Six people sit at a round dining table in a shotgun-barrel-shaped room, completely dark except for the cold phosphorescence of a glow stick and a few other glow-in-the-dark items. Each rests his or her fingertips on the table edge, trying to maintain contact with whatever spirit from the other side has chosen to visit.
The table - or the spirit within - had attempted through a series of spins and raps to communicate with my wife. The medium leading this séance, Victor Vogenitz, tried to help her identify the spirit in the table.
"I sense a pain in the head - a really bad one," he said, touching his left temple. "Did you know someone who got shot in the head or something?"
That helped with the ID. My wife's grandmother died from bone cancer - in the skull.
The table - or the spirit within - had attempted through a series of spins and raps to communicate with my wife. The medium leading this séance, Victor Vogenitz, tried to help her identify the spirit in the table.
"I sense a pain in the head - a really bad one," he said, touching his left temple. "Did you know someone who got shot in the head or something?"
That helped with the ID. My wife's grandmother died from bone cancer - in the skull.
But that's about as far as we got. The message, if there was one, was
garbled. Vogenitz talked to my wife about looking for the opportunities
in catastrophes.
Suddenly, a conical tin trumpet that rested on a small side table fell. Everyone jumped about a foot.
"That was her," Vogenitz said. "She was confirming what I just said."
Everyone loves a good spooky story - especially if they're in it. Perhaps that's what attracts so many people to Cassadaga, a picturesque little town abutting Lake Helen that has one of the most fascinating and unusual histories in Florida.
Much of the unincorporated community sits on land owned by the Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association. George Colby, a trance medium from upstate New York who traveled around the country giving readings and conducting séances, donated the land to the association in 1894.
Colby didn't work alone. He had help from spirits, including an Indian spirit named Seneca who, the story goes, encouraged him to visit Florida.
"Seneca told him to come to the third spring," says Vogenitz, a self-described séance specialist. Colby came south by riverboat, bypassing DeLeon Springs and debarking at Blue Springs Landing in Orange City before heading east through the palmetto scrub and pinewoods, where he found a seep - like a spring, but less springy - where he homesteaded about 70 acres.
Vogenitz and his wife, Esther Vogenitz, hold séances at the Colby Temple, a 1923 building that serves at the spiritual heart of this Spiritualist community. For decades, the séance room was closed to the public, Vogenitz says. However, Spiritualism and Cassadaga's mediums draws visitors - and film crews - from all over the world, so the policy relaxed in recent years.
The Ann Stevens House, a bed & breakfast in nearby Lake Helen, offers a "séance package." The B&B had arranged for me to join a séance that was scheduled at the behest of Mary Cabrera and Isabel Gonzalez, who had come from Miami for a séance after seeing a television show about Cassadaga.
Vogenitz appeared nothing like the old B-movie version of a medium - no turban, no pointed beard, no piercing eyes, no fake European accent. He wore cargo shorts and an outdoorsy-looking sports shirt.
Before we went into the séance room, he told us what to expect. Spirits rarely speak through trumpets suspended in midair, as they did during the Fox sisters' day, he says.
"They don't need to," Vogenitz says. "They have cell phones."
Apparently, he explained, spirits call people from the unknown, then don't say anything.
And to think I thought that was just bad service.
However, we might experience some good old-fashioned table-tipping, Vogenitz said. If especially energetic spirits came to visit, we might hear footsteps, or even a disembodied voice coming from thin air.
I must have looked skeptical.
"Skepticism is healthy," Vogenitz said.
I was happy to hear that.
"But usually, it's the skeptics that really get blown away," he added.
"A séance is rarely scary," Esther Vogenitz added. More often, they're emotionally warm and fuzzy. The couple recounted a recent encounter between a family and their deceased matriarch. "Everyone in the room had the tissues out," Esther Vogenitz said.
However, there was one scary part of doing a séance, Victor Vogenitz warned: "I'm going to want you to sing."
"The spirits need energy," he explained. "And the human voice has energy," which they apparently can use to make themselves manifest.
Suitably forewarned, we headed for the séance room. As we sat at the table, I noticed it was on casters.
After a prayer or two, we began to sing a hymn. Most of us didn't know the words, so after that train wreck, Vogenitz chose simpler fare, and we sang countless verses of "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain." I was afraid we would have to sing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall," but - Lo and Behold! - the table began to spin.
At least I think I was supposed to assume it was spinning. It looked like maybe Vogenitz was turning it.
Suddenly, it lurched toward me, spinning and rapping. A chill passed up and down my spine - perhaps because I felt "a presence." Or maybe I just saw the others looking expectantly at me, and I realized I would soon have to have a conversation with a table.
My mind went blank, except for one thought: If I were a spirit, why would want to communicate by moving a table around?
