George Colby and the Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp

Cassadaga is not a haunting of one room or one ghost but a town built on a belief: that the dead can speak through trained mediums. Its founder was George P. Colby (1848–1933), a trance medium born in Pike, New York, who left the Baptist church of his parents as a young man and travelled giving readings and séances. According to the camp’s own account and Wikipedia, a spirit guide named Seneca appeared to him in a séance in Lake Mills, Iowa, and directed him to Florida. Colby reached the state in 1875, and the Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association was chartered on 18 December 1894 by thirteen people. The camp borrowed its name from the Spiritualist community at Lily Dale, New York, where Colby had attended meetings.

On 3 January 1895 Colby deeded 35 acres to the association, and its first season opened on 8 February 1895, with about a hundred people gathered at his home. A hotel followed in 1922, burned in 1926 and was rebuilt by 1928, and the Depression forced the association to sell it in 1933, the year Colby died impoverished in DeLand. The camp was recognised as a federal historic district in 1991 and now covers about 57 acres, with an auditorium, a temple named for Colby, a library and a healing centre.

Cassadaga’s history includes the usual accusations aimed at mediums. In 1896 a fraud allegation made in Boston against a medium based at the camp, O. L. Concannon, followed him south; the accuser produced no evidence and local newspapers largely defended sincere Spiritualists, though the camp later tightened its certification of mediums. Today certified camp mediums try to distinguish themselves from the New Age and psychic shops that have grown up around its edge. The camp describes Spiritualism as a science, philosophy and religion based on continuous life, with no creed, and visitors should treat it as a living religious community rather than a spook-show.

Ghost stories gather around Cassadaga, as around any community that talks to the dead, but its documented history is a story about real people: a medium, a spirit guide he said guided him, and the families who made a winter community in the Florida pinewoods.

Mediumship, trance readings and séances by the camp’s certified mediums; Colby’s reports of a guide named Seneca; visitors’ claims of ghostly activity around the area are anecdotal.

The roughly 57-acre Spiritualist camp in Volusia County, between DeLand and Orange City, including its hotel, temple and auditorium.

Cassadaga is nicknamed the psychic capital of the world and is a staple of Florida travel writing, television shows about the supernatural and mediums’ readings for visitors.