Fascinating ABC segment about boy who remembers past life as WWII pilot

[Stevepol]

Very interesting. The parents have written a book about it, SOLE SURVIVOR.

Link: http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=13873561&ch=4226713&src=news

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. In a past life I was the guy who shot this kid down.

Also in a past life, I was the guy who sabotaged his cockpit so he couldn't get out.

The prick.

[devilgrrl]

2. BFD, I my passed life I was a seamstress at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory! Got burned alive!

Man, that job sucked!!!!



http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/

[AngryAmish]

3. I set that fire.

In a past life, of course.

[Oeditpus Rex]

9. I *was* the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

After I burned down, I became the Flatiron Building.

[Codeine]

19. HOT! nt

[XemaSab]

36. I was the triangle pantywaist factory

:cry:

[Oeditpus Rex]

37. Hey, wasn't that next to the Dodecahedron Milquetoast Works?

Before they all got sick and quit, that is...

[mitchum]

33. And I was the guy who was fucking his girl back home

[Evoman]

35. Fucker! You killed me too.

I was the son of a farmer who was just about to have some fun, summer loving with Betsy, my special cow, when a piece of shrapnel from that plane fell from the sky, went through my eye and into my brain. The last thing I remember before dying was a fart sound coming from ol' Betsy as a pound of slop fell on to my chest.

[konnichi wa]

4. Long ago in a different life, I was Walter Mitty.

:evilgrin:

[MineralMan]

5. That's nothing. In a past life I was Mrs. O'Leary's Cow.

[ColbertWatcher]

22. Pfft, still doesn't top ...

... The Clenis

[Libby2]

6. That is fascinating! Thanks for sharing.

[bbinacan]

7. Spooky

thanks for the post.

[Batgirl]

8. I've just completed my past-life memoir about my incarnation as a crime solving Great Dane.

Hopefully I'll find a publisher soon and cash in like those parents.

[Johonny]

10. In a past life I was a scammer that wrote a book

about faking memories of past lives in order for suckers to give me money.

[thecrow]

11. When he was about 3 my son asked where his other family was

He asked me what happened to Sarah, his wife.
Then he talked about the 4 kids. He spoke as if he knew what he was talking about.
The details! He had NO way of knowing even these names in his experience... he wasn't even 3 yet.
Eeeerie!

My nephew did a similar thing and recanted his story and showed me in a book the "plane he flew".
He was talking about the others in the plane and spoke in a rythmic tone that I've never heard before or since. He was about 4 at the time.

So yeah, it happens for whatever reason.

[bertman]

20. Did you mean he "recounted his story"? If he recanted it, he denied it or took it back.

Very interesting incidents. Does this occur often in your family, or just these two incidents?

[NeedleCast]

12. How come everyone who remembers a past life is someone awesome?

A fighter pilot, Queen of England, Joan of Arc.

No one was ever a coal miner or an orange picker or a garden slug.

[Celebration]

14. sure they were

Listen to the Johnny Cash/Willie Nelson song (well not a slug)

http://edit.mp3lyrics.org/j/johnny-cash/highwayman/

I was a sailor. I was born upon the tide.
And with the sea I did abide.
I sailed a schooner 'round the horn to Mexico.
I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow.
And when the yards broke off they said that I got killed.
But I am living still.


I was a dam builder across the river deep and wide.
Where steel and water did collide.
A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado.
I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below.
They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound.
But I am still around.
I'll always be around, and around, and around, and around, and

[dflprincess]

16. There seems to be a tendency for those who died a traumatic & often early death

in a past life to remember that when they are very young in their present incarnation. When you think of the number of pilots & flight crews who died since planes became part of the arsenal it shouldn't be too surprising that "fighter pilot" would pop up in memories.

And, when you read up on past life regressions, most people actually remember lives that were very ordinary.

[Occam Bandage]

17. There's also a tendency for these stories to leave out important details.

1. His nightmares did not begin until a few months after his dad took him to a museum of flight with a prominently displayed Corsair. I think it's obvious that he saw the planes, was fascinated by them, remembered all sorts of details about them, and was scared by the imagery of fire and death that goes along with warplanes.

2. The details did not appear until after they took him to a "rebirth" therapist who "encouraged him" to "remember" details. Children are very, very impressionable, and memories can be easily fabricated.

3. For all the child's obsession with Corsairs, the pilot of whom it is claimed he is a reborn version did not fly the F-4U Corsair. He flew and died in an FM-2 wildcat.

4. He signed his pictures "James 3" because he had just turned three. Kids do that all the time.

Full debunking here: http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/07/reincarnation_a.html

[EvolveOrConvolve]

23. Ding, ding, ding; we have a winner

This story is so easily debunked, yet people still eat it up.

[ColbertWatcher]

24. Thank you! n/t

[Maru Kitteh]

26. Thanks for posting this OB. n/t

[mwb970]

39. Have you read "The Search For Bridey Murphy"?

It's an interesting book about an interesting woman who "remembered" past lives as ordinary people (though not as a garden slug!).