Nevertheless, I did my best to talk to the most likely dead relative. Despite helpful encouragement from Vogenitz and the others, however, I didn't get much useful from it.
The table finally gave up on me. Another spirit began moving it inexorably toward the ladies from Miami, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
I have a guiding philosophy: It ain't an adventure if you can't die doing it. As the spirits chose their next victim, I wondered if anyone had ever been crushed to death by a possessed table during a séance.
Seances are available from the Ann Stevens House in Lake Helen at annstevenshouse.com, or by phone at 386-228-0310, and through the Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association. A list is available at their Web site, cassadaga.org.
Suddenly, a conical tin trumpet that rested on a small side table fell. Everyone jumped about a foot.
"That was her," Vogenitz said. "She was confirming what I just said."
Everyone loves a good spooky story - especially if they're in it. Perhaps that's what attracts so many people to Cassadaga, a picturesque little town abutting Lake Helen that has one of the most fascinating and unusual histories in Florida.
Much of the unincorporated community sits on land owned by the Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association. George Colby, a trance medium from upstate New York who traveled around the country giving readings and conducting séances, donated the land to the association in 1894.
Colby didn't work alone. He had help from spirits, including an Indian spirit named Seneca who, the story goes, encouraged him to visit Florida.
"Seneca told him to come to the third spring," says Vogenitz, a self-described séance specialist. Colby came south by riverboat, bypassing DeLeon Springs and debarking at Blue Springs Landing in Orange City before heading east through the palmetto scrub and pinewoods, where he found a seep - like a spring, but less springy - where he homesteaded about 70 acres.
Vogenitz and his wife, Esther Vogenitz, hold séances at the Colby Temple, a 1923 building that serves at the spiritual heart of this Spiritualist community. For decades, the séance room was closed to the public, Vogenitz says. However, Spiritualism and Cassadaga's mediums draws visitors - and film crews - from all over the world, so the policy relaxed in recent years.
The Ann Stevens House, a bed & breakfast in nearby Lake Helen, offers a "séance package." The B&B had arranged for me to join a séance that was scheduled at the behest of Mary Cabrera and Isabel Gonzalez, who had come from Miami for a séance after seeing a television show about Cassadaga.
Vogenitz appeared nothing like the old B-movie version of a medium - no turban, no pointed beard, no piercing eyes, no fake European accent. He wore cargo shorts and an outdoorsy-looking sports shirt.
Before we went into the séance room, he told us what to expect. Spirits rarely speak through trumpets suspended in midair, as they did during the Fox sisters' day, he says.
"They don't need to," Vogenitz says. "They have cell phones."
Apparently, he explained, spirits call people from the unknown, then don't say anything.
And to think I thought that was just bad service.
However, we might experience some good old-fashioned table-tipping, Vogenitz said. If especially energetic spirits came to visit, we might hear footsteps, or even a disembodied voice coming from thin air.
I must have looked skeptical.
"Skepticism is healthy," Vogenitz said.
I was happy to hear that.
"But usually, it's the skeptics that really get blown away," he added.
"A séance is rarely scary," Esther Vogenitz added. More often, they're emotionally warm and fuzzy. The couple recounted a recent encounter between a family and their deceased matriarch. "Everyone in the room had the tissues out," Esther Vogenitz said.
However, there was one scary part of doing a séance, Victor Vogenitz warned: "I'm going to want you to sing."
"The spirits need energy," he explained. "And the human voice has energy," which they apparently can use to make themselves manifest.
Suitably forewarned, we headed for the séance room. As we sat at the table, I noticed it was on casters.
After a prayer or two, we began to sing a hymn. Most of us didn't know the words, so after that train wreck, Vogenitz chose simpler fare, and we sang countless verses of "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain." I was afraid we would have to sing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall," but - Lo and Behold! - the table began to spin.
At least I think I was supposed to assume it was spinning. It looked like maybe Vogenitz was turning it.
Suddenly, it lurched toward me, spinning and rapping. A chill passed up and down my spine - perhaps because I felt "a presence." Or maybe I just saw the others looking expectantly at me, and I realized I would soon have to have a conversation with a table.
My mind went blank, except for one thought: If I were a spirit, why would want to communicate by moving a table around?
Nevertheless, I did my best to talk to the most likely dead relative. Despite helpful encouragement from Vogenitz and the others, however, I didn't get much useful from it.
The table finally gave up on me. Another spirit began moving it inexorably toward the ladies from Miami, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
I have a guiding philosophy: It ain't an adventure if you can't die doing it. As the spirits chose their next victim, I wondered if anyone had ever been crushed to death by a possessed table during a séance.
Seances are available from the Ann Stevens House in Lake Helen at annstevenshouse.com, or by phone at 386-228-0310, and through the Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association. A list is available at their Web site, cassadaga.org.
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