To be honest, I am not sure if reincarnation is possible. I can say I do like the idea of it since I would like to think my life is somehow important. That my life would matter. Am I certain, no. I have heard some stories I would like to share with the Grim Folks, to give y’all some food for thought on the topic. So, we will share three of those and then some other interesting information about scars, DNA, and phobias. After presenting all of this we will give some debunking ideas just to be fair there are always at least two sides to every story, right?

Before we get into that I have a fun story for you all, along these lines to start us off. Back when we had our littles at home, Saturdays were my deep cleaning day, in our house. I let the littles watch cartoons and such in the morning, and we wouldn’t really have to start till around 10 am. On one of these Saturdays, our oldest daughter was not feeling the cleaning vibe. I end up asking her why she isn’t helping like the rest of us. Her eleven-year-old response, I was not prepared for, she looks at me seriously, her head held high, and then says in an exasperated breath, “I just can’t!”

            My stern response was, “and just why not?!” I am preparing myself to have a battle of the wills.

            “Because mom! In a past life, I was a princess, I am not accustomed to all this manual labor,” she trails off somewhat huffingly.

            I had to turn around, so she could not see my face, I was not ready for that one, admittedly, I was trying to compose myself and get a handle on my chuckles. That was a good comeback kiddo! Damn! Now, I have to get her back on track. I was very conflicted as I wanted to tell her she got me good! After a few minutes, I got ahold of my emotions and turned around, super serious, and tell her, “Well honey in this life, we don’t have servants, we are the peasants. So, in this house, it’s time to get busy.”

            Just so y’all know, I did have to take myself into another room, just to laugh since I had been holding it in. This is what I get for trying to teach my kids other theologies like Buddhism along with allowing sarcasm. It is still one of my favorite memories I thought you all would enjoy before we get more serious with the rest of our topic.

Is It Normal For Little Kids To Talk About Past Lives?

I am not sure if it is, or isn’t; however, I can say, it is far more common in Eastern countries like India, Lebanon, and Vietnam. Americans and the British, not so much. I do think there might be some more “normalcy” with anyone who chooses to follow Eastern Religions such as Hindu, and Buddhism. Additionally, on the American side of things, it would be pretty rare for a parent of a four-year-old to take their child in for a psychiatric evaluation for reincarnation,  we would more likely just chalk it up to an over-active imagination. For Westerners who aren’t familiar with reincarnation, this wouldn’t be something we would have in our thoughts since it isn’t discussed openly. I believe it has become more mainstream and generally accepted by more modern generations than it was even for mine.

What Should a Parent Look for?

• Typical ages kids “remember” their past lives
  are between two and seven. The Memories begin to fade or the kids lose interest in remembering the older the child becomes.

• Children who remember past lives tend to have
  above average verbal skills at a younger age.

• The memories are spontaneous, such as when the child
  recognizes something that reminds them of the past life and then they can recount the memories.

• Most of the previous lives were lived nearby
  usually within about 300 miles of where the child had been born.

• A large majority of children who remember
  reincarnation stories, over 70%, died violent or unnatural deaths.

How Do We Have Statistics on This?

      Since child reincarnations stories technically are not paranormal but are instead parapsychology there have been a few different researchers. Dr. Ian Stevenson started to study reincarnation first, and then passed the torch to Dr. Jim Tucker who is the current director of DOPS, the Division of Perceptual Studies. They both have been researching this out of the University of Virginia School of Medicine. I believe between the two professors there are over 1,200 different cases that have been studied. Also, from my research, a large majority of Dr. Stevenson’s cases were from outside the United States. I can tell you from all the different cases I have read about there are some hair-raising ones and some that are just super nerdy cool. With my day job being in healthcare I love it when I get to dig into that side of things.

Twins

Twins and reincarnation have some interesting correlations. For example, of the 37 twins that have been studied 17% were siblings in a past life, not that they were twins reborn, just like single births where the kids had passed. Or that some of the twins were, a husband and wife in their previous life. I have a sibling case for you all in just a bit. I just went all nerdy on this part of the research and stopped myself from making a graph to break it down. Logic won out as the graph wouldn’t have helped our discussion overall. With grabbing a story here and a story there, I do have to admit I see some book purchases in my future on this topic it was so creepy and cool all at the same time for me.

