Reviewed by Josh N · Updated October 5, 2026 · How we verify
Reported Phenomena
- Spirit called Arthur
- Furniture moved overnight
- Devil's Chair legend
- Apparitions in cemetery
- Strange sensations reported
- Mediumship and seances
Reported by visitors & local legend. Stories, not verified claims.
Spiritualism arrived in central Florida on the instructions of a spirit, at least according to the man who followed them. The Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp sits in Volusia County, Florida, an unincorporated cluster of wooden cottages, a temple and a hotel that has been working the same trade for well over a century. Both inside and outside the camp’s property lines, the community is full of mediums and psychics, which is how it came by its unofficial title: the Psychic Capital of the World.
Quick Facts on the Psychic Capital of the World
- Where: Cassadaga, an unincorporated community in Volusia County, Florida
- Founder: George P. Colby of Pike, New York, a trance medium known in his traveling days as the “seer of spiritualism”
- Chartered: December 18, 1894, as the Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association
- Size: thirty-five acres deeded in 1895, now fifty-seven acres
- Status: declared a U.S. Historic District on March 14, 1991; operates as a federal tax-exempt church governed by a board of trustees
George P. Colby and the Spirit Guide Called Seneca
Colby came from Pike, New York, and made his living the way a successful nineteenth century medium did: on the road, giving readings and seances in state after state. He attended the summer Spiritualist camp meetings at Lily Dale, New York, the town adjacent to Cassadaga, New York, and it is that northern Cassadaga that lent its name to the Florida settlement.
Colby said he worked with several spirit guides who passed him knowledge. The one who matters to this story is a Native American guide named Seneca, who Colby said manifested during a seance in Lake Mills, Iowa, and told him to travel south to Florida. Colby reported that he eventually arrived at Blue Springs Landing, near Orange City, and recognized the landscape as the one he had been shown during the Iowa seance.
That recognition is the founding legend of the place, and it should be read as exactly that. It is Colby’s own account of his own experience, repeated ever since by the community he started. What is documented is that Colby arrived in Florida in 1875, the year the camp is generally dated from.
December 18, 1894: The Charter and the Thirty-Five Acres
The spiritual story and the paperwork converge two decades later. On December 18, 1894, a charter was granted to form the Southern Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association. On January 3, 1895, Colby signed a warranty deed turning thirty-five acres over to the association. Camp accounts also name E. W. Bond and Marion Skidmore among the figures involved in establishing the community in these years.
The early residents were not drifters. The people who came to the camp in its first years were affluent and well educated, which helps explain the neat grid of cottages rather than a tent meeting ground that packed up each autumn. More acreage followed, bringing the camp to its present fifty-seven acres.
Cassadaga’s name is usually explained as a Seneca word meaning rocks beneath the water, a translation repeated throughout the community’s literature and tied back to its New York namesake.
What Stands in the Camp Today
The camp is a working religious community rather than an attraction built to look like one. Within its bounds you will find the Cassadaga Hotel, a central auditorium, the Colby Memorial Temple, a community library, the Caesar Forman Healing Center, a camp bookstore, a welcome center, and the Andrew Jackson Davis Educational building, which is used for musical performances and gatherings. Colby-Alderman Park sits nearby.
Spiritualism as taught here is defined by the camp as “science, philosophy, and religion based upon the principle of continuous life,” and residents are explicit that the faith “has no dogma or creed, just a simple set of nine principles to help guide our lives.” The belief that consciousness survives death, and can be communicated with, is the whole foundation of the place. That is worth understanding before you arrive: in Cassadaga, contact with the dead is not a ghost story, it is the stated purpose of the institution.
Arthur at the Cassadaga Hotel and the Devil’s Chair
The best known reported haunting attached to Cassadaga belongs to the Cassadaga Hotel. Guests and staff have described a presence called Arthur, said to move furniture around and to be glimpsed near windows. These are anecdotal accounts passed between visitors and employees, not documented events, and no record identifies who Arthur is supposed to have been.
The other fixture of local legend is the Devil’s Chair, a brick bench in the cemetery near the community. Stories say spirits are drawn to it and that people who sit there come away with strange sensations, and a long running local tradition holds that a can of beer left on the seat overnight will be found opened and emptied by morning. Nothing about the bench is unusual on paper. It is a cemetery seat, and cemetery seats are common in Florida burial grounds of the period. Its reputation is folklore layered onto a plain object over many decades, and visitors should treat it that way.
More broadly, people describe Cassadaga as a place where the boundary between the living and the dead feels thin. That impression is inseparable from the setting. You are walking through a village whose residents openly practice mediumship, in deep shade under live oaks, surrounded by signs advertising readings. Expectation does a great deal of work here, which is not an argument that nothing happens, only a reason to hold your own experiences loosely.
Walking Cassadaga Without Causing Offense
Cassadaga is open to the public, and the welcome center and bookstore are the sensible first stops for anyone unsure where the camp’s property begins and ends. Readings are offered by certified mediums within the camp and by independent psychics in the surrounding community, and the distinction matters to residents, so ask if it matters to you.
Remember that most of what you are looking at is private housing. The cottages are homes, the temple is an active place of worship, and services and classes run on a schedule rather than for the benefit of passing tourists. Check current hours and event listings before you drive out, keep out of yards and off porches, and be quiet in the cemetery. The camp has survived since 1875 partly because it has stayed a community rather than a theme park, and the welcome you get depends on treating it as one.
One footnote for the curious: the 2007 Bright Eyes album named Cassadaga, which carries spiritual themes throughout, takes its title from this place.
See Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp for Yourself
Sources
- Inside Cassadaga, the Psychic Capital of the World
- Bright Eyes: Cassadaga
- Loc (official)
- Yale (official site)
- Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp | Psychic Readings & Mediums
- Wikipedia: Cassadaga, Florida
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp located?
Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp is located at 1112 Stevens St, Cassadaga, FL 32706.
Can you visit Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp?
Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp is open to the public. Always follow posted rules and respect private property.
Reader sightings
Nobody has reported anything here yet. If you have been, you would be the first.
Report your own visit to Seneca Sent Him South: The Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp
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