Magical Lily Dale

It's not what we expected. After reading the book about Lily Dale by Texan writer Christine Wicker, we thought we'd see poor, untended, little patchwork houses with broken bicycles and abandoned baby carriages on tattered porches. We expected everything to be modest and scruffy, with peeling paint revealing years of neglect and various colors-one for each decade---underneath; we thought we'd see a sad array of unmown yards long overtaken by all manner of weeds; rotted shutters hanging by threads; dented old model cars in driveways that were more weeds than cement. "That writer was probably from North Dallas," my Texan husband grumbled disapprovingly, as we walked around the small streets of Lily Dale for the very first time, quickly inhaling its special charm. "They're pretty snobbish up around there in North Dallas. I didn't like her writing style, it was prissy anyway." I agreed. "I expected a slum, too. This is a faerieland." In a way I can't explain, this little town I had never visited before was comfortably familiar to me.

Lily Dale, New York, is the country's oldest and largest psychic community. Celebrating their 125th anniversary, Lily Dale is a small, gated community on the lake an hour from Buffalo, NY; it's a place for which you must be a registered medium to live. Its history is long and rich: the world's most gifted channelers and psychics have long visited and resided in Lily Dale, and the place has been visited by the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mahatma Ghandi, the Roosevelts, Susan B. Anthony and Harry Houdini. Lily Dale opens its doors to the public every summer, offering seminars and famous speakers and psychics: everyone from John Edwards to Sylvia Brown to Wayne Dyer has spoken at Lily Dale.

We had come at dusk and decided to visit briefly, as we wanted a feel for the place before we came back in the morning. I loved everything about this little quirky town, even the titles of their storefronts, like an eatery called "The Karmic Café", charmed me. As we walked down the streets, we smiled knowingly at each other as we both noticed that most of the houses were lit up with mostly white and occasionally multi-colored Christmas lights-in August. The light strands were draped through white lattice triangles, sometimes tangled neatly around and through the ivy and vines that shared the space; they wound around columns and through gates, were sprinkled cheerily from eaves like glittering snow, they weaved through plants and wrapped around lampposts, twirled around pretty aqua and purple mailboxes. Most of the houses were gaily painted in glorious color combinations, most of the time these included endless shades of purple and lavender. We were home: we could have been looking at our own house in Vermont. "I bet I could teach them a thing or two," my husband joked, "about landscape lighting." And he could, too. Not only is our house lit up all year 'round like those in Lily Dale, but we also have colored bulbs placed high up in the leaves of tall trees surrounding our home. At night you see the trees lit up in greens and reds and blues, giving the whole area a soft but colorful glow. The people in our town love it, they even grouse when a bulb or two burns out in a tree. Our house is also used, we were told, for direction giving: "Go to the house with the lights, then make a left…"

We soon realized that my and my husband's mutual love of lights is, as is the case with the mediums of Lily Dale, far from being coincidental. One of them later explained that it was our way of recreating "the other side", using light and color to create an environment that mimicked, as best as it could in the physical, the beauty and feel of the ethereal plane. In other words, we were unconsciously making our environment look as much like our real "Home" as possible. That would explain an ineffable sense of longing I sometimes feel when looking at gaily colored lights, a yearning for something I can't even begin to describe. The fact that purple is the predominant color in Lily Dale made the strong sense of homecoming even more poignant to me: almost every room in our house is purple. And so is both the inside and outside of most of Lily Dale's homes.

As we walked by Lily Dale's Healing Temple, we noticed a healing service was in session so we walked in and sat down. A beautiful older woman, Mary Margaret, introduced herself to the small gathering of people, telling us that we will get what we need from Spirit if we just ask for it. She talked about the faeries in the woods outside the temple that are attracted to the services, and how they tend to show up during healings to spread their healing energies. She told us that the healers do this work "to give back to Spirit", to show their appreciation for their special gifts by giving freely to others and asking nothing in return. I watched as one by one, people in the audience approached the front of the room to sit on low benches and wait for each healer to begin his or her work. As I found myself on one of the low benches for a healing session, I remember feeling my skin tingle and prickle as the healer's hands passed over me. Was it my imagination, or was he concentrating on my lower lumbar region? Yes, he was. That is where I have a very painful compressed disc, but I thought it was probably coincidence.

