Being There Has a Whole Other Meaning
In Florida's Spiritualist Village

CASSADAGA, Fla.--Kit Hoffman-Dittner dabbed at her eyes with a tissue as the tears started to fall. Her cousin Helen was telling her it was time to make a change in her life, and it wasn't easy to hear.

Helen recalled the time Kit fell off a horse at age 11, though the details were sketchy. Now, Helen saw her 48-year-old cousin's life at a crossroads of sorts.

It was almost as if Kit were on that horse again, but nervous about tearing out of the starting gate, Helen indicated.

But Helen was not in the room. She was "in spirit." She died years ago.

In this Central Florida hamlet, messages from people like Helen are entirely normal. In fact, they are what built this town and continue to draw curious pilgrims by the thousands each year.

A sign near the entrance to this 105-year-old village pretty much says it all: "Welcome to Cassadaga. Certified psychic mediums. 5 on duty."

Cassadaga is a community of Spiritualists, individuals who believe messages from the souls of the deceased are proof that life continues after physical death. Spiritualism is built on the belief that communication with the souls of the departed is not only possible but enriches the lives of those remaining on "the earth plane."

That's what drew Kit Hoffman-Dittner to the hamlet to "communicate" with a cousin she never actually new--at least on the earth plane.

The message about the horse stemmed from a childhood incident when Hoffman-Dittner was thrown from a horse that galloped into a clothesline. Perhaps her continued fear of horses represented her hesitation in making a major life decision? she said.

Helen's message--translated through medium Nick Sourant--was accurate enough to make Hoffman-Dittner think that there just might be something to Spiritualism.

"I feel as though we all tap into that spirit source," she said. "And (mediums) can tap into it in a different way, and when they do, they're tapping into my spirit. The spirit speaks to us so clearly, if we are open to hearing."

A walk through this 55-acre community nestled between Daytona Beach and Orlando is a stroll through Florida's past. Quaint Cracker homes from the 1920s dot the rolling hills and quiet streets of Cassadaga. Clumps of Spanish moss loiter in the branches of grand oak trees like ghostly apparitions of those "in spirit."

Most of the village is owned by the Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association, a group of Spiritualists whose predecessors founded the camp in 1894 as a winter retreat for Northern mediums. The group owns the land and allows only Spiritualists to live in Cassadaga to maintain "the ecclesiastical integrity" of the area.

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