- More than 50 people who call themselves psychic mediums live in the small community of Lily Dale, New York.
- The community was founded in 1879 by members of the Spiritualist movement.
- Americans are drifting away from organized religion and embracing spiritual trends – and big businesses are taking note.
- Business Insider Weekly, Business Insider’s new weekly show on Facebook Watch, visited Lily Dale to speak with mediums who are seeing more demand than ever.
- View more episodes of Business Insider Weeekly on Facebook.
The tiny hamlet of Lily Dale, New York, has taken spirituality to the next level.
The community of roughly 275 is packed with people who call themselves mediums, claiming to channel the spirits of the dead. In Lily Dale, more than 50 of its year-round residents are mediums.
The community was founded in 1879 by members of the 19th-century Spiritualist movement, which holds that the spirits of the dead have the ability to communicate with living human beings. Those who spent time in Lily Dale included women’s rights leaders such as Susan Anthony and Margaret Sanger.
Today, Spiritualism has become big business, as Americans increasingly turn away from organized religion in favor of other spiritual trends. The movement is getting a boost from Goop, the health and wellness company founded by Gwyneth Paltrow, and the increased attention is putting Lily Dale back under the spotlight.
"I never thought I would see the day where I would turn on the television and somebody out of Hollywood would be talking about carrying around crystals, or going to a meditation retreat," Celeste Elliott, a registered medium from Lily Dale, told Business Insider Today. "That's a big part of who we are now."
People who offer psychic services are projected to earn a total of $2.3 billion by 2023, and spiritual mediums will account for almost 20% of that, according to the market research firm IBISWorld.
"At one time Lily Dale was pretty unique because this type of thing was seen as not a normal thing to do. It's everywhere now." Lynne Forget, another Lily Dale medium, told Business Insider Weekly.
Forget said she's noticed an uptick in young people seeking out mediums recently, and men in particular - "and not necessarily dragged by their girlfriends or their wives," she said.
"They're coming willingly, and they really believe in it, as well."
Shannon Taggart, who documented Spiritualism in her book "Séance," says as much as a third of the US population in the 19th century were Spiritualists. And it was more than just a trend - the movement wielded political influence and boasted influential adherents like first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, suffragette Victoria Woodhull, Carl Jung, and Thomas Edison.
However, mediums have always had their fair share of detractors, and skepticism is sure to increase as the practice finds its way back into the mainstream. It's something that Elise Loehnen, the chief content officer at Goop, isn't concerned by.
'It's one of those experiences where, for people who believe in this, it's so moving and powerful, but then all the skeptics are like, 'I don't get it,'" she told Business Insider Today.
"You can't judge a reading unless it's your own."