James Leininger had just had his second birthday when he began to have terrible
nightmares. He was in a fiery plane crash, he'd cry out to his concerned parents.
But as the nightmare repeated itself, other details began to come to light. Names, places,
dates- which all matched up perfectly with an actual World War II aviator named James Huston,
who had died 50 years earlier after being shot down by the Japanese.
Belief in reincarnation is prevalent around the world, but even in cultures that typically
have little or no such belief, past life experiences are reported- some
with frighteningly accurate details. James Leininger is the most famous of these examples.
James was born on April 10th, 1998, almost 50 years after the end of World War II. When he
was just 22 months old, James' father took him to the Cavanaugh Flight Museum outside
of Dallas, Texas, and little James became fascinated by the airplanes-
specifically the World War II era planes. A few months later, the family returned,
but this time James' excitement seemed to waver upon entering the area hosting the
museum's World War II planes. Instead James simply stared in fascination, saying nothing.
Shortly after the first trip, James had begun to reenact crashes with his toy airplanes while
shouting “airplane crash on fire!”. The behavior continued and became extremely disconcerting for
James' father, who was a frequent traveler. As the family said their goodbye at the airport,
James would once more spout out, “Daddy, airplane crash on fire!”.
It wasn't long before James began having nightmares, where he'd frequently scream,
“Airplane crash on fire! Little man can't get out!”. He'd shout this over and over again
while thrashing around wildly. James slowly became convinced that these weren't dreams, but memories
that he had of something that had happened to him sometime in the past. At 2 years old now,
James said that he had been flying an airplane that had been shot down by the Japanese.
In time he elaborated, stating that he had been flying a Corsair,
and outside of his nightmares he commented on flying a Corsair to his parents several times.
When James was 28 months old he told his parents that he had been flying his plane off
a boat named the Natoma. James' father searched online for any ship named Natoma in World War
II and was shocked to discover the Natoma Bay, an escort carrier that fought in the Pacific.
After this discovery, James' parents asked him for the name of the little man that was
frequently on fire in his dreams, but he simply responded that it was him. Switching tactics,
they asked him for the name of someone else on that boat. James responded with Jack Larsen.
Right before Christmas, with James now two and a half years old,
his father was looking through a book he was going to give to his own father
for Christmas. The book was called The Battle for Iwo Jima 1945, and as he thumbed through
the book James took an interest. Eventually he pointed at a picture showing an aerial
view of Mt. Suribachi and told his father that that's where his plane was shot down.
James' father, now looking for answers, got in contact with surviving veterans of the Natoma
Bay. When he asked about the name Jack Larsen, the veterans told him that Larsen had indeed served
aboard the Natoma Bay, but he had disappeared during a mission once and had been presumed dead.
James' parents, now believing that something strange was going on with their son,
contacted Carol Bowman, an author who had written a book on children's past-life
memories. She encouraged them to acknowledge to James that the nightmares were actually memories,
and that they were now in the past and could no longer hurt him. With this acknowledgment James'
nightmares seemed to ease substantially, becoming less violent and frightening.
As James became old enough to draw, he recreated hundreds of battle scenes
involving airplanes and he'd sign them James 3. When he was asked about the 3,
James replied that it wasn't his age, but rather because he was “the third
James”. He continued to sign his artwork with a 3 after his name even after turning 4.
James' father attended a reunion of Natoma Bay veterans, and discovered that Jack Larsen had
actually not been killed in combat after all but had survived the war. He also learned that only
a single pilot from the Natoma Bay had been killed in Iwo Jima, a 21 year old from Pennsylvania named
James M. Huston Jr. After contacting Jack Larsen, he was able to confirm that James M. Huston Jr.
had indeed flown off the Natoma Bay and been lost in combat, though not in the attack on Iwo Jima
itself but on an attack on transport ships on a nearby island. Digging into historical records,
an after action report confirmed that Jack Larsen had flown alongside James M. Huston Jr.,
and that Huston's plane had crashed exactly as young James had described.
Was James fantasizing about being a World War II pilot? Possible- but if so then how
did he recall such specific details at a time when the internet was still in its infancy?
Could James' parents have perpetrated the entire event as a hoax? Also possible,
though the parents would only go on to write a book about the experiences when James was 11
years old- 9 years after James had first started making claims about past life memories. As an
investigation into the incident reports, it's highly unlikely the parents would have began a
hoax so far in advance in anticipation of a future payout almost a decade later. The parents had also
failed to capitalize on a media story about James while the experience was still fresh.
Doctor Jim Tucker has been studying past-life experiences for over 20 years, and has gathered a
large amount of data on children claiming to have experienced past lives. According to Dr. Tucker,
children typically begin to have past life experiences right around their third birthday,
which lines up with James's account. As they improve their verbal skills they become more
talkative, further elaborating on past life memories. Interestingly,
70% of cases studied by Dr. Tucker show that children relating past life
memories claim to have died unnaturally, such as murder, suicide, or in combat.
Could a violent death before one's time is up be cause for reincarnation? Or is the
shock of such a death simply imprinted on the soul, manifesting itself early in the
next life? There's no way to know for sure, but violent or unnatural deaths seem to be
the most common amongst past-life memories. By the time the child turns 6 or 7 though,
the memories fade, and children seem to forget all about them entirely.
