A Strange Story About My Visit to Lily Dale and the A Word

What’s Lily Dale?

Lily Dale is a fascinating place.

Lily Dale describes itself as “western New York’s home for mediumship and spiritual healing since 1879.”

According to its entry in wikipedia: “Lily Dale is a hamlet, connected with the Spiritualist movement, located in the Town of Pomfret on the east side of Cassadaga Lake, next to the Village of Cassadaga. Located in southwestern New York State, it is one hour southwest of Buffalo, halfway to the Pennsylvania border.”

This little hamlet is full of old world vibes. The woo is strong here! Visitors pay a small gate fee to enter, and from there are free to roam around all day.

From what I recall, it’s comprised of some common buildings like a community center type of place, a healing center, a small restaurant, and that sort of thing. Nothing felt touristy or flashy. There’s an inn, and a hotel built in the late 1800’s with a beautiful wrap-around porch. There’s also a small campground within Lily Dale.

An interesting spot I visited was the Fairy Village, pictured above. This is the entrance to a path that runs through a wooded area that is flowing with incredible energy.

There are also small streets that run through this hamlet filled with relatively small-sized but full-featured / real houses. Like a slightly smaller version of what you might find in any old New England town.

My understanding is that everyone who owns a home here is a Spiritualist and a medium. I heard tell of some sort of test or certification process they must all pass in order to be residents.

This HBO documentary seems to be a really well done take on Lily Dale: No One Dies in Lily Dale.

My Visit to Lily Dale

It’s suggested that visitors schedule appointments with the mediums they’d like to see well in advance of their visit. Thankfully, for people like me, they were also fine with last minute appointments for those with availability. So I could just walk around the streets, read about each person’s background, and if they had a clipboard hanging near their gate, I could sign up for a time slot.

I think I saw three mediums that day. This is the first time I had worked with a medium in person. I was pretty fascinated to see what the experience would be like.

For context, this visit was in 2017.

A few years before this, my best friend passed away in a house fire. And about 8 years before that, both of my parents passed away around the age of 60.

My wish for loved ones is that they may truly rest in peace, so I really wasn’t bugging them much prior to this Lily Dale visit. That being said, we did have numerous visits during dreamtime over the years.

Before proceeding, to be honest – I wasn’t entirely sold on the whole mediumship thing at all. I had always been interested, or maybe fascinated is a better word for it. But having been raised catholic maybe was enough to keep me in a very cautious place about all of this.

And the whole “A word” thing. Early childhood experiences like the one I had can have a way of making you doubt pretty much everything!

Maybe this is why reading about their principles helped calm me down a bit:

Ok, so About the A Word…

There was a lot that happened that day at Lily Dale for me personally. That being said, there’s one aspect of the day that I really wanted to talk about in this post. It wasn’t the most important thing that happened. But it is one that stuck out to me long after. One of those “this thing is not like the others” type of things.

You see, when you work with a medium, you never really know who is going to come through… and it helps to have questions prepared. For me at least, if I don’t have things at least a little bit prepared, I can be really lost in the experience, in the energy of the moment.

For a variety of reasons, some of which I may get into in other posts, I had a very specific question in mind that I wanted to ask my parents especially – but was also happy to ask grandparents if they were popping in to chat. Or heck, I’d ask anyone on the other side, or this side if I thought they could provide answers or clues!

So what’s the question?

What the bleep happened to me when I was four years old? Or to get right to the point, was I abducted by aliens?

I am not saying that I was abducted by aliens. I get it. This whole topic is a crazy mine field. But something happened to me at that age. I have very clear memories, few of which really add up… (since this visit to Lily Dale, I have also undergone a few different hypnosis sessions… stories for a yet other different posts).

Going in, my line of thinking was that (a) my parents may have seen something themselves, or (b) they may have noticed something different about me at that time, or (c) I might have been blabbing about it – as kids at that age can just talk randomly about anything at all.

So I was very curious. Surely, now that they’re on the other side, they wouldn’t hesitate to share the truth with me! The Men in Black can’t get them there, right?

Heck, they might even be relieved I was asking, so as to give them permission to share the whole deal.

What Happened Next

I felt pretty good about my plan. Even recall feeling a bit optimistic I might get a clue or two about the mystery that had been bugging me for some time.

In one session, my mom had come through… it was actually a really beautiful experience. I didn’t want to disrupt things so waited patiently… towards the end, the medium asked me if I had any last questions…

YES! Why yes, yes I do. Thank you for asking… so hey mom, what’s the deal with what happened when I was 4? Was I abducted by aliens?

The medium was a pro. Didn’t seem even slightly put off. So much so, actually, that I found it a tad bit odd.

Then I remembered – she was recording this session for me to take with me after the session ended.

There was no direct answer from my mom about ALIENS. The medium really didn’t even address the question directly at all. She shared some really nice additional things from my mom, and that was about it.

There was so much to process here, I didn’t dwell on it too much in the moment. Besides, I had another session to get to!

