Greetings from C. Green’s Haunted History Museum!

Cassadaga, Florida, marks the second spiritualist community I’ve been to, Traveler. The first was Lily Dale, New York, which, to my knowledge, is the original spiritual community. Ironically, Lily Dale sits nestled on Lake Cassadaga in New York.

It was a two-hour, one-hundred-mile drive from South Orlando towards St. Augustine, Florida, in the middle of February. Back home, it was snowing, but I’m just glad I had scheduled my reprieve, albeit inadvertently, around the snow. I chose Orlando because it was inexpensive to fly to, warm, and a stone’s throw from St. Augustine, which consistently features in Travel and Leisure magazine as one of the most haunted cities in the United States. 

While I had been to Florida before in my youth, I’d never toured St. Augustine. Moreover, I had never climbed the St. Augustine lighthouse.

Once I’d picked up my car in Orlando, I had a lovely drive north with a few stops along the way. A friend had told me about the town of Cassadaga, which I had somehow missed in my studies. Intriguingly, I had missed the haunted museum inside Cassadaga.

Well, never let me miss the chance to check out a haunted museum, especially one with an affordable $10 admission fee.

And with a friend of mine, off we went.

My initial thoughts on the museum, which lies within a single-story structure and resembles a roadside oddities market, were positive. They only increased as we wandered through. The museum is a chambered, maze-like structure consisting of boo scares as well as exhibits with captions underneath. There are boo scares from time to time, and mercifully, there’s a restroom in the middle of the maze! It’s easy to find.

The museum covers the paranormal in sections. 

We start with a rough outline regarding Native Americans and spirituality and move through a rough history of American spirituality. The museum covers the Fox Sisters, Lily Dale, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Soon, we move into ghost hunting, including the show Ghost Hunters.

I started falling in love with the museum when I spied a copy of my favorite book, one that I’ve had since I was 15 years old.

The C. Green Museum impressed me to the point that my friend was surprised at how excited I was to be there. I didn’t just find a copy of The National Directory of Haunted Places inside. They had a copy of H. H. Holmes’ Holmes: A Serial Killer in His Own Words, specifically the edition with a foreword by my personal friend and Weird Pennsylvania editor, Matt Lake.

Matt was pleasantly surprised that a book about Holmes with his forward made it to Cassadaga.

I won’t go much further into detail from here, Traveler. There is a point where you should experience the museum for yourself, but I hope I piqued your interest enough to motivate you on your journey.

The gift shop alone was worth the trip. There were haunted dolls all over the museum, many of which pointed out paranormal hotspots within the museum, and some of the dolls had captions with bizarre histories regarding said dolls. The interesting thing to me was that some haunted dolls were available for purchase at the gift shop, with a starting price of $25! I notified a friend who runs an oddities shop if he ever needed anything.

One last question has to be on your mind, Traveler. Is it haunted?

As always, I can neither confirm nor deny.

However, many of the motion sensor objects did go off at random intervals, so take that as you will.

Until again,

Safe Travels.

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THE EXIT 13

This Spooky Traveler’s column focuses on haunted locations around the New England area. Victor S. Johnson is an adventurer, tour guide, and published author. His dedicated hobby is traveling through the United States (and soon after, the world), checking out old, reported hauntings and sharing his findings with his audience over on his YouTube channel, Destination Spooky.