Do I believe in live after death?
Do I believe in communication with the dead?
That's a complicated question,
and I still am investigating.
(eerie music)
My name is Mira Ptacin, and I am the author of
"The In-Betweens, The Spiritualists, Mediums and Legends
"of Camp Etna."
I've always been interested in the topic of death
and mortality, because who isn't?
And what happens after we die.
While I was living in Maine, a dear friend of mine
suggested I check out this interesting camp
called Camp Etna that I knew nothing about,
and she said it's a camp for spiritualists.
So I looked up what spiritualism was on the internet,
I had no idea what it was,
and I learned that it was actually
a real, legitimate religion,
and that it was founded by women,
and it was a religion that still existed.
But the one thing that stood out about this religion
is that the practitioners all believe they have
the capability to communicate directly with the dead.
The people who practice spiritualism say it's been
around forever, but it was formally started in 1848
when these two young teenagers, two sisters,
Margaret and Kate Fox, they told their mother
that they could communicate with a dead person
who was living in the walls of their home.
They start showing how they can communicate
by asking a question, and then the ghost would
make a clicking sound, and they did this morse code thing.
The mother was shocked, she told the father,
the father told the neighbors, word started spreading,
and these two young girls, teenagers,
became very, very famous very, very quickly,
and then not long after the Fox sisters
made their debut, the Civil War happened,
and thousands and thousands and thousands of souls
died all at once, and the whole country was grieving,
and there was nothing set up for them
to really deal with these losses.
These two sisters became the poster children
for a new way of dealing with grief,
and so seances started popping up all around the country
just like they were brunches.
People just started diving into this practice,
and about maybe 30 years after the Fox sisters
made their debut, there were millions of followers
of spiritualism in the United States.
Some of the people who we find to be
the most well-respected names in American history
were practicing spiritualists,
Sojourner Truth was a spiritualist.
Abraham Lincoln and his wife, I know that there
were a lot of mediums that came to the White House.
Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who is known for
writing the Sherlock Holmes mysteries,
he was one of the most ardent practitioners of spiritualism
and he actually wrote the two volumes of the history
of spiritualism.
This thing is the not the foolish thing,
which is so often represented, but it really is
a great philosophy.
(suspenseful music)
At Camp Etna, you have to be a member
of the spiritualist church.
You don't have to be a medium, but you do have to be
an active member of the church there.
Mediums live at Camp Etna.
Mostly women, a few men, come
and they basically are just relaxing on their porches
and when people, visitors are welcome to drive in,
anyone is allowed to come to Camp Etna
with or without an appointment in the summertime,
and you can walk up to one of the cottages
and say, "Can you connect me with a lovd one?" or
"A loved one passed."
They have church services, they'll have guest speakers,
they have meditation services, they have seance services,
they call them message circles.
There's a big difference between a medium and a psychic.
A psychic is someone who apparently can tell you the future
and the past.
A medium is a psychic, but they can also communicate
with the dead.
There's a big difference between the two,
and from what I've been told, all mediums are psychics,
but not all psychics are medium,
And at the same time, not all mediums are spiritualists.
Spiritualism is the religion, so there may be
a medium who can see dead people walking around
in the street, but they are not necessarily part
of a spiritualist church.
You don't have to be a medium to be a spiritualist.
You can just attend the church, and not have any of those
other worldly abilities.
I spent five years with the people of Camp Etna
commuting back and forth from my home on a little island
in Maine to their little commune in Etna.
Basically, I participated in a lot of their activities
as their sidekick medium, even though I can't communicate
with the dead.
I think it's very safe to be a skeptic.
I was a skeptic going into this piece, into this book,
into this camp, saying I'm going to be very objective,
but I also really want to see a ghost.
And as it was the end of a few years
spending time with these women, and I was on my way out,
one of the mediums that I had gotten closest to,
Dr. Barbara Williams, said, "You're not leaving yet.
"I want you to go back into this church,
"and sit in on this class."
There were two other women in the class,
and the instructor is teaching us about
how to cleanse your aura after
you go to Walmart or something.
All of a sudden, one of the women in the class
starts breathing really quickly,
and she looks very, very frightened,
and she starts pointing towards the door.
And she's going like this, and she says,
"I know I'm not crazy.
"I'm sorry to interrupt, but does anybody see that man
"standing in the corner over there?"
And I look around, and I don't see anybody,
and the other woman in the class looks around,
she doesn't see anybody.
But the instructor says, "It's okay.
"I see him too, and he's not gonna hurt you."
She said, "Do you know somebody named Phil,
"cause he's touching your shoulder?"
and it turns out my father's name is Phil.
But my father is still living, and she said,
"He's your father's uncle.
"He's who your father's named after."
And she started giving me this message really quickly,
and she really didn't want to because she was terrified,
and this is one of the first times this had ever happened
to her, and so I sat there and watched the teacher
coach this student on how to process and deliver a message
from a dead person, even when she didn't want to.
And it was so specific and so accurate,
and she gave me information that no one knew
with specific dates and specific names and things that
my family members didn't even know
until we looked it up in some records.
Also to witness her freaking out was just incredible,
and that's when I left the camp, and I was like,
"I am a believer, I am a believer."
It was absolutely bonkers.
The mediums that I've worked with
and the mediums that I've written about,
they tell me if we are 80% correct,
that means we're really, really, really good.
And if you come to me, and I can't give you a message,
I'll give you your money back.
They're not in it for the money,
but you do have to find the right medium,
just like you want to find a professional doctor.
Even the mediums I've studied with and spoke with
tell me that they themselves are skeptical
of what they're doing.
Sometimes they question their own sanity,
but they just let go and let it come through
and to witness this communication with a medium
and a person who's grieving is really astounding.
And even to have them have given messages to me
in the past was really astounding too.
Now people ask me, "Are you a skeptic after doing
"all this work with mediums?"
And I'm not after spending so much time with me.
I've seen them in action, and they've given me
various subjective messages from loved ones
who've passed, and there's no way they could've been
making it up.
There's no way they could've googled it either.
It's been really incredible.
I spent years around a community of spiritualists,
and coming out of this, they really unintentionally
taught me what I believed me and what my faith was
and how to have faith in myself.
(jaunty music)