Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles (29 page)

watchman. He often gets up at 3:00 a.m. and cruises the neighborhood

in his pickup, watching for out-of-town teen pranksters.

Daytime visitors are more than welcome since most are custom-

ers, and well-heeled ones at that. A Jaguar sports coupe convertible

rolls past with a young female driver. Dan says she’s typical. Two other

women regularly drive their Austin Martins over from Orlando to see

mediums.

The camp has always had ties to affluence. A Civil War hero and

accountant for wealthy industrialist J. D. Rockefeller built a grand

4,000-square-foot mansion in the camp. The expense seems particu-

larly unusual given that the camp association owns the land beneath all

homes within its boundaries. Not just anyone can buy or build a home

there. You have to be an association member.

Down the lane outside a more modest residence, three generations

of a family—grandmother, daughter, toddler and teen boy—are com-

ing and going. Dan says the teen once died in a motorcycle accident.

“He was waiting for his body at the hospital. He had a total out-of-body

experience,” Dan says. “He couldn’t talk or walk and now he’s without a

cane or anything.”

They smile and wave hello, no doubt used to the curious eyes of

outsiders.

proof

Dan points to the small, wooded Black Hawk Park, where the Native

American group communes for healing ceremonies. He says, “That’s

where the fairy picture was taken, believe it or not.”

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No comment.

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Orbs, like the one he pointed out with his mother’s face, often ap-

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pear at Spirit Pond, where the ashes of many camp mediums have

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been scattered. Dan mentions that he also leads a nightly orb tour for

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twenty-five dollars a head.

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You cannot see orbs with the naked eye, he says. They can only been

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seen in flash photographs. He looks at our professional camera gear

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and warns that orbs probably won’t show up well even in our photos;

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higher-end flashes are just too intense.

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At last we reach the Colby Temple, home to Sunday services and sé-

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ances. Like much of the camp, the interior is rather basic and looks as

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if it hasn’t been updated in decades. Fans hang from high ceilings, and

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rows of slatted wooden benches slope to a stage topped with a simple

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podium.

35

In the back there’s an old metal water fountain and a sign-in book

1

for anyone who wants to be healed of some physical or spiritual ail-

ment. First name only, Dan says, though it is important to list your zip

code so that the healers will know where to direct their energy.

Dan sternly warns us not to touch floral arrangements and peacock

feathers on the stage as we head to the heart of camp mysticism, the

séance room. The narrow, windowless room has only wooden chairs,

a black curtain, and a heavy wooden round table, known in the Spiri-

tualist world as a “tipping table.” A tipping table is supposed to lift to

one side by strictly a spirit force in response to questions posed by a

medium. We aren’t allowed to test it.

“You can’t go in because you’re not certified to do so. Put your arm

in because there’s usually a temperature difference,” Dan says.

A duck inside is met with the warmth of a closed, windowless room

with little, if any, ventilation.

Walking back to the bookstore, Dan points up a street toward some

trees. “That’s where someone saw a wood nymph.”

Message from Afar

The next morning, parking is at a premium. SUVs with TVs, luxury

sportsters, old pickups, and granny sedans park along the lanes’ grassy

proof

shoulders. Dollops of people wearing everything from designer heels

to flip-flops, Sunday best to faded hip-huggers, migrate down the hill

to Colby Temple. Sunday service is about to begin, and the church has

a special speaker, a young Maharishi from India.

Colby Temple fills with more than two hundred people, from crying

babies to the ancient. About two-thirds are women, many dressed and

coiffed as if plucked from a Presbyterian congregation.

Since it’s Memorial Day weekend, the service starts with a group

singalong of “My Country ’Tis of Thee” led by a young soprano who

has trouble holding a note. As standard, a fifteen-minute healing ritual

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precedes the Sunday message. Those who want to be healed move to

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metal chairs along the outside walls and wait to be summoned to the

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back of the temple. There are only a half-dozen healers and about four

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times that many are seeking a cure.

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Having no idea what a healing entails or what I want to be cured of

other than procrastination, I get in line. The tan reverend who looks

like a New Age Ben Franklin, spectacles and all, instructs all to close

154

their eyes and relax in meditative prayer. I struggle to come up with

an ailment and settle on something heartfelt, sadness over the recent

death of an uncle. Granted it’s not hard to fixate on someone you’ve

lost in a place that lives on connecting with the dead. In mourning,

tears roll down my cheeks.

When it’s my turn, the red-haired healer offers me a tissue, prob-

ably thinking I’m dying of something like a brain tumor. She turns my

palms up in my lap and lightly lays her hands on my back, the sides

of my head, my face, my legs, my hands. This goes on for about three

minutes. I feel no energy flowing to me or from me, but it feels pleas-

ant just the same, as a kind touch is apt to do. She clinches my hands

and leans close. “You know what to do,” she says softly. “You just need

to tell it.”

Does she intuitively know that I am a neurotic writer? Or is it some-

thing she tells everyone? Such vague directives, open to interpretation,

are common in the world of Spiritualism.

I return to my seat not feeling much different than when I had left.

I’m told that the effects of a healing aren’t always immediate. Improve-

ment may take more than one session.

Time for the guest of honor—Shri Vibhu Ji Maharaj. The slender

young man is the grandson of the late Shri Hans Ji Maharaj, who was

considered by his followers to be the “perfect master.” Shri Vibhu looks

proof

every bit the part, wearing white pants and a long powder-pink shirt.

