Cases of the Reincarnation Type in the West

9 Replies, 1612 Views

There are more and more spontaneous Western Cases of the Reincarnation Type or CORTs, which is very important, from a theoretical point of view. Common objections against the reincarnation hypothesis such as that the parents simply believe in reincarnation and have indoctrinated their child, simply cannot apply for such cases. 

Western cases can be found in the works of Jim Tucker and in Ian Stevenson's European Cases of the Reincarnation Type.

I would like to invite members to post short summaries of spontaneous (non-induced) CORTs in Western children to this thread.
(This post was last modified: 2017-09-01, 10:02 AM by Titus Rivas.)
[-] The following 6 users Like Titus Rivas's post:
  • Ninshub, Raimo, Vortex, Roberta, Typoz, Doug
Here is a case from the Netherlands, described in Six Cases of the Reincarnation Type in the Netherlands:

The case of Marcel
Marcel is a gifted young ethicist. When Marcel was a boy of about three, his father died. His mother noticed that shortly afterwards he commented on this loss during his play, speaking to himself as follows: "One day my father will be born again as a baby. But what will I get from that? He won't be my father any more!" after which he went on playing again. Two years later, Marcel repeatedly painted and drew a lot of scenes of a beach, which seemed unmistakably filled with what looked like military vehicles and weaponry. His mother, who confirmed the accuracy of everything Marcel told me, had kept some of his drawings and she showed them to me. They can hardly be interpreted in a different manner. During puberty, Marcel experienced images that appeared like memories of being a (possibly American) soldier who was shot in battle.
(This post was last modified: 2017-09-01, 10:04 AM by Titus Rivas.)
[-] The following 1 user Likes Titus Rivas's post:
  • Doug
From the same article:

The case of Mrs De K.-V.
Mrs De K.-V. was a handicapped elderly lady when I first met her. She told me that from 1938 until 1988 she'd had recurrent dreams in which she wore traditional clothing and a small old-fashioned hat. She felt that she was between 18 and 20 years old. She was located in some kind of 'kitchen' of a big house and stood near a very broad staircase that led up­stairs. Outside she could see a lot of trees. She appeared to be on an estate or large farm. Mrs De K.-V. got the impression that she belonged to a rich family who had acquired their wealth through hard labour. It was war time and it seemed that she had killed a soldier who had constituted a threat to her family. The soldier belonged to the enemy, but not necessarily to a foreign power. She killed him with an axe or similar metal utensil, after the man had raped a younger girl, possibly her sister. The family seemed to have buried the soldier's body. She heard or saw that a 'military escort' was arriving, and she was waiting for them to come with her heart beating in her throat. Her last thought in the dream was that everything would end, if they found out. After reaching this point in the dream, Mrs De K.-V. would always wake up. Her daughter confirmed that Mrs De K.-V. had repeatedly told her about the recurrent dream, long before the latter had reported it to us. As far as Mrs De K.-V. could remember, she hadn't seen any films or read any books that might have been the cryptomnesic source of her recurrent dreams. The dreams struck her as unusually life-like and realistic.
[-] The following 1 user Likes Titus Rivas's post:
  • Doug
The third case:

