The Boy Who Lived Before

[seunosewa]

This boy claims to have a memory of his previous life, and the details he supplied have been matched with a real house and its dead occupants:
LITTLE Cameron Macaulay was a typical six-year-old, always talking about his mum and family. He liked to draw pictures of his home too — a long single-storey, white house standing in a bay.
But it sent shivers down his mum’s spine — because Cameron said it was somewhere they had never been, 160 miles away from where they lived.
And he said the mother he was talking about was his “old mum.”

www thesun co uk /article/0,,2001290023-2006410683.html

What do you think really happened? The only things I can think of are really wild - like the parents being the ones who gave their son the story.

[CFLarsen]

Ian Stevenson: "Children Who Remember Previous Lives, A Question of Reincarnation" (http://www.skepticreport.com/psychics/stevenson-book.htm)

The Apparent Belief System of Ian Stevenson (http://www.skepticreport.com/psychics/stevenson-belief.htm)

[Foolmewunz]

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=63406

It's down below on the main page of this section (Gen'l Skepticism & The Paranormal)

[Infinite]

Sure the parents may have somehow delivered this information to the child, but I don't think so. My son has had many things happen in his life and he is now 16 years old. My other children have had wierd unexplained things happen to them as well when they were very small, before the age of 4. I think if you look deeply into life you see alot more than just the surface.

[tkingdoll]

Sure the parents may have somehow delivered this information to the child, but I don't think so. My son has had many things happen in his life and he is now 16 years old. My other children have had wierd unexplained things happen to them as well when they were very small, before the age of 4. I think if you look deeply into life you see alot more than just the surface.

Why don't you think the parents delivered the information to the child? Do you accept that it's more likely he got the information from TV, books, his parents etc than that he's the reincarnation of another person who has retained their memories?

And are you aware of similar cases where it has turned out that the parent has been telling the child what to say?

[blutoski]

This boy claims to have a memory of his previous life, and the details he supplied have been matched with a real house and its dead occupants:

www thesun co uk /article/0,,2001290023-2006410683.html

What do you think really happened? The only things I can think of are really wild - like the parents being the ones who gave their son the story.

The review of Stevenson's book is useful. There are several cases recorded, and only a few have been well investigated. One was a case of incredible detailed knowledge about a girl who had died 60 years previously in a foreign country. I mean: it was impossible for this to be a coincidence.

It was eventually concluded that the babysitter who lived nextdoor had accidentally planted the idea, rather than the parents.

The story is that the babysitter had talked about her childhood friend who had passed away when the babysitter was a girl (the babysitter was in her 70s). The child then fantasized about being this girl, and the story got misinterpreted by the parents as a 'memory'.



Kids make up a lot of stuff for play-acting, and often, it's based on something they saw on TV. I agree that the TV-exposure explanation is consistent with this story.

[Infinite]

