has destroyed or weakened the Black

50:28

spiritual church movement. Following

50:30

her Kane Katrina, a number of churches

50:32

were destroyed and then reclaimed

50:35

by the city as eminent domain, drastically

50:37

reducing the number of spiritual churches

50:40

in the area. The ways in which

50:43

the changing landscape around

50:45

spiritual churches we can

50:48

tell a lot. If you look at the change in landscape

50:50

of spiritual churches, it tells us

50:52

a lot about other landscapes

50:56

and shifting landscapes in New Orleans,

50:59

demographically escapes, social

51:01

landscapes, economic landscapes,

51:04

political landscapes. If you just focus

51:06

on the spiritual churches, we could see all

51:09

of these sort of dynamics that are going on post

51:11

Katrina. About seventeen

51:15

of the fifty plus churches that were in

51:17

New Orleans or operating in New Orleans pre

51:19

Katrina were located in the ninth

51:21

ward um, so they

51:25

were destroyed. And the

51:27

last chapter of my book sort of talks

51:29

about that the ways in which

51:32

not only did they not only

51:34

were some of them structurally destroyed, but

51:37

because of some very deliberate

51:40

economical and political and

51:42

structural changes that occurred in post

51:44

Katrina New Orleans, they were sort

51:46

of the lands in which these churches, even

51:49

if they were in a position where they could

51:51

have you restored the church they were taken

51:53

and they were converted to green spaces.

51:56

I'll be linking to more of Guileleris

51:58

work in the description of this

52:01

episode. But by the mid

52:03

twentieth century or so, the spiritualist

52:06

religion as it had been founded by the Fox

52:08

Sisters had lost many black

52:10

spiritualists to independent spiritual

52:13

churches and other movements. And

52:15

based on this history, it's no wonder

52:17

why and so what we see is

52:20

a religion that was popularized by

52:22

abolitionists that by the early twentieth

52:24

century was still proving

52:26

hostile to black spiritualists.

52:29

In the case of Cassadega, this issue appears

52:31

to be compounded by the even more intense

52:34

racial inequality in the American South

52:36

once that affected the Cassadega area

52:39

immeasurably in the early twentieth

52:41

century. By November, the

52:44

ku Klux Klan was holding open

52:46

parades in nearby Daytona, Florida,

52:48

in an attempt to intimidate local

52:51

black voters out of voting at

52:53

all. To stage essentially

52:55

a complete political coup of the

52:58

area. The KKK burned

53:00

to black theaters in Daytona as well

53:03

beat people and when completely unpunished

53:05

by law enforcement who were deeply invested

53:08

in looking the other way. Clan

53:10

candidates virtually swept judicial,

53:13

municipal and legislative office

53:15

primaries in something

53:18

called the Clan Vocation was

53:20

held in an event

53:22

that attempted to declare Florida as

53:24

a quote self governing realm

53:27

in the invisible Empire unquote.

53:29

This is just a hundred years ago, and

53:32

this deeply racist terrorism literally

53:35

surrounded the Cassadega community.

53:38

But the KKK never

53:40

came to Cassadega. Maybe a

53:42

relief for the camp, But the books

53:44

I consulted indicate no record

53:47

of the majority white religion being

53:49

public allies to Black Americans as

53:51

they had been in the early days

53:54

of the Spiritualist movement. One

53:56

would think if they had been, the

53:58

KKK may showed up. The

54:01

history book Cassadega, the sounds

54:03

oldest Spiritualist community treats

54:06

this as something of a mystery,

54:09

talking around the issue like this, Cassadega

54:12

escaped the clan's wrath during the nineteen

54:14

twenties. The terrorist group did not so

54:17

much as burn across in the Spiritualist community.

54:19

Defies explanation considering the crimes

54:22

committed by the clan and the victims who suffered

54:24

their drubbings. The revived KKK of the

54:26

twenties fantasized of a cultural

54:28

purity that is one Americanism.