Because I had no appointment, and it was the end of the summer season, I never thought I'd have the good luck to get a reading with any of the established and more "famed" mediums, and certainly not with Sherry Lee Caulkins, a five-generation Lily Dale resident medium who was mentioned in Ms. Wicker's cynically cautious book many times, all accompanied by accolaides. Sherry Lee is simply beautiful; an older woman with almost platinum white hair, her blue eyes sparkle like aquamarines and her voice is musical and lilting. She could have been fifty or seventy, I couldn't tell. Though her pretty face was unlined and her eyes bright, her hair was white and her hands were elegant rivers of veined time--the juxtaposition kept her age a secret. I had the sense that half the time she couldn't see or hear me at all, but was talking to the spirit world as if she was more used to being among them than us. And clearly she was; she laughed at things I couldn't hear and scolded them merrily when they gave her information that wasn't clear to her. Sherry Lee converses with angels. She uses color for communication and messaging by drawing with pastels to aid her in getting across messages that those in spirit want to send to her clients. "Oh okay, if that's what you insist upon!" she sang gaily a few times during my reading, carefully picking the color pastel she wanted while distractedly explaining to me what each color meant-she was too busy listening to them. She reminded me of my childhood head injury and the bathtub accident---both were suddenly remembered after many years---and accurately told me what had been going on on my life and the angelic intervention that had saved my life---and my husband's---time and again. She then mentioned something intensely personal about me, which I quietly acknowledged. She gave me some more information that resonated with me, things that meant something to me, things that were specific enough for me to sit up and listen, things that stopped me from being dismissive. I was not overly cynical or overly grasping….I was calmly open, ready to hear what the spirits had to tell me but not ready to believe everything I heard, either. I watched Sherry work as she snickered at the unseen and joyously followed their instructions, hands moving quickly, getting color smudges all over her hands and face. Suddenly she looked at me and said, "oh! You must be an artist, because they get so fussy when I have an artist sitting here in front of me." I watched as she took the green pastel chalk and drew what clearly looked like green beans or pods to me. "Peapods," I said, smiling. "Why yes," Sherry agreed, "I believe they are. Do they have any special meaning for you?"

I was still mulling over the information Sherry Lee had given to me as Glen and I walked in the heavily shaded trees to sit on a bench and take a rest from our walking. That's another thing I like about Lily Dale, it's so welcoming: there are benches everywhere. For the second time since we had arrived, a squirrel approached and came so close to us we could almost pet it. The squirrel stared at me and I stared back, and for a minute or two, it actually looked like he was going to let me stroke its back. He had no fear of me whatsoever. "That's amazing," Glen said. "I have never in my life seen a squirrel get that close to a human being." I decided to carry nuts or seeds with me the next time I visited.

Inspiration Stump, one of Lily Dale's most famous landmarks, is where registered mediums (and nervous mediums-in-training) "give back to spirit" by offering free readings to those visitors assembled. Inspiration Stump is actually a huge tree stump in the middle of a dense forest at the end of a long and narrow footpath. After you walk for about a quarter mile, the forest opens up to a clearing where there are dozens of benches assembled, facing the five or six foot wide stump. Medium after medium stands or paces in front of the stump, getting impressions from those assembled, and when one is to receive a message, they will say, "May I speak to you?" or "Can spirit speak with you?" Most of the mediums are female, but the one who embarrassed my husband out of his private reverie was male. "Sir, may spirit speak with you?" We were sitting all the way in the back, and Glen was jerked out of his daydreaming but managed to answer "yes" in a strong voice. For some reason, everybody turned to look at him, which was unusual. The medium's staccato bursts of information were unusual, too. His rhythm had changed. He spoke louder and more strongly, and was more specific with Glen than he had been with the others he had read. It came like machine-gun fire. "A death of someone from your past is near, you will be asked to speak at his funeral." Bang. "You are a preacher, or could have been one if you chose, and you have a preacher in your family." Bang. "You are a landlord." Bang. "You will go to Fort Lauderdale." Bang. Glen's father was a preacher. We have rented an apartment in our home. I can't vouch for the other stuff, not yet anyway. But the man's change in tone and force struck us both, as did his specific references. Glen, who usually walks around with a slightly cynical smile, was shaken a bit.

We had been back in Vermont a day or two, sitting on the porch, drinking coffee like we always do, and Glen suddenly said, "We need to go back to Lily Dale." I feel the same way. It was almost as if we both had found some faerie dust that quickly dissolved in our hands, and we needed to know if it had been really there, or if we imagined it.

I went inside to get us some more coffee, casually noting that the pain in my back wasn't that bad tonight.

Mindy Sommers

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