Tag Archives: Marty Hamrick

Spiritual Lighthouse Church

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It was home, in the old days, to Southern preaching, bluegrass mandolin, and séances. Bluegrass gospel musicians Billie and Gordon Hamrick were staunch  Southern Baptists, but Billie had “psychic visions.” The line of Spiritualist pastors here, almost all women, dates back to training by the famous psychic Edgar Cayce. In one of Jill Cook Richards’s first séances at the church, she says, her guardian angel came to her.

Revisiting Playtime Drive-In and Church

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Fire after fire after fire. Over the last seven decades, this place went from family theater to porno drive-in to church. One fire was an exorcism, the church burning old reels of pornographic films, the next fire, so said rumors, was a meth lab explosion. Frances the cat hung out above the projector before the burglary in which the theater owner was shot and lost a leg. But this was always holy ground.