I had a boyfriend once who was a hockey player (goalie) and played with Wayne Gretzkey here in Toronto years ago when Wayne came from Brantford, ONtario. I hadn't spoke of him much since I had got married and had children. I never spoke much of hockey after his passing either. We never watched hockey in my house, as to me every goalie was a reminder of the boyfriend I had lost. When I was pregnant with my second son Justin I had gotten out of my bed in the middle of the night because I felt a icy breeze blowing through my house as I slept on the second floor. I checked the front door it was closed. I went back to bed and had this dream I would never forget. I was in my nightgown in the dream, the same one as I went to bed in and I was with my dead boyfriend and he was driving me somewhere and it was fall. He was speaking and the whole time in my dream I was thinking I'm not making this up I don't know what he's going to say next. We got to this place and there hooded monks in brown robes (like a shrine) and a chruch on a hill, one of the monks said to me, "what are you doing here, your not supposed to be here." I was then called to the other side of the road by my boyfriend and he was up on a hill, I said, "how'd you get up there." He said, "think it and you will be up here". I did. He threw a blanket down on the ground and wanted me to stay with him. He said some things to me about what he could do and where he'd been and then he asked me to stay with him. I told him I couldn't that I was pregnant and that I had to go back. Something woke me and I was sweating and terrified and went into the bed that my husband had fallen asleep in with my oldest son while putting him to bed. I lay atop of his back and just lay there numb and scared. It was so weird that I remember it like it was yesterday. My son was born, three weeks early, and he was just beautiful. When he was 11 months old I found him infront of the full lenght mirror with an old skating helmet on, a hockey card in his hand, and a broken hockey stick my older son had found at the park. There was no reference to hockey in my house at all as no one spoke of it or watched it. This little baby was standing there in his diaper looking at the hockey card and looking at the mirror shaking his head "yes" up and down and the helmet three sizes too big going back and forth. He had put himself together. I just laughed. Then he started crawling up to the TV and changing it till he found hockey. I didn't think much of it. By the time he was 3 he was screaming at parks if there were boys playing hockey and pulling at me to take him there. Nope. So I began taking him to the rink and he wouldn't speak much before the age of 3 and he began to talk only at the rink. I started bringing him often. His speach improved. He was a natural, people started telling me and they kept saying that he had a gift and that he skated like the wind. When he was 7 I enrolled him (finally) in hockey. He became a new kid. He ate, slept and breathed hockey. He went from the lowest level house league to the "A" division REP level in one season. When he was 10 he heard some songs in the change room at hockey and one day asked me to record them for him....all of my dead boyfriends favorite songs from 1979-1980. My boyfriend had a mural of Jimmy Hendrix on the hood of the car that he tragically died in and my son phoned me at work and said, "mom there's this song..."excuse me while I kiss the sky (Hendrix-Purple Haze), get that for me" I almost fell off my chair, as that was the theme of the mural on the hook of the car. There were a bunch of these songs that just crushed me even listening to them, but I recorded them for him anyways. Well the last time I ever drempt of my boyfriend, since that time long ago, was once last year when my son, now 16 playing AA hockey in Mississauga, Ontario, CAnada (one of the most gifted skaters in his age group) was headed head first on his back toward the boards in a game and all the mom's including me gasped untill he turned himself suddenly. I went to sleep that night and drempt I was sitting with my son in a waiting room and my boyfriend came from around the corner and sat down beside him and looked at me and said, "did you think I would ever let something happen to "our son" on that ice. How creepy was that? I was freaked out and then I woke up. Now, that I can see me either conjuring up in my brain after the many similarities over the years, but there's always this...hmmmm....Well my son is the second born child of three boys, born in the month of June and a Gemini just like my boyfriend was, maybe birth order has alot to do with all of the similarities? I just discount the similarities but I have said to him just recently that, " I think you have a special gift given to you before you were even born." He agrees. How he got the way that he is beyond me but he is gifted and not "reincarnated" but purely driven and passionate. My two other sons are equally amazing at what they choose to do. This kid just in a reminder to me of a different time and space.

[blutoski]

...

Please don't take this personally... I'm not one to pick on a person for their writing style... but that post was very difficult to read. Two hits of the "Return" key, and you can start a new paragraph.

[Flange Desire]

I had a boyfriend once ...
Huge amount of detailed information there - you could save some effort.

So called 'coincidences' and 'strange things' are a surprisingly common natural part of life, and experiencing them does tend to make one feel 'special', but this is really just the brain doing its normal thing.
The 'coincidences' and 'strange things' can usually all be explained by normal (mundane) processes, but even for those that cannot easily be explained, it is still not nessesary to invent a supernatural cause.

You already have a plethoria of plausible possible causes - there is no need to invent some more less plausible ones.
Unfortunately it is true that the mundane cause is unlikely to make you feel so special.

[RSLancastr]

I had a boyfriend once who was a hockey player (goalie) and played with Wayne Gretzkey...Just so you know, a big mass of words without paragraph breaks is hard on the eyes. Many people - myself included - won't even bother trying to parse it out.

[meg]

I too have an uncanny story like this.

When my daughter was little, her favorite way of wearing her hair was two pigtails high on her head. She always wanted her hair ties to be different colors.

She was always climbing and jumping around, so much so that we nicknamed her "our little monkey".

We used to have a cat named Dweezil. I often caught my daughter chasing this poor cat all around a small shrubbery* in our yard.

As a child, she always enjoyed playing in boxes. It was so weird. We would buy all these elaborate large toys for her for the holidays, and she almost *always* ended up enjoying playing in the box more.

I was playing house with my daughter once, and she got all dressed up in blue, red and orange and said ... "Call me Jack".

She *always* enjoyed hiding and then popping out and startling people. The more startled a person was, the more she would laugh.

She used to enjoy playing "store". When we played, I would ask her "How much for this spool of thread?" She would always quickly reply, "One penny!"

She once took a bite out of a cherry tomato and then put it on her nose. She thought it was funny and wore it that way for a long time.

