00:00
thank you very much so before I talk
00:08
about children's past lives I want to
00:10
tell just for a second talk about how
00:13
our division and how all this work got
00:16
started it it started as Pat had
00:18
mentioned with Ian Stevenson Ian came to
00:23
the University to be chairman of the
00:26
department of psychiatry in 1957 and at
00:31
that point he was in the middle of a
00:33
perfectly successful mainstream career
00:36
in fact he was still in his late 30s
00:38
when he came to be chairman and when he
00:40
interviewed he told people that he had
00:42
an interest in parapsychology but he had
00:45
a lot of other interests as well and
00:47
nobody seemed to mind and then a couple
00:50
of years later he wrote a paper about
00:54
previous reports of people describing
00:57
memories of a past life and after that
01:01
paper was published he started hearing
01:03
about cases of children who were
01:07
reporting memories of past life and he
01:11
decided to start investigating them and
01:14
went around the world investigating
01:18
these cases he was able to fund the
01:21
trips because of the financial help of
01:23
Chester Carlson Carlson invented the
01:28
xeroxing process so he was quite wealthy
01:31
obviously and he read Ian's first paper
01:34
and became interested in it and started
01:37
offering financial support and Ian
01:41
actually initially turned him down
01:42
because he was so busy running the
01:44
department but he eventually got more
01:46
and more interested in these cases and
01:48
then stepped down as chairman of the
01:51
department in 1967 and started this
01:55
division of perceptual studies or Dobbs
01:57
and with the help of other donations and
02:02
bequest over the years we've been going
02:04
ever since so next year will be 50 years
02:08
for Ian he spent the bulk of the next 40
02:13
years the last 40 years of his life
02:16
investigating these cases and he
02:19
published numerous papers and books
02:21
about them one of his books was reviewed
02:25
in JAMA the Journal of the American
02:28
Medical Association and the reviewer who
02:32
was the actually the book review editor
02:34
wrote in regard to reincarnation he has
02:38
painstakingly and unemotionally
02:40
collected a detailed series of cases
02:42
from India cases in which the evidence
02:44
is difficult to explain on any other
02:47
grounds he has placed on record a large
02:49
amount of data that cannot be ignored
02:53
now the latter part of that turned out
02:56
not really to be true in the sense that
02:58
many people did ignore it but that did
03:02
not deter Ian and he continued with the
03:05
work and he also worked to get other
03:07
researchers involved one of the
03:10
criticisms of his work was that he was
03:12
the only one finding these cases and
03:14
that was certainly not his fault but
03:17
then he eventually got several
03:19
psychologists and anthropologists
03:21
involved in studying them independently
03:24
then I came on later as a child
03:28
psychiatrist I got intrigued and
03:31
eventually called up the division and
03:33
asked to volunteer some time and kind of
03:35
one thing led to another and I've been
03:38
full-time at UVA since 2000 so now that
03:41
we've been studying these cases actually
03:43
for over 50 years we have collected over
03:47
2,500 cases from around the world and
03:52
here's the the list of countries where
03:55
we have the most cases and its cultures
03:58
with a belief in reincarnation but the
04:00
reason these particular countries stand
04:02
out is because we've had associates
04:04
looking for them there and in fact cases
04:06
have been found wherever anyone has
04:08
looked they've been found on all the
04:11
continents except Antarctica
04:14
where we have not yet looked
04:17
and they're also found here in the West
04:20
and they they may be less common here
04:24
they're certainly harder to find but it
04:26
may just be that families don't tell
04:29
anyone when their children are saying
04:31
these things like they might in in other
04:33
places and I'm going to tell you about
04:37
an American case in a little bit that
04:39
that is quite interesting so as far as
04:42
these cases go looking at the features
04:46
of them these are very young children
04:49
who spontaneously start talking about a
04:51
past life this work does not involve
04:54
hypnotic regression but rather young
04:57
children when I say young the average
05:00
age when they start talking about a past
05:01
life is thirty five months so it's
05:04
usually a two or three-year-old who
