A little before 8:30 on a Sunday morning, eight women held hands in a circle inside an old Victorian parlor. They’d already introduced themselves: Sassy Susan. Divine Diane. Bubbly Brittany. Joyful Jane, etc.

“It’s a very powerful configuration, the joining of hearts, minds and spirits,” said Susan Frank, a Topsham nurse leading the welcoming ceremony at the Gardens of Atlantis Healing Arts Center. “Let your busy day go and let everything pass and be present here today.”

Hands unclasped.

Onto “Connecting With Your Angels.”

Half of the women sat with journals in their laps, the parlor warm, grandma-cozy. Instructor Peg Losee asked: How many people were already connected?

One hand went up.

“There are hundreds of millions of them out there,” she said.

Losee said that after she’d moved to Maine, she wanted to find a townhouse with an end unit, a garage, an ocean view and a fireplace. She asked her angel for help, and she got it. Pretty much.

“It has a fireplace — I should have asked for a working one,” she said, laughing.

Angels, Losee told the group, can be asked for assistance with everything from healing to finding a parking spot.

“If you’ve lost something, ask Chemuel and he’ll help you find it,” she said. That goes for lost jobs, too. For pests, though, ask Ariel. Losee said she once had an animal in her crawl space and asked for help getting rid of it, while letting it be known that she would put poison out.

“Within a day, the critter was gone,” she said.

Losee’s class kicked off a daylong Finding Joy Retreat at the Gardens in Dayton, just west of Old Orchard Beach, two weeks ago. Participants paid $120 to $130 each to create vision boards, practice qigong, meditate and soul search. It was in a country setting, in a classic yellow Victorian that owner Linda Stilphen said she could see in her mind’s eye before she found it. She had a vision for the Gardens, and for this building in particular: a space for healing, learning and honest conversations.

“People are really tired of TV; they’re tired of being talked at in this very artificial way,” Stilphen said. “I think we’ve become very disconnected and it’s just not the way it’s supposed to be.”

Since January 2006, she’s organized eclectic classes with instructors from as far away as Massachusetts. The day before, she’d received a call from a man interested in teaching there, a homeopath and herbalist who worked with the late John Denver.

“There’s always interesting people popping out of the woodwork. I’m just going to go with the flow,” Stilphen said.

An anonymous boost

Stilphen grew up on Orrs Island, the daughter of a lobsterman. She had a massage therapy practice in Portland when she came up with the idea for the center. After three years of looking for just the right spot — “This is the exact image in my head, this house” — she called on her psychic. One of the psychic’s tips: The place was going to be near water.

Stilphen said she was out aimlessly driving around when she finally saw the 1880s mansion. It had been under contract for the past nine months, but the sale had just fallen through and the price had dropped by $50,000. And Cooks Brook passed behind it.

“Every cell in my body was electrified,” Stilphen said. “It represents an era of bygone days that we need to get back to. This house was built with love; you can just feel it.”

Her class list is always changing, as is class size, anything from one to 25. The Gardens tends to draw more women then men. “Most men aren’t into angels,” Stilphen said.

On Aug. 22, she’ll host a Healing Arts Festival on the grounds, with about 30 booths offering chair massage, holistic counseling, chi transmissions, colon hydrotherapy, spirit doodles and Native American tarot card readings. (The fair is free; practitioners charge their own fees.) Stilphen said she’s expecting to draw 200 to 300 people.

A colorful, painted sign on a door leading to her front parlor reads, “Good things are going to happen.” She said the current economy has been tough on business, and pointed to one day this past winter when she came close to hanging it up, sitting next to a bunch of bills at her desk.

She tried to ditch her funk, left to work on a client who’d come in for a massage and returned to her desk to find a purple envelope with $1,000 inside.

“I burst into tears,” Stilphen said. “To this day, nobody’s ’fessed up. It gave me the kick in the butt to say, ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get going.’”

Weird, Wicked Weird is a monthly feature on the strange, intriguing and unexplained in Maine. Send ideas, photos and any doodle at all to kskelton@sunjournal.com.

Go and do

Healing Arts Festival

Where: Gardens of Atlantis Healing Arts Center, Route 35, Dayton

When: Aug. 22, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

What: Dozens of booths offering holistic counseling, Reiki, chi transmissions, food and crafts. Admission is free; some booths charge a fee for services.

FMI: 929-5088

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