One past life experience in the 1950s though led to a brief, but intense cultural phenomenon
right here in the United States, and an upsurge in belief in reincarnation.
In 1952 Morey Bernstein was at a dinner party and witnessed a party attendee get hypnotized. He was
instantly inflamed with curiosity for the subject, and began to buy every book he could find on the
subject of hypnotism. Spending months learning all he could, the self-taught hypnotist decided
it was time to put his technique to the test, so he used his wife and a nephew of a family friend
as test subjects. His wife was allegedly cured of a persisted migraine that had plagued her, and the
young college student was cured of his stutter. As his fame grew, so did his practice, and Bernstein
began curing all sorts of ailments though hypnotism and post-hypnotic suggestions. Insomina,
bad smoking habits, mental ailments of all sorts- all cured through Bernstein's gift of hypnotism.
Then Bernstein met Virginia Tighe, and with the help of a local newspaper
Bernstein and Tighe would rock the world with the possibility of past-life regression.
Under hypnosis and over the course of several sessions, Tighe began to recount that she had
lived a prior life before this one. In that past life she had been born on December 20th,
1978, in the town of Cork, Ireland. As she dove into her past life memories, Tighe
began to speak with a thick Irish accent, despite having no such accent in her 'normal' life.
Slowly, Tighe laid out all the details of her life as a woman named Bridey Murphy,
including exhaustive details about daily life in her home and the village she lived at.
She spoke of getting married in a local church, which she described in great detail,
and then finally revealed that she had died by falling down a flight of stairs.
Bernstein rushed to write a book based on Tighe's past-life regressions,
resulting in the smash hit The Search for Bridey Murphy. Helped along by a firebrand media,
the book became a cultural phenomenon that swept the United States by storm,
even prompting parents to start greeting newborns with “welcome back” instead of “hello”.
The fad however was short lived, as with extraordinary claims came
an equally extraordinary investigation into Tighe's alleged past life as Bridey Murphy.
Tighe had alleged that she and her husband, Sean Joseph Brian McCarthy,
had been married at St. Theresa's Church in Belfast- but upon investigation,
that church hadn't been built until 1911, a full 47 years after Tighe's 'first' death in 1864.
She had also identified her young husband as a barrister, but as a Catholic her husband would
have been barred from holding that title until the Catholic Emancipation in 1829.
She had even gotten wrong claims of buying clothing in shops, when at the time in the
area it was still common to instead purchase cloth and have a dress made by a dressmaker.
Further investigation revealed that Tighe's real life parents had both been part Irish,
which would have explained her ability to accurately mimic an authentic Irish accent.
As if that wasn't damning enough though, Tighe had an Irish immigrant as a neighbor
named Bridey Murphy Corkell across from where Tighe had grown up in her childhood home.
But Tighe and Bernstein may not have been malicious hoaxers out to make a buck-
both likely believed that the experiences were very real. Tighe and Bernstein had in fact not
discovered evidence of past lives, but rather of a psychological phenomenon known as Cryptomnesia.
This condition occurs when the brain recalls a memory but fails to recognize it as such,
thus leading the sufferer to believe that this is a brand new event. Given Tighe's
very young age when she had been influenced by her partly Irish parents and her Irish neighbor,
these buried memories would have been highly fragmented.
Under Bernstein's amateurish use of very leading questions, Tighe likely gathered
these fragmented memories together and formed brand new ones. With her brain
failing to recognize the original fragments as real memories, they seemed like something
that could not have happened to Tighe in this current life, and easy fodder for a past life
experience. A total shunning of the spotlight by Tighe during the height of Bernstein's book's
popularity further goes to show that the event was unlikely to have been maliciously hoaxed-
Tighe always insisted that she be identified only by the pseudonym Ruth Mills Simmons.
Nonetheless, Bernstein's book did ignite a brief national obsession with past lives,
leading to several films such as I've Lived Before and songs based
on the phenomenon. People even began to throw “Come As You Were” parties,
with attendees encouraged to dress as they believe they would have had in a past life.
The most tragic part of this accidental cultural phenomenon however is the development of past
life regression therapy, a practice which uses hypnosis to recall past life experiences. It
encourages subjects to revisit past traumatic events, believing that facing those memories
and accepting them as no longer able to harm them can bring a form of catharsis in this new
life. This practice has soared in popularity, and despite it being illegal to practice psychotherapy
without a license you don't have to look very far to find a past life therapist in your local area.
Yet, there does seem to be some benefit to past life regression- even if it likely has
nothing to do with actually revisiting past lives. Clients undergoing past
life regression have shown in some cases success in dealing with real-life phobias,
mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety, and bad habits. This however is likely due to the
subject feeling safe to tackle these problems head on in a fantasized scenario of their own creation,
or by feeling empowered through fantasized achievements accomplished in a past life.
But while past life regression has no basis in real science,
real science still falls short on explaining how a 2 year old child accurately recalled
information about a World War II battle that took place nearly 50 years before his birth.
Now go check out Doctor Discovers Proof of Past Lives, or click this other video instead!