 On October 20, 1950, Thomas Earl Petty was born in Gainesville, Florida. In 1976, he formed the band Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Shortly after, while on a plane, Tom Petty read an article about a Florida spiritualist camp a hundred three miles southeast of his hometown. Although he had never been to this camp, he would go on to immortalize it forever in his song, Casadega. In 1978, Petty would first introduce this song to a live audience by saying, This is a town in Florida that has 35 acres of weird people. Before his death in 2017, Tom Petty had sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the top selling recording artists of all time. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. As always, a very, very special thank you to all of our producers and our patrons here on Esoteric Atlanta. If you would like to join our Patreon or our producer community, there is a link down in the description box below. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta and today on this deep dive, we're going to be talking about Casadega, Florida. Today, Casadega is an unincorporated community in Volusia County, Florida. It is also considered today to be the psychic capital of the world. It lies on the eastern coast of the Florida Peninsula, just 110 miles south of Jacksonville and about 35 miles northeast of Orlando. Today, Casadega holds the Casadega Hotel, a central auditorium, the Colby Memorial Temple, a library, a healing center, a bookstore, an educational building, and a wellness center. It also contains a fairy garden that seems very spectacular to me and very much reminds me of our very own doll's head trail here in Atlanta. On March 14, 1991, Casadega, Florida was officially declared an historic landmark and an historic district. At present, the community is officially owned by a specific association of spiritualists. In order to actually live in the vortex, and I do mean vortex because allegedly there is a particular, very significant vortex in Casadega, Florida, the same as the likes of Stonehenge, you have to actually be a licensed and certified psychic medium to be able to claim residency in this town. In order to be certified as a psychic medium, this takes about four years of training and internships and you have to be tested by the board of spiritualists and psychic mediums. But how did this little sleepy town come to be the psychic center of the world? Of course, when I found out about Casadega, Florida, I had to do my own deep dive to get the answer to my own little mystery. But before we get into the mystery itself and my deep dive, just a brief little word from our sponsors. My uncle Dan used to talk about QTR. QTR meant for him quality time remaining. My uncle Dan was a very active cyclist and a very avid hiker. 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So if this product doesn't work for you or isn't what you expected after the first 30 days, they will refund you. Alright, back to our show. As you guys know, I am kind of a magnet for spirits and ghosts. There's no mystery as to why I wanted to look at the mystery of Casadaga because I myself, for better or for worse, whether I like it or not, always attract paranormal phenomenon. What can I say? I'm very, very popular with the dead folk. Now again, I've been very honest on my channel about my struggles with this gift, curse, whatever you want to call it. But I will say another added benefit to Asiya is that it's actually really helped me with grounding myself in order to put up boundaries when it comes to the spiritual world. Now, yes, Asiya is a redox system that typically helps the body rebuild itself with cellular signaling and communication. But this is just something I've noticed for me. The more my body, the healthier my body is, the more grounded I am within my body, the better off my boundaries are. Casadaga, Florida was founded by a man named George Colby. In one of the lectures that I listened to involving the history of George Colby and Casadaga, the presenter made the joke that George Colby was probably one of the first snowbirds in recorded history. If you're not from the United States or you are not from the southeast, you probably don't know what a snowbird is. A snowbird is the slang word, a slang phrase down here in the southeast that refers to somebody from the north who comes to the south to escape the hard winters. Florida is notorious to magnet for snowbirds. And with these spiritualist camps, especially the one in Lillydale, New York, which we will briefly speak about, they typically had to have seasons. Of course, if you're up in the New England area or Canada or any type of cold climate in the 1800s, you're probably not going to want to go stay at a spiritualist camp in the dead of winter. So a lot of these spiritualist camps would be open when the weather was appropriate for people to come partake in the festivities at the camps. So as Lillydale, New York would most likely be open in the summertime, a spiritualist camp in Florida and Casadaga therefore was open in the wintertime. Therefore, George Colby definitely was probably the first snowbird in our recorded history. George Colby was born on the 6th of January in 1848 in Pike, New York. Colby was born to a very, very religious and devout Baptist family. Now, if we step back a little bit and look at what was happening in the 19th century in general, we see a lot of chaos, a lot of bluster, a lot of confusion when it comes to religion. We see tent revivals happening everywhere. We see the forming of the Mormon Church happening. There was a lot going on, including the development of spiritualism, which we will get into. George was the middle of five children. He had two sisters and two brothers. According to the history books, his sisters did die young before the age of 10, which is very, very sad, but unfortunately was more common in that day to have to lose a child. At the age of eight years old, George and his family moved