
Back in the 1800s, a medium from Pike,New York was directed by his guide – Seneca – to establish a Spiritualist community in the South. He ended up in central Florida, which was mostly swamps and mangroves, totally uninhabitable in my book! But on December 18, 1894, the Cassadaga Spiritualist camp was officially chartered.
Today, the camp consists of 57 acres with 55 homes, two lakes (Colby Lake and Spirit Lake), a haunted hotel, a bookstore, gift shops, and mediums, psychics, astrologers, tarot readers, healers. I first went there in the 1970s, when I was in graduate school, and had a mind blowing reading with a psychometrist, Wilbur Hull, a quadrapelegic. After Rob and I met in the 1980s, we began going there every so often, usually when en route elsewhere. Over the years, we got to know Hazel Burley, one of the mediums in the camp, and her husband, Art.
The friendship started around 1984, when we were walking around the quiet streets in town, checking out the various little houses, most of them posted with signs that read, Reverend So and So, followed by the person’s psychic expertise. The sign outside of Hazel and Art’s place was simpler:

So we went in and had readings. The synchronicity in our meeting Hazel was that her mentor had been Wilbur Hull, the quadrapelegic with whom I had my first reading in Cassadaga. Ever since then, we always drop by Hazel’s when we’re in town.
On our way back from the book fair in St. Augustine, we stopped overnight in Cassadaga, stayed at the haunted hotel (that’s another story) and this morning, dropped by to say hi to Hazel. We hadn’t seen her for three years and discovered that her husband, Art, passed on in December 2006. But as always, Hazel is the paragon of graciousness and intellectual curiosity and the three of us settled in her comfortable reading room and talked.
The conversation turned, invariably, to her wonderful collection of books. She pulled out a 1962 edition of a Sydney Omarr book that we’d never seen. Thought Dials, based on his numerology system.

Since Rob and I have been writing Omarr’s astrology books since 2003 when he died, we were most interested. We were also curious about whether our contract for these books is going to be renewed. We didn’t tell Hazel about our contract concerns, but she said, “Let me show you two how his marvelous thought dial works. Think of a question, then you each turn the dial to three different numbers.”
As she was demonstrating how it worked, we both had the feeling that Omarr was giving us a reading about the future of his books! The upshot? Rob’s numbers added up to a 1, mine added up to a 9. The beginning, the end. And the interpretations that Omarr had written for these two numbers perfectly describes the situation.I’ve since ordered the book so that when this whole thing shakes out, we can post his words, about those numbers.
There’s a certain synchronicity in timing here, too. We had thought about dropping by Hazel’s the night before, but learned this morning that she hadn’t been home. So our timing for this morning was perfect. She was home and in between clients.
– Trish
Trish and I also both had readings with a couple of the psychics who live just outside of the camp. The ones who aren’t members of the Cassadaga Spiritualist Association, as Hazel is, usually are card readers, not mediums. The association is very strict on rules and adding new people.
Trish’s reading was positive about her career and things in general. I sort of complained that psychics usually are very positive, because it makes you feel good, like you got your money’s worth. They rarely tell you that anything negative is coming your way.
So I had a reading with a guy named Mike, who used a native American deck. I picked eight cards and he talked for 45 minutes. When he got around to asking if I had any questions, I asked about my left foot, which was fractured this past summer. “Will it get better so it doesn’t bother me anymore?”
He answered instantly: “Oh, that foot is going to give you pain the rest of your life.”
Hmm, so much for complaining about positive readings. That’s a good example of a trickster synchronicity.
Rob