Remembering My Friend and Mentor “Ro”: A Tribute to Rosemary Ellen Guiley (1950–2019)
This first appeared on the New Mystics website in 2019. It has since been updated.
Of all the losses we are destined to suffer in the course of a lifetime, I find the loss of a mentor to be one of the hardest.
It was 16 years ago this November that I first met Rosemary (whom I affectionately came to call Ro a few years into our multilayered relationship). A few months before, during a trip to Point Pleasant, WV to see the Mothman Museum with Tonya, in August 2009, we were driving back from the McClintic Wildlife Refuge (the TNT Area in local parlance) when we saw an interdimensional being.
Word quickly spread and Ro was one of a handful of investigators who met with us to recreate the circumstances of our experience and visit the site where the interdimensional appeared and disappeared.
That weekend was the start of a friendship, a mentorship, and eventually a relationship as our publisher. I also had the honor of reviewing many of Ro's books for my review site and other platforms at her request.
.jpg)
The paranormal field is one that is met with endless cynicism. It attracts many different personalities and the methods and authenticity of some investigators and even experiencers span a wide range, with the far end being outright fraud. There’s also a lot of back-stabbing, trash-talking, and unproductive competition (read as one-upmanship). Ro and I agreed that the TV “reality show” culture has not helped to legitimize the field and has created a vast number of misperceptions about a very important aspect of our experiences on Earth and what comes after.
But Ro was on the opposite end of that spectrum. She was professional beyond a doubt. Her methods that first weekend in Point Pleasant made a lasting impression on me. At the time, Tonya and I had no idea that, 16 years later, we would be doing the same work as Ro was doing as often as we are (field investigations, consulting, presentations, and workshops), and have two books published about our work (the first one published by her Visionary Living), as well as doing a podcast, Into the Outer Realms.
With the spirit box November 2011 at the site of the Silver Bridge tragedy on the Ohio River.
All that we have done, and so many people we have met, are all thanks to Ro. Her belief in us has been the driving force behind all that we have accomplished—and hope to continue to—in the field of paranormal research and our work with a variety of clients. Her example and guidance are weaved throughout my continued examinations of the patterns and parallels of the phenomena we have all devoted so much time and energy trying to understand.
Ro was many things. First, she was an experiencer, which made her compassionate toward those she interviewed. She was a detail-oriented investigator, with a healthy balance of skepticism and deep belief. She was also a gifted writer, with over 60 titles to her credit—many of which are standards in the field. I have read about a quarter of them and have reviewed about ten. Tonya and I were honored to have our stories told in about a half dozen of her books. So, when she asked Tonya to write Living the Intuitive Life: Cultivating Extraordinary Awareness in 2016 and asked us to write Watch Out for the Hallway: Our Two Year Investigation of the Most Haunted Library in North Carolina a year later we were beyond honored—we were determined to apply all she had taught us to contribute in substantial ways to the field to which she had devoted her life.
Ro was also our friend, helping us through some tough times as a family and helping both Tonya and Jolie, our 25-year-old daughter—both of whom are gifted psychic mediums—to understand, develop, and apply their talents safely and to use them in helping others. She spent many nights at our “holler” home in West Virginia as both a friend and as an investigator and lectured on fairies and dreams at our New Mystics Center for Arts and Education. I have fond memories of our adventures, paranormal experiences, and of hearing her typing away in our guest bedroom, answering emails and writing her books.
One of our late night sessions in the lobby of the Lowe Hotel, Point Pleasant, WV, 2013
Although she was often on the TV and radio, she was down to Earth and accessible—using these media to foster interest in the legitimacy of the paranormal and to share her theories and research with a broad audience. It was never about ego. Never about being a star.
Although, in many ways, she was.
Ro with many of the best-know people in the field of UFOlogy (photo courtesy of Joe Redmiles).
Ro was the center of an informal band of investigators she dubbed The Mothman Irregulars, of which I am honored to be a founding member. Two other founding members—John and Tim Frick—were there that first time in November 2009. We mourn her loss together and carry on her work, which we experienced for many, many hours during our shared field investigations and roundtable chats at diners and in hotel lobbies until the early hours of the morning.
.jpg)
Ro’s spirit and guidance are as powerful now as before she transitioned. Tonya and I have received many messages from her in a variety of ways (dreams, automatic writing, and even brief visits right before and after her passing) and we have heard from numerous colleagues who have reported the same.
The last time we saw Ro and her husband Joe (one of my dearest friends to this day), in Ohio 2018.
It is a comfort to know that we have not truly lost our friend and mentor—that she is watching over and guiding us even as she collects firsthand data and experiences of the phenomena that she devoted her life to studying and reported about.
As she shared with Tonya shortly after her transition through automatic writing: I am here with Keel and Bigfoot is real!
Just what that means… well, we’ll have to wait and see for ourselves. As she has said to a few of us in different ways since she’s passed: “You’ll have to work for it.”
It is an honor to have been asked by so many people and organizations to share our memories of Ro since her transition in 2009. This brief Tribute is just one more way to express our gratitude for all she gave to us, and shared with us—in the field, in our home, and at events like the annual Mothman Festival—in the almost 11 full years that we were lucky enough to know her on this fleeting plane of existence.
Comments
Post a Comment