      Let’s get back to the background stuff, shall we? Each story was meticulously documented, then the researchers would try to identify the previous life person. When the researchers were able to, they would dig through newspapers, government documents, interview possible relatives. With their interviews, though another nerd moment is that initially, they would ask open-ended questions without explaining why and once the information looked like it was matching with the kid’s story they would explain why. Yeah, I am not sure I would be as forthcoming with information on someone who had passed to a total stranger. What about you? I think in my case it might just be that I am a Western Generation Xer. I really do question everything and people’s motives, and I like true crime a bit too much. This might be another reason why a large portion of the cases were from Eastern Countries?

      This all seems very unreal to me from a skeptical standpoint and then it does make me question the possibility too. I would like for you all to read some of these stories and get your opinions. I know I am on the fence but I might just be tipping over the edge on this one with some of these cases.

James Leininger

      For our first case let’s start with James Leininger he began having intense nightmares of a plane crash when he was two. Little James had visited an air museum in Texas near the family’s home at the time with his father. James seemed to have really enjoyed his visit and his father had bought him an airplane video about the Blue Angels that the young child would watch over and over. His father traveled a lot with his job and the two would go back to the museum again on another trip James became highly focused on a World War II fighter plane. James began crashing his toy planes together and nose-diving them into the family coffee table. Then one day the play became more descript and he described being a pilot who had died when his plane was shot down by the Japanese. He gave very specific details that included the name of an aircraft carrier, the first and last name of a friend who had been stationed on the military ship with him, and the location, along with other specifics about the fatal crash. Eventually, little James’ parents found a pilot named James M. Huston. When his parents looked into young James’ descriptions more, they were able to find the aircraft carrier James said was “Natoma” was actually the USS Natoma Bay. James had also started telling his parents that he had flown a Corsair, turns out this was a plane that was developed during WWII. As James’ parents began to ask more questions like if he could remember anyone else from the other James’s life he replied with the name Jack Larsen.

      Now, little James is about two and a half and his father was looking through a book he planned to give to little James’s grandfather for Christmas that year. Little James pointed to a picture and said, “that’s where my plane was shot down.” his father said, “what?” and little James responded, “My airplane got shot down there, Daddy,” while pointing to an island where Mt. Suribachi a dormant volcano was located. The book was The battle for Iwo Jima 1945.

      Whoa, I don’t know about anyone else but if this had happened to me as a parent I would have been fascinated, creeped out, and scared all at the same time. Your little is having all these nightmares then starts saying things you are able to start piecing together online. How is this possible? Enough of my blabbering, there is more to this story.

      With the ongoing nightmares, James’s parents ended up contacting Carol Bowman. Mrs. Bowman had written a book about past lives so his parents began writing to her. Through their correspondence Mrs. Bowman helped James’s parents to relay to him the events had indeed happened, they were in the past and he was safe now. The parents report that after doing this little James’s nightmares became less violent.

      When James started drawing he drew pictures of planes and he began signing them as James 3. When his parents asked him about it he said he was the third James, he did this until he was 4. Dr. Stevenson says, “James may have thought of himself as the third James because James Huston, the pilot, was James, Jr.”

       In June of 2002, James and his parents were contacted by ABC to be interviewed for a program called Strange Mysteries. The program never aired but a copy of all of little James’ statements about his previous life as a pilot was verified as at least partially true if not fully true before the actual name of the pilot had been determined. It was ABC that had forwarded James’ story to Dr. Stevenson. I really like how Dr. Stevenson’s case study was written and how he had tried to debunk it, along with verifying information. It is listed as one of the sources below.

 

       Eventually, little James met James E. Huston Jr.’s sister and Jack Larson. Both were convinced little James was in fact the reincarnation of James E. Huston. Little James’s parents did write a book about the experiences and they have been featured in another book Carol Bowman.

There is so much information on this one, and I didn’t want to go too in-depth on this one as we still have two other stories.

Ryan Hammons

       For our next case, we will look at Ryan Hammons in this case who was studied by Dr. Jim Tucker, a professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral science at the University of Virginia.

       When young Ryan Hammons was around four, he told his mother Cyndi, “I think I used to be somebody else.” 