05:06
starts coming out with these things and
05:07
usually by the time they're six or seven
05:09
they stop but in the mean time they will
05:12
sometimes everyday talk about a life
05:16
typically a recent ordinary life they
05:21
are not talking about being kings or
05:23
queens they almost talk about and never
05:24
talk about being a famous person but
05:27
instead somebody perfectly ordinary who
05:30
lived usually in the same country and
05:33
often even fairly close by and when I
05:36
say a recent life the average interval
05:39
between the death of the previous person
05:41
in the birth of the child is four and a
05:43
half years the median interval meaning
05:46
half are shorter and half or longer is
05:47
only 16 months so there are typically
05:50
extremely recent lives now there are
05:53
exceptions to that and the example I'm
05:56
going to give you is an exception some
05:59
of them talk about being a deceased
06:01
family member but others describe being
06:03
strangers in other locations and if they
06:06
give enough details like the name of
06:08
that location then people have often
06:10
gone there and found that in fact
06:11
somebody did live and die whose life
06:13
matches the details of the child gave in
06:16
that situation we say it's a solved case
06:19
if a child talks about a past life but
06:22
no one can verify that the details match
06:24
anyone who actually lived and it's
06:26
unsolved we have plenty of both kinds in
06:29
our collection but two-thirds of our
06:31
cases are solved and of course they tend
06:33
to be the more interesting ones the one
06:37
part of the past life that is often out
06:39
of the ordinary is how the previous
06:41
person died in 70% of the cases the
06:44
previous person died by unnatural means
06:46
meaning murder-suicide combat accidents
06:51
those sorts of things that certainly
06:53
seems to be an important factor in this
06:56
phenomenon now for the kids who died
06:59
violently
07:01
many of them have are born with
07:05
birthmarks or birth defects that match
07:08
wounds usually the fatal wound on the
07:11
body of the previous person and Ian who
07:15
was before he got involved in any of
07:17
this was interested in psychosomatic
07:20
medicines of the connection between mind
07:22
and body and he was really fascinated by
07:26
these cases were somehow an injury from
07:29
a past life shows up on the new baby's
07:33
body so he spent years collecting these
07:35
cases and then years more writing them
07:38
up and he eventually published this book
07:42
called reincarnation in biology it's a
07:46
two-volume set that's over 2,000 pages
07:49
long and it describes over 200 such
07:53
cases I will now review all 200 with you
07:57
I may run over my 20 minute time
08:02
allotment now I'll tell you about a
08:04
couple of them there's a girl who
08:06
remembers the life of a man who got his
08:08
fingers chopped off as he was being
08:10
murdered and the girl was born with her
08:14
hands looking like that
08:17
there was a case of a boy who remembered
08:20
the life of a boy in another village who
08:22
had lost the fingers of his right hand
08:24
in a fodder chopping machine and the
08:27
second boy was born with his hands
08:29
looking like that there was a boy who
08:33
remember the life of a man who had been
08:35
killed by a shotgun blast to the side of
08:38
his head and this boy was born with a
08:42
stump for an ear and actually
08:44
half of his face was was underdeveloped
08:48
Ian also lists 18 cases in which
08:52
children are born of two more two
08:53
birthmarks ones that match both the
08:56
entrance wound and the exit wound on the
08:59
body of gunshot victims so I eventually
09:07
decided to focus on American cases I
09:10
took several trips to Asia but I decided
09:12
to focus on the American ones for a
09:14
couple of reasons one they don't have
09:16
the potential cultural influences that
09:20
might impact the cases from Asia and two
09:23
I felt like that they could have more
09:26
impact on people that they could be
09:27
harder to dismiss if you realize that it
09:30
could be happening to the kid down the
09:32
street so one in particular that I want
09:36
to tell you about is is one that has
09:39
gotten a fair amount of press you may
09:40
have heard about it a little boy named
09:42
James Leininger
09:43
the case has been on TV some his parents
09:46
eventually wrote a book about their
09:48
experiences he's a boy who talked about
09:50
being a pilot who was killed during
09:53
World War two kind it's believed that
