Cassadaga, Florida is a Spiritualist community just north of Disney World. We’ve posted about it several times. Established in 1894, it’s now a flourishing little town where nearly every resident is a medium or psychic who specializes in contact with spirits. On weekends, the place is jammed with cars and tourists, all of them walking through the old, narrow streets, past Spirit Lake, in search of exactly the right medium. Hotel Cassadaga is usually booked solid on weekends.
When Megan was just a baby, we went to Cassadaga for readings and stayed at the Cassadaga Hotel. We were surprised that we were the only guests and later learned it was bike week in Daytona, so that’s where the tourists had gone. We had our choice of rooms and selected one on the third floor. It was actually two connecting rooms that overlooked the Colby center – now a bookstore and gift shop.
We walked around the town that afternoon, pushing Megan along in her stroller. I think we had readings with Hazel Burly, mentioned in the linked post above. I have this vague memory of Megan crawling around on Hazel’s floor, scampering after her cat or dog. That evening, we ate at a restaurant in nearby St. Helen’s.
When we entered the hotel later that evening, I was struck by how eerily quiet it was. The hotel doesn’t have an elevator, so we folded up Megan’s stroller and headed up the stairs to the second floor. It was so still, the groan and creak of the steps and the old wooden floors sounded abnormally loud.
We settled in for the evening with our books. We didn’t bother locking the doors. The town was deserted, the hotel was empty, what was the point? Around eleven or twelve, we turned off the lights. Megan had fallen asleep earlier. I remember it was unusually chilly that night and my feet were cold. I got up to scour the closet for additional blankets, found one, and fell back into bed. Just as we were drifting off to sleep, we heard footfalls on the stairs. Loud footfalls. It sounded like a troop of bikers from Daytona had arrived wearing heavy boots. It sounded like an army.
I was a little spooked and whispered, “Hey, Rob, aren’t we alone in the hotel?”
“That’s what the guy at the desk said. Maybe he’s doing his midnight rounds or something.”
Rob is more grounded than I am when it comes to this stuff. But I could hear uncertainty in his voice. We lay there, listening. The footfalls became echoing thuds. It began to freak me out. The clerk, I recalled, was a short, skinny guy; these thuds sounded like they came from a 300 pound monster.
I suddenly got up and hurried into the adjoining room to get Megan. Rob turned on the lamp, but the light didn’t do much to mitigate my mounting fear and panic. The thuds now sounded like something out of The Shining, so hard and loud I thought I could feel the hotel shaking. I swept Megan out of her bed and rushed back into the other room, where Rob was now locking the doors. I set Megan, who still slept on, oblivious, in our bed and hurried over to where Rob was.
“What the hell is it?” I hissed.
“Not the night clerk.” He pressed his ear to the door.
The clunks and thuds reached the top of the stairs. A sense of profound malevolence electrified the air, that’s the only way I can describe it, and for moments, neither Rob nor I moved. The thuds escalated to the point where it sounded as if a semi was slamming repeatedly into the building. Then the thuds stopped. Total silence. We could hear someone breathing outside our rooms.
Rob and I immediately pushed a heavy wooden dresser in front of one door and moved the bed in which Megan had been sleeping in front of the other door. We moved back to the bed, Rob on one side, me on the other, both of us terrified that whatever it was would break through our defenses.
The knobs turned, rattled. The inside of my mouth flashed desert dry. We simultaneously reached for Megan, Rob grasping one of her hands, me grasping the other. I don’t know where we thought we would escape if whatever was on the other side of that door broke in. There was no fire escape, just a roof – and a long jump to the ground. Whatever it was kicked the door viciously, then the thudding footfalls continued down the hall and gradually faded away.
We didn’t sleep much after that. The next morning, when we checked out, I asked the clerk if the hotel was haunted. He sort of grinned. “You bet. But we’ve only got friendly ghosts here.” It even says that on the hotel website.
We beg to differ. What happened to us in Cassadaga was terrifying. But we had a similar experience in the Dominican Republic that was energizing. We didn’t feel threatened then. I’m not sure why the experiences differed so radically emotionally. Perhaps it had something to do with the spirits involved.
Rob wondered whether this story is a true synchronicity. So let me add this to put his mind at ease! For Carl Jung, many types of psychic phenomena fell under the larger umbrella of synchronicity. Jung had several experiences with spirits.
During the winter of 1924, he spent vast stretches of time alone in the tower of the home he built on the shores of Lake Zurich. As author Deirdre Bair recounted in Jung: A Biography, he experienced “ghostly presences” in the tower. “He heard music, as if an orchestra were playing; he envisioned a host of young peasant men who seemed to be encircling the tower with much laughter, singing, and roughhousing.” Bair says these experiences happened only once to Jung, but that he never forgot them.
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Anon- that's absolutely true of their policies now. However, 20 years ago, it was a different story.And on an empty weekend, no business at all, it was a VERY different story.
