When people start talking about mystical psychic energy, clairvoyance, and windows into my inner spiritual world, I’m usually very quick to be skeptical of their methods. However, the argument made by speaker Patricia Gagliardo in favor of psychic powers last Thursday at “Voices from Beyond” was quite compelling and interesting.
During her 24 years working as police-accredited clairvoyant, Gagliardo has heard every joke told about psychics and clairvoyance. She understands the skeptical viewpoint because she herself was once very skeptical of psychics. Gagliardo wouldn’t read or watch anything regarding the spiritual world. “I was a previous skeptic too ... I didn’t believe in too much of anything,” she said.
But all that changed when Gagliardo had a near-death experience and saw a man whom she didn’t know floating by her bedside in the hospital. Her husband insisted that she was crazy. “You’re on an awful lot of morphine.”
He asked her sometime later to attend a seminar about getting to know your psyche at the local junior high school and to take notes for him. Gagliardo was largely unimpressed with the speaker until she noticed tiny purple lightning bolts shooting out from the woman’s fingers. Speaking to a friend after the discussion, she said, “Did you see something strange about her? ... I saw something.” The experience piqued her interest in meditation practices and heightened her memory and recall. Soon she began to have new visions.
Initially, she only saw the image of a person’s hand; it wasn’t until two years later that she had a glimpse of his face. Eleven more months passed, and the visions began to change—she saw an eagle, a boat, and then symbols, each vision prompted another vision. In the 1970s when people had visions like hers they were thought to be high on drugs. “It’s out there, so people are becoming more enlightened [today],” said Gagliardo.
The source of her visions was Richard Eastman, a coast guard officer who had disappeared off the coast of Connecticut. At the Connecticut State Attorney’s office, Gagliardo revealed her vision to an official who put her in touch with the detectives investigating the case in New London, the site of the disappearance.
Gagliardo spent hours using her psychometric touch on Eastman’s personal items, including his watch and torn up credit card, and came to the conclusion that Eastman had drowned in an area near “where the planes arrive.” The next day, divers located the body and the car of Eastman in the area she had indicated.
During her career, Gagliardo has helped solve more than 400 cases with an astounding accuracy rate of 80 percent. She is still very hesitant of people who claim to be psychics but are largely fraudulent, however. “The proof is in the pudding,” said Gagliardo.
She has participated in such high-profile cases as the Atlanta children kidnappings during the early ’80s and Operational Retriever, where a Florida plane carrying Cuban-Americans was presumably shot over Cuba. “It’s wonderful to help your fellow man,” said Gagliardo, but the “responsibility, pain, and anguish have been very difficult.”
Gagliardo believes that everyone has the potential to harness the power of their spiritual energy if they are willing to look at things the right way. After her son was born autistic, she spent years hating people and life for it. But later she came to realize that his spiritual energy was still present, despite his mental handicap. Take a good look at the face of someone who is mentally impaired, and you’ll see that “they’re smiling. We’re spiritual beings first ... [Our] energy does not die,” said Gagliardo.