He sits in a tapestry-draped chair that looks like a throne. He is twenty-

eight, with hair and eyes as black and shiny as obsidian, and skin as

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smooth as chocolate pudding. The reverend invites attendants onstage

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to welcome their guest. A half dozen go up and lay white roses at his

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feet and bow. One woman from Nepal even kisses his socked feet.

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He smiles and nods to each. When he stands, the parishioners rise,

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too, and give him a hearty applause. Their enthusiasm is contagious.

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After all, what could be more enlightening than the words of a young

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guru who comes from the land of Gandhi, no less? He has spoken to

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crowds of 100,000, spreading the ancient wisdom of how to get right

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with the universe.

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He tells the audience that they must look deeper within themselves

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for meaning. Learn to remove the labels of a profession and family

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roles and see the world as it is. “What is the mind? What is the spirit?”

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he asks rhetorically.

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Yes! He’s going to tell us.

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He speaks of how all religions follow the same noble codes and the

1

golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” But it’s

the concepts beyond that rule that cause dissension among faiths.

“Concepts can be their own trap, you know.” he says. The key to un-

derstanding life, he says, is “Man, know thy self. Looking deeper within

yourself because everything you need to know you are born with.”

“The spiritual journey is very individualized, you know,” he says.

“That’s why it is important to accept the actual truth. For the essence

of knowledge is not words. It is not concepts. It is your being. All the

answers you seek you are born with, you know.”

Eureka! I feel a divine message has been revealed and join in the

crowd’s applause and another standing ovation.

The guru bows his head and demurely walks back to his throne. It is

not until reflecting on his message outside the sheep-following energy

that I realize how general it actually was. That he had put into words,

so plainly and simply, something all want to believe is true.

His oration is followed by a shrill soprano solo of Cat Stevens’s “Like

the First Morning.” Senior men in blazers like Baptist deacons pass of-

fering plates brimming with cash, donations for the Maharishi.

The normal service is cut short, but the reverend still manages to

throw in a couple of psychic readings of audience members. He calls

out to a woman in the crowd. “I feel a very strong connection to you,”

proof

he says. “You have been through a loss and have her with you.”

He moves on to another younger woman several rows farther back.

“You feel everything is going faster and quicker and at times you feel

life is moving past you, but it is all working for good,” he tells her. “I feel

something concerning learning with you. Maybe it’s books and school.

Embrace it.”

Afterward, regulars catch up on small talk as they exit. Visitors

make their way up the hill to the bookstore and shop for spiritual trin-

kets and texts. Some head to their cars for a 30-to-40-mile drive back

to their suburban homes in Orlando, Deland, Mt. Dora, and Daytona

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Beach.

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One Deltona woman in a conservative suit says she doesn’t attend

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service regularly, but she didn’t want to miss the Maharishi. She’s

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been a Spiritualist for about five years and is taking medium classes

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at the camp. “I’m just a baby,” she says. The gift of clairvoyance runs in

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her family. “My mother has dreams that come true, and my sister is a

healer but doesn’t know it,” she says. “I think like he said, the truth is

156

within ourselves.”

For regulars like Kristi, a vivacious single mom, the service was a

weekly dose of positivism. “It always makes me feel really good when I

come here,” she says with a sincere enthusiasm that overshadows her

awkward appearance: curved spine, long dishwater-blond hair, and

gangly bowed legs filling faded bell-bottom jeans.

“Usually when I thought about going to church it was a dread. But I

want to come here. It’s rejuvenation. There’s no signs telling me I’m a

sinner and no one telling me I’m going to hell. It’s always positive.”

Kristi came to the temple seeking guidance a year before. “I was go-

ing through some unhappy times in my life and I went online looking

at different religions.” Nothing she found appealed to her, but she had

heard about Cassadaga. One morning she mustered the courage and

drove over for a service. She’s been back most every weekend since with

her young daughter.

“You are all in control of your brain. If you think life sucks and is

horrible, then your life is going to suck and be horrible. It’s all about

control of how you look at things. That makes a lot more sense to me

than believing you are going to hell for all eternity.”

Kristi is studying to be a nurse. Since she discovered Spiritualism

she’s is also contemplating pursuing a psychology degree. “I think this

will give me a step up,” she says. “It will be interesting to see how the

proof

two combine.”

Her family isn’t thrilled about her participation in the church, es-

pecially her father. “They think I’m joining some kind of cult, and I tell

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them it’s nothing like that. My Dad and I get into arguments all the

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time. I wish I could just get them to sit down and listen to a service and

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they will see it’s not some crazy cult.”

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Kristi may believe in communicating with the dead, but she isn’t

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sold on the whole fairy business. “I think the people who are into it

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are more on the fringe. I saw the same photo and I didn’t want to up-

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set him or anything, but I didn’t want to say I had seen fairies when I

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didn’t.”

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I Am a Rainbow, I Am Doomed

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Nellie’s home is only a five-minute walk from the hotel. Perched at the

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top of a hill, it is mishmash of painted and bare clapboard siding with

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a tiny front yard of wildflowers. Despite its eclectic form, or maybe be-

75

cause of it, it has a cozy vibe.

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A knock on the heavy wooden door triggers the yip-yips of a small