I hate to discredit this story but I have never seen Cassadagga Hotel allowing a guest under the age of 21. I stay there every year several times a year and have never had anything even remotely close to what your describing so I gotta say. I don't believe it. BTW it stipulates on their website nobody under the age of 21.
Yes, nuff said, indeed. You need to do some research. You're speaking from a point of ignorance, and denial.
Sorry guys, but I don't buy it. I've gone to supposed hunted houses, haunted towns, grave yards, fields, caves, mountains, watch reality show, documentaries, etc and just plain tried talking with the dead to ask them to take or do whatever fghost do to people. I even drove out to Amitville House on Long Island parked in front and walked up to a locked house and nothing happened…shit and I even hoped for something to happen. 🙂
Hmmm…never saw or heard or felt one thing from a ghost my whole life…why? Beacuse there is no such thing!
Nuff Said!
oh, man!!! what a fantastic story!!! i could "feel" it – the tension and trepidation!!! and cassadaga has been on my own list since i first heard of it through you all! but listen, have you posted that postcard image before? i know i've seen that exact scene before – it was just totally familiar but i've no clue from where – anyway – great great story here, macgregors!!!
you know, i've never really come across many spirits/presences which i found threatening – one of the most threatening situations of that kind however, was in a little farm in northwestern arkansas where by brother was house sitting for his friends who owned it – and i went up for a long weekend visit – but the minute i got into the house, it was like i had stepped into the black abyss in terms of the "atmosphere" in the house – my brother was oblivious to it seemingly – it was so overwhelming – i will never forget – that rather than sleep in my bed, i went over to a corner of the room and put a quilt and pillow on the floor and then piled chairs in front of me and sat up the entire night in that corner – waiting – i never closed my eyes – my brother pooh-poohed it – but i did the same thing the other night i was there and ended up leaving a day earlier than i had planned – this old farm house probably dated back to the civil war era and i always felt as if that carnage was the key to my overwhelming feelings while i was there –
funny how one story leads back to an experience that otherwise might not have been remembered at all –
Not only that, Trish, but a good friend of ours, was there about a week or two later, and she saw long grass moving on the side of the road, and a black 'shadow' emerged and moved in front of her car and disappeared across the other side of the road. She was Totally freaked out and rang to tell me about it. It was really scary. We haven't been back since, and were really keen on the area initially.
I just asked Mark to comment about his feelings, and he said he was 'just spooked'. 🙂
Black Hill? Wow, Nat. Interesting that you both felt it so strongly!
Holy Dooley! Freaky!!!!
Mark and I experienced a malevolent force last year. We were out house hunting in a rural area nearby, and we went up a hilly, winding road. The closer we got to the top, the scareder we got. The was an electric, EVIl feeling, and it wanted us OUT! We turned the car around and screeched as fast as we could back down the steep hill. We were still holding our breath at the bottom, and held hands all the way home.
The name of the place is Black Hill…….sure was.
Jung was basically a mystic, who had numerous strange and psychic experiences.
The land on which he built his tower was a burial ground. had been a burial ground. From Deirdre Bair's biography of Jung: "…while digging the foundation, they unearthed a badly decomposed body. They deduded it was one of the Napoleonic French soldiers who drowned in the Linth River floods of 1799,whose bodies were swept downstream to the upper lake and subsequently washed ashore. They gave the corpse a proper burial…"
Years after Jung's experience in the tower in 1924, He "found a parallel in a seventeenth centruy chronicle by Renward Cysat of Luzern, who wrote about the 'salig Lut,' Swiss dialect expression for 'departed folk,' who manifested themselves through such carousing." (Bair, p330)
Jung's experiences were no doubt a different thing altogether, he built the building so it was not an old building.The land may have been inhabited and 'haunted', this is a phenomena I'm familiar with.
Old houses are a different story with as many 'hauntings' as places and all different.Familiar with those too. Ain't life fun?
That sounds like a scary experience! I grew up going to my best friend's, grandmother's house which was haunted, and I saw some pretty strange things, but, thankfully, nothing that bad!
My list is also long, Mike, and includes many of the places you write about.
Jen – shampoo bottles? Now THAT really is strange. Poltergeist?
That certainly sounds terrifying! I don't think I have ever had anything quite that LOUD happen to me, however even just last night I awoke to a clatter of shampoo bottles randomly all falling over in the shower (we have a large rectangular stand-up shower, and they were all standing on the floor of the shower to begin with, so strange that they all just CLATTER AROUND at 3AM)- Also when I got up, all of the bottles where standing up where I had left them!
I knew exactly what you were talking about when you said Sometimes you can feel that ELECTRIFYING malevolence. Sometimes it's not malevolence, but just a presence- sometimes I can feel someone? something? moving through my mind (trying to communicate??) and I shove it out in complete horror!
TANGENT!
I will be staying away from known haunted spots for now. : )
That was some experience. Have never heard of Cassadaga previously or of a town like this – sounds a great place to visit. Must put it on my list (it's a very long list!).