I Wish I Could Escape to Lily Dale for a Psychic Fix

This is the Snarky Sunday edition of Snarky Senior — the newsletter from Erica Manfred, which you can read about here. If you like it and don’t want to miss an issue, you can get it in your inbox by subscribing.

            I’ve always been a sucker for psychics.   I’d been depending on YouTube psychics to call this election but they didn’t get the cliffhanger we just went through any more accurately than the pollsters.   Probably because even psychics are swayed by confirmation bias—they have too much invested in the result.

  Despite a lifelong skepticism about anything that even hints of hype or charlatanism, I long ago became hooked on psychic readings.   It is a guilty pleasure that I am loath to admit to my more skeptical friends.   When I’m under stress and no one is watching, I skulk into storefronts with crystal balls in the window, seeking a psychic fix. 

As a psychic groupie, always ready to try the latest Svengali in town, my unscientific survey has found psychics are right about 50% of the time. It’s just impossible to predict which 50%.

 But I keep getting readings. Uncertainty makes me long to know the future.

  I’m cheering Biden’s win, but I also want to know when there will there be a vaccine for Covid-19, and when I’ll be able to go back to my former mask-free life of Meetups and happy hours with friends.  I can’t breathe in a mask and I’m so deaf I can’t hear for shit when other people have a mask on. This makes socializing a burden instead of a pleasure. 

I wish I could head off to Lily Dale for a vacation from uncertainty—and from my life. It’s my personal Shangri La.

Here’s the account of a visit I made to Lily Dale a while back.

Lily Dale and Spiritualism—the Un-Religion

  Lily Dale, near Buffalo, is known as the “town that talks to the dead,” according to an HBO documentary.    It’s the home of the Spiritualist Church, a rather wacky religion that started in 1855 near Buffalo.   The core belief of Spiritualism is that the dead are among us and we can talk to them.  Lily Dale’s homes are all owned by Spiritualists, most of whom are mediums. 

Spiritualism became a fad in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when America fell in love with séances, ectoplasm, spirit paintings and other ghostly phenomena.   

It was eventually discredited because of phony mediums who bilked their customers.  But it was never disbanded despite the efforts of professional magicians like the Amazing Randi and Houdini.  The Amazing Randi recently died still in possession of a million dollar prize he’d offered to anyone who could prove that paranormal phenomena actually existed.  Harry Houdini spent years debunking psychics, only to have his wife try to contact him after death and claim he actually showed up.    

Why was I, a Jew brought up by athiests, who rediscovered her own religion not long ago, so attracted to goyishe Spiritualism?   Jews are much more likely to be found in a Zen monastery than at Lily Dale.   

Reverend Erickson is the reason.  In the 1970s my friend Loni and I would go on Sundays to a Spiritualist Church message services run by Reverend Ericson at the Ansonia Hotel on 72nd St. and Broadway.   For a small contribution, you’d put a question in a box and Reverend Erickson would look at each question and answer it, not knowing who asked it.  Her accuracy level was uncanny. 

I visited the Hotel about ten years ago and looked for her.  She was very old and frail, her back bent, walking with a cane.   She greeted me cheerfully, apologized that she was no longer doing readings and explained her infirmity. 

“When we get old instead of growing up towards the sky, we grow back towards the earth.”   She made a sweeping gesture towards the ground and gave me a wonderfully serene, sweet smile.   She’d always been a kind, lovely lady and still was, despite her infirmity.

I never forgot that visit, and her philosophical acceptance of aging and death.    I was getting old myself and I thought it was possible that Lily Dale would offer me the same acceptance of my own mortality.  Maybe I could even say hello to my deceased mother, who I still miss.

So I made a reservation at the Maplewood, the main Lily Dale hotel and drove the 400 miles from Woodstock, New York with my Chihuahua, Shadow. 

 The Maplewood looks like a hotel out of a Stephen King novel.  Old and rickety and supposedly haunted, it was built in the 1880s and hasn’t changed since.  

The word that best describes Lily Dale itself is adorable.  Lily Dale is set on the original one hundred acres bought by the Spiritualist Assembly back in the 1800s, so you can walk up and down all the streets in about an hour.

 It’s a tiny little town, with small gingerbread Victorian and clapboard cottages all crowded together, most with luxuriant gardens.  It seems miniaturized, as though it’s inhabited by little people, though actually most of the residents are on the heavy side.   Mediums like to eat.   Vegetarianism hasn’t arrived at Lily Dale yet and neither has Pilates. 

Mediums Versus Psychics

  Most houses have signs advertising readings and there are twice daily “message services” at the “Inspiration stump” in Leolyn Woods, an old growth forest with a pet cemetery and fairy houses built by children.  At the services mediums pick out people in the audience and give them messages from their deceased relatives.  You probably know the drill if you’ve watched John Edwards on TV. 

