CATHRYN MCINTYRE

A Writer with a Psychic Ability

With the publication of her book, Honor in Concord: Seeking Spirit in Literary Concord, in 2008, author, Cathryn McIntyre demonstrated not just her extensive knowledge of the literary history of Concord, Massachusetts or her talent for writing beautiful prose, she also demonstrated for the first time the ability she has to tap into the realms of spirit and to relate in ways few others have ever done to the writers of 19thcentury Concord, Massachusetts. 

The Concord Writer was also founded in 2008 as “a literary and publishing concern” dedicated to “the words, wisdom and enduring spirit” of Concord’s most famous writer, Henry David Thoreau. The intent was that The Concord Writer would provide a forum in which McIntyre could begin to share her experience and understanding of Thoreau and his words, those spoken and written during his lifetime and those that came after. It had been two years at that point since McIntyre had first made contact with the spirit of Thoreau and she was still regularly connecting and receiving the words from him that she would later publish in her book, The Thoreau Whisperer: Channeling the Spirit of Henry David Thoreau.  

An Indie Author

The publication of The Thoreau Whisperer came in 2018, after McIntyre had once again failed to gain the attention she sought from traditional agents and publishers. Her experience was not unlike the one that Thoreau had in his own lifetime when, after being unable to secure a traditional publisher for his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers, he also resorted to self-publishing in 1849. It wasn’t until his masterpiece, Walden: Or Life in the Woods was published by Boston’s Ticknor & Fields in 1854 that he began to receive the recognition he so well deserved, but unfortunately most of that recognition didn’t come until after Thoreau’s death. 

Holding Thoreau Captive

Although she has a B.A. in English literature, has studied the literary history of Concord, Massachusetts for decades, both independently and in university settings, and is a long-time member of The Thoreau Society, McIntyre is neither a scholar nor an academic. In fact, she feels that the academics that dominate The Thoreau Society and academics in general “have been holding Thoreau captive for too long.” There are few people outside of the academic world and outside of Concord, Massachusetts, where Thoreau is worshipped as a native son, who ever take the time to pause to consider Thoreau or his words. They go on with their lives unaware that the pathway to truth that seems to be missing in today’s world is there within them and has been there all along. That is the message at the heart of all of Thoreau’s work and McIntyre’s hope in sharing her story in the way that she has is that that message will reach a greater number of people than it ever has before.   

McIntyre believes that the academics that praise him the most and continue to claim him as their own seem never to fully understand Thoreau or to adequately present his message. The publication by The Thoreau Society of a collection of essays written by various academics called, What Would Thoreau Do? is a recent example of what she means by this. To McIntyre it is clear that: “if they truly understood Thoreau’s message they would know that the last thing he wants is for them to ask him what it is they should do.”   

McIntyre goes on to say: “The fundamental principle of Thoreau’s beliefs is for each individual to establish a direct connection between themselves and the divine. To do this we must go within and identify that part of us that is divine and that connects all of us to each other and to our shared source. Once we have done this, we must learn to be guided by that wisdom we receive from source and not by any other individual or group who can offer us nothing more than their own interpretation. Our relation to the divine is personal and private. It has nothing to do with what anyone else believes to be true for us. Each individual must intuit his own truth through his own direct connection to the divine and to conduct himself accordingly.”  

In Civil Disobedience, Thoreau states: “The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.'' For Thoreau there is right action and it is action that comes from the higher source. In McIntyre’s view, even entertaining for a moment the notion that any individual should do what they believe Thoreau would do proves that the academics who claim to have the greatest admiration and understanding of him really don’t get his message at all.   

McIntyre believes the ambivalence that the academics have shown toward The Thoreau Whisperer, a book that may in fact contain words spoken by Thoreau in our time, shows their total lack of the insight, imagination and spiritual awareness that fueled Thoreau and the other transcendentalists. This lack of faith in anything spiritual or divine that is common among the intellectual elite seems to McIntyre to be the reason for what is lacking in their understanding of Thoreau and his message. He and all of the other transcendentalists were truly spiritual people who believed fully in the survival of the soul after physical death. Thoreau would not have been surprised to hear from anyone who he knew who had passed before him, for he believed, as McIntyre does, that “All who ever were, still are and always will be.”   . 

A Supernatural Life

McIntyre writes for a broad and general audience but has a particular fondness for those who share her passionate interest in the mystical, metaphysical and paranormal. She is a natural psychic who possesses at least four of the clairs (clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, claircognizance). As a result, she has lived a very supernatural life and has had the full range of what are most often considered paranormal experiences but what she has come to understand are a normal part of life. One of her ghostly experiences was written about by Greg Latimer in his book, Ghost of the Boothbay Region, and Ronny LeBlanc, star of the Travel Channel’s Expedition Bigfoot, included an interview with McIntyre in the latest of his Monsterland series of books.

Anyone who loves magic, mystery and elegant writing will be captivated by McIntyre’s books. Most readers find that any venture into her reality is enormously freeing as it helps them to gain a better understanding of who they are as ever evolving spirits and reminds them of the enormous potential that exists within each of us.