A little upstate town in New York is known to be the best place to converse with the dead. Moreover, the place has a century-old organization of healers, séances, and medium.
Lily Dale is a community located in the Town of Pomfret on the east side of Cassadaga Lake. It is next to the Village of Cassadaga. Lily Dale is located in southwestern New York State and is one hour southwest of Buffalo, halfway to the Pennsylvania boundary. Lily Dale's year-round population is estimated to be 275. Every year approximately 22,000 visitors come for classes, workshops, public church services and mediumship demonstrations, lectures, and private engagements with mediums.
Like many villages, Lily Dale has a post office, volunteer fire department, library and a playground. It has a coffee shop, two restaurants, two gift shops, a few of guesthouses and a museum. For 133 years, however, Lily Dale is the home of the Lily Dale Assembly. It is a religious organization of mediums and healers who claim to have the ability to convey messages from those who have passed on to those still living.
Ron Nagy, Lily Dale historian said the tiny village, is now considered as the world's largest center for the Science, Philosophy, and Religion of Spiritualism. It started out as a summer campground for Spiritualists in the 1870s. Afterward, they bought 20 acres of farmland for $1,845 and called their meeting place Cassadaga Lake Free Association, then altered the name to The City of Light. In the early 1900s, they embraced the name Lily Dale because of a large amount of water lilies on the lake.
According to Syracuse, Lily Dale has been the center of many speculations including an HBO special, newspaper stories, more than a half-dozen books, a Canadian documentary that attracts 22,000 visitors during its nine or ten week summer season. Lily Dale's visitors come from different places ranging from England, Kuwait, Australia, Italy, Germany, and Japan, most of the visitors, however, are from Canada.
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