Giving Up the Ghost by Eric Nuzum

candles, or shower without the curtain completely closed—all because these activities will push the building over some kind of functional abyss.
    And of course, the place is supposedly teeming with ghosts.
    In fact, ghost sightings are so common in Lily Dale that some claim they can’t tell who is alive and who is dead. Pass a person on the street, and it could be someone staying in the hotel room next to you or it could be someone who stayed there in 1928. Some visitors and residents of Lily Dale have taken to referring to themselves in the plural—as in “We are going shopping today” or “We might stop over later for a visit.” They’re referring to themselves and their spirit posse.
    I have no time to investigate the Maplewood’s otherworldly residents, as I am on the verge of being late to the five-thirty Stump Service.
    Inspiration Stump is a tree stump in the middle of the Leolyn Woods, a towering old-growth forest on the outskirts of Lily Dale. There are no bells or announcements when it’s time for one of Lily Dale’s four daily public services. At five-fifteen, almost every person in town simply exits home, hotel, or guesthouse and quietly walks to the far end of town and the trail into the woods.
    The Stump itself is huge, probably three feet in diameter.It’s thought by Lily Daleans to be an “energy vortex”; standing near it will amplify a medium’s abilities. For some reason that no one has been able to explain, in 1898 the residents of Lily Dale decided to encase the Stump in cement, later adding a short fence around it. Lily Dale mediums are no longer allowed to stand on top of the Stump when giving readings and messages. Some say it’s because it is too powerful (according to a long-repeated rumor, a medium had a heart attack while channeling atop the Stump). Others suggest it is too unsafe, as the cement covering has caused the actual wooden Stump to rot away completely, leaving an empty shell.
    From the 1880s to the 1920s, Spiritualism was the fastest-growing religion in America. Spiritualism was founded, albeit loosely, in 1848, when Kate and Margaret Fox started to receive spirit messages from a murdered peddler who was buried in the basement of their family home. The Fox sisters began demonstrating their medium abilities to others and quickly grew into a national sensation. Other mediums began to emerge, and Spiritualism slowly grew from a curiosity into a movement, then a religion. By the late nineteenth century there were more than eight million followers. And all this despite there being no centralized anything in Spiritualism—no religious texts, no core sets of beliefs, organization, or dogma—except the belief that adherents speak to the dead.
    During Spiritualism’s peak, thousands of people would fill this clearing in the woods to hear the Stump-fueled mediums shout out messages from long-lost relatives and friends to those assembled. Today there are about a dozen wooden benches, capable of holding about 150 people, arranged in a fan shape in front of Inspiration Stump.
    For my first service, it’s a packed house. As we’re sittingaround waiting for the service to begin, I notice that at least ten of the people attending are already crying. Outside of a few bored children, most of those assembled are middle-aged and older; all rather pasty, plump, and plain-looking—the type of people you expect to see at a Kiwanis pancake supper or in the cheap seats at a Wayne Newton concert, rather than at a gathering to invoke the dead.
    At precisely 5:30 P.M. , a man walks up and stands in front of the Stump. “Good afternoon. My name is George Kincaid, and I’d like to welcome you all to the five-thirty Stump Service.”
    George looks like a standard-issue retiree—unextraordinary in every sense. He stands in the small clearing separating the Stump from the first row of pews.
    “How many of you are here for the first time?” he asks.
    A few dozen hands shoot up, including