 I went to a couple of message services at Inspiration Stump where mediums asked people questions like “I’m hearing from a Judy.  Do you know a Judy?”

 If the person said “no” they’d continue picking names, eventually finding a name that the person recognized.  I silently scoffed.  Doesn’t everyone know a Frank or a Jennifer?   Then the medium would deliver a message, mostly of the “Frank says you’re doing great, keep following the life path you’ve chosen,” variety, or “Jennifer says she’s OK now, she’s not in pain anymore, don’t worry about her.”   Never anything juicy like:  “Your husband is having an affair with his secretary.”

 None of the mediums ever called on me to give me a message, probably because they didn’t want to be annoyed by my mother who would undoubtedly have said something like, “You can’t possibly believe in this stuff.”

I’m still not sure I know the difference between mediums and psychics.

 What I do know is that I’d rather get my psychic information from this side, and leave the other one to the ghosts.   After all, they’ve done their time on the earthly plane, they should be playing harps and having a good time cavorting in heaven, not hanging around in upstate New York giving cookie cutter messages to people desperate for reassurance from beyond the grave. 

The Healing Temple

Despite my skepticism, Lily Dale cast a spell on me immediately, especially at the Healing Temple where I felt the most profound sense of peace I’d ever experienced.  Usually fidgety and impatient to get it over with whenever I’d tried meditating, even in spiritual retreats with meditation halls, this was something entirely different.  

The plain wooden building has rows of pew-like benches, and an area in the front where a number of “healers” do their work on whoever comes up to be healed.    They may touch you lightly or wave their hands around your body from a distance of a few inches.  Some seemed better than others, leaving me at least calmer, if not healed.  

 During one healing I started thinking about my mother.   Her presence was so palpable I actually cried.    After my healing I sat for the rest of the hour and half with closed eyes, listening to the soft music and letting my mind wander.   I was able to be totally still, a unique experience for me.  There were two services a day and I went to both every day I was there.

The power of the place surprised the non believer in me.   I felt I was actually being healed.

After one of the services, a healer—an attractive, gray haired older man—came over to me to chat and pet Shadow.   A dog lover, he invited us to his house for tea and dog biscuits.  I asked him how he’d wound up at Lily Dale.

“After my second divorce I was an emotional wreck,” he told me.  “I’d realized I was gay.   I was stuck living and teaching in the Midwest and wanted to escape from my ex-wife and my past.   I’d been involved with Spiritualism for a while and thought I’d visit Lily Dale and look for a place.  I found this house, which is historic by the way.  This town healed me.  A lot of folks who come to Lily Dale are wounded people who come here looking to heal from trauma of one kind or another.”

I knew there was a reason I felt so comfortable at Lily Dale.  It’s a mecca for misfits.  There’s none of the pretentious, more spiritual-than- thou stuff you find at other new agey retreats.

An Amazing Psychic Reading.

One of my goals was to get a psychic reading from a Lily Dale medium.

I asked around about who was the best psychic at Lily Dale.  Everyone talked about Gregory Kehn in hushed tones, followed by “you’ll never get an appointment.  He’s booked for months in advance.”   I called anyway, and got an appointment the next day.   It was “meant to be” according to everyone I told.   

Greg Kehn is a nondescript,  middle aged, rather portly man, dressed very conservatively, who saw me in a room in his house designated for readings, which was also very nondescript with only two chairs facing each other, a table for an old fashioned tape recorder and a couple of cabinets.   I might have been in a psychotherapist’s office, except there wasn’t a couch.  Unlike most of the female mediums at Lily Dale who dress the part, Kehn wasn’t the least bit flamboyant or colorful.   He could have passed for a banker or accountant and spoke so quickly in such a soft monotone that sometimes it was difficult to decipher what he said.

Getting right to the point he said, “A gentleman walked in with you.  I feel the energy from him goes back to your childhood.    He might be your uncle or grandfather.”

“It might be my grandfather,” I said. The only uncle I knew was my mother’s brother who ignored me.  “But I didn’t know him.  He died when I was three.  My mom told me he adored me and when he died his biggest regret was he wouldn’t live to see me grow up.”

“I feel the presence there, the warmth.  I feel he’s with you; he’s your protection and guidance.  How old was your mom when she died?”

“Eighty-seven.”

 “She made up her mind to leave.  Is that right?”  

“Yes,” I said, “she sure did.”  I knew my mom had decided to die when her Alzheimer’s got so bad she stopped being able to enjoy life.   Before the disease destroyed her mind totally, her kidneys failed.

“Her energy would have been very strong, determined.  She felt that if she wasn’t productive she might as well be out of here.  I feel the love there, she’s here to watch over you.  She’s around you a lot.”

My mom’s  parenting skills left a lot to be desired, but she loved me fiercely, so if anyone was watching over me, I wasn’t surprised it was her. 