The case of Christina
Christina K. was born on February 24th 1979 in the village of Malden (Gelderland), the Netherlands. Christina died as a teenager of 17 after being struck by a car more than a year before her memories could be investigated. When she was about 3 years old she never dared go to the attic alone. She did not know why, but she just felt frightened. One Friday morning in 1982, when she was about three and a half, she was crying and told her mother she'd had a nightmare. It was a dream about a different, big and white house with high windows, somewhere in a town. She knew she had a father and a mother and was approximately 10 [or 11] years old. She told her mother that her former parents were very different from her present mum. She'd also had more brothers and sisters. It was Easter. They were sitting at the table and her brother and sisters were quarrelling. Their parents sent them to their rooms. Her younger brother had been playing with matches and his mattress had set alight. She ran to the balcony of her room and saw her mother and a fireman, who shouted at her to jump. She simply was too frightened to do so, although one or two of her sisters did. The smoke overcame her. A lady in white told her that she had died and took her through the burning house. Christina was shown several possible mothers and asked to pick one of them. She chose a woman with blonde hair who was typing at an office. After this dream, Christina sometimes recurred to its contents. I tried to find as many witnesses as possible for this. Fortunately, I succeeded in tracing a female cousin who remembered Christina telling her about it when she [the latter] was [around] eight. Christina's sister also confirmed the main story line of the dream and the phobia she had felt for the attic. Christina's mother told me that she had heard of a similar story of a terrible fire in which several children would have died, before Christina had been born. The fire had taken place in Arnhem. Therefore she wanted to test Christina by taking her to that town when she was 15 years old. After arriving at the central station, Christina led her straight to a white house, which she claimed to recognise. I visited the municipal archives of Arnhem and found that there had been a fire as described by Christina, at Easter 1973. There were several minor discrepancies, but the main line of her dream accorded well with the historical events of this fire. One of the casualties within the family afflicted by the catastrophe was called Hendrika, aged 9, who died as a consequence of the suffocating smoke caused by the fire.
Unfortunately, I could not find any living relatives of the family. I did succeed, however, in establishing that the dream was not made up by Christina's mother after her death at the early age of 17. There were several independent persons, including Christina's best friend, Laura, who testified to the fact that she really did have this dream long before her death. Furthermore, Christina clearly identified with the dream for years, which is hard to explain if she never had this dream in the first place. Finally, the age at which she had the dream is classical and so is her phobia. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of this case is Christina's vision of her mother. She saw her as a lady with blond hair who was typing at some office. It is remarkable that Christina's mother told me that she remembered the fire at Arnhem as occurring somewhere during the late '60s. She would have been around 13 or 14 when it happened and it would have shocked her because there were children involved. However, the fire really took place in 1973, when she was working at an office and used a dye to colour her hair blonde. This firmly excludes the possibility of fraud, and together with the other features suggests that Christina's is a classical reincarnation case with the standard pattern.
[-] The following 1 user Likes Titus Rivas's post:
  • Doug
The fourth case:

The Case of Angela
Athanasia Foundation was approached in 1997 by the parents of a girl called Angela, who had had a recurrent nightmare when she was about 2 or 3 years old. At first she would not tell her parents the subject of the dream. She woke up crying between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. and felt sweaty and anxious. Her parents reassured her, so that she went back to sleep after a while. Once, when she was 3, she was so upset that her mother insisted she should tell her what she dreamt about. Angela finally told her mother that in the dream there were men chasing her and shooting at her with guns. She said: "I see myself lying down and they are thinking: she's dead. But I'm not dead. They think I am, they don't see me. And then they set me afire." A few days later when Angela had the same dream again, her father asked her to describe the surroundings in the dream. Her father identified the description given by Angela with an African environment, possibly during the Boer War. They once intentionally left a book opened at a page about this war lying on the table and Angela claimed to recognise the pictures in it, making comments on hats and guns. She was very emotional while doing so. She was also afraid of hot temperatures, both when taking a bath and when having a meal. The dream recurred several times more, but gradually disappeared, after Angela was repeatedly reassured by her parents. When her parents contacted us, Angela, a teenager by now, could not recall any images of the dream. Angela's parents did not believe in reincarnation when she told them about her dream, and they are certain that they never told their daughter about previous lives or gave her detailed graphic descriptions of war scenes.
[-] The following 1 user Likes Titus Rivas's post:
  • Doug
The fifth case:


