The Search for Bridey Murphy

by Morey Bernstein

  “It’s about reincarnation,” he said.

  Here we go again, I thought.

  From this point, naturally, it didn’t take me long to summarize my own current interest in the topic, and I soon learned, to my amazement, that this financier’s reading interests had not been confined to the Wall Street Journal. He had long been curious about the problem of rebirth, and he quickly recommended several reference sources, suggesting that I check them myself. One of the sources he cited was to be found in the third chapter of John in the New Testament, in which Nicodemus (a leader of the Pharisees, a Jewish sect) questioned Jesus about spiritual truths. The Wall Street analyst was able to quote the words of Jesus without even turning to his New Testament:

  “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

  Then again: “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.”

  When I left the financial district I took the subway and headed for the New York Public Library, I wanted to check the Kipling story—the one about reincarnation. I had read a lot of Kipling but I could not remember any reference to reincarnation.

  But sure enough, there it was: “The Finest Story in the World.” And a fine tale it is, too.

  While I was still in the library I thought it would be a good idea to check the card file to learn whether there might be any other, interesting contributions on the same topic. I came across an interesting definition: Reincarnation is a plan whereby imperishable conscious beings are supplied with physical bodies appropriate to their stage of growth.

  As I continued checking I was stunned at what I found.

  The reincarnation researchers had really invaded the place! There were literally hundreds of references—books, poems, researches, anthologies. In almost every conceivable form of literature the scholars of rebirth were having their say. And one of the first statements I read—written by Professor T. H. Huxley seemed to be pointed directly at me: “None but very hasty thinkers will reject it [reincarnation] on the grounds of inherent absurdity.”

  My check on the card file turned into an extended study which started at that moment and has never stopped. I was surprised again and again by encountering great names whom I would never have expected to be even remotely interested in the matter of reincarnation. Even the archcynic, Voltaire, had something to contribute: “It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.”

  Another very earthy chap, none other than the brilliantly versatile Benjamin Franklin, made several allusions to the reincarnation principle and even suggested, at the age of only twenty-three, that his own epitaph should read as follows:

  The body of Benjamin Franklin,

  Printer,

  Like the cover of an Old Book

  Its contents worn out,

  And stripped of its lettering and gilding,

  Lies here, food for worms,

  But the work shall not be lost,

  For it will, as he believed, appear once more,

  In a new and more elegant edition,

  Revised and corrected

  by

  The Author

  As to the poets, it appeared that they had enrolled almost enmasse into the ranks of the believers. Included in the list were Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, Rossetti, Longfellow, Whitman, Donne, Goethe, Milton, Maeterlinck. John Masefield, England’s Poet Laureate, wrote:

  I hold that when a person dies,

  His soul returns again to earth.

  Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise:

  Another mother gives him birth.

  With sturdier limbs and brighter brain,

  The old soul takes the road again.

  Literary notables, philosophers, and thinkers had made their contributions too. Cicero, Virgil, Plato, Pythagoras, Caesar, Bruno, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Victor Hugo, Thomas Huxley, Sir Walter Scott, Ibsen, Spinoza—they were all there. Schopenhauer defined his position in no uncertain terms: “Were an Asiatic to ask me my definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life.”4

  There were, moreover, repeated references to the subject of reincarnation as found in the New Testament. At least one book was devoted exclusively to that theme.5 The author wrote, “That reincarnation, not only in the case of men, but also as the law of life that applies to all men, is distinctly taught in the New Testament has been shown. To dispute this point is to deny that the authors of that collection of writings meant what they said in unmistakable language. To reject what they said is to impugn their teachings.”

  One of the most interesting books I found was a studious, thoughtful report called The Problem of Rebirth by the Honorable Ralph Shirley. The book is almost a full-scale consideration of the subject’s many facets, and it presents a number of impressive cases.

  One of the most extraordinary of these cases is that of little Alexandrina Samona, a doctor’s daughter, who died when she was only five years old (March 15, 1910). The mother was particularly distressed over the loss of her daughter, and her grief was aggravated by the realization that in all probability she would have no more children. As a result of a miscarriage and a subsequent operation (before Alexandrina’s death) doctors seriously doubted that she could ever again become pregnant.

