The Villages to Cassadaga
    60-mi, 1-hr 20-min
Ocala to Cassadaga
    70-mi, 1-hr 27-min
Gainesville to Cassadaga
    107-mi, 2-hr 6-min

Cassadaga Hotel, 355 Cassadaga Road, Lake Helen, FL 32744 
    (386) 228-2323
 
No admission fee, free street parking 

Fred’s Marketplace, 835 Currency Circle, Lake Mary, FL 32746
    (407) 915-6808

Even if you are not a believer, it is nice to be in a place where anything is possible. A short stroll down the street and the realization sinks in that you are no longer in a normal little town. Someone turned up the volume on the squirrels and birds and conversations are heard from a block away. Or is it that all of the background noise of cars, planes, sirens and leaf blowers is strangely absent? Colors are a bit brighter and the feeling of disconnect from regular reality is unsettling and intriguing at the same time. You are a visitor here.
    Twenty of us from The Villages area met to attend an open message reading with five different mediums in the meeting hall across the street from the 1927 Cassadaga Hotel. Coffee, salad and lasagna are served from a buffet line and we join a group of about forty other people, mostly women, for pleasant conversation before the opening prayer message about awareness and connectiveness is shared. It is easy to read the body language in the room: about 30% skeptics and 70% eager spiritualists.
    Wandering the streets of town we found a "Fairy Trail" at the top of the hill on Seneca Street, the entrance marked by two old leaning pylons.

    Watch the video below for a tour of Cassadaga near Orlando, FL.


 
Cassadaga residents have lined the trail with gnomes, fairies, other fantasy objects, all of which have faded patinas. Shady and quiet, this trail has benches and backdrops for photo ops.
    You can book a reading with any of the local mediums at the meeting hall or gift shop in the hotel and have a cold drink, a glass of wine or a meal in the restaurant. We enjoyed live music while we were there. From Cassadaga we drove to nearby Lake Mary and enjoyed the southern buffett at Fred’s Marketplace. Some were witnessed eating four desserts. Yes, the banana pudding is other worldly!