Cindy Gilman knew something was wrong but just could not put her finger on it. Three weeks before Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, when four coordinated terrorist attacks launched by Al-Qaeda upon the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. area, killing more than 3,000 people, the well-known Rhode Island medium felt shaky and weak. The Warwick resident had a metallic taste in her mouth; she even began to experience unidentifiable fear. Every time Gilman went into a meditative state to “spiritually lift herself up,” her discomfort became even stronger. A series of blood tests just one week before the national tragedy, performed at her primary care physician’s office, found no medical irregularities.

When the passenger planes dove into their iconic targets, Gilman, like others across the country, learned about the Islamic terrorist attacks. Only then did she realize that her symptoms were what New York residents were now feeling, even down to the foul-tasting smoke and ash they breathed in from the falling burnt debris.

One day before the mass shootings inside the Beltway, on Sept. 16, 2013, Gilman, 67, began to violently shake, even having an unidentifiable sense of fear, like she experienced 12 years earlier. The medium knew intuitively something was going to happen. The next day on local radio, confirmed by CNN, validated her uneasiness that something was going to happen. It did. A lone gunman fatally shot 12 people, injuring three others in southeast Washington, D.C., at the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command at the Washington Navy Yard.

Having the Gift

The petite, blonde-haired medium, whose 37-year-old son, Danny, resides in the Boston area with wife and 1-year old child, consciously began her spiritual journey in the early 1950s.

One of her first major spiritual experiences that she can recall, as a second grader, the young student went up to her teacher and said, “I have to go home because my mother needs me, my grandfather just passed away.” The teacher let the youngster walk home where her mother validated this death, in fact, did occur before her arrival.

At age 7, over 60 years ago, Gilman became aware of her spiritual gifts as she sang to a room full of Holocaust survivors at a memorial service held in Boston. Standing on a milk crate to reach the microphone, the child singer brought tears to the eyes of many in the room, as she nervously sang lullaby songs they remembered being sung by their mothers while they were in captivity in German concentration camps. As the horrific, repressed memories came to the surface of the audience as she continued singing, a nervous Gilman remembered, not seeing them as they were dressed that day but seeing them as emaciated, with shaved heads and wearing striped pajamas like they did in the camps.

“I just closed my eyes and saw my maternal grandfather standing before me with my spiritual eye,” said Gilman, seeing him as “young and healthy,” not a man whose body was once ravaged with cancer, who passed on months earlier. “My deceased grandfather nodded his head and at that moment I knew that there was something more to life, more than just a person’s physical body.”

For a long time the young child told nobody of this experience, but eventually brought it up with her paternal grandmother.

“She started to cry and rubbed her hands on my face,” she said, telling her that “God is with you.”

Later at a family gathering, Gilman would walk up to an uncle and warn him of an impending heart attack. This happened. Her mother quickly told her not to say things like this.

“I was told to sit on the couch and not put my intuitive foot in my mouth,” she said.

As to her spiritual verbal slips, Gilman now knows that “some things come through my higher intuitive self or through spirit guide.”

Looking back at her childhood, the seasoned medium thought, “Everyone had the abilities of being intuitive; it was a part of human nature,” but life would teach her that this was not the case.

From Singer to

Intuitive Pioneer

At age 17, Gilman would seek formal educational training to enhance her musical career by attending Emerson College where she once danced with Henry Winkler, “the Fonz,” in a college production.

“We remained in touch long after our college days,” she said.

Ultimately, she transferred to New England Conservatory of Music, where she graduated. Residing in New York City, the young college graduate honed her musical abilities by professionally performing in Miami, Florida, New York City and the Catskill Mountains in upper state New York, and the Bahamas. At this time, before she became a professional medium, she would sometimes pick up things from the audience as she performed her repertoire of songs from the stage. In her late 20s she returned to Boston to begin to work as a professional intuitive spiritual medium.

“I really was a pioneer doing this type of work. People started calling, asking me for readings,” Gilman remembers.

Both print and electronic media also began calling asking her for interviews on spiritual understanding.

For more than 23 years, Gilman brought comfort and insight to thousands of listeners as a radio talk show host at WHDH-AM Boston (1972-1993), later moving to WHJJ-AM Providence (1984-1996), and used her intuitive and healing abilities, understanding of hypnosis and meditation skills to assist in the healing process. She is a certified hypnosis counselor and meditation instructor. As an intuitive, her ESP expertise has been called upon to work with psychokinetic children in cooperation with Dr. J. B. Rhine, who coined the phrase “ESP” in the early 1970s and 1980s. Besides giving readings that bridge the physical world with spirit, Gilman has also lectured at colleges on spiritual topics, also teaching psychic development classes and working with intuitively gifted children.

Gilman has even assisted police departments to solve crimes. In one instance, she traveled to Miami, Fla., to assist the chief of detectives to locate a murderer. Quickly looking at photographs of five suspects, Gilman intuitively described where the police could find the murderer, at a cottage she described in detail, including a printed sofa inside with three garbage cans in the back. The suspect was later captured at that location. However, she has retired her services working with law enforcement because “it is just too painful to do.”

Successful Hits

While Gilman will tell you that no intuitive can be 100 percent accurate in their psychic predictions, she gives a few examples of intuitively zeroing in on major New England events. The medium gave a feature writer at the Boston Herald a prediction when he asked for one that a big blizzard would happen in February 1978.

“I clairvoyantly saw a newspaper headline that read, “This Is the Blizzard that Paralyzed Boston.” Meanwhile, an image of Valentine cards on a shelf would date the event around Feb. 14, she noted.

Meanwhile, detailed in Dave Kane’s book, “41 Signs of Hope,” the former radio talk show host, comedian, performance artist and author shares how Gilman gave him a message from Nicky, his son, who had died at the Station nightclub fire. A day before the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in United States history that occurred in West Warwick on Feb. 20, 2003, killing 100 people and injuring 230, Gilman smelled smoke as she walked through her East Greenwich office. The medium knew that a tragic event would happen close by and that she could not do anything to stop it.

The day after the tragic fire, a figure of a young man appeared to Gilman, with long blond hair, a glittery shirt and a leather jacket. This spirit had just died at the Station nightclub fire, begging her to “call his father.” Startled, she did not know who to call. A moment later the spirit re-appeared showing her his charred body, then transformed back to his original form.

The young man wanted her to tell his grieving father that he had “crossed over, was OK and not in pain,” said Gilman. Picking up her personal phone book, it fell open on the “K” page, the name of a professional acquaintance, Dave Kane, was the only listing in that section. She then called his beeper. That evening, Kane returned the call, the medium offering him to help those who lost family members and friends in the fire. Kane told her “we had lost Nicky in a fire,” Gilman remembered, “I knew it, I should have said something.” Kane hung up but he called back the next morning and she described the spirit to him. It was the spitting image of his son, he said. He confirmed to Gilman that this was his son, especially detailing how he had dressed the night he died.

A Few Thoughts

and Observations

Gilman concludes this interview at the Kitchen Bar Restaurant on Hope Street, noting that there is definitely a spiritual, financial and social shift happening across the world. Although horrific events like Earth changes, even terrorist attacks like the recent shooting at the Washington Naval Yard, will still occur, she stressed that people will become more spiritually-inclined, too.

“Finding ways to become more grounded and focused will become more important,” said Gilman, recommending meditation.

For more information or to book an appointment, call Gilman at 885-4115.

Herb Weiss, LRI ’12, is a Pawtucket-based writer who covers aging, health care and medical issues. He can be reached at hweissri@aol.com.