The case of Annet van de K.
Annet van de K., a GIRL of 14, approached my team on May 16th 1986. When she was 5 years old, her grandfather died, and she tried to comfort her mother. Annet told her mother that it wasn't so bad to die, as she had died once herself. She added that she'd had another mother who resembled one of her aunts in the present life, and she lived in a house with a bay window. It was wartime and she was killed by a man with a flat hat and a gun, who had shot her while she was standing in the bay window. She was hit at a spot where she now has a round birthmark. Stichting Wetenschappelijk Reincarnatieonderzoek interviewed Annet's mother, her brother, and several aunts and established that Annet really must have told at least these elements of the story, though some relatives added more details. Her mother was not at all comforted by this story and told Annet to stop talking nonsense, as she certainly did not believe in reincarnation herself. Annet answered that even if they didn't believe her, her story was true.
[-] The following 1 user Likes Titus Rivas's post:
  • Doug
The sixth case, a recurrent dream that started during puberty:

The case of Jojanneke M.
In 2002 we were approached by a lady from Limburg who told us about an incident that happened when, together with her children, she repeatedly visited a cemetery, where her uncle was buried who had recently died of leukaemia. One of her daughters, Jojanneke, who was about 3 at the time, always visited the graves of young children at the graveyard. On several occasions, her mother inquired about her motives and she always replied: "I used to be a mother too and my baby is buried somewhere in this cemetery." She always gave the same answer. Unfortunately her mother did not notice any other statements about a previous life.
[-] The following 1 user Likes Titus Rivas's post:
  • Doug
Here is a case included in my article "Three Cases of the Reincarnation Type in the Netherlands" in the Journal of Scientific Exploration

