With a population of some 275 residents - many of whom are practicing mediums - it looks like a town frozen in the mid-19th century. The town was founded as a gated spiritualist summer retreat in 1879, and not much has changed since then. In 2001, at age 26, she decided to visit Lily Dale despite knowing nothing about the place except that it was a short drive from Buffalo, where she grew up, and the medium who revealed her grandfather’s secret had lived there. This story stayed with Taggart over the years, and she became consumed with “how a total stranger could have known the details of this tragedy.” “Someone at the hospital put food into his mouth and left him alone,” her father had said, “and he choked.” She laughed off the story, until her parents confirmed it. Years earlier, her cousin had learned from a medium that their grandfather hadn’t died from heart disease - as Taggart had always believed - but by asphyxiation. When she first traveled to Lily Dale, it was out of curiosity. Rather, she says, she was driven by “a sinking feeling that these mediums knew something about life that I didn’t.” Taggart didn’t set out to prove or disprove spiritualism. Medium Annette Rodgers leads a séance, allegedly with the help of her deceased daughter, Lauren. More than 150 of her photographs, many never before seen, are published in her new book “ Séance” (Fulgur Press). That encounter was just the beginning of a spiritual awakening for Taggart, who would spend the next 18 years documenting mediums in New York as well as Essex, England, and Antequera, Spain. “My great aunt Margaret lived in Texas and she’d died a few months earlier,” Taggart says. “She says ‘Texas.’ What does ‘Texas’ mean?” “Margaret? I don’t know any Margaret,” Taggart insisted.Ĭlark closed her eyes and listened. She composed herself and returned to the reading and then just as quickly turned back to Taggart. “I told him not to interrupt me while I’m working,” Clark explained to her client and then turned to an empty spot and yelled, “Chapman, we’ve talked about this!” “Apparently the spirit of her brother was in the room and told her a joke.” “All of a sudden, she started laughing at nothing,” Taggart tells The Post. The Brooklyn photojournalist was taken by surprise while watching a private reading with Gretchen Clark, a fifth-generation medium. But that changed in 2001, during one of her first visits to Lily Dale - a hamlet in southwestern New York state that’s home to the world’s largest spiritualist community. Shannon Taggart was never a big believer in ghosts. Here's what you watched this season: the top network TV shows The terrifying reason I let my 2-year-old daughter sleep in my bed 'Ghost hand' captured in photo sparks debate: 'Call an exorcist' MLB player worried about ghosts in allegedly haunted hotel
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |