The idea of reincarnation has been around virtually forever; it’s a part of a number of religions and belief systems dating back to ancient times — and it can be pretty wild to read about some of the most infamous stories of alleged past life experiences from history. Clearly there’s something about these stories that draws us in; indeed, although both past life regression and reincarnation are frequently regarded as pseudoscience, almost a quarter of Americans — 24 percent, according to the Pew Research Center — believe in reincarnation. That’s not an insignificant number; it demonstrates that the idea resonates strongly for many, although I’d imagine the reasons why can vary greatly from person to person.
Despite the history of the concept of reincarnation, though, interestingly, it’s only really in the late 19th and early 20th century that actual research into past life experiences kicked up — and what’s more, it only really started to hit its stride starting in the ’60s. We’ve got Ian Stevenson to thank for the push to more seriously study the phenomenon; these days, folks like Jim Tucker are continuing to further what we do — and don’t— know about alleged past lives.
However, in the English-speaking world at least, interest in alleged past life experiences kicked up a little less than a decade before Ian Stevenson’s first published work on the subject arrived. Beginning with two notable cases in the 1950s — which we’ll look at a little more in depth below — reincarnation and past life regression became all the rage; perhaps, though, given that the world was still recovering from the devastation of World War II at the time, it’s understandable.
These seven cases date back a bit further than the ones we looked at in our last examination of alleged past life experiences. Do you believe?
1. The Bridey Murphy Case

Between November of 1952 and August of 1953, Morey Bernstein, at the time an amateur hypnotist who would later become known as a successful businessman, used hypnotic regression six different times on a Colorado woman named Virginia Burns Tighe — and what emerged during these sessions became a straight-up fad after the publication of Bernstein’s book, The Search for Bridey Murphy. Tighe — who was referred to by the pseudonym “Ruth Simmons” in the book — had, it seemed, allegedly lived a past life as a woman named Bridey Murphy in 19th century Ireland.
While Tighe was under hypnosis, she spoke with a thick Irish accent — despite the fact that Tighe did not have such an accent, and, indeed, had never even been to Ireland. The tale she told detailed Bridey’s life from the age of eight, when Bridey lived in Cork, up through the fall she later suffered that resulted in her death as an adult. When The Search for Bridey Murphy was published in 1956, it kicked up quite the pop culture fervor for reincarnation— “come as you were” parties were de rigueur, bars served “reincarnation cocktails,” and folks just otherwise couldn’t get enough of the whole thing.
However, the Bridey Murphy case did eventually collapse under scrutiny: Journalists failed to be able to verify key elements of “Bridey’s” life (for example, there’s no record of anyone resembling Bridey being born on Dec. 20, 1798 — which Tighe under hypnosis had said was Bridey’s birthday — or dying in 1864) … and eventually, it came out that Tighe had grown up across the street in Wisconsin from a neighbor who was an immigrant from Ireland named Bridie Murphey Corkell. We don’t think Tighe made up the story on purpose; as LiveScience notes, it’s generally believed that Tighe may have unconsciously built Bridey Murphy out of her childhood memories of Bridie Murphey Corkell.
2. The Bloxham Tapes

British hypnotherapist Arnall Bloxham was born in 1881. In the 1950s — possibly inspired by the Bridey Murphy case — he began researching past life regression. Over the course of about 20 years, he recorded a whopping 400 hypnotic regression therapies on tape — and in the 1970s, these tapes were transcribed and published in the Sunday Times as a series. BBC producer Jeffrey Iverson headed the charge on the published series; in 1976, he both produced a documentary for the BBC about the Bloxham tapes and published a book about them, More Lives Than One? Evidence of the Remarkable Bloxham Tapes.
Of particular note was the case of a 30-year-old Welsh housewife referred to by the pseudonym Jane Evans. According to Evans’ regression tapes, she had allegedly lived not one, not two, but six different past lives: That of Livonia, a tutor of the sons of the Roman governor Constantius in York in the third century A.D.; that of Rebecca, who was married to a Jewish moneylender in York in 1189; that of Alison, an Egyptian woman who, in 1450, was a servant in the household of a French merchant; that of Anna, who in the 16th century was a lady in waiting to Catherine of Aragon; that of Ann Tasker, a seamstress in London in 1702; and that of Sister Grace, who was a Catholic nun in Iowa at the beginning of the 20th century.
According to the Skeptic’s Dictionary, though, Jane Evans’ alleged past lives have been found not in the historical record, but in the fictional one. Livonia, for example, seems to be based on The Living Wood, a novel by Louis de Wohl published in 1947. Alison’s “life” also seems to come from a novel — The Moneyman, by Thomas Costain — while Rebecca may have emerged from a radio play. It’s believed that Evans’ “past lives” may actually be the result of cryptomnesia and confabulation.
Read More – 7 Stories Of Alleged Past Life Experiences From History That Will Truly Chill You
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