LAKE PLEASANT — After reopening The National Spiritual Alliance’s Thompson Temple this spring, Camp Weekend is welcoming guests for a weekend of workshops on spiritualism, musical performances, mediumship and more.
Starting Friday, Sept. 19, and ending Sunday, Sept. 21, Thompson Temple at 2 Montague Ave. will be open for both free and ticketed events for guests of all ages. Guests can purchase a weekend pass for all ticketed events for $60, or $20 per ticketed event, with proceeds going to support The National Spiritual Alliance.
Alliance member Kara Kharmah said this weekend celebration is to pay homage to “Camp Week,” which was a decades-long tradition in Lake Pleasant for spiritualists to gather and camp for a week in July before people settled to live in the village full-time in 1874.
“This is our homage to the old days,” Kharmah said about the festivities. “They would have had mediumship workshops and all kinds of stuff like that, but we wanted to honor all the aspects of our mission and the community that we’ve been building.”
Community-building has been important for The National Spiritual Alliance, which is less than a year out from its November 2024 hiatus due to financial strains in keeping the Thompson Temple heated and available for use, coupled with declining membership and event participation.
Since reopening in May, Kharmah said the alliance is building its community back with a balance of staying true to spiritualism, the belief that departed souls can interact with the living, while also opening up activities and connections to the wider western Massachusetts community.
To achieve this, The National Spiritual Alliance has held a monthly psychic-medium session that has been a successful event to build community, on top of other offerings like music nights and community game nights.
To expand on this mission, Camp Weekend will offer a “wider version” of what Camp Week used to be, with not only spiritualism education and workshops, but also more secular, community-based events.
All events on Friday are free, with donations welcome. These include a 9 a.m. drop-in session at the Thompson Temple for coffee and meeting others; reiki and spirit readings at 1 p.m. with the Rev. Andrea Krawczyk; a spiritualism and Lake Pleasant history talk with The National Spiritual Alliance’s Vice President and acting CEO David James at 5 p.m.; and a 6 p.m. potluck dinner.
On Saturday, ticketed events will kick off with an 8:30 a.m. yoga class for all experience levels, followed by a 1 p.m. workshop on mediumship skills with teacher Stephen Hermann and a roundtable of spiritualist mediums featuring Hermann, Jordan Taylor and Paige Lussier Johnson, who will provide a reading to participants at 4 p.m.
Remaining events Saturday are all free with contributions accepted, including a Lake Pleasant history walk at 2:30 p.m., a pizza party at 6 p.m. and a singer-songwriter event sponsored by RiverCulture at 7 p.m., featuring musicians Charlotte Malin Collins (Althaea), Matt Emmer and Tobey Sol LaRoche.
Sunday will have one free event followed by one ticketed event. A spiritualist service led by speaker and medium Alicia Parrish at the Thompson Temple will start at 10:30 a.m., followed by a 45-minute workshop at 1 p.m. on how to understand spiritual warfare, its impacts on the body and how to protect oneself with Krawczyk.
With this Camp Weekend being the first revival of the tradition that was lost amid declining membership and the COVID-19 pandemic, Kharmah said she hopes attendees find a space for community, and a chance to connect, listen and learn from others.
“I think it’s really important that we have conversations, and talk and listen to each other, and the more we understand each other, the better we are as a country,” she said. “Personally, I just really hope that this exposes people to some of the positive that we’re doing here, and it’s a random little hole in the wall, best kept secret of western Massachusetts.”
To purchase tickets online ahead of Camp Weekend or to learn more about the programming, visit tinyurl.com/yjp4ddar. Tickets can also be purchased in person on the day of the event.
