Category Archives for Spirituality

Children Can Bring Message of Life after Death

Published in Pawtucket Times, December 20, 2014

The tragic, untimely death of a child, will bring emotional pain and suffering to the parents. But, amazingly through horrific experiences like this slowly comes a greater appreciation, understanding and love of life.

Sixty-five year old Dave Kane and his wife, Joanne, know this so well. The fourth largest Nightclub fire in the nation’s history, killing their son Nicky O’Neill, would propel the semi-retired radio talk show host (he’s on the air at WARL1320 in Attleboro from 8 am to 10 am on Saturdays), comedian, performance artist and author, with his wife on a journey of personal healing that would lead to their bringing comfort to others who grieve for lost loved ones.

Kane’s eighteen-year-old son, Nicky O’Neill, was the youngest victim of the Station nightclub fire in which 100 people lost their lives over a decade ago, over 230 people were injured. After this tragic event, Kane became a very visible proponent of fire safety and the enforcement of strict laws to ensure safety in public buildings. Three years later, he would publish his first book, 41 Signs of Hope. In this book, Kane shares personal stories of synchronistic, and at times, seemingly spirit communication, around the number 41, which Kane and his family contend are contact from the spirit of his deceased young son, Nicky.

The Number 41

Kane, views the number 41 as an “incredible sign” from his deceased son that he still exists. Throughout the young man’s life he always liked this number, he says, noting the Nicky noticed that number everywhere and he would let those around him know it.

“When he passed away Nicky was 18 years-old and 23 days, that totals 41,” notes Kane, a Johnston resident, who can reel off dozens of examples of the number 41 showing up around him. A video tape of Nicky as a baby discovered one year after his death shows him as a baby wearing a baseball uniform, wearing a base-ball cap embroidered with the number 41.

At that time no one could figure out the significance. For over a decade that followed Nicky’s death, the number continued to appear. Although Kane and his family initially viewed the sightings as coincidences, they now see it as a sign of spirit contact. The book, 41 Signs of Hope, followed by an hour and fifty minute documentary released in 2005 (just called 41), by Rhode Island filmmakers, Christian de Rezendes and Christian O’Neill, is jam-packed with examples of the sightings of this number 41.

The First Contact

Detailed in Kane’s book, 41 Signs of Hope, shares how medium Cindy Gilman gave him a message from Nicky, his son, who had died at the Station nightclub fire. A day before the deadly fire that occurred on Feb. 20, 2003, Gilman smelled smoke as she walked through her 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, while sitting in her kitchen drinking tea, a figure of a young man appeared to Gilman, with long blond hair, a glittery shirt and a leather jacket, begging her to “call his father.” Startled by this vision she did not know who to call. A moment later the spirit reappeared showing her his charred body, then transformed back to his original form.

Gilman knew that the apparition wanted the East Greenwich medium to give his father a message, that he had “crossed over and was not in pain.” Picking up her personal phone book, she turned to “K” and immediately saw the name of a professional acquaintance, Dave Kane (the only name under that letter).

Kane recalls that she called his beeper. He returned her call and the medium offered to come on his radio show to identify the young spirit. The grieving father told her, “we had lost Nicky in a fire,” with Gilman responding, “Oh, I should have said something.” A very distraught Kane immediately hung up on her, thinking that he had a medium telling him she knew something that she really did not know.

Ultimately, he would call Gilman back and she would describe the spirit vividly to him. It was the splitting 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.

Looking back, losing his son was the most horrible experience of Kane and his wife had experienced in their life, he says. The morning after the deadly West Warwick fire, he stood in front of his bathroom mirror and cried, screaming “Okay big shot, now what do you think.” Thirty years as a talk show host gave him all the answers to any topic. But he had no answers to why his son died tragically and so young.

But, the Number 41 would give Kane and his wife comfort that their son was reaching out, telling them that life does not end with death. Loved ones who have passed on never leave us, they are still with us, loving, supporting, guiding and sending us signs each and every day, he says.
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Rhode Island medium Gilman’s confirmation of Nicky’s definite proof of life after death was validated by a reading given to Kane and his wife by Robert Brown, an internationally acclaimed medium. The medium confirmed where Nicky had stood before he died and that he helped a young woman during the fire, all confirmed months later.

Brown pointed at him at the end of the 45 minute reading and said “your son wants me to tell you one more thing, the show must go on.” What Brown and nobody else knew was these words were spoken by Nicky to his father before he died at the Station nightclub, says Kane,

Just a couple of days before the tragic fire Kane found out that his son was not getting paid much money to play in opening act for the headlining band, Jack Russell’s Great White. “You should not sell God’s talent so short, said Kane jokingly. Nicky just hugged his father and kissed him, saying “the show must go on.”

Those last words, repeated by British medium, confirmed the existence of spirit. Each and every day Kane and his family continue to receive signs from Nicky to continually validate this.