The Case of C.
In the Spring of 2001, a friend of mine, Ms. Anja Janssen from Nijmegen, told me that she knew a married couple in Molenhoek who had a daughter with
memories of a previous life. I met all the family members, Christine Thijssen, Sirat Bouts, and their four daughters, in May of 2001. My team also interviewed
them by phone and asked them questions via (normal) mail on several occasions in 2001 and 2002. The girl who claimed to remember a previous life was called
C. and she was seven when I personally met her. Both her parents had some belief in reincarnation before the case developed, although they certainly
weren’t interested in propagating such a belief. During my investigation of the case, they were both very keen on a precise formulation of their statements even
if this meant that the case would seem weaker from a scholarly point of view. Also, Mr. Bouts seemed quite eager to know my motivation for conducting the
investigation before he would participate in it. Finally, C.’s father admitted he did not value scholarly research as much as meditation as a way to find truth.
Thus, we have no reason to suppose the case was fabricated to promote a particular belief in reincarnation. Instead, both parents just seemed interested in
sharing their experiences and in a possible verification of their daughter’s statements. It is also important to note that Anja Janssen was mistaken about the
daughter who would have had memories of a previous life. She thought it was Fanja, the youngest daughter, who was only three when I first met the family. If
C.’s parents would have made up a story, it is very strange that they didn’t choose Fanja as its protagonist.
C.’s mother, Christine Thijssen, had an announcing dream in the eighth month of her pregnancy with her daughter. She saw a strange shamanistic
‘Pictic’ woman in her forties, barefoot and dressed in fur, who held deer antlers in her hand. It seemed this woman told her telepathically that she was going to
give birth to a daughter and that she should call her ‘Deer’. Christine had not had a scan before the dream, so that she was unaware of the sex of her unborn
baby. The woman also told her that the child had had a difficult past life. This experience made the parents choose a Celtic name for their daughter, C.,
which is derived from the Celtic divinity Cerunnos or Kernunnos who was associated with deer and a world between death and rebirth.
During the first two years of her life, C. was a silent child but very quick in her motor development. She also seemed a bit boyish, both physically
and psychologically. When C. was about two or three years old, she spontaneously told her parents about a previous life as a (male) sailor. She
commented on the waves in a swimming pool saying that she used to see waves that were much higher, ‘‘as tall as a house.’’ She also told them that life
at sea could be very strange. Sometimes there had been a storm all night and the next morning everything was completely silent. Often C. would draw
a sailing-ship and she claimed that the passenger-ship the sailor had sailed on had been called the Vurk. Aboard, he had many tasks, including watching the
sail and pennants and being on watch, but also caring for the passengers. She also described where on the ship the adult passengers and the children were
lying during the night, and stated that they didn’t have beds or hammocks, just a pillow and a blanket. They urinated somewhere on the floor, as there wasn’t
any sanitation around. There were dead cows aboard, off which they cut pieces of meat. They also ate raw meat. Sometimes there were fights with knives
among the sailors aboard, but she said the sailor whose life she claimed to recall couldn’t stand rudeness and aggression himself. Also, there was an
accident in which a friend of his fell from a mast and broke his back. There was a large rudder. She also mentioned the word ‘‘moekille’’ (Dutch spelling),
a pointed walking stick which was also used as a weapon. Her own name when she was a male sailor had been Peer and he was a lean man with a black beard.
The ship sailed to la Garoonya or Karoonya (English spelling) to pick up poor families and take them to a harbour with palm trees, on an island. She also
mentioned the name India in this respect. There were mountains in the background and only a few small shops. The poor families were not slaves and
they were fair-skinned. Sometimes the ship moored illegally. On the island Peer sometimes slept in filthy huts, but the inhabitants were very nice, relaxed
and easy-going. When C. was seven, her memories seemed largely intact to her parents, but she felt too embarrassed to talk about them with strangers such as myself.
She did confirm, however, that she had memories of a life as Peer. In this period, she had just told her parents that Peer had been at least 95 years old when he died
and had remained fit for most of his life. She mentioned dry biscuits they had been eating aboard the ship. She commented: ‘We were healthy men’. A remarkable skill that
might be related to her memories of a life as a sailor was an unlearned agility in climbing. She showed this skill from a very young age and never suffered from fear of heights.
She couldn’t swim, however, though she was convinced she could. According to her parents, she also showed a toughness uncommon in girls of her age.
Our team, lead by historian Pieter van Wezel, established that in the 19th and early 20th Century la Coru a (which is phonetically very close to la Karoonya)
used to be an important harbour for immigration to the Spanish colonies sometimes referred to as las Indias, including Cuba, an island with palm trees. The
(white) Galician immigrants were so poor that they were known as ‘‘Galician slaves’’ (escravos galegos). The word moekille can be related to mak(h)ila or
makil(l), an originally Basque pointed walking stick which was also used as a weapon. The makila had become known in the Galician region of La Coru a
through the pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela. The names Peer and Vurk may with some imagination be seen as distortions of the Spanish name Pedro and
Barco or Barca (ship). We established that Vurk is not the name of a Scandinavian (or Dutch) ship and that as such it doesn’t mean boat or ship either.
In my view, these featurestaken togetherseem to suggest a paranormal process rather than cryptomnesia or childish fantasy.
There also appears to be a strange link between Christine’s announcing dream about a shamanistic priestess and La Coru a. The city of La Coru a, or part of
it, was originally founded by the Celtic people of the Brigantes and known as Brigantia. Many elements of Galician culture are derived from this Celtic heritage.
Besides, the divinity which was worshipped at Brigantia, Briga, was a fertility goddess and therefore thematically related to Kernunnos.
(This post was last modified: 2017-09-01, 10:25 AM by Titus Rivas.)
A second case, taken from the same article:

The Case of Kees
In February of 1997, I was contacted by a Mrs. Marja M.-V. who had been asked by theologian Dr. Joanne Klink (1994), author of
an important book on Dutch CORTs, to tell me about her son’s memories of a previous life. She wrote me that from the age of about two, her son Kees
(pseudonym) had repeatedly crowed: ‘‘My heart stopped beating, then I went growing in the tummy and then my heart started beating again!.’’ He was
beaming with joy and threw his hands up in the air to express his delight. He repeated this ritual about twice or three times a week for months in a row. It was
only when he had reached the age of three-and-a-half to four that he could formulate what he meant by this enigmatic exclamation. Mother and son were
sitting on his bed together when he told her that he had lived before. He was called Armand then, and was not very old when he died, but not very young
either. To his mother’s surprise, he pronounced the name Armand with the typical French nasal sound. He had a girlfriend and they were engaged to get
married. Next, Kees described a battle-field on which he was threatened by tall, strong and terrifying macho-men he termed ‘‘he-men.’’ They had already killed
all of his friends. He had laid on his belly and held a gun in his hands. All of a sudden he was hit in the back and his heart started beating in a very irregular
pace. He was overcome by fear. Kees told his mother that he had seen the enemy getting closer to him and hitting him a second time.
When Kees was about seven, he added some details about what happened to him after he died. An angel came for him and took him to God who was
pure goodness, the Big Light, and humour (sic). It was very difficult for Kees to describe the other realm and he told his mother it could not be recorded on a slide
(sic). There was a beautiful waterfall and flowers and trees with delicious fruits, better than all the sweets in the world. Kees resisted the angels when after a long
time they urged him to reincarnate. He did not at all feel like returning to earth. However, the angels assured him that they would stand by him and God would
have added that it was his own responsibility to lead a good life (sic).
As a young child, Kees suffered from a severe phobia of dying, as it reminded him of his own painful death. It took his parents quite some effort to convince
him that the dying process he recalled is not exactly very common.
In 1997, Kees was 11 when I interviewed him. He still had vivid memories of his death and even added a new element to his mother’s account. He recalled he
had lost a good friend whose wife had died during labour and claimed he had taken care of his son. He also remembered that an angel told him this adopted
son was doing well, so that he shouldn’t worry about him.
And the third case:

The Case of Myriam R.
Myriam R. was a woman of 31 when my team and I met her at a so-called ‘paranormal fancy-fair’ in 1996. Born in Leiden, she claimed that as a young child of about
three or four (i.e. around 1968) she had spontaneously remarked that her previous mother used to wear the same kind of dress as her present mother did.
She asked her mother to take it off as it reminded her of her unpleasant past life in a desert-like environment. In her previous life, she had to take care of her
brothers and sisters and look for food in the desert. One day, she had to fetch some water at a well, and she died in a sand storm. Though remaining unverifiable,
her memories were quite extensive. For instance, Myriam recalled the appearance of her parents, a wooden house with a porch, and the respect she had
felt for elderly people.
A friend of mine, Mr. Gerard M. stayed in New Mexico for some time as part of a social project and he was struck by Myriam’s story. He declared that it
reminded him very much of living conditions in the deserts of this state. The wooden porches Myriam had described would be quite common there as well.
Gerard participated in our research during a visit to Myriam’s home in Alphen aan den Rijn. Though he is a Roman Catholic and does not believe in reincarnation
himself, he was struck by the lack of sensationalism on Myriam’s part.
There were months between the several interviews we conducted with Myriam and her story always contained the same elements.
Soon after we interviewed Myriam, we also got in touch with Myriam’s mother who confirmed that she had indeed told her about such a previous life
when she was about 3 or 4 years old. There were no discrepancies between her testimony and the story Myriam told us. She explicitly confirmed that Myriam
was about three to four years old when she made her statements; that she compared her dress to that of a previous mother; that she told her about an
unpleasant life in a desert; that she had to take care of her brothers and sisters and look for food; and that she died in a sand storm.
Apart from her memories of a previous life, Myriam also claims to have memories of an intermission period after her life in a desert-like environment.
She found herself in a very beautiful afterlife. In the present life, she experienced a Near-Death Experience during a caesarean section which strongly reminded
her of these memories of an intermediate state.
It is important to note that her Roman Catholic parents certainly did not believe in reincarnation when Myriam told them about a past life. Also, we have
no reason to believe that Myriam embellished her story to attract our attention.

  • View a Printable Version


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)