      Ryan would tell his mother that he wanted to return “home” in reference to Hollywood signs he would see. He also told her that he had been an agent in Hollywood and his agency would often change the actor’s names. He also talked about dancing on Broadway and living in a house with a large swimming pool. He would start tap dancing to various songs when they would come on the radio. Ryan also made references to a “cowboy man” that had a horse and did cigarette commercials and had a horse that performed tricks.

      Cyndi, Ryan’s mom, started writing down his memories and notes about Ryan’s past life. She researched through books about Hollywood from her local library in hopes to be able to help her son process his past life memories. In one of those books, they found a picture from a movie called Night After Night that Ryan shouted to her, “Mommy, that’s George, we did a picture together!” Then young Ryan pointed to a man at the right side of the photo and told her, “and that’s me.”  Ryan had always told his mother he didn’t know the name of his past life person. Cyndi struggled to identify the man Ryan had said he was in a past life. 

      When Ryan was around five years old Cyndi made contact with Dr. Jim Tucker, who began to investigate young Ryan’s claims. Around this time there was a documentary made about Ryan’s experiences and a member of that production who was a film archivist identified the man Ryan said was him as Marty Martyn, a dancer, actor, and an agent who died in 1964.

      When Tucker visited Ryan and his parents, Ryan was asked to pick out photos that were related to his past life. Some of these photos were of specific people and places related to Marty Martyn’s life and the rest weren’t. Ryan succsessfully chose the photos that pertained to Marty Martyn. 

     According to the Society for Psychical Research, author James G. Matlock’s Ryan Hammons (reincarnation case) says, “Ryan holds the record for the number of memories of a previous life related before the previous person was identified.” Their particular article gives a very detailed breakdown of this case that is definitely worth the time.

 

The Pollock Twins

 

GrimmingItUp.com Image of newspaper clipping from the Daily Mirror May 4, 1957, page 3

   This case of the Pollock twins is very intriguing, and has been discussed and featured on a great many TV, blogs, podcasts, and books. Below is a video clip of the Pollock twin’s story.

 

https://youtu.be/e-YA6C809oQ

 

      Even though this video from Human Stories, is brief it is packed full of interesting details, and many photos of both the sisters who had passed, as well as the twins in their current lives. I think this is a good example of some of Dr. Stevenson’s research on twins and is honestly what led me down the whole nerd rabbit hole, I had talked about earlier. If anyone is interested a freebie and instantaneous way to read more of Dr. Stevenson and Dr. Tucker’s work would be the from DOPS research on the website https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/our-research/ .  Personally, I can see myself spending a bit of time there. I have so many questions, and frankly, this whole topic fascinates me as I hope it does the rest of the Grim family. Additionally, this website also gives the most current listing of all the affiliated researchers and books.

       There are several elements within this particular story I think we should consider, such as their scars, their phobias, and even the possibility of being influenced by older sibling brothers.  First, let us discuss the debunking idea that maybe the twins were told by older siblings about their older sisters. I think if they were, and it is a definite possibility, but that doesn’t explain away everything. It would be possible, to have affected some of their play, or reenactment statements, and could also work for the foods that the girls liked that were liked by their older sisters. What it wouldn’t be able to dismiss is when the girls went to visit the “old” house in another town. My reasoning is if you dig into some of the research on the Pollock twins their brothers weren’t around for this part it was just the twins. At least as far as some of my research so far; however if any of the Grim family finds verifiable research we will gladly update the post for that part.

I am going to make this our first two-part article, in the second part we will look into the scars, phobias, and DNA. I want to give y’all examples and explanations as well as get your thoughts on various parts. And let’s be honest, I am totally geeked out on some recent DNA stuff but I want to try and present it in a more digestible fashion, (I do know, not everyone is a medical nerd, and that it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.) I just don’t think I would be able to do this in a single post without it turning into a novella. I would love to get your thoughts on the stories so far, and what you think. Is reincarnation possible? Do you have past life memories? If so, you can share on our Facebook page for an opportunity to participate in a discussion or you can leave a comment here on the website. A third option would be to email your stories to grimmingitup@gmail.com.

 

Thank you all for your time today! It means a lot that you spent time with us today. We will get out part 2 here shortly.