09:55
that pilot has now been identified so
09:58
his parents are this Christian couple in
10:01
Louisiana and his dad in particular was
10:04
quite opposed to the idea of past lives
10:06
before this case began it began when
10:12
James is 22 months old and he and his
10:15
dad took a trip to a flight Museum and
10:18
James was fascinated by the exhibit of
10:21
World War two planes to the point that
10:23
he kept insisting that they go back to
10:26
it and his dad ended up spending three
10:28
hours of the museum when he was 22
10:31
months old and then a couple months
10:34
later around the time his second
10:35
birthday he started having horrible
10:38
nightmares multiple times a week in
10:40
which he would be kicking his legs up in
10:43
the air and screaming airplane crash on
10:46
fire
10:46
little man can't get out and after I
10:50
spent a weekend with the family going
10:53
over all the details of the case and
10:55
then afterwards I talked with his aunt
10:56
who
10:57
spent a lot of time of the family she
10:59
said you cannot believe how horrible
11:00
these things were to witness that it
11:02
really looked like somebody fighting for
11:04
his life and then during the day he
11:08
would take his toy airplanes and he
11:10
would say airplane crash on fire and he
11:13
would slam them nose first BAM into the
11:15
coffee table he would do this over and
11:18
over again and his parents are
11:21
apparently tolerant people because this
11:25
is a picture of their coffee table I
11:27
don't know how well you can see it but
11:28
there are dozens of scratches and dents
11:31
where he would say airplane crash on
11:33
fire BAM so that looks very similar to
11:38
what we in children's mental health
11:40
called post-traumatic play where a child
11:43
who is experienced or witnessed
11:45
something traumatic
11:46
then reenact the scene over and over
11:49
again in their play and when you combine
11:51
that with his nightmares he really looks
11:54
like a child who'd been traumatized but
11:57
he had not been at least in this life
12:00
and he didn't but many of the children
12:05
who destroyed violent lives show phobias
12:09
as well in the unnatural death cases
12:12
over thirty five percent of the kids
12:14
will have an intense fear toward the
12:17
mode of death and the other thing that a
12:21
lot of the kids will do in their play
12:23
they will also reenact compulsively the
12:26
occupation of the previous person and in
12:29
James's case not only did he play with
12:31
his toy planes a lot but he he took an
12:33
old car seat and created a cockpit in
12:36
the closet of his dad's home office says
12:39
that our being there working and James
12:41
had come tumbling out of the closet as
12:43
he was parachuting out of his plane and
12:47
then his parents were able to have
12:50
several conversations with him
12:51
after a second birthday in which he
12:54
could talk about this stuff while he was
12:55
awake what he described was that his
12:58
plane had crashed on fire that he had
13:01
been shot down by the Japanese and that
13:03
he flew a Corsair no I'd never heard of
13:06
a Corsair but
13:08
a special plane that was developed
13:11
during World War two and after this case
13:15
got some publicity skeptics said well he
13:18
just saw a Corsair of the museum and the
13:20
name stuck with him and in fact if you
13:22
go to the website of the flight museum
13:24
you see the in fact there is a Corsair
13:25
there now James is dead said there was
13:28
not one there when he and James visited
13:31
so I looked into it and found then in
13:32
fact his dad was correct
13:34
they had had a Corsair it had crashed at
13:37
a public airshow the year before they
13:40
visited and then they didn't get a
13:42
replacement for three more years so that
13:44
it's not where he learned about Corsairs
13:47
he also said that he flew off of a boat
13:50
and his parents asked him the name of
13:52
the boat and he said Natoma which I
13:57
think we can all agree would be quite an
13:59
unusual name to guess that for a US
14:01
aircraft carrier and in fact his dad
14:04
responded well that sounds Japanese to
14:06
me and James said no it was American so
14:12
after that conversation dad went and did
14:16
an online search and eventually came
14:18
across information on the USS Natoma Bay
14:21
he printed out the information and the
14:24
footer shows the date when he printed it
14:31
out 827 2000 is born in April of 98 so
14:36
this documents that by the time he was
14:38
28 months old that Natoma was part of
14:41
