Television review: ‘No One Dies in Lily Dale’

Nestled among the glens and groves of western New York, about 60 miles south of Buffalo, sits the 130-year-old community of Lily Dale, the self-described World’s Largest Center for the Religion of Spiritualism. It is a town peopled by mediums and healers, folks who will draw the toxins from your body by waving a green pepper at your back, analyze your aura or — and this is what attracts most of the thousands of seekers and sightseers who pass through each year — get in touch with your late loved ones, gone to that undiscovered country from which no traveler returns but where operators are standing by.

Although it sounds like the premise for a new SyFy series it is instead the subject of Steve Cantor’s video documentary “No One Dies in Lily Dale,” which premieres Monday on HBO.

“Lily Dale is to spiritualism as Rome is to Catholicism,” says one resident, the comparative proportions of those burgs describing as well the relative size of the churches. The 40 mediums who live and work there have been “registered” (a title card informs us) after “rigorous testing by its board of directors” — which is to say, they are medium-approved mediums.

That’s important, they are ready to point out, because over the years their practice has been polluted by quacks; the modern medium therefore eschews the bells and whistles, the ectoplasm and weird voices of the old school séance in favor of therapy-modeled “mental mediumship.” In that they are wholly sincere, the mediums of Lily Dale are not fake. But whether they talk to spirits — or more to the point, whether the spirits talk back — is outside the interest of this colorful and engaging if not deeply illuminating or historically comprehensive group portrait.

Cantor (“loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies”) adopts a tone of fond skepticism; he does not decline the comedy his subject offers up on a plate, but, if only in that he does not judge them outright, he’s basically sympathetic to the people and the process. The only really negative view comes from the Bible-toting protesters at the gates.

(“ Harry Potter will damn the souls of your children,” reads one of their signs. “They’re not happy people,” says healer Tom, looking on.) Susan, whose son died of cancer at 21 — the visitors we meet share a deep, persistent grief — is unconvinced but understanding: “It reminds me a lot of ... going down to Disneyland and knowing that everybody wants to buy into that fantasy too.” Then she claims the camp in Jesus’ name.

If some of the mediums employ the same vague homiletic generalities that the charlatans use, they are nevertheless the homiletic generalities that their clients have come to hear. Ron, whose son was collateral damage in a gang shooting, does move on to some better place. In Lily Dale, the departed are always at peace and bringing peace: standing at your shoulder, wiping away your tears, and offering the occasional dish of grainy astral fudge.

“Mother’s been hanging around,” one psychic sister says casually to her psychic siblings. (It’s their mom with the fudge.) “I’m sure you’ve seen her, especially over by the hemlock tree.”

robert.lloyd@latimes.com