Case file · High strangeness
Camp Chesterfield and 'The Psychic Mafia'
In 1976 former medium M. Lamar Keene published The Psychic Mafia, describing how he and others faked séances at Camp Chesterfield, a Spiritualist camp founded in Indiana in the 1880s.
1976 CE · 40.11, -85.60 · status: hoax
The account
Keene described shared files on sitters, gauze 'spirits' and trumpet voices. Earlier, in 1960, investigators had filmed a 'materialization' séance there with infrared film.
The sceptical view
The camp continues; its leaders reject Keene's account as applying to them today.