SPIRIT WORLD.

The article informs about a visit to two villages that still share the nineteenth century's conviction that one can communicate with the dead. Psychic "channeling" is no recent development in America, and the New Age movement we know today is really only the most recent iteration of a feature of the nation's religious and spiritual landscape that can be traced back deep into our colonial past. Nor did the country's fascination with communes and "intentional" small communities start in the 1960s. By the end of the nineteenth century there were dotted across the nation villages, sometimes called camps or colonies, devoted to the practice of the same metaphysical disciplines that are in vogue today. Two of them, Lily Dale in New York, and Cassadaga in Florida, are remarkably well-preserved examples of the American camp style.