He then described my adopted daughter so accurately she might have been in the room.  He laughed while doing it, “She’s the kind of kid who thinks what hers is hers and what’s yours is hers.  She’s a powerful person, don’t let her push you around.”

 What was even more startling was his warning that I better check my tires before taking a long trip, one of them was low.   My tires were brand new and I had no intention of checking them, but hey you don’t mess with a psychic prediction so I checked them before I got on the Thruway to travel home.   Sure enough one tire was almost flat.   If I’d gotten on the Thruway with it I could have had a dangerous blowout, or just been stuck on the side of the road in the summer heat with a flat tire.   Greg Kehn may have saved my life. 

He kept asking me if I recognized the spirits that were around me, but I have trouble recognizing road signs much less spirits.    “Would you recognize that sometimes the dog would stop and stare? He’s seeing spirits around you.  If they can’t get your attention they’ll get his attention.” 

 I could believe that Shadow sees spirits.  He was my soulmate from the first moment I rescued him. Aztecs and Toltecs considered Chihuahuas sacred animals.  Unfortunately they were also sacrificial animals, but I’m not telling Shadow about that.

I Learn I Have Psychic Powers

  At a workshop with John White, a Lily Dale star psychic, we were asked to pick someone in the room and intuit something about them.   I picked a short, heavyset woman with brown hair and told her that she had a tall, slim daughter with black hair.  Her mouth dropped open. She pulled out a photo of her daughter, who, sure enough, fit my description to a “T.” 

Then I was told to come up with the past life of a person sitting next to me.  

“I see you with straw hat and overalls,” I said to her.   “You’re part of a family that traveled across the plains to settle the West.  The effect of your past life on your present makes you a hard worker who loves to garden.”

She gaped at me in amazement, and said “I come from a family of pioneers and early settlers.”

 How did I come up with this information?  I have no idea. 

All About Orbs

My favorite spot to hang out was the huge front porch of the Maplewood.  I’d park myself in one of the rockers which were lined up in a row facing beautiful Cassadaga Lake.  

Anyone from any walk of life could be found in one of those rockers.  Most visitors to Lily Dale were just-plain-folks, not the woo-woo types that you find at Buddhist-type retreats. There was a big guy who looked like a trucker, an elderly couple from New Jersey, a nerdy-looking guy who I found out later was a computer scientist, an Australian woman with a fancy digital camera who showed me some mysterious shots she’d taken the night before.

 “Look at these,” she said, pointing out shots of what she called “orbs” fuzzy, white circles on a background of dark trees. 

Some of the ghostly images looked like orbs but others had the shape of fairies.

 “I blew up these pictures and that’s what appeared,” she said.  “When I took these photos all I could see out there was blackness and shadows.  No white dots.” 

 I saw these orbs myself in real time on her digital camera when we took the late night “ghostwalk” a tour of Lily Dale that introduces visitors to all the attractions at the witching hour, including a walk in the Leolyn woods in total darkness.   Very spooky. 

I was thrilled and amazed, ready to declare Lily Dale a real fairyland.  However, the next day I ran into a computer whiz who analyzed the photos.

 “Those white dots she blew up could be anything,” he said as we sipped a latte at the coffee shop across from the hotel, “from fireflies, to raindrops, to digital distortion.”  He explained some of the intricacies of digital photography, which was more of a mystery to me than fairies.  

“What do you think about Spiritualism?” I asked, thinking that as a scientist he’d be objective. 

“The whole point of Spiritualism is to prove the existence of life after death,” he explained.   Spiritualists call it “passing” and see it as a gentle transition to the next world, which they believe is a much nicer place than our own brutal world.” 

“Are you a believer?” I asked.

“I keep an open mind, but I’m a scientist so I usually believe what I can prove.  But my wife loves it here and I love my wife, so I don’t want to be too skeptical.  How about you?  Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “I’ve never seen one, but I keep the option open.”

I’m still waiting.

Cassadaga

I moved to Florida a few years later, after visiting Lily Dale again a couple of times.  The spell never wore off.

Serendipitiously the winter retreat of the Spiritualist church is here in Cassadaga, Florida, about the same distance from where I’m living now as Buffalo was to Woodstock, where I lived in New York.  I’m planning to visit after the pandemic.    I know it won’t compare to Lily Dale, but hopefully I’ll get my psychic fix there.  Stay tuned.

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Snarky Senior" is for those of us who qualify for a senior discount, but aren’t content with the crap we can buy with it. Subscribe for an irreverent take on life, culture, media, aging, health, politics and everything else about aging as a rebel—with or without a cause.  You can follow me on Twitter here (Don’t expect much. I hate Twitter), and on Facebook here (I love Facebook. It’s where we older folks hang out). Email me anytime at [email protected]. Suggestions and feedback welcome.

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