Sequestered within gingerbread-style clapboard cottages, their gardens packed with pottery gnomes and plasticine fairy figurines, the residents of Lily Dale all share one very unusual and very important characteristic: they are committed Spiritualists. But what is a Spiritualist? What draws people to such an unconventional way of life? And what does a town made up of clairvoyants look like?

Click or scroll to find out more about this little-known community and take a look at their quaint homes...

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This bucolic upstate New York hamlet of Lily Dale, on the banks of Lake Erie around 60 miles from Buffalo, has been a Spiritualist township since its foundation in 1879. The settlement started as the ‘Cassadaga Lake Free Association’, a religious camp and meeting place for Spiritualists and freethinkers. The town's name was changed to ‘The City of Light’ in 1903, and finally to Lily Dale Assembly in 1906.

Practised around the world, Spiritualism is a social religious movement born in the 19th century which dictated that a person’s spirit continued to exist after death and that the living could communicate with the spirit world through certain ritualistic practices.

The popularity of Spiritualism reached its peak between the 1840s and 1920s, drawing adherents largely from the middle and upper classes of English-speaking nations, and including prominent figures such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes.

However, by the turn of the century, the credibility of the practice had been weakened by the exposure of numerous fraudulent practitioners, who employed physical manipulation and illusion to create dramatic spectacle. The Spiritualist activities in Lily Dale, too, were allegedly questioned by the world-famous magician Harry Houdini. He waged a relentless campaign throughout his career against fraudulent mediums, and was said to have visited the town in disguise sometime in the 1920s with the intention of exposing its inhabitants. But he did not succeed...

Despite the dramatic dip in the popularity of Spiritualism by the mid-20th century, the town of Lily Dale managed to retain its ethos and its identity as the largest Spiritualist community in the world. Today, the town has a year-round population of approximately 275 people, but hosts up to 25,000 visitors each year, according to a 2010 HBO documentary.

People travel from around the world to seek solace or answers from the 30-plus registered mediums living within the selective, gated community. But what exactly does life behind those rising arm barriers look like? The reality might surprise you.

While the concept of communicating with the dead may conjure images of sombre streets, darkened rooms with heavy drapes, and a general ambience of shadowy macabre, the reality could not be more different.

In fact, entering Lily Dale is more akin to stepping into a fairytale village, with neatly kept streets lined in pastel-painted cottages, each equipped with a generously proportioned front porch from which neighbours greet each other warmly. 

Everyday life in Lily Dale is lived right alongside the dead, in accordance with the Spiritualist beliefs. “I love the fact that I can walk down the street and one of my friends will say, ‘Gretchen, you know your aunt’s walking along there with you?’ and it’s an aunt who died 15 years ago,” says Gretchen Clark, a medium and long-time resident of Lily Dale, in the HBO documentary from which this article's quotations are drawn.

The homes themselves, built largely in the charming style sometimes known as Carpenter Gothic, date to the town’s origins in the late 19th century, when Gothic Revival architecture was in its heyday.

Characterised by its wooden structure and jig-sawn ornamentation, Carpenter Gothic was also frequently employed in religious settlements, including the famous gingerbread cottages of Martha’s Vineyard (pictured here), as the steep gables and sharply peaked rooflines mimicked the original tents the homes were constructed to replace.

However, these are more than just residential properties. The homes also serve as the offices in which the resident mediums receive their clients. In front gardens decorated with grandmotherly ornaments, there are painted signs advertising the name of the practising medium within, each of whom has a unique method of performing his or her craft.

“There are three ways that somebody who’s trained really receives: you see, you hear, and you feel,” says Pamela White, one of Lily Dale’s practitioners. Visitors to the town are encouraged to find a medium whose method speaks to them, and to meet with as many as necessary to find the right fit.

There is also always the option to work with a visiting medium, as Spiritualist practitioners from all over the world frequently travel to Lily Dale for limited, though highly lucrative, residencies.

Recent guest speakers have included British psychic and medium Lisa Williams, alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra, actress Dee Wallace, members of the Ghost Hunters, and a delegation of Tibetan monks.

If meeting a medium in their home isn't for you, a public venue designed for the practice of Spiritualism, called the Healing Temple, provides visitors with “a place of peace and solitude for all those who come to renew their energies through healing or quiet meditation and prayer,” according to the Lily Dale Assembly website.

However, the majority of the ‘spiritual healing’ appears to take place in nature. In the heart of Leolyn Woods, the forest which buttresses the small town to the west is the remains of an old tree that's been used as a site of spiritual revelation since 1898. Called the 'Inspiration Stump', it's rumoured to have been struck by lightning and is the site of twice daily mediumship demonstrations, which guests and residents can attend, free of charge.

Like the Inspiration Stump, the Forest Temple is another outdoor venue dedicated to Spiritualist demonstrations. Little more than a white-washed pavilion, the Temple has been in operation since 1894, and, according to the website, is “an area of spiritual, emotional, and mental upliftment”.

Formerly a one-room schoolhouse circa 1890, this quaint colonial-style building has since been converted into the Lily Dale Museum. Here, a standing collection of photos, artefacts, and memorabilia from the early days of the Spiritualist movement are on proud display.

Highlights include a collection of newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets; an assortment of items belonging to the Fox sisters, whose performative ‘contact’ with the spirit world helped give rise to the Spiritualist movement, in spite of the fact that the sisters themselves acknowledged the act was a hoax.

A highlight of the odd collection has to be the odd conical ‘séance trumpets’, which early 19th-century mediums once used to produce sticky cobwebs of ‘ectoplasm’, enabling the trumpet to give voice to the spirits with which he or she was communicating.

