Gem City Jewel: When Edgar Cayce lived here

Edgar Cayce is well remembered as a psychic. While in a self-induced trance Cayce was said to have the ability to “read” the medical and physical conditions of people.

In 1923 he met Arthur Lammers, a successful printer from Dayton.  Lammers invited Cayce to Dayton to do a set of private readings.  It was during these readings that Cayce became convinced of reincarnation, after stating during his trance that he himself had once been a monk. Lammers convinced Cayce that he should begin a psychic research society in Dayton.  Cayce agreed and in 1923 opened the Cayce Psychic Institute in an office in the Phillips Hotel and began giving readings there.

Things did not go well in Dayton for Cayce. He wrote “Many were the days that we wondered when we left the house after breakfast to go to the office at the hotel whether there would be anything to eat when we returned in the evening.”  He eventually had to close the office in the hotel and set up a place at his residence at 322 Grafton Avenue, where he continued to do business until moving to Virginia Beach in September, 1925.

Cayce would go on to gain national prominence in 1943 when an article titled “Miracle Man of Virginia Beach“ appeared in Coronet magazine.

Today, Edgar Cayce’s not-for-profit organization, known as Association for Research and Enlightenment, has members in more than 70 countries.

About the Author