Beatrice Anne Gehman (July 1, 1936-2024) was an American psychic medium and the pastor of The Center for Spiritual Enlightenment, a Spiritualist church that she founded.
[2] Petoskey was the home of the Chippewa (Ojibwe) and Ottawa (Odawa) people, and she felt a close relationship with Indian friends with whom she grew up.
[5] She left home at age 14 and moved to DeLand, Florida, where she held three part-time jobs and rented a room for $5 a week.
She met medium Wilbur F. Hull, who operated from Cassadaga, a spiritualist community near Orlando, Florida, when her old Studebaker repeatedly stalled outside of his home.
[6] Hull taught her psychometry (the practice of reading objects such as rings, watches, and glasses for psychic information), and introduced her to Spiritualism, teaching her from books such as the J. Arthur Findlay classic The Rock of Truth.
[12] Through her gift for dowsing, she consulted for the Philips Petroleum Company, helping to locate drill sites for gas and oil, work that she later distanced herself from as damaging the earth.
[15][16] In 1973 she described where to find the body of a missing Alexandria, Virginia man to his family, after touching clothing he had worn (psychometry) and viewing photographs.
[24] This work at the Human Energy Systems Laboratory was documented in a book by professor Gary Schwartz and William L. Simon, with a foreword by Deepak Chopra, The Afterlife Experiments.
"[30] She accepted the life and work of Jesus Christ, believed he was "the ideal man," and encouraged her husband Wayne Knoll to remain a Catholic in his faith, although he was also a Spiritualist and maintained that there was no conflict.
[6] The Knolls lived in Northern Virginia near his job in Washington, DC, and they often visited her longtime second home in Lily Dale, New York, famous for its psychics and healers.
[19] They kept additional retreat property that Wayne Knoll had bought years earlier on the western slope of Old Rag Mountain, near the Shenandoah National Park.