Case file · High strangeness
Summerland, a Spiritualist colony
In 1883 Spiritualist H. L. Williams founded Summerland near Santa Barbara, naming it after the Spiritualist term for the afterlife, and sold lots to believers who held séances in the town hall.
1883 CE · 34.42, -119.60 · status: official
The account
The town later became an early oil field, with some of the world's first offshore wells drilled from piers in the 1890s.