to Minnesota. And this became the catalyst of George's evolution of a person. This would be what would kind of turn George into the George Colby that he became. You see, in the Baptist faith, they baptized by dunking. I grew up Presbyterian. We baptized by having a little water sprinkled on our head as young babies. And there's different reasons why different churches decide to baptize at different ages and in different means. The reasoning why some churches like the Presbyterian Church baptize right away, it's because historically a lot of babies did not live very long. They died early. And so parents over the course of time would frantically want to get their kids baptized just in case their life was cut short. Now, in our modern times, it's not really something we have to worry about, but still that tradition has continued. In the Baptist faith, they believe that a person needs to be able to consent and want to get baptized. And they also believe in full dunking, just like the way John the Baptist allegedly baptized Jesus by dunking him into the river. That's kind of like along the lines of what the Baptist still do to this day. Most Baptist Church in our modern times have kind of like a pool behind the pulpit for those who weren't raised Christian. And they open up and dunk people in. I've been to a few Baptists baptism. It is a full body immersion of water. Well, obviously in the mid 19th century, they didn't have the modern technology of a heated pool like we do in 2023. And so George Colby, now some of the records say he was eight years old, so immediately after the family moved to Minnesota. Some records say 12 years old, so four years after the family had moved to Minnesota. Regardless in that time phrase of young childhood, George Colby made the decision to be baptized. And of course, again, as I said, his family was Baptist. So that meant that George Colby was going to be fully submerged and dunked into water for his baptism. Now, if anybody is from Minnesota, Minnesota, or has been up that way, it's very cold in the wintertime. Minnesota is known to be very, very cold state, lots of snow, lots of freeze. And so the story goes that the day that George Colby was baptized, he was baptized in a river that was extremely cold, almost too cold. This means that George was almost killed by his own baptism. They say that he had, was severely injured, I guess, by the cold and definitely had hypothermia and it literally almost killed him. Now, personally, I don't know if that part of the story was added on over time to kind of exaggerate the folklore around George Colby or if it's true or not. Because as you guys know, I'm a huge fan of ice baths and cold showers and cryotherapy. And when someone is baptized, they're literally dunked in and then taken right back out again. And people can sit in an ice bath for up to 10 minutes before they're taken out. If you do cryotherapy, you're taken out at like three minutes. And this is very cold. So again, I don't know if this story is necessarily true or an embellishment of true events. He might have been baptized at this age, but maybe didn't have some near-death experience, although he could have, I don't know. But I just wanted to clarify, I'm not sure if that part of the story is actually, I have my suspicions that might be an embellishment, but whatever. Regardless of the fact, coming to Minnesota with his Baptist family, getting baptized, this is when stuff started shifting for George Colby. Because around this time, some of George Colby's deceased relatives started talking to him. Now I can understand why people would want to say, oh, there must have been a near-death experience to cause this, but that's not necessarily true. Some people are just born with their abilities and as they get into adolescence, they start to understand that they even have abilities. A young child might see grandpa standing in the corner playing with him and not realize that their mother or their father don't actually see grandpa standing there. Young children don't really understand death. And so there is a possibility from my perspective that George Colby was born with these abilities and that they just enhanced when he became an adolescence. And they enhanced because all of a sudden he started to understand that he was seeing things that other people are not. I hope that makes sense, but regardless, around the age of 12, George Colby started communicating with past loved ones. Now of course, mediumship is probably not the career that good old farm and Baptist parents want for their son. However, it goes, the story goes that George's deceased loved ones he started communicating with did tell George that his destiny was to be a healer and was to be a psychic. So as the story goes from the age of 12 to 19, George started to work on his abilities and secrets really honing in his ability to understand the spiritual world and see beyond the veil. And for those that might be skeptical of this or for those who are new to communicating with with loved ones or any type of entity on the other side of the veil, it does take practice. It does take training. And so the fact that he was able to kind of do this on his own is pretty miraculous in my humble opinion because it is kind of scary. Even though I attract ghosts and I laugh about it, it's not it's not the most convenient thing in the world. And it does take a lot to learn how to like put your boundaries up and understand what it is you're being told. But his training obviously worked because by the age of 19, George Colby was a bit of a local celebrity. He was booking people out left, right and center, people wanting to come to him for help. He was what we call a trance medium. So basically what a trance medium is and I'm quoting from the Arthur Finley College. A trance mediumship occurs when through the induction of altered states of consciousness, we allow the spirit world to capture our attention or even place a hold on our minds enabling a