Spreading the Word

For over 30 years Kane educated tens of thousands of Rhode Islanders on state and national topics on his radio show, “Kane and Company.” Now he’s traveling a new path in his later years, bringing the public awareness to more ethereal topics, like life after death.

With several of his own family members being cared for by Home and Hospice Care of Rhode Island, Kane wanted “to give back” and offered to share his 41 Signs of Hope presentation to our bereaved families, says Deanna Upchurch, Grief Counseling Department Manager at Home and Hospice Care of Rhode Island. After reviewing his “incredible” presentation, he was invited to share it to HHCRI’s Loss of Parent, Loss of Spouse and Loss of Adult child groups.

For over one hour, Kane gives dozens of examples of how deceased loved ones can send you messages in many forms, to validate their existence. Nicky shows up at Disney Land, at Chili’s restaurant even a family Thanksgiving dinner, when Kane was driving his car reminding them he is still around as the number 41 pops up everywhere.

“It is up to us to acknowledge and know that they are here. We are so busy grieving and busy we just don’t see our loved ones,” he says.

Those attending HHCRI’s grief counseling groups, felt comfort in Kane’s stories, notes Upchurch. “Grieving people often talk about ways they feel their loved ones are still connected with them after death, says Upchurch. “Whether it’s a faint smell of a loved ones cigar or the sight of a cardinal, or butterfly which they feel represents their loved one, people frequently share their experiences of sharing signs from their loved ones.”

Upchurch says that Kane’s presentation validates the experiences of the grieving. It helps them continue to feel connected to their loved ones and even keeps them open-minded for future signs from them.

After listening to Kane’s passionate stories, it only reinforced my belief that “death is nothing at all,” Kane’s concluding words.

For more information about 41 Signs of Hope, go to http://www.davekane.net/41-the-book.html. Or call 401- 965-0467.

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,

The World According to a Rhode Island Medium

Published in Pawtucket Times, September 27, 2013

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 the Washington, D.C. area, killing over 3,000 people, the well-known Rhode Island medium felt shaky and weak. The fifty-five year old medium 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 huge passenger planes dove into there iconic targets, Gilman, like others across the country, learned about the Islamic terrorist attacks. Only then did she realize that her symptoms where 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 began to violently shake, even having an unidentifiable sense of fear, like she experienced twelve years earlier before 9/18. 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 twelve 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, blond-haired medium, whose 37-year-old son, Danny, resides in the Boston area, with wife and one-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 seven, over sixty years ago, Gilman became aware of her spiritual gifts as she sang to a roomful 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 stripped 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,” added Gilman.

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 says.

Ultimately, the college student transferred to New England Conservatory of Music, where she graduated. Now, 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 twenties 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 over 23 years, Gilman has 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, using 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 psycho kinetic 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, Florida, to assist the chief of detectives in locating a murder. 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 is 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 February 14th, 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 on Feb. 20, killing 100 people, injuring 230 in West Warwick, Gilman smelled smoke as she walked through her 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 reappeared 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,” says Gilman. Picking up her personal phone book, she turned to “K” and immediately saw the name of a professional acquaintance, Dave Kane. She ly 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 ultimately called back the next morning and she described the spirit to him. It was the splitting 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 my 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, but she stresses that people will become more spiritually-inclined, too.

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

For more information or to book an appointment call Gilman at (401) 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

Conquering Cancer Through Living Fearlessly

Published in Pawtucket Times, November 9, 2012 

             We’ve heard it before – “don’t sweat the small stuff”,  “do not fear death…only the unlived life”, “live your life to the fullest”.  Anita Moorjani, 50, only knows the truth behind these familiar sayings all too well because of a Near Death Experience (NDE) she had in 2006.

             In Moorjani’s book, Dying to be Me: My Journey From Cancer To Near Death, To True Healing, published in 2012 by Hay Houses, USA, the Hong Kong-resident recounts stories of her childhood, being raised Hindu while residing in a largely Chinese and British society in Hong Kong.   Throughout her adult life, she faced challenges to find a  profession, eventually found her one true love,  husband Danny, and eventually fought her devastating cancer, which lead to her death, but ultimately came back to life and became healed, an outcome that today baffles the medical world.

             The 191 page inspirational tome tells how Moorjani fought against Stage IV lymphoma for almost four years, ultimately a terminal disease that spread from the base of her skull, which traveled over her neck and down to her abdomen.  Her body was riddled with malignant tumors, “some the size of lemons”, she recalls.            

            As a result of her near death experience, and the publicity generated by her book, Moorjani now speaks at conferences and events around the world to share her insights gained from her Near Death Experience.  She is also a frequent guest at The University of Hong Kong’s department of behavioral sciences speaking on topics such as dealing with terminal illness, facing death, and the psychology of spiritual beliefs. 

