Today I am reblogging an article by Judith Fein. She was kind enough to give me permission to do so.
My mother died two months ago. Before her passing, I asked her on three separate occasions to send me a sign in the form of white feathers. The first time she sneered. The second time she rolled her eyes. And the third time she didn’t answer. So I forgot about it.
Communicating with the dead has actually been a secret part of my life for many years. It began when my father died when I was in my senior year of college. I used to go to the cemetery to visit him, and one day, quite unexpectedly, he spoke to me. “Don’t give up your writing either,” he said.
“Either what?” I thought. Why did he talk about writing? I was going to be a college professor. As it turned out, he was right. I didn’t give up my writing and I became a writer.
It happened again when a teacher presented me with an owl feather in a large box at the end of a kundalini yoga class. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to the gift. I lifted it up, and I saw dead people jumping up and down, wanting to speak.
Then it happened with my dear New Zealand friend when I met her in France. She was looking for the cemetery where her grandfather was buried. All she knew was that he died in the battle of the Somme. We chose one of the many military cemeteries in the area and drove there. When we arrived, feathers lined up in front of us, leading the way to an arch, which was flanked by two books bearing the names of the interred. Her grandfather’s name was among them.
A feeling of weightlessness. A bright light at the end of a warm tunnel. The ability to see your own body below you, and friends or loved ones—who passed away years ago—now surrounding you in absolute peace. These are just a few of the things described by people who have had a near-death experience. And not all of them are as positive. Some recount a visit to hell, where they were overcome with fear and hopelessness, and even tortured by demons.
While many in the scientific community are skeptical of these accounts, others believe they offer the most definitive proof of life after death we might ever encounter. And though the debate continues, one thing is for certain: These people insist what they went through was life-altering. But by all means, feel free to judge for yourself.
10 Veronika-Ulrike Barthel
Veronika Barthel says that, after being struck by lightning while driving her car one day in 1981, she was instantly transported into hell, where she found demons escorting her into a big waiting room.
“The creatures that I saw there were more terrifying than anything I even saw in a horror movie. Today I know that they were demons. As soldiers they where marching past me, and in the middle of them were people that were screaming with pain. It was very difficult to breathe down there, because of the terrible smell of this place. I saw a lake, which looked like the inner part of a volcano, where people were cursing because of great pain.”
She says that she saw people being thrown into caves, which were guarded by demons, who threw spears at them as they screamed. She also recalled snakes being present all over the ground, which were there to frighten and intimidate the people in hell.
After her experience, Veronika found herself transported back into her car, where for a moment, she saw her own burning hands gripping the steering wheel.
9 Howard Storm
Once a self-described “double atheist” and “know-it all college professor,” Howard Storm was leading a three-week European art tour with his students when he retired to his hotel room in France on the last day of the trip. Without warning, he suddenly screamed and dropped to the floor, prompting his wife to call for help. At the hospital, the news was grim: Howard had a perforated stomach that required surgery, and if he didn’t get it soon, he would die.
The wait for a doctor to arrive at the hospital was lengthy—so much so, that Howard turned to his wife at one point and said his final farewell to her, insisting that he was moments from death. That’s when he recalled finding himself standing next to his own body (which was still on the hospital bed) and feeling more alive than ever, with no more stomach pain. Soon after, he heard unfamiliar voices calling to him.
“Come with us,” they said. “Hurry up, let’s go. We’ve been waiting for you.”
After calling out to his wife and getting no response, he began to follow the voices, which led him out of the room and down a long, dark hallway. He followed them for so long, and became so increasingly terrified, that he told the voices he wasn’t going any further. Then they attacked him.
“We had a big fight and the fight turned into them annihilating me, which they did slowly and with much relish,” he says. “Mostly they were biting and tearing at me. This went on for a long time. They did other things to humiliate and violate me which I don’t talk about.”
Collapsed on the ground, Howard began reciting The Lord’s Prayer, after hearing a soft voice tell him to “Pray to God.” After saying a few other other prayers, he said that Jesus personally saved him from the demons, and sent him back to Earth, telling him to live his life differently. Storm’s book, My Descent Into Death, was published in 2000.
8 Dr. Mary Neal
During a kayaking trip in 1999, Dr. Mary Neal became pinned under the water when her kayak capsized, making it impossible for her to breathe for anywhere between 15 and 25 minutes. That’s when she says she experienced a near-death experience that brought her into the presence of God, Jesus, and angels.
During the experience, God told her that her family would be facing an upcoming tragedy and would need her to help them through. Specifically, her nine-year-old son Willie was going to die—but she wasn’t told when, where, or how. Ten years later, at age 19, Willie was killed in a car accident in Maine by a driver who was on his cell phone.
Mary is convinced Jesus helped her under the water, making it possible for rescue workers to revive her following the kayaking accident. She awoke with two broken legs and lung complications, and spent a month in the hospital, followed by six weeks in a wheelchair. She wrote a book called, To Heaven And Back, which was published in May 2012.
7 Ben Breedlove
When 18-year-old Ben Breedlove of Austin, Texas began posting a series of videos on YouTube telling the world about his rare heart condition, they instantly went viral, attracting millions of viewers. In one of them, he tells the story of being wheeled down a dark hall by nurses to the surgery room, and seeing a bright, peaceful light near the ceiling. He was four at the time it happened.
Through a series of index cards in the video, he wrote: “There were no lights on in this hall. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, and I couldn’t help but smile. I had no worries at all, like nothing else in the world mattered.” He talks of different times when he “cheated death,” including an incident where he fainted in the hallway at school.
“While I was still unconscious, I was in this white room; no walls, it just went on and on. There was no sound, but that same peaceful feeling I had when I was four. I was wearing a really nice suit, and so was my favorite rapper, Kid Cudi. I then looked at myself in the mirror—I was proud of myself, of my entire life, everything I have done. It was the best feeling. I didn’t want to leave that place. I wish I never woke up.”
Ben’s videos attracted the attention of rapper Kid Cudi, who apparently “broke down” after viewing them. He responded: “I broke down, I am to tears [sic] because I hate how life is so unfair. This has really touched my heart in a way I can’t describe, this is why I do what I do. Why I write my life, and why I love you all so much.”
On Christmas Day 2011, one week after posting the videos, Ben Breedlove suffered a heart attack and died. A family friend stated, “There are times that [the family is] overwhelmed by the pain and the loss of Ben, but then it’s replaced with knowing that he was at peace with what was going to happen.” The final index cards in Ben’s last video stated, “Do you believe in angels or God? I do.”
6 Colton Burpo
Colton Burpo wasn’t quite four years old when his appendix burst, landing him in a hospital for emergency surgery. And when he awoke two hours later, he had an amazing story to tell. He said he had been to heaven, where he met Jesus, John The Baptist, God, and even family members who had passed away previously—including a baby sister that his mother had lost due to a miscarriage. Neither of his parents had ever mentioned the miscarriage to him.
He also met an old man he called “Pop,” whom he had seen as a young man. Later, he was able to identify Pop in a family photograph as the man he had seen in heaven. It was his paternal grandfather. And while the surgery was taking place, Colton told his father that he had seen him in another room, where he had gone to pray.
His father, Todd Burpo, said, “We knew he wasn’t making it up, because he was able to tell us what we were doing in another part of the hospital. Not even Sonja had seen me in that little room, having my meltdown with God.”
Todd wrote a book called Heaven Is For Real that recounts the entire story of his son’s incredible experience in detail. Colton Burpo now travels the country with his parents, sharing his story with others.
5 Betty J. Eadie
In November 1973, Betty Eadie underwent a partial hysterectomy, after which she says she floated out of her body and passed through a tunnel to heaven. She said she was guided by three hooded, monk-like figures who claimed to have always been her guardian angels and informed her that she had died prematurely.
In an excerpt from her book, Embraced By The Light, she recalls:
“I saw a pinpoint of light in the distance. The black mass around me began to take on more of the shape of a tunnel, and I felt myself traveling through it at an even greater speed, rushing toward the light. I was instinctively attracted to it, although again, I felt that others might not be. As I approached it, I noticed the figure of a man standing in it, with the light radiating all around him. There was no questioning who he was, I knew that he was my savior, and friend, and God. He was Jesus Christ, who had always loved me, even when I thought he hated me.”
Following its publication in September 1994, her book became a No. 1 best seller and remains in print today.
4 Don Piper
Following a pastor’s conference in January 1989, Don Piper was driving over a bridge when a Texas Department of Corrections tractor-trailer truck crossed the center line and ran into him head-on. He said he was “instantly transported to Heaven,” where he found himself surrounded by dead relatives and friends, and a large pearl gate.
“The gate of heaven was a magnificent edifice, the one that I saw. It looked no less like a giant gate that had been sculpted from mother-of-pearl,” he said. “Behind that portal was such a light that I don’t conceive of how you could see it in an earthly body. It could only be envisioned in a heavenly body because it was too bright.”
As he lay there crushed in his vehicle on the bridge, a pastor came by, who prayed over him. The EMS staff had told him that Don was deceased. After the pastor prayed, he instantly found himself back in his vehicle, staring up at a tarp that had been draped over him. At the hospital, it was revealed that, although he suffered no major head trauma, nearly every bone in his body had been broken or shattered. Don wrote a book called 90 Minutes In Heaven after his recovery.
3 Bill Wiese
In his book 23 Minutes In Hell, author Bill Wiese tells the story of laying in bed at 3:00 AM and being suddenly thrown into the depths of hell, where he was tormented by demons. He said he was placed in a small cell with vicious “beasts” who looked like reptiles. He recalls understanding that they had been assigned to torment him, which they did, throwing him against the walls and piercing his flesh with their claws. The pain became so bad that he wished for death but was not obliged. He said that he heard the cries of millions, who were either burning in hell, or being tortured as he was.
When he awoke, his wife noted that the clock read 3:23, so his book is titled 23 Minutes In Hell.
2 Crystal McVea
Following a simple medical procedure for pancreatitis in 2009, Crystal McVea of Oklahoma went into full respiratory arrest on the operating table. When that happened, she says she experienced a trip to heaven that renewed her faith in God, whom she met in person. She described him as “an immense brightness,” one that she could “feel, taste, touch, hear, and smell,” and recalled having 500 senses while in heaven, as opposed to the traditional human five.
“I had angels, I had God, and I fell to my knees in front of him,” she said, adding that she’d always been a doubter prior to the experience. When she was asked twice by God if she’d like to return to Earth, she chose to stay both times. But despite her insistence, God sent her back—though not before relieving her of her guilt and shame.
McVea released a book about her experience called Waking Up In Heaven in April 2013.
1 Ian McCormack
While diving for lobster one day on the island of Mauritius, Ian McCormack was stung on the arm by a box jellyfish. He says that, by the time the ambulance arrived, he already felt completely paralyzed and necrosis had begun to set in. As he lay dying, Ian saw a vision of his mother praying for him, and after he made it to the hospital, he was clinically dead for a period of 15–20 minutes. That’s when he found himself in a very dark place and began to hear people screaming.
“From the darkness I began to hear men’s voices screaming at me telling me to ‘shut up’—that I ‘deserved to be there’—-that I was ‘in Hell.’ I couldn’t believe it, but as I stood there a radiant beam of light shone through the darkness and immediately began to lift me upward. I found myself being translated up into an incredibly brilliant beam of pure white light—it seemed to be emanating from a circular opening far above me (I felt like a speck of dust being drawn up into a beam of sunlight).”
As he walked toward the light, Ian says he could feel it giving off a “living emotion,” and that God then spoke to him. McCormack hasn’t written a book but has shared his story with several news outlets and talk shows.
Have you experienced this or know someone that has?
Did it change your belief in life after death or not?
In parts of Asia, tradition dictates that when a person dies, relatives will mark his or her body—often using soot—with the hope that the soul of the deceased will be reincarnated within the same family. The mark is said to become both a birthmark and evidence that the soul has been reborn.
In 2012, University of Virginia School of Medicine professor and psychiatrist Jim Tucker and Jurgen Keil, an emeritus professor and psychologist from University of Tasmania at Hobart, submitted a paper to The Journal of Scientific Exploration (a peer-reviewed journal for the study of fringe science, from alternative medicine to UFOs). Their study detailed families with children who were born with marks corresponding to their dead relatives.
In one case, K.H., a boy from Myanmar, was noted to have a birthmark on his left arm in the same place where his grandfather’s body had been marked. His grandfather had died 11 months before K.H.’s birth. Many people, including family members, saw the grandfather’s mark made by a neighbor from charcoal of the underside of a pot.
At just over two years old, K.H. called his grandmother Ma Tin Shwe, a name only used by the deceased grandfather. The grandmother was called “Mother” by her children and Daw Lay or “Auntie” by other children. K.H. called his mother War War Khine, just like his deceased grandfather had, rather than Ma War.
When K.H.’s mother was pregnant, she dreamed of her father saying, “I want to live with you.” The birthmark and the child’s names for his loved ones makes his family think the dream has come true.
Ian Stevenson was a psychiatry professor from the University of Virginia who focused on reincarnation. In 1993, he published a paper in the Journal of Scientific Exploration detailing birthmarks and birth defects seemingly linked to past-life memories. According to his findings, the majority of birth defects are thought to be formed by “unknown causes.”
In one case, a child in Turkey remembered the life of a man who was killed by a shotgun. Hospital records told of a man who had died after six days of injuries caused by a blast to the right side of his skull. The boy in question was born with unilateral microtia—a malformed ear—and hemifacial microsomia, which is the underdevelopment of the right side of his face. Microtia occurs in roughly 1 in 6,000 babies, while microsomia is estimated to occur in 1 in 3,500 babies.
8. The Patient Who Killed and Married Her Son
Photo credit: BrianWeiss.com
Brian Weiss, the chairman of the psychiatry department at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Miami, claims to have seen a patient have a spontaneous past-life regression episode during treatment. Even though he is a classically trained psychiatrist and had a regular practice for many years, he is now a leader in past-life regression therapy.
In his book Messages from the Masters: Tapping into the Power of Love, Dr. Weiss tells the story of a patient named Diane, who worked as the head nurse at an urgent care center. During a past-life regression session, Diane supposedly experienced the life of a young settler in North America during the early years of conflict with Native Americans. She specifically talked about hiding from a hunting party with her toddler son in a secret compartment while her husband was away.
She described the baby as having a birthmark shaped like a half moon or curved sword beneath his right shoulder. While hiding, the son cried out. Out of fear for their lives, and in an effort to quiet him, the woman accidentally smothered the child by covering his mouth.
Months after the regression experience, Diane felt herself attracted to a patient who had been admitted for asthma attacks. The patient also felt a connection or familiarity with Diane. Diane was shocked when she noticed a crescent-shaped birthmark in the same location on the patient. Dr. Weiss claims to have seen asthma in people whose previous memories involved death by suffocation.
At age six, Taranjit Singh was living in Alluna Miana village in India. The boy had been claiming since the age of two that his real name was Satnam Singh and that he was born in Chakkchela village in Jalandhar, roughly 60 kilometers (40 mi) away.
Taranjit allegedly recalled that he was a student of Class 9 (about 15 or 16 years old) and that his father’s name was Jeet Singh. A man on a scooter had collided with Satnam, who was on a bike, and killed him on September 10, 1992. Taranjit said that the books he was carrying the day of the accident were soaked in his blood, and he’d had 30 rupees in his wallet. The child was so insistent, and the story was so odd yet detailed, that his father, Ranjit, decided to investigate.
A teacher in Jalandhar told Ranjit that a boy named Satnam Singh really had died in an accident, and this boy’s father was named Jeet Singh. Ranjit reached out to Satnam’s family, who confirmed the blood-soaked books and rupee details. When Taranjit and members of Satnam’s family met face to face, Taranjit was able to correctly identify Satnam in photos.
A forensic scientist, Vikram Raj Chauhan, read about Taranjit in the newspaper and investigated further. He took samples of Satnam’s handwriting from an old notebook and compared them to Taranjit’s. Even though the young boy “was not accustomed to writing,” the handwriting was a near-match. Dr. Chauhan shared his findings with colleagues, who also found the samples similar.
6. Born Knowing Swedish
Psychiatry professor Ian Stevenson investigated numerous cases of the phenomenon of xenoglossy, which is defined as “speaking a real language entirely unknown to (the speaker) in his ordinary state.” The definition was coined originally by Charles Richet between 1905 and 1907. Richet was a Nobel Prize–winning doctor, whose interests and research spanned many areas, including parapsychology.
Stevenson investigated a 37-year-old American woman whom he called TE. TE was born and raised in Philadelphia, the daughter of immigrant parents who spoke English, Polish, Yiddish, and Russian at home while she was growing up. She studied French while in school. Her only exposure to Swedish was a few phrases spoken in a television show about the lives of Swedish Americans. However, while under eight different regression hypnosis sessions, TE became “Jensen Jacoby,” a male Swedish peasant.
As Jensen, TE answered questions posed in the Swedish language with Swedish responses, using about 60 words not first spoken by the Swedish-speaking interviewer. TE as Jensen was also able to answer English questions with English answers.
Stevenson gave TE two polygraph tests, a word association test, and a language aptitude test, all of which she answered as though Swedish. He also spoke to her husband, family members, and acquaintances about her aptitude or exposure to Scandinavian languages. All agreed that she had none. No Scandinavian languages were taught in the schools TE had attended.
That said, TE as Jensen was not fluent. The transcript of the session shows that TE as Jensen had a vocabulary of roughly only 100 words and rarely spoke in full sentences. In fact, there were no complex sentences at all, despite Jensen supposedly being an adult male. The accent was praised, however, by Stevenson’s consultants. In an added twist, several specialists pointed out that the language was mixed with Norwegian.
5. Memories of Monasteries
In his book Your Past Lives And The Healing Process, psychiatrist Adrian Finkelstein describes a boy named Robin Hull who often spoke in a language his mother couldn’t understand. She contacted a professor of Asian languages, who identified the language as a dialect spoken specifically in the northern region of Tibet.
Robin said that he went to school many years ago in a monastery, and that is where he learned to speak that language. However, the truth was that Robin wasn’t even of school-going age and had yet to set foot in a classroom.
The professor investigated further based on Robin’s descriptions and eventually settled on a monastery in the Kunlun Mountains that matched the information the young boy was able to relay. Robin’s story inspired the professor to actually travel to Tibet, where he located the monastery.
Finkelstein specializes in hypnosis and past-life therapy. He has been on the staff of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and was a clinical assistant professor at UCLA. He currently has a private practice in Malibu, California.
4. The Burned Japanese Solider
Another Stevenson investigation revolves around a Burmese girl named Ma Win Tar. Ma Win Tar was born in 1962, and at around age three, she started referencing a life as a Japanese soldier. The soldier had been captured by Burmese villagers and burned alive while tied to a tree.
The specific life in her account was not identified, but, as Stevenson points out, the circumstances were plausible. In 1945, Burmese villagers would capture any of the stragglers from the retreating Japanese Army, and they sometimes burned soldiers alive.
Ma Win Tar showed traits that were incongruous with her life as a Burmese girl. She liked her hair cut short and liked to dress in boyish clothes (something her family forbade). She refused the spicy foods that marked Burmese cuisine, showing a preference for sweet foods and pork. She also showed a “streak of cruelty,” including a habit of slapping the faces of her playmates. Stevenson said that the Japanese soldiers “often” slapped Burmese villagers and that the practice is not culturally organic to the area. Ma Win Tar resisted her family’s Buddhism and even went so far as to consider herself “a foreigner.” She declared visiting members of the Japanese War Graves Commission (who had come to her town) as “our nationals.”
Oddest of all, Ma Win Tar had been born with severe birth defects in both hands. Her middle and ring fingers on the right hand were webbed and “loosely attached” to the rest of her hand. They were amputated when she was only a few days old. Several other fingers were missing or had “constriction” rings. A ring on her left wrist had three separate depressions. There was also, according to her mother, a similar mark on her right wrist that had faded. The marks were eerily similar to that of a rope burn—something a Japanese soldier who had been burned alive while tied to a tree may have acquired during his ordeal.
3. His Brothers Scars
In 1979, Kevin Christenson died at the age of two. A broken leg at 18 months had revealed metastatic cancer. Chemotherapy was administered through the right side of his neck to combat the many ailments brought on by the disease, including a tumor that caused his left eye to protrude and a nodule above his right ear.
