THE DUMB SUPPERS

The evening of March 24, 2012, we held a very large, elaborate Dumb Supper in the Grand Midway.  The title ‘Dumb’ is reference to the silence.  A Dumb Supper, or Dinner for the Dead, is an ancient, funerary-like, somber, sober meal where one “steps into the sacred realm of the dead”.

Dumb suppers are set in a sacred place.  They are to honor those who have died.  During the entire meal no one speaks.  Each course is served backwards, from dessert, to main course, to soup, and eventually ending with salad.  An empty seat and plate are set for the departed.  Music carries the silence.  Memories swell.  Participants often break down in tears.  Many claim to be touched by those passed on.

Dumb suppers used to be common.  For a while they were a Christian tradition.  They are a big deal still in various Wiccan and Pagan traditions.  They are held mostly at Samhain (Halloween), and sometimes at New Years, but one can enact the ritual any time.  When you sit alone at your dinner table with a glass of wine recalling a loved one in silence you are in essence on some level doing this.  The main point is reverence.

Salem, Massachusetts’ own Christian Day, who wrote the Witch’s Book of the Dead, and hosts a large Dumb Supper at his annual Festival of the Dead, flew in as our mediator for the Grand Midway Hotel’s first official Dumb Supper.  We had thirty guests.  We almost even had Leilah Wendell joining us, curator of the New Orleans Westgate ‘House of Death’ Art Gallery and author of Our Name is Melancholy, but something turned up last minute and she was the one guest who couldn’t make it.  In this photo outside the Midway is Christian Day on the right, with host myself, Blair Murphy left, and famed paranormal author and researcher Rosemary Ellen Guiley in the middle.  Rosemary wrote Talking to the Dead and The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft & Wicca.  We held the event in the hotel’s first floor dining room.  The entire space was dark, illuminated entirely by candlelight.  Several Midway friends volunteered as staff.  Chef Thom cooked and in-house manservant Kyle served with his wait staff.  People brought photos of their loved ones who’d passed on as well as letters they’d written them.  After welcoming each guest into the ‘sacred realm’ with a nod and a swing of the arm for a direction of where to sit, Christian played music for the hour of dining silence.  At one point he put on a skull mask and stepped around the room holding a mirror in front of each guest as they dined in silence.  The night felt historic.  The dinner was a smashing success, perhaps our greatest night in the Midway yet.  An article appeared immediately after in Psychology Today by Katherine Ramsland describing our legendary evening.  Katherine also attended.  We unveiled Terence Kauffman’s stunning tarot mural ceiling as well this night.   He’d just finished painting it that week.  Terrence also attended the dinner.  Candlelit, paranormal celebrity-clad, and deeply touching, the hotel seemed one throbbing mystical temple.