Eventually I just could not ignore these freaky, unexplainable occurances any more, and I knew I had to admit what I knew was true.

The only possible answer that adequately explains this is that my daughter is the reincarnated soul of my favorite childhood playmate.

I've attached a picture..

.


Meg




*it was a mulberry bush

[sophia8]

When he was 11 months old I found him infront of the full lenght mirror with an old skating helmet on, a hockey card in his hand, and a broken hockey stick my older son had found at the park. There was no reference to hockey in my house at all as no one spoke of it or watched it. This little baby was standing there in his diaper looking at the hockey card and looking at the mirror shaking his head "yes" up and down and the helmet three sizes too big going back and forth. He had put himself together. I just laughed. Then he started crawling up to the TV and changing it till he found hockey.
My bolding. Your child had an older brother, who would have been told that the broken stick he bought home was a hockey stick. The helmet and the hockey card were where both your sons could find them. It's obvious to me that both your sons could have played with the hockey stuff before, without you knowing (or remembering) it and that your eldest son would have talked about hockey within the hearing of his brother, at the very least. He could have even showed the hockey stuff to Little Brother and encouraged him to try it on.
You had a TV in the house. There is no way your son could have avoided hearing/seeing something about hockey - on the sports news, in the ads.

Your youngest child could only have avoided any exposure at all to the idea of hockey if you had lived hundreds of miles from a sports stadium in a house without TV, without radio, without magazines and newpapers, without any visitors who talked about hockey, without any friends who knew about hockey, and also if you had homeshooled him with strictly regulated hockeyless bookreading.

[exarch]

Your youngest child could only have avoided any exposure at all to the idea of hockey if you had lived hundreds of miles from a sports stadium in a house without TV, without radio, without magazines and newpapers, without any visitors who talked about hockey, without any friends who knew about hockey, and also if you had homeshooled him with strictly regulated hockeyless bookreading.

I would go further and say that if she'd moved to Europe for some reason, she wouldn't have given it a second thought if her youngest son had stood in front of the mirror wearing a soccer jersey and holding a deflated soccer ball the eldest son had found in the park. Had suddenly switched the channel until he found a soccer match on TV, had been found to be a "natural" at soccer, etc...

The only one giving it special significance in this case is the one who's experiencing the coincidence. To everyone else, that boy and his preference for hockey are probably considered as normal as would every other kid his age ...

[Irish Murdoch]

When he was 11 months old I found him infront of the full lenght mirror with an old skating helmet on, a hockey card in his hand, and a broken hockey stick my older son had found at the park. There was no reference to hockey in my house at all as no one spoke of it or watched it.

As a Brit (hockey isn't big here), I don't know what a hockey card is. But it's clear you had one in the house. So it wasn't quite a hockey-free house.

Again, forgive my ignorance about what a hockey card is, but would it have on it a picture of a hockey-player?

I don't find it at all unusual that your son should have been gifted at hockey. Some children just turn out to be gifted at various things. Even if reincarnation were sometimes an explanation of being gifted at x, it couldn't always be so, otherwise how could anyone have been the first person to be gifted at x? And since reincarnation can't be used to explain such cases (that is, since some cases of giftedness must have another explanation), it seems to me that there's simply no warrant at all for appealing to it in any case.

[Loss Leader]

IWhen he was 11 months old I found him infront of the full lenght mirror with an old skating helmet on, a hockey card in his hand, and a broken hockey stick my older son had found at the park. There was no reference to hockey in my house at all as no one spoke of it or watched it.

You live in Canada, you have a television, in your house was an old skating helmet, a hockey card and a hockey stick and you think that there were no references to hockey in your house?

I'm not trying to make fun of you, but it appears that the far more likely explanation is coincidence.

And, if you don't want to hear that over and over again, I would suggest that you are in the wrong forum.

[Yahzi]

I think if you look deeply into life you see alot more than just the surface.
If you close your eyes while you are looking, you can see all sorts of wonderful things!

[exarch]

If you look deeply into a bottle, things get even more interesting than that.

Anyway, I don't mean to make fun of Infinite like that, but I think she just experienced an amazing fluke of coincidence. And one that would never have registered if her ex-boyfriend had not been a hockey player for instance. Obviously the only one making this into more than it really is, is she herself. The only one (perhaps subconsciously) looking for meaning in things related to hockey is her. If it hadn't been for the ex-boyfriend, she'd never have given the events that took place in front of the mirror a second thought. So anything that can be tied into the ex-boyfriend suddenly becomes significant to her. It's coincidence, sure, but it's very selective memory. I wonder if she realizes this ...

[bluess]

Infinite, I'm a bit wierded out by your deciding to never watch hockey again because an ex-boyfriend who was a goalie passed away.

[gfunkusarelius]

yes, infinite sounds like a very passionate person, so i wouldnt want to be cruel to her, but in addition to what others have pointed out, i would add a couple of other things. one, the fact that you had this vivid dream that you never forgot indicates such a strong mental attachment that i would expect you to look for connections to this person you lost- no offense, it is human nature. a highschool girlfriend gave me a cat and after we broke up, i would miss her occassionally and i would sort of think she was seeing me thru the cat's eyes. in other words, there was a longing and i filled it to some extent with this (seemingly plausible at the time) fantasy.
second, purple haze is one of the most staggeringly popular and familiar rock songs of all times. i was in high school in the early nineties and i loved it and asked my parents to buy me the cd it was on. if it had been some extremely obscure band that had a song that wasnt even considered a one-hit-wonder, i wouldve had a little more reason to consider something more than a simple coincidence (and even then, i would look for "contamination" first- for example, maybe he heard you humming the tune or you had looked longingly at the cover in a record store and he noticed it, if even subconsciously). we look for the most logical explanations and go from there.
on a final note- i have a personal account. i had a friend who moved back to germany and her favorite number is 222...she said i would think of her when i saw the number, and as soon as she said that- i twas freaky...i would see it all the time...2:22 pm, 222 miles on the odometer, etc. but i know this is because of the power of suggestion. i look at the clock probably 50 times a day, but i dont think much of it until i see that number.

[Demigorgon]

I had a boyfriend once who was a hockey player (goalie) and played with Wayne Gretzkey here in Toronto years ago when Wayne came from Brantford, ONtario. I hadn't spoke of him much since I had got married and had children. I never spoke much of hockey after his passing either. We never watched hockey in my house, as to me every goalie was a reminder of the boyfriend I had lost. When I was pregnant with my second son Justin I had gotten out of my bed in the middle of the night because I felt a icy breeze blowing through my house as I slept on the second floor. I checked the front door it was closed. I went back to bed and had this dream I would never forget. I was in my nightgown in the dream, the same one as I went to bed in and I was with my dead boyfriend and he was driving me somewhere and it was fall. He was speaking and the whole time in my dream I was thinking I'm not making this up I don't know what he's going to say next. We got to this place and there hooded monks in brown robes (like a shrine) and a chruch on a hill, one of the monks said to me, "what are you doing here, your not supposed to be here." I was then called to the other side of the road by my boyfriend and he was up on a hill, I said, "how'd you get up there." He said, "think it and you will be up here". I did. He threw a blanket down on the ground and wanted me to stay with him. He said some things to me about what he could do and where he'd been and then he asked me to stay with him. I told him I couldn't that I was pregnant and that I had to go back. Something woke me and I was sweating and terrified and went into the bed that my husband had fallen asleep in with my oldest son while putting him to bed. I lay atop of his back and just lay there numb and scared. It was so weird that I remember it like it was yesterday. My son was born, three weeks early, and he was just beautiful. When he was 11 months old I found him infront of the full lenght mirror with an old skating helmet on, a hockey card in his hand, and a broken hockey stick my older son had found at the park. There was no reference to hockey in my house at all as no one spoke of it or watched it. This little baby was standing there in his diaper looking at the hockey card and looking at the mirror shaking his head "yes" up and down and the helmet three sizes too big going back and forth. He had put himself together. I just laughed. Then he started crawling up to the TV and changing it till he found hockey. I didn't think much of it. By the time he was 3 he was screaming at parks if there were boys playing hockey and pulling at me to take him there. Nope. So I began taking him to the rink and he wouldn't speak much before the age of 3 and he began to talk only at the rink. I started bringing him often. His speach improved. He was a natural, people started telling me and they kept saying that he had a gift and that he skated like the wind. When he was 7 I enrolled him (finally) in hockey. He became a new kid. He ate, slept and breathed hockey. He went from the lowest level house league to the "A" division REP level in one season. When he was 10 he heard some songs in the change room at hockey and one day asked me to record them for him....all of my dead boyfriends favorite songs from 1979-1980. My boyfriend had a mural of Jimmy Hendrix on the hood of the car that he tragically died in and my son phoned me at work and said, "mom there's this song..."excuse me while I kiss the sky (Hendrix-Purple Haze), get that for me" I almost fell off my chair, as that was the theme of the mural on the hook of the car. There were a bunch of these songs that just crushed me even listening to them, but I recorded them for him anyways. Well the last time I ever drempt of my boyfriend, since that time long ago, was once last year when my son, now 16 playing AA hockey in Mississauga, Ontario, CAnada (one of the most gifted skaters in his age group) was headed head first on his back toward the boards in a game and all the mom's including me gasped untill he turned himself suddenly. I went to sleep that night and drempt I was sitting with my son in a waiting room and my boyfriend came from around the corner and sat down beside him and looked at me and said, "did you think I would ever let something happen to "our son" on that ice. How creepy was that? I was freaked out and then I woke up. Now, that I can see me either conjuring up in my brain after the many similarities over the years, but there's always this...hmmmm....Well my son is the second born child of three boys, born in the month of June and a Gemini just like my boyfriend was, maybe birth order has alot to do with all of the similarities? I just discount the similarities but I have said to him just recently that, " I think you have a special gift given to you before you were even born." He agrees. How he got the way that he is beyond me but he is gifted and not "reincarnated" but purely driven and passionate. My two other sons are equally amazing at what they choose to do. This kid just in a reminder to me of a different time and space.

Wall of text crits you for 2400. You die.

[Jaggy Bunnet]

This boy claims to have a memory of his previous life, and the details he supplied have been matched with a real house and its dead occupants:

www thesun co uk /article/0,,2001290023-2006410683.html

What do you think really happened? The only things I can think of are really wild - like the parents being the ones who gave their son the story.

To be accurate SOME of the details (the totally unsurprising ones, like a white house on a Scottish island) were matched with a real house. MOST of the details (like the names he gave) did not match at all.

[Anders W. Bonde]

I know we've touched upon this before, but wouldn't the "ability" to tap one person's memories, store them somwhere in the universe and then magically implant them in someone else's mind later contavene both the first and second laws of thermodynamics (apart from pretty much all laws of nature)?

Believers in "afterlife" or reincarnation (heck, in incarnation even) need a tad more convincing evidence in order to even speculate about a mechanism. Parsimony says psychological and sociological phenomena can explain these experiences - no need to redo all scientific discoveries here.

Question to the believers: When are the "first" souls created, how many times are they recycled, do they eventually wear out, how does the production of souls keep up with increases in population, what happens where populations decrease?

[Irish Murdoch]

Question to the believers: When are the "first" souls created, how many times are they recycled, do they eventually wear out, how does the production of souls keep up with increases in population, what happens where populations decrease?

Well, as I hope is clear, I'm no believer. But I bet I can predict the sorts of answers that might result from a believer's Procrustean inventiveness here:

1. Time is cyclical, and so has no beginning. There is no time that the first souls are created.

2. Souls are recycled until they realise enlightenment, when they become eternally united with a pale mauve mist.

3. There are lots of souls in other realms/on other planets. There are enough to keep bodies in souls (or, ahem, souls in bodies) on this planet.

4. Where populations decrease, souls are reincarnated in other spiritual realms/on other planets.

Gosh! Inventing woo-woo explanations is more fun than I could have imagined possible! ;)

[exarch]

3. There are lots of souls in other realms/on other planets. There are enough to keep bodies in souls (or, ahem, souls in bodies) on this planet.

4. Where populations decrease, souls are reincarnated in other spiritual realms/on other planets.

How many people have ever come forward claiming to be the reincarnation of some alien race? At the rate earth's population is increasing, there must be thousands upon thousands of souls migrating from one part of the galaxy to this planet. I suppose aliens are visiting our planet then. But they're not probing our rectums, they're probing our heads ...

Unless of course animals of lesser intelligence than humans also have souls, in which case the souls are just moving from an ever decreasing population of wildlife to an ever increasing human population.

[Brainache]

My daughter didn't talk much until she was about 2. The first words I her her say were "Ooh La La".(she would say it when she heard a loud noise or was startled in some way).
She also would sometimes say "oui" instead of "yes". There were no French speakers in the house or anywhere nearby that I could tell. Then one day when I was sitting on the back steps watching the sun set she came and stood beside me. She couldn't have been more than three years old. We could hear a train going past in the distance.
She said to me "when I was a grown-up I drove a train".

Now does this mean my daughter is the reincarnation of a French train driver?
She was born ten days after the death of Princess Diana.
I personally don't believe she is the reincarnation of a French train driver, but I still don't know where she got "ooh la la" from. I don't even think French people have ever used that expression outside of crap movies.
I don't think she had even seen an episode of "Madeline" although I guess it might be possible.

[exarch]

She also would sometimes say "oui" instead of "yes".

Did she actually say "Oui"? Or did she say "oui" the way you think French people say "oui" :p

[Brainache]

Well ok she said wee, but in context she meant yes not yipee or urine.
I would say "do you want a chippie?" and she would say "wee"

[steenkh]

Well ok she said wee, but in context she meant yes not yipee or urine.
I would say "do you want a chippie?" and she would say "wee"
Most children I have known have been slow to learn a word for "yes". It is always "no" that has been more important to them.

[Brainache]

Well she did say non! as well.
Only kidding. I don't believe that she is a reincarnation of anyone I'm just saying that if I was the kind of person who believed in these kinds of things, I probably would think it was true.
I would probably also try to find some reason why her teacher says she is so good at music.
A musical French Train Driver!!
Mon Dieu!:eek:

[tkingdoll]

Well she did say non! as well.
Only kidding. I don't believe that she is a reincarnation of anyone I'm just saying that if I was the kind of person who believed in these kinds of things, I probably would think it was true.
I would probably also try to find some reason why her teacher says she is so good at music.
A musical French Train Driver!!
Mon Dieu!:eek:

Well, if you did believe she was the French train driver, just ask her something that she's unlikely to know but that any Frenchman or train driver would know.

[Brainache]

She is nine now and I mentioned it at her birthday last week, she doesn't remember anything about any of it.

[ObscureReferenceMan]

Reminds me of watching a woman being hypnotically "regressed" (on P&T's Bullsh*t?). Apparently the woman was a French countess, or something. But when she spoke with the hypnotist, she spoke English with a (bad) French accent. Can someone explain this to me? (Well, someone from the woo camp. My explanation is that she's play acting.)

[sophia8]

She couldn't have been more than three years old. We could hear a train going past in the distance.
She said to me "when I was a grown-up I drove a train".
When my son was around that age, he once said almost exactly the same thing: "When I was grown-up, I swim!"
Just a couple of questions established that he actually meant "When I am grown-up, I willswim."
At that age, kids are still learning the technicalities of language, and easily get their tenses mixed up. Personally, I think this is what starts off most cases of reported childhood "reincarnation memories". It would also account for the "forgetting" of such claimed memories when the child gets older - the child simply learns how to use tenses.

[Loss Leader]

Infinite's post was two days ago. She's not coming back.

[Palimpsest]

Reminds me of watching a woman being hypnotically "regressed" (on P&T's Bullsh*t?). Apparently the woman was a French countess, or something. But when she spoke with the hypnotist, she spoke English with a (bad) French accent.

Oh, wow, I remember that. It was indeed on P&T B***s***, and she "regressed" to a noblewoman in Napoleon I's court. Worst French accent since Pepe Le Pew and those French knights in "Holy Grail."

[sophia8]

Reminds me of watching a woman being hypnotically "regressed" (on P&T's Bullsh*t?). Apparently the woman was a French countess, or something. But when she spoke with the hypnotist, she spoke English with a (bad) French accent. Can someone explain this to me? (Well, someone from the woo camp. My explanation is that she's play acting.)
Reincarnatees have a particular problem with accents, I've notice. For instance, about twenty years ago,the BBC showed a programme about a bloke who claimed to have been a Lancashire farm labourer who had thought in the Napleonic Wars. They bought him to the HQ of his "regiment" in Preston and showed him round the museum, where he amazed everyone by accurately describing a particular battle and managing to handle a gun of the period.
I was amazed that nobody seemed to notice that his accent was totally wrong - from London IRL, he was speaking as his reincarnated self in a mild Manchester accent that had clearly been picked up from watching Coronation Street (filmed and set in Manchester). The accents may sound all the same to London ears, but Manchester is not Lancashire and they don't sound anything like that anywhere north of the M60.
Furthermore, a real 19thC farm labourer from Lancashire would have had an accent so thick, and used so many dialect words, that he would have been incomprehensible to most of the audience.
Still, the fact that he used the wrong accent and no dialect did at least show that he was genuine in his belief. If he had been deliberately lying, he would have put in much more research.

[Irish Murdoch]

For instance, about twenty years ago,the BBC showed a programme about a bloke who claimed to have been a Lancashire farm labourer who had thought in the Napleonic Wars.

Was that a war of minds? ;)


I was amazed that nobody seemed to notice that his accent was totally wrong - from London IRL, he was speaking as his reincarnated self in a mild Manchester accent that had clearly been picked up from watching Coronation Street (filmed and set in Manchester).

We have to add to that the fact that many of the accents on Coronation Street aren't Manchester accents either, but generic "northern" ones (frequently, in the days when I used to watch it anyway, Yorkshire accents) that southerners won't be able to tell apart.

Furthermore, a real 19thC farm labourer from Lancashire would have had an accent so thick, and used so many dialect words, that he would have been incomprehensible to most of the audience.


A very good point. I grew up in rural Lancashire, and when I was young (the early 70s) it was quite hard even for me to understand the older people! They spoke practically a different language. Go back to the Napoleonic Wars, and I guess the people in my neck of the woods might as well have been speaking Welsh ....

[Tamazon]

My 2 year-old niece went up to her mother the other day and told her matter of factly that "chinchillas live in the forest and are scared of pumas."
She's obviously a reincarnation of one of the Ugga Bugga tribe from somewhere in South America.

Hmmm. Or maybe she's been watching "Go, Diego, Go."

We don't give shildren enough credit. They are smarter then we think. My 4 year-old daughter says things that blow me away sometimes. And the more attention we give them for something, the more they are going to play on that.

[lolurigeller]

This boy claims to have a memory of his previous life, and the details he supplied have been matched with a real house and its dead occupants:

www thesun co uk /article/0,,2001290023-2006410683.html

What do you think really happened? The only things I can think of are really wild - like the parents being the ones who gave their son the story.

could you like you know? Get a working link to the article?

[Ripley Twenty-Nine]

I had a boyfriend once who was a hockey player (goalie) and played with Wayne Gretzkey here in Toronto...
So you believe your son is the reincarnated version of your boyfriend? That is so Freudian I don't even know where to start! :)

Having lived in Toronto for years, I find the most amazing part of the story to be the fact that someone could live in Toronto for more than a day and not be exposed to hockey! That borders on the paranormal in itself!

[Ryokan]

The Boy Who Lived

Harry Potter?

[Azrael 5]

could you like you know? Get a working link to the article?

Look for thread titled "UK tabloid in Woo shock" it's all been discussed already.;)

[exarch]

could you like you know? Get a working link to the article?

No, because (s)he is a newbie and not allowed to post links yet.

[Infinite]

Yes I probably saw the similarities between my son and my dead because I needed to because I missed my dead friend. Perhaps my son's birth order (2nd son of three boys with the older brother being 4 years older), his time, month and place of birth (June7, outside Toronto), his starsign (Gemini) and his environment (being in the hockey arenas) all being the same as my dead friend produced the same sort of person with a similar character. I just never expected he'd like all the same crappy 1978 music and share his passion and fire for the game. It sometimes feels as if I knew my dead friend just so that I would understand this child of mine. Anyways, I look at all the similarities with fond memmories.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

My 2 year-old niece went up to her mother the other day and told her matter of factly that "chinchillas live in the forest and are scared of pumas."
She's obviously a reincarnation of one of the Ugga Bugga tribe from somewhere in South America.

Hmmm. Or maybe she's been watching "Go, Diego, Go."

We don't give shildren enough credit. They are smarter then we think. My 4 year-old daughter says things that blow me away sometimes. And the more attention we give them for something, the more they are going to play on that.

When my daughter was about five she made some comment (correct) about bowling. Neither my wife and I bowl. The kid had never seen the inside of a bowling alley, I asked her where she knew about bowling from and she said she had been a champion bowler in her previous life. Err. No that's not right -- she said she knew all about bowling from watching the Flintstones.

Children spend the first years of their lives trying to make sense of the world, They observe and absorb everything.

[exarch]

When my daughter was about five she made some comment (correct) about bowling. Neither my wife and I bowl. The kid had never seen the inside of a bowling alley, I asked her where she knew about bowling from and she said she had been a champion bowler in her previous life. Err. No that's not right -- she said she knew all about bowling from watching the Flintstones.

In all fairness, did Infinite's son ever claim to have had a past life? I'm sure she never burdened him with the story of her dead friend either. Or even bothered to interrogate him about where he learned the things he knows.

She just connected a few dots and came up with the wrong picture.

[Soapy Sam]

Given the number of psychics who can tell the future and the number of people who are reincarnated, I find it odd that we never hear of anyone being born with memories of a future life.

[steenkh]

Given the number of psychics who can tell the future and the number of people who are reincarnated, I find it odd that we never hear of anyone being born with memories of a future life.
Odds are that the next life for any of us internet-geeks will be in some dirty third-world country with no clean water or electricity. *Shudder*
I would rather not have premonitions about my next life :scared:

[exarch]

Given the number of psychics who can tell the future and the number of people who are reincarnated, I find it odd that we never hear of anyone being born with memories of a future life.

I believe there actually may be a few stories about people with a "current" life. And I don't mean that as a joke (although for us internet geeks, anyone with a life is interesting).
Apparently, there are some people who experienced past lives only to find out that the person they believed to have been in their previous life wasn't actually dead yet.

Of course, if any case is easily debunked, it's one like that.

[snooziums]

Given the number of psychics who can tell the future and the number of people who are reincarnated, I find it odd that we never hear of anyone being born with memories of a future life.

Actually, reincarnation and "psychics" are rather different. Most of the Eastern philosophies do not have "psychics." It is just some "psychics" that adapt reincarnation. However, mainstream reincarnation belief does not have psychics.

Good clue: If someone claims reincarnation, and a belief in "God," then they are not holding true to the original beliefs of reincarnation. The "standard" reincarnation ideas do not have any "God" or higher being in them.

[Explorer]

Apparently, in the programme they said that it was young children between the age of two to four to have these kind of "past life" memories. Beyond that the memories fade and they seem to get on with their "current" life.

The lad in the documentary described his "previous" house and the location in Barra, a remote island off the west coast of Scotland. He said he had a "Barra" mum and dad. His father's name was Shane Robertson.

Upon investigation with the local historian, it turned out that there was no such family in that part of the island near the coast and where the planes land on the beach that he described. Later though, it transpired that there was indeed a Robertson family in a long white house ajacent to the beach where the planes landed. This family were not local but owned what we assumed to be a holiday home on this part of the island in the fifties and sixties.

They traced one of the Robertson family, Gillian, who was in her sixties and she showed the lad and his current mum photos of the time when they stayed there, presumably on holiday, although that was never established. They had a black and white dog, as the lad had described. There were rock pools by the house and a secret gate down to the beach from the house, again as the lad described.

However, there was no Shane Robertson, his supposed dad, and no one had been "knocked down" by a car, and there were no deceased children involved with this family, assuming some kind of reincarnation was at work.

This report for me, had all the characteristics of a young and creative brain, which in itself is an amazing phenomena. It has similar characteristics of Ouija board feedback. Some of the detail is checkable and accurate, but the rest of it is so wrong it smacks again of brain creativity filling in gaps and detail falsely, when prompted.

I am sure this lad under prompting has made up wittingly or unwittingly some of these "memories" under pressure of questioning, whether that be from his mum, or the investigator. As for the rest of it, well it could be coincidence.

Verdict: Unconvinced, at least with this particular case.

[exarch]

Apparently, in the programme they said that it was young children between the age of two to four to have these kind of "past life" memories. Beyond that the memories fade and they seem to get on with their "current" life.

Perhaps that explains the memories I have of a previous life living on Mars.

Come on, at this age children have invisible friends and monsters under their beds ...

[Explorer]

Perhaps that explains the memories I have of a previous life living on Mars.

Come on, at this age children have invisible friends and monsters under their beds ...

This aspect was discussed. The qualatative difference in this case is the word "invisible". This was not used by the lad in any context.

[exarch]

This aspect was discussed. The qualatative difference in this case is the word "invisible". This was not used by the lad in any context.

Well, it's not necessarily the kids ho are calling their friend invisible either ...

[sophia8]

I think I've found the source of some of the boy's "memories":
16/07/04
Casualty Airlifted off the Island
A Barra boy was airlifted to hospital on Monday morning following a one vehicle accident on Sunday night. The vehicle, driver and one passenger, went off the main road just north of the junction with the Glen Road on the approach to Bealach Breibhig. Medical staff, Ambulance, Police and Fire Brigade were in attendance. Best wishes are extended to Seamus Iain MacLean ( Mac Him) who is in hospital in Glasgow following the accident.
From: Isle of Barra News (http://www.isleofbarra.com/news/archive10.html) That would certainly have featured on the local TV news at the time.