Twelve years later, Kevin’s mother, who had divorced his father and remarried, had another child named Patrick. Right from the start, there were similarities between the half-brothers. Patrick was born with a birthmark that looked like a small cut on the right side of his neck. It was in the same place where Kevin’s chemo IV entered his body. Even stranger, there was a nodule on Patrick’s scalp in the same place that Kevin’s had been. Like Kevin, Patrick had an issue with his left eye, which was eventually diagnosed as corneal leukoma (thankfully, not a tumor).
When Patrick began walking, he limped, even though there was no medical reason for him to do so. He claimed to have a memory of going under surgery. When his mother asked him where on his body, Patrick pointed to the area above his right ear, the same place his half-brother had had a nodule biopsied.
At around age four, Patrick started asking about his “old house,” even though he had never lived in any other home. He described it as being orange and brown. If you’re guessing that Kevin had lived in an orange and brown house, you get a gold star. Researchers investigating the situation actually took Patrick to the old house, but the little boy did not identify anything that convinced them that he was actually familiar with the orange and brown home.
While it is very possible that Patrick was able to pick up on details of his mother’s life with her previous husband and deceased son, the biological connections are difficult to explain.
2. Cat Memories
When John McConnell was fatally shot six times in 1992, he left behind a daughter named Doreen. Doreen gave birth to a son, William, in 1997. William was diagnosed with pulmonary valve atresia, a congenital condition in which a faulty valve directs blood from the heart to the lungs. The right ventricle of his heart was also deformed. William’s condition improved after numerous surgeries and treatment.
When John was shot, one of the bullets entered his back, hitting his left lung and the main pulmonary artery in his heart. John’s injury and William’s condition affected the heart and lungs in a very similar way.
One day, while trying to avoid discipline, William told Doreen, “When you were a little girl, and I was your daddy, you were bad a lot of times, and I never hit you!” Similar overly familiar statements followed. William asked Doreen about a cat she’d had as a little girl and mentioned that he called it “Boss.” Strikingly, only John had called the cat that—its given name was Boston. William was also able to differentiate between Boss and another family cat named Maniac.
William was able to state the day he was born (a Tuesday) and the day John died (Thursday) before he even knew his days of the week without Doreen’s prompting. He said he’d been told on a Tuesday by “God” that he was ready to “come back.”
John had told his daughter that he would always take care of her. Whether he did in fact come back to care for her as William, the coincidences are an interesting link to her father.
The ‘In-Between’ State
Dr. Brian Weiss became involved with past-life regression through his involvement with a patient named Catherine, as illustrated in his book Many Lives, Many Masters. During a regression session, Catherine shocked Dr. Weiss when she mentioned that she was in an “in between” state and that both Dr. Weiss’s father and his son were present. Catherine went on to say:
“Your father is here, and your son, who is a small child. Your father says you will know him because his name is Avrom, and your daughter is named after him. Also, his death was due to his heart. Your son’s heart was also important, for it was backward, like a chicken’s . . . He wanted to show you that medicine could only go so far, that its scope is very limited.”
Dr. Weiss was shocked, as his patient knew very little about his personal life. Photos of his living son, Jordan, as well as a daughter were on his desk, but Catherine seemed to be talking about Adam, the doctor’s firstborn who had died at only 23 days old. Adam had been diagnosed with total anomalous pulmonary venous drainage with an atrial septal defect—the pulmonary veins had grown on the wrong side of the heart, effectively backward. Further, Dr. Weiss’s father went by “Alvin,” but his Hebrew name was Avrom, just as Catherine had suggested. Dr. Weiss’s daughter Amy was indeed named for her grandfather.
The revelation convinced Dr. Weiss of the veracity of Catherine’s regression claims and changed the course of his career.
***
As you can see there are cases that are startling in their detail. Of course there are ‘explanations’ given for some of these occurrences but not all can be dismissed. My own nephew has remarkable similarities to my father. At an early age, he would reel out whole perfectly formed and enunciated sentences when he was ‘too young’ to know those words. He also walks just like my father crossing his hands behind his back with his thumbs linked.
10 Interesting Cases Of Supposed Reincarnation – I was unable to reblog this article so just copied – please visit the original post. http://listverse.com/2013/10/21/10-interesting-cases-of-supposed-reincarnation/Even though reincarnation stories can never really be proven true, some of them have elements that are genuinely mind-boggling, especially when the stories come from children too young to have much knowledge of the world.
