Florida’s Lake Helen - Cassadaga Cemetery

There is a historical cemetery that boarders the town of Lake Helen and the unincorporated community Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp in Florida.

Some of the monuments date back to the 1800's. George Colby, the "Founder of Camp Cassadaga" (June 6,1848 - July 1933), was buried at this cemetery.

Located within this cemetery is a big, brick chair or bench, which is now known in local legend as the "Devil's Chair." In contemporary legends, several USA states have funerary structures or memorial sculptures in lonely spots, which have gained this ominous nickname. These figures are either symbolic or functional chairs or benches.

Nineteenth century cemeteries often had this type of carved stone bench or chair available for visitors to sit on. The nearby presence of Cassadaga apparently has affected the legends surrounding this particular "Devil's Chair" in Florida.

Though there are several legends attached to this bench or chair, there is nothing uncanny about sitting on the chair in daylight. In fact, the bench or chair was most certainly constructed as place for mourners to sit and rest.

The stories surrounding this chair or bench can be broken into five different legends.

Legend #1: Louis Gates stated that an early story explained that sometime in the 1920's an elderly widower with arthritis had this chair or bench built so that he could rest his aching joints when he visited his late wife's grave. Gates told Weird US, "He needed something to sit on, so he built that big, brick chair so he could rest beside his wife’s grave." Gates is a local folklorist and historian, as well as a medium. The story may well be true, but Gates does not provide the widower's name.

Legend #2: The most commonly repeated legend recounts that somebody, at sometime prior to sundown, left an unopened can of beer on the chair for the gatekeeper of the spirit world. The unnamed somebody then returned the next day--only to discover the beer can still sitting on the chair--EMPTY. According to the story, whenever a beer is left on the chair it is always gone the next day. A video post on the Weird US website shows a beer bottle, not a can, sitting on the chair. Of course, the Weird US also noted there are three different chairs/benches in the cemetery and it is not certain which of them is THE "chair" of legend.

One can only wonder if a bottle of beer would work as well as a can.

Legend #3: Allegedly, should any individual be sitting on the chair exactly at midnight, the spirit "El Diablo" himself, would speak/communicate with that individual. It is this legend that explains the diabolical name attached to the rather ordinary-looking brick chair or bench.

Legend #4: A variant claims that sitting on the chair at midnight will allow the sitter to hear the voices of the dead. If the person stands up the voices quickly fade into the silence of night.

Incidentally, Halloween night is not a good night to test any of these legends. On October 31, guards are posted to protect this historic site from destructive pranksters and vandals. The idle curiosity seeker is not welcome at this time of year either. Thus, since the mid 1980's, Cassadaga has taken these steps to keep people away from mucking around unsupervised in the cemetery--especially around the Halloween.

According to Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman's book, Weird U.S.: Your Travel Guide to America's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets, 2009: "Local police deign that the chair has any supernatural powers. The following is from the Daytona Beach News-Journal: 'Lake Helen Police Chief Keith Chester has spent many a night on patrol in the cemetery, sometimes even seated in the Devil's Chair.'" (p. 292) Chester affirmed that as many times as he has been at the cemetery, he has never seen or heard a spirit, ghost, or devil.

Legend #5: There is even a vague legend about "dark figures lurking." On the internet several different anonymous people, or perhaps the same incident has simply repeated it on more than one page about these "dark figures lurking." Those who post this story claimed to have visited the cemetery with a group at night and spotted "some dark figures lurking in the shadows." In this tale, the group of people leaves immediately without doing anything at the cemetery or seeing/hearing anything else.

Discussion about the Legends

If any of these legends are true, the most likely one is Legend #1, provided by Louis Gates. Nineteenth century graveyards sometimes included chairs or benches made of marble, stone, or brick for visitors to sit on. It was not unusual in the 19th century for whole families to meet and visit cemeteries, frequently on Sundays after church and various holidays. Later this custom of visiting with family and friends--living and dead--came to be viewed as somewhat morbid by later generations of modern, sensible people. (I have not been able to pinpoint when this changed of attitude happened, but I think it started post WWII. The attitude was certainly in place in the mid-20th century.) Nevertheless, once the original purpose of these chairs and benches fell out of fashion, local legends and superstitions developed in association with the act of sitting in them. After all, who would take time to sit in a cemetery? If people visit at all, they would simply drop the flowers and leave.*

As these five legends are attached to a graveyard in which numerous spiritualists and mediums are buried, some of these stories attached to Lake Helen - Cassadaga Cemetery may involve garbled ideas or misunderstandings involving the religion of Spiritualism.

For example, Legend #4 indicated that whoever sits on the "chair" at midnight will hear the voices of the dead. This legend is the one that I think has the closest connection to Spiritualism.

In the practice of Spiritualism, a medium will "sit" for a group of people who wish to hear from their beloved family and friends who have died. In trance, a sitting medium will hear the voices of the dead. The people attending the meeting are called "sitters." The meeting is called a "seance," which is French for "seat, session," from Old French seoir, "to sit."

Of course, there are earlier legends about people covertly visiting a cemetery to hear voices—including for divination purposes. There are certain English legends about a type of folk divination performed in certain church graveyards. These legends claim that if a person stands in a certain spot in the graveyard on a certain night, usually New Year’s Eve, a person will hear the names of those in the congregation who will die in the coming year.