54:31

One could speculate that because Cassadega

54:34

went dry before either state or national

54:36

prohibition became law, and since

54:38

the Spiritualist manifested a strong sense

54:40

of patriotism, the clan looked elsewhere

54:43

for more appealing targets to terrorize. Perhaps

54:46

the Spiritualists seemed too ordinary to

54:48

typically American to attempt the clan. If

54:51

the town's progressive ideas on race and gender

54:53

coupled with its unorthodox faith, bid

54:55

Cassadega sitting duck for the clan. What

54:58

saved the tiny community from the clan ends

55:00

abuse remains a mystery, even

55:02

if you're willing to put this writer's dog

55:04

whistle of too ordinary and

55:07

too typically American as a way

55:09

of describing middle class white

55:11

people. It is at least true that

55:13

Spiritualists in Cassadega proudly

55:16

displayed the American flag and historically

55:18

celebrated patriotic holidays with

55:20

regularity, And it may have

55:23

been this jingoistic tilt that

55:25

protected the majority white religion

55:28

and deterred Black and Indigenous

55:30

people from wanting any part of it. But

55:35

most of this information I have to find

55:38

on my own time. It's not available

55:40

on the camp's grounds. And I'm very grateful

55:42

that there are scholars who have dedicated

55:45

their careers to preserving the histories

55:47

of movements like a Spiritisma

55:50

and the Black Spiritualist Church, ones

55:52

that are so underdiscussed that I didn't

55:54

know they existed before working

55:56

on this show. And okay,

55:59

I sort of bear ate the lead earlier.

56:01

Things did get interesting after my night

56:04

at the library in Cassadega, So if

56:06

you will indulge me, let's go back

56:08

there for a second. My two hours were

56:10

almost up the night I was at the library, and I

56:12

hadn't been able to do much more than

56:15

frantically snap pictures of books

56:17

that don't exist anywhere else and

56:19

could easily be lost to history forever.

56:22

If a leak sprung in the ceiling, and

56:24

given how much maintenance a lot of buildings

56:27

in Cassadega need, it's not

56:29

out of the question. The married

56:31

volunteer librarians from Rhode Island

56:34

continued to talk to the main librarian,

56:36

Richard, in a thick accent that makes

56:38

me homesick whenever I hear it. It's

56:40

an accent that cannot be reproduced in movies.

56:42

Matt Damon forgot how to do it ten years ago,

56:45

and no one wants to talk about it. But

56:47

the librarian's voice is slow

56:49

and soothing. He advises

56:52

the woman from Rhode Island to calm her

56:54

temper in her dealings with spiritualists,

56:56

something her husband is eager to jump on,

56:59

he says, keep telling her to calm down.

57:01

You know you want to be a medium, and you can't be walking

57:04

around getting piste off all the time. I

57:06

want to ask them for more time here, because

57:09

sure, this place is kind of a mess. But between

57:12

random volumes on World War two and

57:14

sticky ancient doctor filled books,

57:17

there are documents and ideas

57:19

that might not exist anywhere else.