10 Edward Austrian
Patricia Austrian’s four-year-old son Edward had a phobia of drizzly, grey days. Then he developed a problem with his throat and started to complain of severe pain. Whenever he had a sore throat, he said that his “shot was hurting.” Edward told his mother very detailed stories about his previous life in the trenches in what was apparently World War I. He told her that he had been shot in the throat and killed.
At first doctors could not find a cause for his sore throat and removed his tonsils as a precautionary measure. A cyst developed in his throat and doctors did not know how to treat it. As soon as Edward was prompted to tell his parents and others more about his previous life and talk about how he was killed, the cyst disappeared. Edward’s doctors never found out why the cyst had vanished.
9 The Dutch Clock
Bruce Whittier had reoccurring dreams of being a Jewish man hiding in a house with his family. His name had been Stefan Horowitz, a Dutch Jew who was discovered in his hiding place along with his family and taken to Auschwitz, where he died. During and after the dreams, he felt panicked and restless. He began to record his dreams, and one night he dreamed about a clock, which he was able to draw in great detail upon waking.
Whittier dreamed about the location of the clock in an antiques shop and went to look. The clock was visible in the shop window and looked exactly like the one in his dreams. Whittier asked the dealer where it had come from. It transpired that the dealer had bought the clock from among the property of a retired German major in The Netherlands. This convinced Whittier that he really had led a past life.
NB ***On a side note I actually had an experience with a clock – I will relay at a later date! Mandy
8 John Raphael And The Tower Tree
Peter Hume, a bingo caller from Birmingham, England, started having a very specific dreams about life on guard duty at the Scottish border in 1646. He was a foot soldier of Cromwell’s army and his name was John Raphael. When put under hypnosis, Hume remembered more details and locations. He started to visit places he remembered with his brother and even found small items that appeared to have come from the era in which he had lived, such as horse spurs.
With the help of a village historian in Culmstock, South England, he even managed to positively identify details about a church that he had known—he was able to tell her that the church used to have a tower with a yew tree growing from it. This was not a published fact, and it startled her that Hume knew it—the church tower had been taken down in 1676. In local registers, John Raphael was discovered to have been married in the church. A civil war historian, Ronald Hutton, investigated the case and asked Hume very era-specific questions while under hypnosis. Hutton was not satisfied that Hume was totally in tune with the era of his past life, as he could not answer all his questions in a satisfactory way.
7 Who’s Your Grandad?
Gus Taylor was 18 months old when he started to say that he was his own grandfather. Young children can be confused about their own identity and those of their family members, but this was different. His grandfather had died a year before Gus was born and the boy totally believed they were the same person. When shown some family photographs, Gus identified “Grandpa Augie” when he was four years old.
There was a family secret that nobody had ever spoken about in front of or around Gus—Augie’s sister had been murdered and dumped in the San Francisco Bay. The family were perplexed when the four-year-old child started to talk about his dead sister. According to Gus, God gave him a ticket after he died. With this ticket he was able to travel through a hole, after which he came back to life as Gus.
6 The Case Of Imad Elawar
Five-year-old Imad Elawar from Lebanon started talking about his life in a nearby village. The first two words he spoke as a child were the names “Jamileh” and “Mahmoud,” and at the age of two he stopped stranger outside and told him they had been neighbors. The child and his parents were investigated by Dr Ian Stevenson. Imad made over 55 different claims about his previous life.
The family visited the village that the boy had been spoken of, together with Stevenson, and found the house where he claimed he had lived. Imad and his family were able to positively identify thirteen facts and memories that were confirmed as being accurate. Imad recognized his previous uncle, Mahmoud, and his mistress from a former life, Jamileh, from photographs. He was able to remember where he had kept his gun, a fact verified by others, and was able to have a chat with a stranger about their experiences during their army days. In total, 51 out of 57 of the experiences and places mentioned by Imad were verified during the visit.
5 The Navy Fighter Pilot
At a very young age, James Leininger started to remember his life as a navy fighter pilot. Airplanes were the only toys he would play with, and after a time his plane obsession turned into a nightmare. He lost a lot of sleep and kept talking about flying planes, about the weapons, and the scary accident with his plane. James, who only watched kids’ programs on TV, showed his mother what a fighter plane drop tank was, and was able to check a plane over as a pilot would during a pre-flight check when he was justthree years old.