closer binding with the spirit world. So basically George would go into a bit of a trance. A bit sounds a bit like our old friend Edgar Casey, who was also kind of working around this time period. You go into a trance and he would use his spirit guides. We all have guides, all of us. We all got guides. So he would use his spirit guides to kind of communicate with other people's spirit guides so that he could speak the information that he was being told. So basically George was like a conduit for the every every day average human to be able to get information from their their team as we call it today. And again, he became very popular. He was making a lot of money. He was selling out. So obviously, you know, if you're a shitty medium, you're not going to have a good business, right? People are going to, words going to spread that you don't know what you're talking about. But obviously kind of knew what he was doing because he was generating a lot of traction. And so at the age of 19 around this time, he decided to officially leave the Baptist faith, the Baptist church and join the spiritualist movement. So in 1867, George Colby is officially now part of the spiritualist movement and religion. So what actually is the spiritualist religion? Spiritualism was a social religious movement in the 19th century, according to which an individual's awareness persists after death and may be contacted by the living. So as I said in the beginning, around this time period in the 19th century, historically, there was just a lot happening when it came to people's religious beliefs. We had a lot of tent revivals going on. We had the forming of the Mormon church. There was a lot of, you know, we're coming up to the industrial revolution. So people's anytime there's like a huge shift in consciousness, people are probably most likely going to start to question their own mortality. Who are we really as people? And it's weird to me to think about spiritualism as being an actual religion because I feel like most people feel like what's kind of happened in our lifetime is that we've kind of come full circle back. I think most people, regardless of the religion that they were born into, do believe that the soul is an eternal thing and that life exists after death. I don't even think you have to be religious to believe that. After all, from a scientific perspective, energy cannot be creative nor destroyed. It can only be transmuted. So something's going to happen to that energy in the body after death. This is also very, very, very much part of the Eastern teachings, the Vedic texts, the Yoga Sutras, as we've spoken about many times on this channel. And it's interesting now, I feel like in our modern eyes, you can be like a Christian and also be a spiritualist or Jewish and a spiritualist. I feel like we are a little bit more, there's more blurred lines, I guess, within our own modern day culture where we don't see things as being mutually exclusive. But of course, if you think about the spiritualist movement of the 19th century, you've got Blavonsky, you've got the Fox sisters, you've got the massive cultural acceptance of things like seances. People were really, really digging this stuff. And of course, if you've been on this channel for a while, you will know we've spoken a lot about the Hesse Act. And so we're looking at the build-up of what was happening in the 19th century. Almost every human being was touched by this spiritualism. People started to understand astrology again, divination against seances. And it was in the Hesse Act in World War II in the mid 20th century, or early 20th century, where Hitler and the Catholic Church decided to create a propaganda piece making divination of the devil so that we would lose all that education, all that knowledge of being able to communicate with beings that are not within our own physical reality. Now I do want to give a disclaimer here as I've done many times on my show, but if you're new here, I just want to give a huge disclaimer. Being a spiritual person versus the spiritualism religion, if you are a spiritual person working on your own spirituality, that actually has nothing to do with talking to guides or ghosts or spirits or dead people or whatever. That's just communication. To be a spiritual person, that means you're working on your own spirit. But in order to be a spiritual person, you have to actually believe in the dogma of spiritualism, which is that you have a soul and your soul is eternal. We're all eternal beings, right? I hope that makes sense. So as I said, George is now officially a spiritualist. He's already got a reputation for being a good, very good spiritualist, very talented spiritualist. So he's traveling around in a horse and carriages to all these towns in the Midwest and all up and over the country, seeing people, treating people. This is how he is making his living. In 1875, at the age of 27, while Colby was in Iowa, he received a new guide by the name of Seneca. Seneca apparently was a Native American guide, and he would go on to become George's main guide and the leading force behind the Casa Daga Florida spiritualist camp. Now, I do want to point out that this was the age 27. And if you know, that's when you get your first Saturn return is at the around the age 27 to 30. So around the age 27 to 30, if you think back at your life around that age for me, I moved from Los Angeles back to Atlanta. There's usually a lot of really crazy things that start happening to people at their Saturn returns. It's like, you know, Saturn is the planet of Father Time. It's the planet of Karma. And so it's really like kind of a transition for a lot of people is that Saturn return. There's a lot of up people and people's lives. So I thought it was interesting when I did the math that Seneca popped up around Colby's Saturn return. Seneca informed George that he needed to travel to Wisconsin to pick up another medium by the name of TD Giddings. Together, they were instructed to travel