One Step Up and Two Steps Back

The second session was equally moving and intense for me. I connected with a few people.. one of the people I heard from was my great grandmother on my mom’s side. If anyone other than my parents would have known, it was her.

“Great Grandma Ross”… can still picture her in her headquarters, the kitchen with the coffee percolator running 24×7 right along with the police scanner on top of her fridge. That woman knew everything that was happening in my home town, usually before it even happened, lol.

This session was not being recorded, so I even more curious what would come up.

I asked when the time felt right. Yet again, no answer was provided.

This time, however, the woman I was working with took me aside after the session to chat.

This is when I started to get to at least one layer in to what was going on. And only because I had found a kindred spirit…

She gently advised me to not go around asking about aliens.

WHAT? Here I am, literally surrounded by people who talk to spirits all day every day, and I can’t ask about aliens???

That’s correct. What I learned surprised me then, and has stuck with me ever since.

Apparently, there is a photo that still exists of an actual alien, of the glowing variety, sitting on a tree stump in the woods out in Fairy Village. And Lily Dale itself had in earlier years hosted speakers on the topic of alien visitation.

But apparently, there was significant conflict in the area with the locals that erupted and threatened the village (or I guess the Hamlet, according to wikipedia). She said something to the effect of “talking to spirits was pushing things far enough, the alien thing was just too much”.

Ever since that time, there’s apparently been an unspoken rule to just not go there.

The medium who was sharing this with me did so in a hushed voice, as if she might be overheard. Again, it’s hard to fully describe how surreal this experience truly was… after all, WHO could be listening to us as we sit here alone in this house???

I was grateful to her for this insight. And because she too shared a sincere and serious interest in this topic, she recommended other groups and resources I could connect with to learn more.

By the time I reached the third medium I would work with that day, I opted to only briefly comment on the topic – and shared that I had heard it was best to not focus on this area of questioning. The third medium quietly affirmed my choice in this matter.

As I write about this experience now, how could I not wonder what my mother or grandmother might have wanted to share, if this topic weren’t verboten? (Although I certainly have some ideas due to other work I have done over the years since.)

It’s Not Just Lily Dale

As I contemplated sharing this story, I began to connect the dots to other experiences where this topic has come up in a hushed way, only to be quickly set aside.

For example, I went to lunch with a teacher and a small group of students in Chicago once. This teacher was well known for a particular healing modality. At lunch, a student asked about a different method, which was shown to kill cancer cells.

Our teacher very abruptly said something along these lines: “yes, that method works. It kills cancer. But you must realize, not all techniques have human origins. Some come with a price. They are given to us by aliens… they work on the physical level, but do not heal at the soul level. So the cancer returns.”

It wasn’t the concept being shared here that surprised me. It was the very abrupt way he mentioned the A word! He literally shared that this healing modality was given to this other person by aliens. And when he said the A word, he sounded disgusted. What ELSE might this guy know? What’s the real story here?

I should add that I took a number of hours of classes with him… probably 6 full days in all, spread out over a number of months… and at no other time in class did he ever mention anything like this.

Why Share This Here and Now?

Are these merely stories of coincidence? How is any of this relevant to what I’m doing here with the High Mesa Mystic website and practice?

In many ways, it goes to the heart of why I felt inspired to embrace the whole Mystic thing in the first place. I’d like to stay as close to the truth as possible. Work with honesty and integrity. Call things what they are. Work transparently when and where possible.

There are so many boundaries setup in so many different areas of life. As a result, there’s a whole lotta of “gotta fit in” energy going on. And with it, a great deal of self-censorship.

I know I have struggled with this myself many times in the past.

But whether “aliens” are real or not, and regardless of what we believe – we seem to be headed for a time when we may have to deal with this topic in one way or another.

I have no intentions of making this site or my work be all about aliens.

At the same time, humans have interacted with non-human intelligence from the start, long before recorded history. Where we stand today, we have people of all walks of life from all areas of the planet who have experienced some form of interaction with non-human intelligence.

And yet, we cannot seem to talk openly and honestly about it? Not without risking ridicule or banishment (the old-timey form of being canceled)?

So I share these stories as a way to begin working against that current. To try to open things up a bit more. To also let the world know that this kind of self-censorship can creep in anyplace – even in a place where the residents talk to dead people all day every day, and a place that literally has a Fairy Village where people tell stories of interacting with Fairy Folk!

Last Word on Lily Dale (for now)

I very much enjoyed my visit to Lily Dale, and do not mean any disrespect or really even any criticism. The mediums I worked with all struck me as very skilled and genuine.

Maybe too there is much more to the story at Lily Dale. I’m sure there is. I also understand that I may have had a somewhat unique experience.

If you happen to know more, or have had differing (or similar) experiences with Lily Dale that you would like to share, please jump on over to the contact page to let me know!

Regardless, it’s a truly unique place to visit. I’d love to go back someday myself. Even if I have to leave my questions about aliens back home.