The child was able to tell his father that he used to take off from a boat called the Natoma and knew the name of a co-pilot, Jack Larson. The Natoma was indeed a Pacific ship and Larson was still alive. After James told his father that he had been killed in his plane at Iwo Jima, his father discovered a pilot called James M. Huston Jr. who had died there. This was especially strange, as James had started to sign his drawings “James 3.” James’ family contacted Huston’s sister, and she sent James a bust and a model airplane that had been returned to her by the navy after her brother’s death.
4 Ruth Simmons
One of the best-known reincarnation stories is that of Ruth Simmons. In 1952, she underwent a series of hypnosis sessions during which her therapist, Morey Bernstein, regressed her back to her birth. She suddenly started to speak with a heavy Irish accent and remembered many specific details from her life as Bridey Murphy, who had lived in Belfast, Ireland in the 19th century. Not many of the things she mentioned could be verified. However, she recalled two people from whom she used to buy her food—a Mr. John Carrigan and a Mr. Farr. The town directory for 1865–66 lists the two individuals as grocers. The story is shown in a film from 1956 called The Search for Bridey Murphy.
3 The Barra Boy
Cameron Macauley was born in Glasgow, Scotland. Since the age of two he told his mother he was from an island called Barra, off the west coast of Scotland. He talked about a white house and a beach on which planes landed. He had a black-and-white dog and his dad’s name was Shane Robertson—he was killed by a car. He drew the white house by the beach and complained of missing his other mother. As the child got more and more upset about missing Barra, his mother took him on a visit the the island, which was an hour-long flight away. The plane landed on the beach.
The family found a white house owned by the Robertsons, and the black-and-white dog was in one of their family photographs, along with a car that Cameron had remembered. However, nobody recalled Shane. Cameron knew his way around the white house and was able to point out all its peculiarities.
As he grew older, Cameron slowly lost his memories, but he is still convinced that death is not the end. Like Gus Taylor, he stated that he ended up in his mother’s tummy after he fell through a hole. The story was picked up by British television, making the Barra case one of the best-documented reincarnation stories.
2 Parmod Sharma
Parmod Sharma was born in India in 1944. When he reached the age of two, he told his mother that his wife in Moradabad could cook for him, so she did not have to. Morabad was 145 kilometers (90 mi) away from his birthplace, Bisauli. Between the ages of three and four, Parmod described a business venture called “Mohan Brothers,” where he had worked with family members, selling cookies and water. He built miniature shops and served his family mud cookies and water. He had been a well-off tradesman and complained about the financially less rosy situation of his current family. He advised his parents against eating curd, and would not touch it himself. He said that he had become very ill after eating it in his old life. Parmod hated being submerged in a bath and told his parents that he had died in a bath tub.
Parmod’s parents promised to take him to Moradabad once he had learned to read. It turned out that there was a family by the name of Mehra that had run a soda and cookie shop called “Mohan Brothers.” Manager Parmanand Mehra had died in 1943 after gorging on curd and suffering from a gastrointestinal illness and peritonitis, from which he had eventually died. Parmanand had tried medicinal baths as a cure and had been given a bath very shortly before his death.
1 Steve Jobs
A software engineer called Tony Tseung, an employee of Apple, sent an email to a Buddhist group in Thailand, asking if they could tell him what had happened to Apple founder Steve Jobs after he died. The answer was that Jobs is now a celestial philosopher, in a glass palace that hovers over the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California.
In Malaysia, a group of Jobs’ admirers performed a religious ceremony after his funeral. During the ceremony, the group each took a bite from an apple before throwing it into the sea to speed up the process of reincarnation. Phra Chaibul Dhammajayo, one of the abbots at the Dhammakaya Temple, is convinced that Jobs has already been reborn. He is now a divine presence with a specific interest in science and art. Followers have received this information through a special message that was broadcast worldwide. Apparently, more specific details will be communicated when Jobs feels the need to pass on any knowledge or messages.
I found this interesting and enlightening interview on Alan Rinzler’s blog. There is a wealth of information and insight within this blog, so I suggest you bookmark it..!
The interview is with Toni Morrison, a critically acclaimed author.
Mandy Eve-Barnett's Blog for Readers & Writers 