On Cassadaga Lake in western New York State lies a village of some three hundred residents, with a Victorian hotel, an old-growth forest – and one feature found nowhere else on earth: Lily Dale has belonged to the Spiritualists since 1879. It is considered the largest Spiritualist community in the world, home to the highest concentration of mediums anywhere, and every summer season up to 25,000 visitors pass through its gate. To live here is to live in a place where talking with the dead is as everyday as talking about the weather anywhere else.
From picnic to Free Association
The story begins modestly: from 1873 the region's Spiritualists met on the land of farmer Willard Alden, and in 1877 he hosted a "June Picnic and Sunday Assembly". Two years later, in 1879, the Spiritualists bought twenty acres on the lake and founded the "Cassadaga Lake Free Association" – a summer camp where mediumship, healing and survival after death could be discussed undisturbed. The community later took the name Lily Dale Assembly, after the water lilies of the lake. Tents gave way to Victorian houses: the Auditorium was built in 1883, the Maplewood Hotel began in 1880, the Forest Temple followed in 1894, as did the library named after co-founder Marion Skidmore, which gathers the movement's literature.
The Fox sisters' cottage
No place on earth would have suited a relic of Spiritualism better – and Lily Dale received one: in 1916 resident Benjamin Bartlett bought the Fox sisters' house in Hydesville, where the famous rappings of 1848 had begun the Spiritualist movement, and had it moved to Lily Dale in its entirety. For four decades the movement's founding house stood in the middle of the village, until it was lost to a fire in 1955. Today a memorial stone and a meditation garden mark the spot.
Inspiration Stump and the vetted mediums
The heart of Lily Dale beats in a patch of forest: at "Inspiration Stump", a massive tree stump in the Leolyn woods, public message services are held daily in season – mediums step forward one after another and give visitors spontaneous messages, free of charge and before an audience. It is the same basic idea as the British platform demonstrations: mediumship should show itself in public, not in hiding.
What stands out is how the village safeguards its quality. Anyone wishing to practise in Lily Dale as a registered medium and offer readings must pass a years-long vetting process: the Assembly and the local Mediums League test candidates over a period of roughly two years in public message services and private test sittings before they are admitted. Some forty to fifty registered mediums carry that seal. The village has thus practised for generations what is still being debated elsewhere – a parallel to British mediumship certifications and an example of how to recognise a reputable medium.
Suffragists and stars
Lily Dale was never only a place of séances. Early Spiritualism and the American women's rights movement were closely interwoven – Spiritualist communities were among the few places where women spoke in public as a matter of course. So Susan B. Anthony, America's most famous suffragist, came to Lily Dale repeatedly; in 1891 she spoke there on "Woman's Day". Later the village drew Hollywood too: the actress Mae West, herself a convinced Spiritualist, travelled there in 1955 for the dedication of a temple. And in 2010 the HBO documentary "No One Dies in Lily Dale" by Steven Cantor brought the village to a world audience – with the pilgrims who come each season seeking healing and farewell.
Lily Dale today
The village still lives by its own rhythm: a roughly ten-week summer season full of lectures, workshops, healing services and Stump services, then the quiet of winter by the lake, when the three hundred or so year-round residents have the place to themselves. Its pull remains unbroken – on mediums too: Lisa Williams, one of the world's best-known TV mediums, left Los Angeles after eight and a half years and chose Lily Dale, of all places, as her new home – "the home of spiritualism", as she called it. Her profile in our directory lists what she offers today. Anyone who wants to understand why an entire village has held on to the question of whether consciousness survives death for almost 150 years will find the most vivid answer in Lily Dale: there, they simply never stopped asking it.
Sources: The website of the Lily Dale Assembly; the portrait "The Tiny New York Town Where Mediums Give Voice to the Dead" in Smithsonian Magazine; the article on the medium vetting process at Atlas Obscura; the historical marker of the Lily Dale Assembly; and the HBO documentary "No One Dies in Lily Dale" (Steven Cantor).
For more, see our curated knowledge collection – it gathers further articles on the history of Spiritualism and its institutions.