by rail to the end of the line in Florida, which was Jacksonville at that time. After that, they were instructed to search out a plot of land by foot that matched the land Seneca described. Seneca told Colby that he would recognize this land because there would be seven small hills around some bodies of water like lakes. Now, I saw some conversations in my research where people who were not from America or were not from the Southeast were very confused by Florida having hills. I understand how that would be confusing for people because I think when we think of Florida, we really see pictures of like South Florida, which is very flat. That's palm trees. But North Florida around Jacksonville around this area is still very much part of the fall off of Appalachia. And so you do have a lot of hills, a lot of pine trees, even though it's very hot and there's a beach there. It's kind of like got some of that Georgia deep wood feel to it. Once they found the appropriate land, they were instructed to create a camp there for spiritualists who all come together and work together. In 1880, Colby files for the Homestead Grant that would become Casadaga. In 1884, four years later, the grant is approved with about 75 acres of land. And then in 1893, the official National Spiritualist Association of Churches is formed. In the same year of 1893, George Colby would travel up to experience the first kind of convention that they would have after being officially formed as a religion. And there he would meet a lot of movers and shakers, people with some money that are going to help him really, really bring Casadaga, Florida together to help him build up the camp. And a year later in 1894, Casadaga was officially, officially ready to go. Casadaga at this point would become the second most populated spiritual camp in the United States, second only to Lillydale, which again was up in New York. And Lillydale itself had a lake called Casadaga. So there is some whisperings that maybe George got the name from the lake, but there's also another explanation as to why or where he got the name Casadaga. Casadaga also means the rocks beneath the water. And it was this particular water at this particular lake that cured Colby of tuberculosis. Because you see, during this time, Colby ended up getting very sick. Tuberculosis was a terrible, terrible sickness that I think most of us are familiar with because it did kill a lot of people. At this point, when he got sick, Colby was once again traveling around being a medium, trying to build up excitement, anticipation about this new spiritualist camp. And it was Seneca that told Colby that in order to heal his tuberculosis, he needed to go back down to the homestead in Florida and drink from this particular lake. He also needed to inhale the pine needle smoke of burning pine needles. Again, this was, this is found in North Florida, not necessarily South Florida, but these pine trees are found in this area. Which pine needles are also a cure nowadays for these things. Interesting, right? Thought it was kind of interesting myself. And we also know in this area around the Jacksonville area, Casadaga area, that there's a lot of folklore around Ponce de Leon and his fountain of youth, the water. There's also many, many healing fountains, which I do, I've been to some of them and I do plan on covering a lot of the healing fountains that are in this area as well. Well, I've been to them, they're actual fountains, so the mystery isn't if they're there or not, they are there, I've been in them. It's just whether they actually have healing properties or not. So all these folklores around Ponce de Leon and the fountain of youth and all that kind of stuff, it's all kind of, you know, everything's adding up. Like there's something here, right? Obviously, that's why I love folklore so much. Folklore doesn't come from nothing. Darkness can't create anything, only the light can create. So where is the truth in this folklore? Is there something very special about the waters and the springs of this area? I think so, because as you guys know, you've been on this channel for a while. I believe that this area is actually the real Egypt. If you haven't been on this channel for a while and you're just now watching this, that might be shocking to hear me say, but stick around for a while. Hit that subscribe button and you over time will probably see a lot of those videos, videos pop up where I talk about this actually being the real Egypt. And as I said in the beginning, allegedly, there's a vortex in this town, the likes of Stonehenge. They still talk about that even in 2023. So there's obviously something very magical about this place. George Colby never married. He stayed single for the rest of his life, but he did adopt a lot of children, seven to be exact, six boys and one girl. When Colby passed away, he was buried in a nearby cemetery that has its own folklore and mystery and magic to it, which we will be covering on Monday mystery. But nonetheless, after his passing, the community of Cassadiga has continued to be in existence. It is a very sleepy small town and it is technically open during the winter time. Although in the state of Florida, you can pretty much go anytime and find a licensed psychic medium there. Just so you guys know me and a couple other people on YouTube are planning a trip down there as soon as we can when it's open and booming. So we can get tours and interviews for you guys to actually see this with your own two eyes. So with that being said, please let me know down in the comment section below. If you have ever been to Cassadiga, Florida or Lillydale or any of these other spiritualist camps, please let me know your thoughts and your opinions. And of course always be nice to each other and be looking out for our Monday mystery where we talk about the cemetery where George Colby was buried and the folklore and mystery surrounding that particular burial plot. Alright you guys, have a wonderful day.