the story and it turned out that the USS
14:46
Natoma bay was an escort carrier that
14:48
was in fact stationed in the Pacific
14:50
during World War two
14:52
his parents would also ask him who he
14:55
was during all this and he always just
14:57
said me or James which they didn't make
15:00
anything up at the time they also asked
15:02
him one time who else was there and he
15:04
said Jack Jack Larsen this is all when
15:08
he was 2 now when he turned not when he
15:12
turned when he was two-and-a-half his
15:14
dad bought a book on Iwo Jima to give to
15:18
his dad James's granddad
15:20
and he was looking through it one day
15:21
and James came and got in his lap and
15:24
they were thumbing through it when they
15:27
came to a page with a picture of iwo
15:30
jima on it and James pointed that and
15:33
said that's where my plane was shot down
15:35
and his dad said what and he said my
15:38
airplane got shot down their daddy and
15:40
his dad was just floored that his two
15:43
and a half year old was talking like
15:44
this and then he learned that in fact
15:47
the Natoma BAE did take part in the Iwo
15:50
Jima operation then when James got old
15:53
enough to draw he drew Quinn and his
15:56
parents dozens if not hundreds of
15:58
pictures of airplanes and battle scenes
16:01
and he would always sign them James
16:04
three now I thought that might be
16:06
because he was three years old but his
16:09
parents said no they asked him and he
16:10
said I'm the third James I'm James three
16:14
and in fact he continued to sign them
16:16
that way even after he turned four so
16:19
with all this going on his parents did
16:21
begin to wonder if he could be
16:22
remembering a past life so when he was
16:26
four and a half his dad attended the
16:29
Natoma Bay reunion and he learned that
16:32
there had been a Jack Larson there he
16:34
had been looking for a Jack Larson among
16:36
the war dead but in fact this Jack
16:39
Larson had survived the war and was even
16:41
still alive
16:41
so James's dad went and visited him and
16:46
he learned that he was on the ship on
16:49
the Natoma Bay during the Iwo Jima
16:52
operation he also learned that one and
16:55
only one pilot from the ship was killed
16:58
during the Iwo Jima operation this was a
17:01
21 year old pilot from Pennsylvania
17:05
named James Houston so this means if
17:09
James Leininger was in fact remember in
17:11
the past life it had to be Houston's
17:13
life because he was ailing pilot from
17:15
the Natoma Bay killed at Iwo Jima so
17:18
what we can do is compare what James
17:20
said with Houston's life now his parents
17:23
say that he also talked about family
17:25
life before the war but we don't have
17:28
any documentation of those statements
17:30
that was made before Houston was
17:32
identified
17:33
but what I can do is list all the items
17:36
where we have definite documentation
17:39
that was made before anyone knew
17:41
anything about James Houston much of it
17:44
comes from an interview that the lining
17:45
goes did with ABC News again before
17:48
anyone knew if James's statements
17:51
actually matched an actual pilot so
17:55
James signed his drawings changed three
17:59
Houston was changed jr. which would make
18:02
James Leininger the third James James
18:06
said that he flew off then the tomah
18:09
Houston was a pilot on the USS Natoma
18:12
Bay James said they flew a Corsair
18:15
Houston had flown Corsair he was
18:17
actually flying a different plane when
18:19
he was killed but he was part of the
18:21
squadron that had tested the Corsair for
18:23
the Navy James said he was shot down by
18:26
the Japanese and Houston was shot down
18:28
by the Japanese James said he died at
18:31
Iwo Jima Houston was the woundn't Olympe
18:34
pilot killed during the Iwo Jima
18:35
operation James said one-day quote my
18:38
airplane got shot in the engine and
18:40
crashed in the water and that's how I
18:42
died eyewitnesses reported that
18:46
Houston's plane his quote hit head-on
18:47
right on the middle of the engine
18:49
James had nightmares of a plane crashing
18:52
and sinking in the water
18:54
Houston's plane crashed in the water and
18:57
quickly sank and James said that Jack
19:00
Larson was there and Jack Larson was a
19:04
pilot of the plane next to Houston's on
19:06
the day that he was killed James is now
19:10
18 years old he became an Eagle Scout
19:13
and he graduated from high school this
19:15
spring and he has recently joined the
19:18
Navy with that I will stop and I will
19:23
turn it over to dr. Penberthy