Spooky season: From the other side

There were two books that fit in especially well with the theme:

Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead by Christine Wicker

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach

I had read an article in Smithsonian about Lily Dale that referenced the book. It took me about fourteen years to get to the book, but I did it.

When I was reading about death, trying to be ready for something that still hasn't happened, I read Stiff by Mary Roach. I realized that she had some other books that I was interested in. When she is interested in a topic, she goes all in, and I can appreciate that.

Stiff was about what happens to the body, while Spook is about what science says about the soul. That was partly what experiments they do to try and understand near-death experiences, but there was also a section about mediums.

Lily Dale is about a whole town of full of them.

I had already known something about the topic -- and how to fake it -- from reading about Houdini, especially in David Jaher's The Witch of Lime Street. Reading Lily Dale and Stiff so close together gave some different thoughts.

Wicker and Roach both took classes on how to receive psychic messages. Yes, they have those. 

It is probably easier to take one in Lily Dale than anywhere else.

Lily Dale is a town in New York that started as a spiritualist community. It started after the movement started after the Fox sisters started using "rapping" to communicate with spirits.

One of the sisters -- with another present -- later admitted it was a hoax, but recanted after pressure and continued to provide services. Somehow the community continues. 

There is an organization, but there is not a strict dogma. Therefore different residents may claim to get their messages from fairies or the dead or various other sources.

When I was younger, my tendency was to think that such things were either fake or evil. After more years and experiences, I think there can be many ways of receiving information.

There were two things that were interesting about the classes. 

One is that while you are in one, it can really feel real. I believe it was Wicker who wrote about being in a session where they levitated a table. It was exhilarating, and she was amazed, but something someone said later caused her to wonder. She realized it was a trick. The participants did not know it was a trick -- at least not in the moment -- but what about the person leading the session?

That was unclear. Perhaps they believe they have something to offer and consider some showmanship to be a fair selling point.

They are getting paid for their offerings.

Wicker told many stories of people hearing life-changing things that they needed to hear that could not always be explained by tricks or guessing.

There was something else from Roach's account:

People were more interested in the messages they got for others than the messages others had for them.

That obviously can't be the case all of the time, or there would not be people making money on it. However, that tendency to get inebriated on the thrill of having a message for someone, rather than wanting to know what you can know about yourself, seems like a problem of human nature.

But yes, sometimes you might feel or think or realize something that would be important for someone else.

I bet you could even more reliably -- and more helpfully -- figure out things about yourself.

I also watched a lot of Tyler Henry (the Hollywood medium) clips on Youtube.

Honestly, I appreciate that he is so caring with the people he reads for. Is there something to it? Probably. Would it be something they could hear for themselves? Probably.

Then, at some point -- after I was done and stopped clicking on links for Tyler Henry clips -- Youtube started suggesting clips from the US version of Ghosts.

It looks pretty funny, but with a good heart. 

I could imagine watching that.