While present Lily Dale mediums are keen to distance themselves from the practice’s fraudulent forebears, they nevertheless lean into the more commercial aspects of Spiritualism.

Like many small New England towns whose economies are sustained solely by their summer tourism season, Lily Dale’s streets are lined with kitschy shops selling new-age trinkets and offering on-brand services to visitors, with names like the Sacred Grounds Coffee House, Crystal Cove, Haven Cave and Angel House – a hotel offering ‘fairy’ and ‘cherub’-themed guest rooms, starting at $85 (£68) a night.

To be sure, a visit to Lily Dale comes at a price. While accommodation may not be expensive, a reading with a medium usually costs between $100 (£80) and more than $200 (£160) for just a 30-minute session.

Guest lectures and workshops cost, on average, around $50 (£40) and even off-season Zoom events can cost up to $35 (£28), with the result that a pilgrimage to Lily Dale – not forgetting the obligatory exit through the ‘Awaken Boutique’ gift shop – could easily bring the final bill to thousands of dollars.

Despite its dubious origins and overt commercialism, Lily Dale still strikes a poignant chord with hundreds, if not thousands, of people every year looking for a way to connect with the spirits of their loved ones. “A lot of people that come in here…the first thing they say is they feel the energy of the place. This is just a spot that’s blessed,” says Mario Tollis, a long-time resident of Lily Dale who first visited in the 1950s. “Once you’re here at the Dale, you don’t stop. You keep coming, so I never stopped,” he explains. 

Which brings us to the ultimate question – just who can live in this highly exclusive community? 

The answer is not a simple one, although the parameters for residency are explicitly set forth on the Lily Dale website. The town is comprised of 169 leaseholds, all of which are owned by the Lily Dale Assembly.

“Purchasing a home in Lily Dale is not a typical real estate transaction,” the webpage warns. “DO NOT make any agreements, verbal or in writing, before obtaining Lily Dale Assembly approval to purchase.” To live in Lily Dale, you must be accepted by 'The Assembly'.

While the moniker 'The Assembly' may sound highly cloak-and-dagger the term simply refers to the organisation of recognised Spiritualists who reside in Lily Dale, and even those who only visit seasonally.

To apply for membership, you must have been a member “in good standing” of a recognised Spiritualist church for at least a year prior to applying, complete an application, pay some hefty membership fees, and attend a meeting with the Lily Dale Board of Directors to discuss your interest in joining the community. In short, not much different from applying for membership to your local country club... but there's more.

Here’s where it gets complicated. Only members of the Lily Dale Assembly can apply to purchase a leasehold. These applications will then be processed by the Board of Directors and, if successful, permit the applicant to buy and reside in the home for a set number of years. Mortgages are not permitted in this process.

While this strictly regulated yet highly irregular application process may raise some litigious eyebrows, it is, in fact, legal. The federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibits discrimination in housing on the basis of religion, race, sex, and disability, among other factors. However, there are stipulations in place which make exceptions for housing maintained by religious organisations.

For most residents of Lily Dale, like medium Carol Miller and her husband Dale, pictured here, it is this opportunity to live in a community inhabited solely by like-minded individuals that is its major attraction.

“I’m so glad to be here. I’m so glad to live in this lovely, safe, peaceful place, and I’m so glad that I can do what I do,” says Sherry Lee Calkins, another professional medium and Lily Dale resident. “We’re not touched too much by the world out there. Most of us very seldom turn on the TV,” says Gretchen Clark, for whom Lily Dale’s isolation from the rest of the world is its primary draw.

But Lily Dale has elicited jealousy and even controversy from those who have been found lacking and prevented from moving in. The New York Times has reported that three women are currently suing the town over their failure to pass the town’s rigorous application process, a points-based system in which scores are determined in accordance with a medium’s ability to demonstrate they have made contact with the spirit world.

Only by passing the test will a medium be granted permission to practice inside Lily Dale, which holds an effective monopoly on the medium trade in the county, and indeed the state of New York.

In their joint case, plaintiffs Natalie Scobercea, Barbara Robinson and Linda Struble question their respective scores, arguing that, according to the criteria outlined in Lily Dale’s membership guide, they did actually get the requisite number of points.

The Assembly has countered that “achieving a passing grade on the demonstration evaluations..." does not automatically mean that the plaintiffs had "'passed' the requirements to become registered mediums," according to The New York Times, and further stressed that the membership application process has not been “a problem in decades and decades”.

The current residents of Lily Dale seem unruffled by the impending lawsuit, which was filed in the New York State Supreme Court in July 2023. It’s certainly not the first time controversy has come knocking in the town’s storied history, throughout which residents have remained unperturbed by the general perception of their unconventional lifestyle, or the process by which they accept new members.

As far as they’re concerned, Spiritualism is something you seek out as and when you need it. “If you believe, you will receive,” says medium Gerta Lestock.

Regarding Lily Dale’s place in the wider world, however, residents take differing views. For some, like former-visitor-turned-resident healer Rev. Tom Cratsley, Lily Dale offers something truly special. “When people come here, something else stirs in them. They start to feel that what’s available here is truly a liberation of their own spirit,” he explains.

But for others, Lily Dale is nothing so very out of the ordinary. “Lily Dale is a small town. It’s a lot like a lot of small towns,” says Lynne Wiltsie, former President of the Lily Dale Assembly. “We have our ups and our downs and our personalities and we’re free thinkers.”

‘Free thinking’ is certainly one way of describing the town residents’ unique outlook, and the one point on which they can all agree: “There is no death and there are no dead, that’s an illusion.”

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