(Incidentally, I was interested to learn that the Florida “Cassadaga” takes its name from a lake in Lily Dale. There was a community near the town where I went to college in Florida called Cassadaga which was known for psychics, and I was never curious enough about it to visit, but now that I’m older (much older) I’ve developed more of an interest in the variety of things people believe and why they believe them. different! Also, I have books on the supernatural-related investigations of William James and the Spiritualist beliefs of Arthur Conan Doyle in my TBR stacks, and Lily Dale, founded during the same period in which these men were actively working in the Spiritualist movement, seemed like it might offer another angle into the subject. I actually heard of Lily Dale through an old episode of the television show “Supernatural.” A psychics and mediums-themed town sounded quirky and interesting – sort of like Colonial Williamsburg or Gatlinburg, but …. For me the enjoyment was in reading about another eccentric piece of the puzzle that is this world. Believers will like the book for obvious reasons. She's not condescending to the residents, the visitors or the reader. Wicker doesn't buy into what happens there nor does she dismiss it. She describes the people and places vividly. Regulars visit residents upon whom they rely. Newcomers stroll the lanes reading signs outside the quaint homes, deciding which to enter. People come from all over the world, especially in summer, for one-on-one psychic and tarot readings to make contact with the dead attend group sessions hear lectures by residents and talks by prominent believers like John Edwards. Today Lily Dale is entirely populated by professed mediums, psychics, tarot readers and the like.

But what they had set in motion took on an afterlife of its own. Late in life one of the sisters confessed that it was all a hoax gone viral. They are commemorated in the museum there. Eventually the Fox family home was moved to Lily Dale. Along the way they attracted a lot of followers, including some renowned intellectuals (and Conan Doyle believed in fairies). Their contrived table rapping, cheesecloth ectoplasm, fake spirit voices and other tricks played a big role in spreading the movement and they made a long career of it. Lily Dale is a lovely small town in upstate New York that arose from the spiritualist movement popularized by the Fox sisters in the mid 1800s. I got the book because I read an article on Lily Dale that piqued my interest, and I'm glad I did. A disclaimer and some background: I don't believe in ghosts, ESP, tarot or anything like that but neither will I mock them (in this review).

Lily Dale by Christine Wicker