Above: Millstone Mayor Nancy Grbelja, the driving force behind an upcoming fundraiser for the Standardbred Retirement Foundation, walks her horse, Bud’s A Winner, at Gaitway Farm in Manalapan. Right: Spiritual medium Gail Lionetti, who says she has a very high rate of communication with spirits during her readings, will be featured at a January fundraiser for the Standardbred Retirement Foundation. PHOTOS BY JEFF GRANIT staff Bring your own spirits — not alcoholic beverages but rather the presence of deceased loved ones — to a benefit for the Standardbred Retirement Foundation featuring medium Gail Lionetti.
The event, called Angels Among Us, is the brainchild of Millstone Mayor Nancy Grbelja, a standardbred owner, and her friend Lionetti. Angels Among Us is set for Friday, Jan. 13, at the Radisson hotel, Freehold Township, beginning at 7 p.m. Lionetti will do readings at each table.
Lionetti, of Aberdeen, first recognized her gift for seeing and communicating with spirits at the age of 6. She recalled that at age 7, the father of her best friend died. At the funeral, she saw the man’s physical body in the coffin but his spiritual self standing next to it, trying to tell people that he was fine, she said.
In addition to people, she said she can communicate with deceased pets.
Lionetti’s interest in standardbreds arose when an owner at Gaitway Farm in Manalapan, where Grbelja keeps her racehorse, had a mare no longer able to race. Lionetti wanted to buy the horse, but the owner gave the mare to what she thought was a rescue in southern New Jersey, where the mare was supposedly retrained and adopted by a family.
Lionetti said she had a vision of the horse communicating that it needed help and was losing weight. She asked the former owner to check on the people who took the horse. According to Lionetti, the following day someone in Ohio called the former owner asking for the horse’s papers, because they wanted to race her. The “scam artists,” as Grbelja termed them, had posed as a rescue and instead sent the mare to the New Holland, Pa., auction, where she ended up in the kill pen to be sent to slaughter. Fortunately, someone did buy the mare from the pen, and she eventually ended up with the person in Ohio, Grbelja said.
The mare is now back with her former owner in New Jersey, Grbelja said. The horse returned “underweight, scarred and badly hurt,” she said. After this incident, Lionetti approached Grbelja and said that she wanted to help horses and prevent any of them from going to slaughter. They contacted the SRF to propose the benefit.
Grbelja said that she has had readings with Lionetti, who contacted her late parents and brother, as well as her beloved horse, Watson. Grbelja had to euthanize Watson in June because of severe pain issues, which her veterinarian said could not be alleviated.
Lionetti, who said she has had two near-death experiences, goes into meditative prayer before conducting readings. She said she has no control over what spirits may come through, but claims a very high communication rate for readings.
When asked about ghosts, Lionetti said that spirits sometimes don’t leave a physical place because they are comfortable there, but may also go back and forth between this world and the next.
Tickets to the buffet dinner are $75 each. For more information or to make a reservation, visit www.gaillionetti.com or www.adoptahorse.org and click on Angels Among Us.