57:22

I'm flipping through something called a spiritualist

57:24

solo graph from that

57:27

reads as your galactic father

57:29

mother, I Liolia, seek

57:31

to warm you with my heart's love and try to

57:33

fill you with the wisdom and understanding

57:36

which will help you find the easy way and

57:38

the light burn for you are my own

57:40

dearly beloved children. On other

57:43

book reads, was Abraham Lincoln,

57:45

a spiritualist and the book

57:47

itself kind of feels around in the dark for about

57:49

eighty pages before admitting, no,

57:51

probably he wasn't. I pick up a

57:54

CD rom on the ground that says the

57:56

story of how the sun has influenced

57:59

cultures since this start of written words,

58:01

twenty seven minutes of the most important

58:03

history you will ever witness. There's

58:06

more solographs with illustrations of

58:09

the sun within the sun, a wheel within

58:11

a wheel, the beam within a beam, old

58:14

volumes of the Journal of the American

58:16

Society of Psychical Research from the

58:18

nine twenties and thirties. But I

58:20

already know there's no way that the library

58:22

is going to be open a second longer than

58:25

seven o'clock. I can hear the librarian

58:28

nearly counting down the minutes until he can

58:30

go home with his dog, and I know there's no

58:32

use in asking, so I take pictures

58:34

in the low overhead lighting until the

58:37

minute I can't anymore. My phone

58:39

gets all hot in my hands, like when you're trying to finish

58:41

an argument with your boyfriend before a plane

58:43

takes off. That's to me picking

58:46

a fight before getting on a Spirit

58:48

Airlines flight. Well, good

58:50

for you all, So my time at

58:53

the library is up, and the volunteers

58:55

from Rhode Island and the librarians start to pack

58:57

up, shut off the lights behind me. As I leave,

59:00

I get the feeling that a lot of what I managed

59:02

to capture from the library, however

59:04

frantically documented, won't

59:07

be much help to get to the bottom of the spiritualist

59:09

movement if there is one, and scrolling

59:12

through my phone at the Hotel Cassadega

59:14

later that night, I realized that I

59:17

was right. But something happens

59:19

as I'm leaving the library that night, and

59:22

I want to be careful to protect this person's identity.

59:24

But what I will say is that I am approached

59:27

by a medium at the camp who I've

59:29

met before. We have a good rapport,

59:32

and they asked me what I've been eating

59:34

on nights like this, nights like the

59:36

three before this one where the one restaurant

59:38

in town, Sanatra's Restaurante

59:41

isn't open. And I tell them

59:43

the truth. I have been

59:46

walking to the gas station a half hour away

59:48

and getting stockpiles of diet gatorade

59:51

and those little fried chicken bites that come

59:53

in paper cups under heat lamps. Pretty

59:56

good stuff. The medium laughs and

59:58

asks me if I'm here is but I

1:00:00

am serious. The reason I've been doing

1:00:03

this is because a different medium implied

1:00:05

to me the other day that it would be a bad

1:00:08

look for a visiting reporter who is still

1:00:10

seeking out the approval and cooperation

1:00:12

of the spiritualists to be ordering

1:00:15

delivery for dinner, and

1:00:17

I took it to heart. So the medium I'm

1:00:19

talking to laughs and asks me to go

1:00:22

to dinner with them, and I say

1:00:24

yes and go to their car. Now

1:00:26

does that sound dangerous? Sure it does, But

1:00:28

I have a policy in these kinds of situations

1:00:31

where every single instinct is to say

1:00:33

no, and uh to say yes

1:00:35

and see if I die or not. So we're on our

1:00:37

way to Perkins Restaurant, the Dennis

1:00:40

of Florida for a four course meal

1:00:42

of salad, half sandwich, a

1:00:44

slice of pie, and better information

1:00:47

on spiritualism in its current era

1:00:49

than any disheveled library could

1:00:51

have provided. So what I learned

1:00:53

at dinner is for another time for

1:00:55

today. Spiritualism's history

1:00:58

is full of these kinds of characters. Believers

1:01:00

and deniers alike have intense opinions

1:01:03

and systems of belief, and the influence

1:01:05

of the religion extends far in spite

1:01:08

of their somewhat diminished power today.

1:01:11

And yes, this extends to its influence

1:01:13

on the evolution of the Black Spiritualist

1:01:16

Church and a Spiritismo. And

1:01:18

for my money, one of the major failures

1:01:20

of Spiritualism to this day is to acknowledge

1:01:23

issues and their own history that

1:01:25

i'd wagers still presents a major barrier

1:01:27

to entry to the religion to this day.

1:01:30

And then there are conflicts within

1:01:32

the religion that are just weird.

1:01:37

And next week we're gonna look at one

1:01:39

of my favorite kinds of historical

1:01:41

stories, a weird and petty

1:01:43

conflict between two famous people who

1:01:46

you think would have something better to do, but they

1:01:48

don't. In our penultimate episode

1:01:51

of Ghost Church, I'll be taking

1:01:53

a look at the decades long battle

1:01:56

between Harry Whodini and Sir

1:01:58

Arthur Conan Doyle for real.

1:02:01

And yes, I think we actually are going to get to

1:02:03

ectoglossoms, So look forward to that. That's

1:02:06

next week on Ghost Church.

1:02:09

Wow. Ghost

1:02:12

Church is a Cool Zone Media production created,

1:02:15

written, and hosted by me Jamie

1:02:17

Loftus. The show is produced by Sophie

1:02:19

Lichterman, edited by Ian Johnson.

1:02:22

Our theme song is by Speedy Ortiz

1:02:24

that's Sadie Dupley, Andy Moholt,

1:02:27

Audrey, Zy Whiteside and Joey Dubeck.

1:02:29

Music is by Zoe Brad