Camp Silver Belle was a Pennsylvania Spiritualist center located in Ephrata, half way between Harrisburg and Philadelphia. The borough began as a famed religious community, the Cloisters, founded in 1732 by the German mystic Conrad Beissel. It was the seat of the Mystic Order of the Solitary, a semi-monastic order of the Seventh-Day Dunkers. As the Cloister community declined in the early 1800s, the village grew and became a well-known vacationing location. Two resort hotels were built, the Mountain Springs and the Mount Vernon House.
More than one hundred years after the Cloisters disbanded, Ethel Post-Parrish discovered Ephrata. Ethel was a prominent physical medium whose direct voice demonstrations and spirit materializations attracted world-wide attention. She would enter a deep trance while sitting in a cabinet, bringing forth her guide Silver Belle as well as other spirits. Ethel had opened a church and established a school for the education of Spiritualist ministers and the development of mediums in Miami, Florida in 1927. To escape the heat and humidity of Florida’s summers, in 1932, she opened a summer camp and school for mediumship in Ephrata. She called it Camp Silver Belle.
The Mountain Springs Hotel was originally built in 1848 by Joseph Konigmacher, above the center of town where the local mineral spring gave rise to a renowned spa. By 1860, the original farmstead had grown to a 400-room hotel containing a 60-foot high observatory. In 1935, Camp Silver Belle, with help from Mr. and Mrs. John Stephan, purchased the building for meetings, conferences, services, and vacations. In 1937, the Silver Belle group dedicated a new hospital in the Stephans’ memory.
As a sister camp to Chesterfield in Anderson, Indiana, Silver Belle flourished from 1932-1991 as a mecca for physical phenomena. Only the best mediums were invited to serve at the camp. Spiritualists from throughout the United States as well as internationally traveled to participate in the seances that took place on the grounds. Maurice Barbanell, the medium for the famous spirit teacher Silver Birch reported on the full materialization’s he experienced when he visited in the late 1930′s. In 1965 renowned Brazilian medium, Chico Xavier, attended seances at Silver Belle on his famous Spiritist missionary visit to the United States.
During her lifetime, Ethel submitted to many tests to prove the legitimacy of the physical manifestations she produced. There is one account of a séance in 1928 where doctors weighed a manifested spirit as well as Ethel during a demonstration and found her weight loss equaled that of the spirit’s weight.
As many as five spirits could materialized during a séance, but Jayne Cuthbert described an unbelievable event in which nearly fifty spirits manifested. In a 1945 account, she stated, “While there were materialized individuals on the floor talking with their loved ones on earth, at the same time during the séance there were voices singing in the cabinet.”
The following letter was written after an exam in 1933:
“This is to certify that Ethel Post, of Miami, Florida, a trumpet and materialization Medium, held a series of seances in the City of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, under the auspices of the Ontario Society for Psychic Research. Before giving a public seance the Committee had the Medium give a sitting under severe test conditions to prove that her work was genuine.
“She was sewed into a bag with only her head outside and in such a manner that it would have been impossible for her to make use of her hands and feet without breaking the cords used in sewing the bag.
“The results obtained, even under those severe test conditions, were excellent and entirely satisfactory to the Committee, who were satisfied that the manifestations were genuine.
“The following were members of the Committee: Mr. and Mrs. C. W. Schiedel, Mr. and Mrs. F. Tylinski, Mr. and Mrs. A. H. Seibert, Mr. E. Huehn, Mr. J. Bohnsen, Dr. J. E. Hett and Mr. E. Hamel.
Yours sincerely,
The Ontario Society for Psychic Research
By A. H. Seibert, Sec’y and Treas.”
Ethel married Jimmy Parrish at the ripe old age of seventy-one in 1957 and died the next year. Her ashes were spread about the grounds of Camp Silver Belle. The camp was closed in the 1990s and the hotel and neighboring lodge where Ethel stayed were demolished in 2004.
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