Happy Spooky Season! Join me tomorrow, on 4 October from 13:00-14:00 in a presentation about the Semi-Tropic Spiritualists, their tract, and the Semi-Tropic Park.
If you need a brief introduction. The Semi-Tropic Spiritualists Association was an early 20th-century utopian and Spiritualist collective (essentially Victorian era hippies or ravers) that established a campground and community in the hills of Elysian Heights where they communed with one another, with ghosts, and hosted dances. They also ran afoul of the local government, other spiritualists, their neighbors, and the police.
It’s scheduled to take place at the Edendale Branch Library and is sponsored by the library and the Echo Park Historical Society.
It’s free but you should get tickets here
I am going to film it with my phone and post it here but it will be more fun in person!
Support Eric Brightwell on Patreon
Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, essayist, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking paid writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities. He is not interested in generating advertorials, cranking out clickbait, or laboring away in a listicle mill “for exposure.”
Brightwell has written for Angels Walk LA, Amoeblog, Boom: A Journal of California, diaCRITICS, Hey Freelancer!, Hidden Los Angeles, and KCET Departures. His art has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft Contemporary, Form Follows Function, the Los Angeles County Store, Sidewalking: Coming to Terms With Los Angeles, Skid Row Housing Trust, the 1650 Gallery, and Abundant Housing LA.
Brightwell has been featured as subject and/or guest in The Los Angeles Times, VICE, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, CurbedLA, LA Times 404, Marketplace, Office Hours Live, L.A. Untangled, Spectrum News, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, Notebook on Cities and Culture, the Silver Lake History Collective, KCRW‘s Which Way, LA?, All Valley Everything, Hear in LA, KPCC‘s How to LA, at Emerson College, and at the University of Southern California. He is the co-host of the podcast, Nobody Drives in LA.
Brightwell has written a haiku-inspired guidebook, Los Angeles Neighborhoods — From Academy Hill to Zamperini Field and All Points Between, that he hopes to have published. If you’re a literary agent or publisher, please contact him.
You can follow him on:
Bluesky, Duolingo, Facebook, Goodreads, iNaturalist, Instagram, Letterboxd, Medium, Mubi, Threads, and TikTok.
Eric Brightwell 
One thought on “The Semi-Tropic Spiritualist Association, with historian Eric Brightwell”