I would ask you if you believed in ghosts, but every time I do that, there's like a swarm of angry redditors that descend on me like wasps.

So I'll ask you this instead.

Have you heard of Ghost Church?

My name is Jamie Loftus, the creator behind Lolita podcast, My Year in Mensa, and a bunch of other stuff.

And I love a freaky niche American experience. So what if I told you there are camps

across the U.S. dedicated to communing with the dead? What if I told you the religion behind these

camps had attracted the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Frederick Douglass, Mary Todd Lincoln, Queen

Victoria, Dan Aykroyd, and the first woman to run for the U.S. presidency. No? Well, what if I told you

I've been there and I've seen it myself? American spiritualism is a religion I've been tangentially

aware of for years, but it wasn't until I went to the religion's

largest surviving camp in Casadaga, Florida, that I started to learn about the U.S.'s bizarre and

somewhat tortured relationship with spirit communication. The assumptions that come along with it are

expected. Is it a cult? Are they witches? No, and relax. But the reality of how

the religion came together, how it was blown apart, and how it's managed to mostly survive for

nearly two centuries undetected is fascinating. My new series, Ghost Church, follows this uniquely

American religion from its origin to a week

of me sweating in Florida listening to mediums drunk gossiping at a karaoke night, trying to make

ends meet.

I went to spiritualist churches, ghost churches, across the country, to find out how a religion

that was started as a prank by two preteen sisters in upstate New York

snowballed into a movement that consumed the final years of Harry Houdini's life.

It's not a cult.

...