[TorchTheWitch]

40. pretty well debunked - from your wiki link...

The 'facts' related by Bridey were not fully checked before the publication of Bernstein's book The Search for Bridey Murphy. However, once the book had become a bestseller, almost every detail was thoroughly checked by reporters who were sent to Ireland to track down the background of the elusive woman. It was then that the first doubts about her 'reincarnation' began to appear. Bridey gave her date of birth as December 20, 1798, in Cork, and the year of her death as 1864. There was no record of either event.<1> Neither was there any record of a wooden house, called The Meadows, in which she said she lived, just of a place of that name at the brink of Cork. Indeed, most houses in Ireland were made of brick or stone. She pronounced her husband's name as 'See-an', but Sean is usually pronounced 'Shawn' in Ireland. Brian, which is what Bridey preferred to call her husband, was also the middle name of the man to whom Virginia Tighe was married. But some of the details did tally. For instance, her descriptions of the Antrim coastline were very accurate. So, too, was her account of a journey from Belfast to Cork. She claimed she went to a St. Theresa's Church. There was indeed one where she said there was—but it was not built until 1911. The young Bridey shopped for provisions with a grocer named Farr. It was discovered that such a grocer had existed.

Despite the many holes in Bridey's story, it was still a remarkably detailed account of life in 19th-century Ireland—information unlikely to have come the way of Virginia Tighe. The case was studied by psychiatrists and psychologists, who had used hypnosis in treatment for many years. Many subjects, in deep hypnosis, can be highly suggestible and will act on the slightest hint given to them, seeking to supply the answer they subconsciously believe the hypnotist wishes to hear. Such hypnosis is largely a matter of releasing relevant details from the brain's incredible capacity for storing information. For instance, the subject can speak in a foreign language not used since childhood, and in which they would not be able to converse in normal conscious life. A subject can even quote verbatim from a long-forgotten childhood book. However, someone under hypnosis is not automatically telling the truth even if they are seeking to give a satisfactory response. Bernstein admitted that, while she was under hypnosis, he did tell Virginia Tighe what he wanted, and it was then that she became Bridey Murphy.

The experts who examined the case of Virginia Tighe came to the conclusion that the best way to arrive at the truth was not to check back to Ireland, but to her own childhood and her relationship with her parents. Morey Bernstein's book stated that Virginia Tighe (whom he called Ruth Simmons in the book) was brought up by a Norwegian uncle and his German-Scottish-Irish wife. However, it did not state that her actual parents were both part Irish and that she had lived with them until the age of three. It also did not mention that an Irish immigrant named Bridie Murphy Corkell (1892–1957)<2> lived across the street from Tighe's childhood home in Chicago, Illinois. Most scientists today are satisfied that everything Virginia Tighe said can be explained as a memory of her long-forgotten childhood.

[Puzzler]

41. Yes, it was completely debunked decades ago.

.

[FarLeftRage]

13. I was a sailor on board the USS Arizona

When it was bombed and sunk by the Japanese during the attack on Pearl Harbour...

[glennont]

25. I was

I was stopped by this statement because for me it's true. Blond, lanky, young mid-western farm boy. I drowned fighting for air by a hatch above me. I still don't like the ocean.

[Maru Kitteh]

27. Only 14 posts since 2001. You're a shy one, you are.

[Richard Steele]

34. Good catch. nm

[Oeditpus Rex]

38. Well, we *know* you're lying

It was the Germans who attacked Pearl Harbor. :P

[Occam Bandage]

15. In my past life I was Cordell Hull.

I deliberately sabotaged the peace efforts with Japan, so we'd enter the war and that kid would die. Because in a life prior to that, the bastard totally beat me up at school.

[ColbertWatcher]

18. I guess the business to get into is either UFO-tourism or ...

... crap-de-bunking.

How many people are going to fall for this shit?

[RagAss]

21. Ghost tours are big too....scams rake in the dough.

[struggle4progress]

28. It's cheaper to cover than real news. And it meets the Corporate Media #1 goal, which is

not to tell you anything that would actually enable you to do anything

[thelordofhell]

29. In my past life I was Susan Boyle

I dreamed a dream in time goes byyyyyyyyyyyyy..........

Man, I can't believe people still fall for this shit. Maybe this kid and the Ramtha cult chick can get together and make another "What The @*&# Do We Know?" movie.

[anigbrowl]

30. Fascinating DU thread about internet users who'll believe any damn thing.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5806914&mesg_id=5806914

[LostinVA]

42. lol

[Hugabear]

31. Goddamn I can't believe people actually believe this bullshit nowadays

I still find it incredible that even in industrialized society, with all the education available, that so many people still believe in bullshit like ghosts, past lives, UFOs, Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monsters, aliens, and other nonsense.

[solstice]

32. I saw this on GMA and find it hard to take seriously. And I think reincarnation is actually

a possibility, having read tons and tons about it.

But the parents gave off very strong "cashing in" vibes.