Lily Dale, a small town in upstate New York—ostensibly frozen in time, with its pretty Victorian buildings, bucolic surroundings, and air of sleepy gentility—was established in 1879 as a sanctuary for practitioners of Spiritualism. This religious movement (which had connections to several reformist and progressive causes of the nineteenth century, including women’s suffrage and abolitionism) posits that the veil separating the living from the deceased is porous, and can be breached by those blessed with special gifts. The burg, which is also home to the National Spiritualist Association of