SOLON — Adding to a lifetime in radio, including at a new low-power FM station in Skowhegan and one afternoon a week on WMHB-FM at Colby College, a local woman also focuses on the disincarnate, penning three books on spirit guides — guardian angels.

Annie Stillwater Gray, 70, of Solon, who describes herself as a mystic, will be among the presenters Saturday at the Mind, Body, Spirit Festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Fairfield Community Center on Water Street. Her topic, as reflected in her most recent book, “Work of A Guardian Angel,” will be life guides — spirit guides who help humans along their path to the other side.

Author and mystic Annie Stillwater Gray works on a manuscript Thursday at her home in Solon. Staff photo by David Leaming

Author and mystic Annie Stillwater Gray cuts daffodils Thursday in one of her many gardens at her home in Solon. Staff photo by David Leaming

Her own spirit guide, Darcimon Stillwater, from whom she takes her name, is always with her, she says.

“Humans are here because life on Earth is a learning experience. We’re here to advance our souls,” Gray said from her home in rural Solon. “This stuff is beyond religion. It’s metaphysical.”

Gray said human society is so caught up in the material world that it cannot grasp the layers of the ethereal beyond the 3-D world we all live in. That’s where the spirit guides come in.

“The spirit guides are the highest vibration of all the intertwined layers, and they have direct access to the master guides and the angels and the creator so that they can bring us information and help whenever we need it — healing, especially,” she said.

Everyone has spirit guides who teach, heal, and help them on their physical journey into higher consciousness, according to Gray. Communication is telepathic, ignited during meditation and dreams and learning how to focus the mind to receive messages, she said.

Gray, who was raised in Connecticut and studied fine art and creative writing at Boston University, married jazz musician Gary Burton in 1969 and became friends with folk and blues singer Maria Muldaur, famous for her 1973 hit “Midnight at the Oasis,” and was like a nanny to her young daughter.

Having parted ways with Burton, Gray got her first radio broadcast license in 1974, starting at WHUS at the University of Connecticut, then to WWUH at the University of Hartford, and finally was hired in 1976 by rock radio station WHCN in Hartford, doing the afternoon drive-time show. It was still the days of free-form radio, which soon ended, she said.

Gray said she was fired eight times from radio stations, despite her experience and her knowledge of music, because she refused to follow the new emerging formats of the broadcast world.

She moved to Sabattus in 1978 and was hired by rock station WBLM and later WTOS with the on-air name Annie Earhart, her given name Donna Kelly Gray. She worked at WTOS — “The Mountain of Pure Rock” — off and on for 20 years from 1979 until 1999. She moved to Solon in 1982 and started at WMHB 89.7-FM — Mayflower Hill Broadcasting at Colby College — as a volunteer doing live shows in 1986. Her show “Stroke the Goddess” continues to air 4 to 6 p.m. every Friday. The station also streams live on the Internet at wmhbradio.org.

She married her husband, Andy Wendall, in 1996. Together they run Welcome Radio, with the weekly show “The General Store.” The couple also perform in the vintage Western music group Merry Go Roundup.

Her first book on spirit guides, “The Dawn Book,” was self published by Gray in 1989-90.

“It’s information from the master guides,” she said. “We all have spirit helpers, and the happy news — which is why I love doing this work — is that we all have one that has chosen us and actually signed on the line to help us before we’re born, during the life, and when it’s time for us to pass over, they’re right there with us.”

She said her publisher prefers the term “guardian angel” because it’s in the Bible and people are more familiar with it than with “spirit guide.” Gray said people connect with their spirit guide through their instincts or their dreams, but she teaches how people can interact with them consciously. They can get conscious messages from them telepathically, she said.

“I teach telepathy, basically,” she said. “You have a male and a female guide. One is the life guide, the one that’s signed on; and often they’ll bring a partner in. All you have to do is acknowledge that they’re there.”

Gray said if someone needs help from their spirit guide, the best way to get results is to write down their need and be specific, so the guides will know exactly how to help you. Help can come in any number of ways: through dreams, or having an actual person come into your life with the information you are seeking, or one can see the answer on television, in a magazine or in a newspaper.

“Simply ask, and your guide will bring you what you need,” Gray said.

Gray’s second book, “Education of a Guardian Angel,” was published in 2014. Her first book, “The Dawn Book,” is now in a second printing.

She is now working on a fourth book she will call “Joys of a Guardian Angel,” which like the others, she said, is the work of her own spirit guide she calls Darcy for short, who dictates the words to her and she writes them down longhand in a big notebook.

“I write longhand because I’m listening to my guide tell me the story,” she said. “These are all in the first person. These are my spirit guide speaking, so it’s in the first person. He’s really the author and I’m the scribe. I listen to what he tells me and I write it.”

Doug Harlow — 612-2367

dharlow@centralmaine.com

Twitter:@Doug_Harlow

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