Kathy’s Place
Every place possesses a particular energy, a soul symmetry that speaks to us at some fundamental level. We love the spot, hate it, feel ambivalent toward it, or sense a kindred spirit. For me, Cassadaga, Florida has that feel of I’m home, but…I could never live here.
Home: laid back, relaxing, is what it professes to be – a community of psychics and mediums –live and let live; when you walk into a bookstore and the clerk says, We’ve got readers on call…. And they don’t mean they’re going to read a book. They’re going to read you…if you are willing.
Never live here: when my printer dies, when my printer cartridge needs replacing, when I’d like to shop at a mall, when my car needs an oil change, when I yearn for a Barnes and Noble…
But. Cassadaga is always a very large BUT. And here’s why. Half an hour north of Disney World, where you can immerse yourself in a corporate view of what makes entertainment tick, Cassadaga invites you to immerse yourself in a very different sort of world, which corporate America can’t touch. Yes, there are books and websites and a lot of speculation, but in Cassadaga, no one really knows what’s going on. You drive in, park, and on a weekend, the parking is tricky. Squeeze into any space you can find. Then walk around.
But don’t walk too far. Directly across the street from the Cassadaga Hotel, next to the town post office, is where you’ll find Kathy, a psychometrist, a woman whose talent could challenge Stephen King character Johnny Smith any day of the week.
On the weekends in the Florida tourist season, there’s a wait. I’m sitting in the tiny waiting room, jotting down my questions. Rob is outside, walking the dogs around Colby Lake, named after the man who founded Cassadaga. Now and then, I stand up and look outside the window, checking to see if he is back at the car. I hope he hurries so he can take a spot in line. It’s already four PM and other people are coming in for readings.
The door to the inner part of the house opens and a blond woman steps out and sits down. She looks preoccupied, fiddles with her iPhone, then says something to me in Spanish, and quickly apologizes in English. “Oh, sorry.”
“Not a problem,” I say in Spanish, loving the fact that I get to practice my Spanish!
She’s Peruvian, has lived in Orlando for 8 years, and has been getting readings from Kathy for nearly that long. “She’s the best of the best,” the woman says. “Names, dates, events, nearly everything she has told me has happened. My youngest daughter was translating for me, now she (the daughter) gets her reading. Kathy’s a nurse, you know, so her health readings are accurate.”
Kathy is also outside the spiritual camp, just across the street, and the campers are not so happy about her somewhat garish signs. But she has been there for years and can hold her ground at the entry corner to Cassadaga. She can do it because she is good.
I explain that my daughter and I got readings from her in January and were both impressed.
Rob calls, he’s back from the lake, and I tell him he’d better get up here and take his spot. And then it’s my turn.
The setting is informal, the room is small. Kathy is a short woman with a pretty face, beautiful eyes, a quick smile, and wavy light brown hair that tumbles to her shoulders. She’s wearing jeans and an attractive sweater, and sits in a desk chair. I sit across from her. “That Peruvian woman loves you,” I tell her.
She laughs. “She’s a terrific person.” She frowns slightly. “Have I read for you before?”
“In January.”
“I see so many people, but you look familiar.”
I work my wedding ring off my finger and hand it to her. She fits my ring over her thumb, strokes it with her index finger, turns it slowly, shuts her eyes. For a few minutes, she’s quiet, then begins to speak. I jot notes rapidly. The highlights are intriguing:
“A business proposition pulls you back and forth to the west coast (California.). I see books everywhere around you. Something big here. Book writing is taking you to and from the west coast. A book is being converted to a TV movie or movie. Positive financially. It’s as if they want you to continue writing so the series doesn’t end.”
I then tell her I’m a writer.
“California happens by the end of this year. Your significant other picks up a BIG project that takes him to Chicago or somewhere in the Midwest. It comes out of the blue. So while you’re going back and forth to California, he’s flying back and forth to the Midwest. Positive for him. By mid-year next year, you and your partner purchase a property in the middle of nowhere, but near water – a creek, river, lake. I see animals playing down near the water. It’s not like a second home, it’s a refuge, a sanctuary, and it’s an older place that you fix up. It’s here you and your significant other recharge your batteries.”
After Rob’s reading, we compare notes. “The first thing she said to me,” says Rob, “is Canada. That I’m involved in a project with a Canadian (the Quebec encounters). That it’s going to be big.” He looks at me, suspicious. “Did you say something to her about Quebec?”
C’mon, I know better than that. I rarely offer any information at all. “Nope. Nothing.”
We continue to compare notes over dinner at the hotel. It’s easy to dismiss all this stuff as wishful thinking. But much of what Kathy told Megan and me in January has come to pass: the appearance on William Shatner’s show – Weird or What?; Megan’s personal life; details about my writing that she couldn’t possibly have known; details about my parents, both deceased; details about my sister. Some of the info must be interpreted. You have to make associations. So, we’ll see. The bottom line, I think, is that psychics read what’s most probable at a given moment. At any point along the way, we exercise our free will and the probability may change.
What I love about this town is the consensus reality: the dead are with us always, opening doors for us, communicating with us, helping from the other side. On Sundays, there are services at Colby Center – not your usual church service, but one in which various psychics give readings for people in the audience. A “message” service. And then there are the quirky reminders that you’re in a town where the norm is totally different than what lies beyond the city limits:
PS While in Cassadaga, I bought a t-shirt with these words on the front of it: Cassadaga, Florida, Home of the Happy Medium. It’s the same violet shade of one set of sheets for our bed. When we returned from the weekend, I removed the cases from the pillows we had taken with us and washed them, along with the new t-shirt. So yesterday morning, I wake up way too early and pull a pillow against me and see those words. I bolt upright, shocked that the t-shirt I bought is being used as pillowcase.
Rob must have put it on the pillow before he’d gone to bed – same color as the sheets, right? – but the next day when I mention it, he swears he didn’t do it and says that I did. But I only washed the pillowcases and t-shirt and I definitely didn’t put a t-shirt on a pillow! We write this off to high strangeness, the same high strangeness that has disappeared a $100 bill, socks, car keys…well, you know, all the stuff that has vanished into a quantum black hole over the years.
But really, a t-shirt as a pillowcase?