The most commonly repeated and apparently favorite legend is Legend #2. This legend is most probably fueled by the I-dare-you practices of idiot teens, who slipped out to the cemetery to indulge in underage drinking with a couple of six-packs. Later someone came by and found an empty bear can on the ookie spooky "chair" and assumed a supernatural cause. Several different articles on line make humorous comments about who or what might actually be drinking the beer.

Still, one might ask why did this particular legend about leaving a drink take such a firm foothold in a historical Florida cemetery in the past 30 years or so? Simple--it has parallels in the magical practices of leaving "offerings" in cemeteries for the "guardian of the cemetery" or the "gatekeeper to the spirit world."

According to Icelandic folklore, the first person to be interred in a new cemetery became the "guardian of the graveyard," whose responsibility was to oversee and stand watch over those who follow. Echoes of this folk belief were found in some parts the British Isles around Saxon settlements. Supposedly members of a community feared being the first to be buried in a new cemetery, as that poor soul must stand watch alone. I have seen vague references to it in some American folklore. The idea is the “watchman” must wait and watch until the Second Coming, when the elect are called forth.

Other folklore indicated that it is wise to leave a gift (perhaps a bit of ale) for the guardian whenever engaging in some sort of occult-like practice--even if the purpose was something as benign as gathering wild violets or a sprig of rosemary for a simple love charm. If you take something away…something ought to be given back.

Somewhat similar to making an offering to the “guardian of the cemetery," there was the practice in a number of magical traditions of making an offering to a powerful spirit known as the "gatekeeper of the spirit world,” sometimes in cemeteries. This “gatekeeper” has different names and attributes in different African diasporic religious systems, including New Orleans Voodoo, Dominican Vodou, etc. As far as I know, none of these systems involve offering a beer to the “gatekeeper.”

I point out above about the beer to clarify that I am NOT implying that any serious practitioners of African diasporic religious systems are engaging in spiritual or magical practices at Lake Helen-Cassadaga Cemetery. Indeed, I think a modern practitioner of hoodoo or spirit work would be more likely to use whiskey than beer. I am simply discussing parallel legends, folktales, and folk practices with the intent of illustrating where some of these ideas came from.

Another interesting parallel to Legend #2 can be found in a legend involving Appalachian conjure. Supposedly, one way to become a conjure man was for a man to go to an old graveyard at midnight and leave an empty liquor bottle there. If everything went well, he would see a sign after leaving the graveyard. The next morning, the conjure man was supposed to collect the bottle and cork it, as it now contained a familiar spirit that would work for him.

Conjure (hoodoo) is not Spiritualism and Spiritualism is not conjure (hoodoo). However, an interesting parallel among certain mediums is that a medium would often have specific spirit guides, which s/he regularly worked with and s/he was familiar. One of the medium’s spirit guides would be referred to as her/his “spirit control.”

Nevertheless, the medium would not have referred to her/his “control” or “spirit guide” as a familiar spirit.

The spirit control serves two functions. The first is to protect the medium from “earthbound spirits” who can be overly eager to communicate with the living. These earthbound spirits might also attach themselves to a medium, drawing energy from her aura. The spirit control prevented this from happening. Therefore, in a protector role, the control sometimes is said to act like a “doorkeeper” or “gatekeeper.”

The other function of a medium’s spirit control is to act as an intermediary on the spirit side. The control sometimes repeats messages from the other side of the veil.

It is possible that leaving a beer as an offering is a garbled misremembered or misunderstood practice relating to a conjure man collecting a spirit whom he would feed, which would then work for him. It is also possible that this idea got all mixed up with the concept of a medium’s spirit control.

* In order to provide two specific instances from the mid 20th century, I am going to quote that medium of popular culture—television. These two examples can be dated to 1964 and 1971. In a show aired on March 18, 1964, on The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Plots Thicken on Season 3, Episode 25, Rob (Dick Van Dyke) and Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) were provided with multiple cemetery plots by parents and the government. Both sets of parents argued about where Rob and Laura Petrie would be buried, with the bewildered couple caught in the middle. The overall message from this show was that living people should not worry about the location of their final resting place or what family members would be buried with them.

In a show aired on October 15, 1971, on The Odd Couple, A Grave for Felix on Season 2, Episode 5, Oscar Madison (Jack Klugman) lost the deed on a cemetery plot belonging to his roommate, Felix Unger (Tony Randall), while gambling in a poker game. In a long convoluted process Oscar attempted to help Felix find another burial place or buy the original back from the man to whom it was resold. After meeting the man to whom cemetery plot was resold, Felix decided that living people should not worry about the location of a final resting place. The overall message of this show was life is for the living and one’s mourners are not going to spend much time visiting the grave. A line from this episode was: "People are just going to drop the flowers and leave."

Copyright May 2014 Myth Woodling. The folklore is public domain, but the discussion about the legends are my own thoughts.

Sources

Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman's book Weird U.S.: Your Travel Guide to America's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets, 2009.

Weird US, The Devil’s Chair--Weird US

G2G, THE DEVIL’S CHAIR, CASSADAGA, FL, posted February 28, 2014, accessed April 14, 2014.

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