 Crossing Over

             By the morning of February 2, 2006, Moorjani was wheel-chair bound, on oxygen and receiving full-time care at home.  She was sliding in and out of consciousness while experiencing breathing difficulties due to fluid in her lungs.  Her body was swollen with open skin lesions and she was soon admitted to the local hospital in a coma.  Her outcome was grim, and the attending physician informed her husband that he did not expect her to survive for another 36 hours.

              Now in the ICU and having been in a coma for nearly 20 hours, the forty-four year old woman’s vital organs began to fail. In fact, she was ultimately pronounced dead.  Moorjani recalls entering into a “NDE”, having a spiritual epiphany while on the other side of death’s veil.  She came to understand the ultimate cause of her devastating medical condition, which she reports as  “being fearful of life”.  When she chose to return to her physical body, Moorjani knew that she indeed had the power to heal her body of the spreading cancer,  knowing with certainty that this medical miracle would occur.

             Over a six month period after her NDE, Moorjani was given chemotherapy,  even though every medical test revealed no trace of cancer.  A lymph node biopsy also revealed no cancer in any of her lymph nodes.

.            Like millions of others who have reported NDE, Moorjani had experienced many of its classic traits.  She recalls having “an extreme sense of peace and well-being, an intense feeling of unconditional love”, and became reunited with deceased family and friends and spiritual guides.

             Her book noted that even in a coma in this very deep NDE, she was acutely aware of her surroundings.  She heard a physician tell her husband, outside her room in the corridor, that her organs were failing and she would not last the night.  In her NDE she knew that her brother was on a plane coming to say his goodbyes, too.

             On the other side, Moorjani recounts in this book how she received profound knowledge about her life, mission and purpose of life with an understanding of the nature of the universe as well.  When the terminally ill woman approached the boundary of no return, she remembers she had a decision to make, to stay and sever ties with her sickly body, or come back to heal and accomplish her life’s mission.   Choosing to voluntarily return to her disease-ridden body, upon regaining consciousness, she knew that her body would be quickly healed of cancerous tumors. She was released from the hospital within weeks, without a trace of cancer in her body.

             With an increased belief in the God-force within, no longer would Moorjani fear death, and this experience fueled her desire to confront life fearlessly.

 NDE Is a Common Occurrence

            Over the years, Jeffrey Long, M.D., a leading NDE researcher, has documented over 3,000 NDEs, posted on the www.nderf.org website. The practicing radiation oncologist says that this data base is by far the largest collection of NDEs, available in 22 languages, that is publicly accessible.  Readers from over 100 different foreign countries access Dr. Long’s web site monthly.  Over 300,000 pages are read from this website every month.

            Meanwhile, Dr. Long’s website, notes that although most people who come near death do not remember anything, around 18% later report that “something happened.”  That “something” is often a near-death experience NDE, says Long.  He notes a 1993 Gallop Poll estimated that 12 to 15 million Americans personally experienced a NDE.  As of 2001, almost 600 adults per day across the nation experience an NDE.

            According to Dr. Long, who penned the New York Times bestseller, Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences, Moorjani’s, NDE is “one of the most profound NDEs ever reported.  The insights that she received during her NDE are profound, yet corroborated by the insights of many other NDErs.”

            Dr. Long noted, “I have carefully reviewed Anita Moorjani’s incredible recovery and NDE.  It is medically inexplicable.  Doctor’s don’t like to use the term ‘miracle’, but that is the best word to describe her experience.”

            While he did not review her original medical records, one physician did. In an email and a press release, promoting a workshop to discuss Moorjani’s  rapid remission from an advanced stage of cancer, Dr. Peter Ko, an oncologist who reviewed her medical records did not attribute her dramatic recovery to her chemotherapy.  “Based on what we have learned about cancer cell behaviors, I speculate that something (non-physical…”information”?) either switched off the mutated genes from expressing, or signaled them to a programmed cell death.  The exact mechanism is unknown to us, but not likely to be the result of cytotoxic drugs.” 

Lessons Learned from Beyond the Veil

            Moorjani now believes that her cancer manifested in her physical body due to the fear of being herself, displeasing others, not measuring up to their expectations andthe fear of living life to the fullest.  In fact, it was being “fearful of everything,” said the internationally recognized writer, that blocked her greater essence from healing the physical body.  

            “Only when I realized my own magnificence, my own perfection, my own self worth as a beautiful child of the universe, was I able to let go of fear and embrace life with all its uncertainties, ambiguities, joys, sorrows, and challenges. Seeing myself as perfection, as an exquisite manifestation of life, led to my healing,” she said. 

            Moreover, a prevalent part of her experience was the realization that we are all interconnected and when she was not in her body she was able to clearly see this. 

            Finally, “laughter and a good sense of humor can be your best medicine” – Moorjani recommends not to take your life too seriously, just “Learn to lighten up and laugh. Don’t be afraid of just being yourself.”

            For more information about Moorjani’s NDE and her philosophies of living life fearlessly, or to purchase her book, go to  www.anitamoorjani.com,

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