  Three days after the child’s death the mother had a dream. In this vivid dream Alexandrina came to her mother and made an effort to mitigate the woman’s sorrow. “Mother, do not cry any more,” implored the girl. “I have not left you for good. I shall come back again little, like this.” Then Alexandrina (in the dream) made a motion with her hand which apparently intended to convey the idea that she would come back again as a baby.

  This was not much solace for the skeptical mother. In the first place the doctors had already made it clear that the odds were against the possibility of her ever bearing another child. Furthermore, she had no respect for the principle of reincarnation, which would seem to be involved here. Her grief, therefore, continued unabated.

  Nevertheless, the dreams persisted. Much to her surprise, moreover, she learned on April 10 that she was again pregnant. Still, though, Mrs. Samona was doubtful. In view of her poor health and the opinion of the medics, she felt she could not successfully give birth to another child. But Alexandrina (again in a dream) insisted, “Little Mother, do not cry any more, as I shall be born once more with you as my mother, and before Christmas I shall be with you again.”

  Then, at a later date, the girl added something which made the mother more skeptical than ever: “Mother, there is another one as well within you.” The girl made it clear, in short, that when she was born this time she would be accompanied by a little sister. Naturally this seemed ridiculous to the ailing mother. She doubted that she could bear one child, let alone two. Furthermore, there had never been twins in the family.

  On November 22, however, Mrs. Samona gave birth to twin daughters. One was altogether unlike the first Alexandrina; but the other, whom the parents again named Alexandrina, bore an astonishing resemblance, both physically and mentally, to the deceased child.

  Alexandrina II was, like the first, left-handed, she had the same disposition, likes, dislikes, idiosyncrasies, and speech habits. And, like the first Alexandrina, she had hyperemia of the left eye, seborrhea of the right ear, and a slight facial asymmetry.

  An even more impressive incident developed when the twins were ten years old. A family trip to Monreale had been proposed, the mother adding, “When you go to Monreale, you will see such sights as you have never seen before.”

  “But, Mother, I know Monreale,” replied Alexandrina. “I have seen it already.” When Mrs. Samona protested that she couldn’t have yet made this trip, the girl stubbornly persisted in her contention. “Oh yes, I went there. Do you not recollect that there was a great church with a ve
ry large statue of a man with his arms held open on the roof? And don’t you remember that we went there with a lady who had horns, and that we met some little red priests in the town?”

  Finally the mother remembered that some months before the death of the first Alexandrina the family had, indeed, made the trip, taking with them a lady suffering from disfiguring excrescences on her forehead. Just before entering the church at Monreale they had met with a group of Greek priests whose robes were decorated with red ornamentation.

  The family recalled that all these details had made a particularly deep impression on Alexandrina I.

  The Honorable Ralph Shirley then goes on to list a considerable number of attestations and corroborations by eminent persons and officials who were acquainted with the circumstances as they developed. He concludes: “It is obvious that the doctor took all pains to secure evidence on the question at issue which should satisfy, if not the most bigoted skeptic, at least the most intelligent scientific investigator.”6

  There were scores of provocative cases. One example, still without satisfactory explanation, was presented in a book by the late Professor Flournoy of the University of Geneva. More than half a century ago this psychologist called attention to a Swiss girl who, while in a trance, claimed to have lived before in the kingdom of Kanara during the fifteenth century. Furthermore, the girl, who had never finished grammar school or been outside the canton of Geneva, spoke perfect Hindu words and phrases and gave forth a plethora of detail about Kanara and a very obscure prince named Sivrouka. A scholar verified the proper usage of her Hindu; and a researcher in Calcutta confirmed the accuracy of her political and historical knowledge, which seemed to be available only in a little-known book of the history of India which had been written in Sanskrit and was admittedly beyond the reach of the Swiss lass.

  Still reeling under the word-beating delivered by the allies of the students of reincarnation, I returned to my round of New York business chores. But no matter where I went, the subject dog gently pursued me. A friend in the real estate business called my attention to a curiously interesting article which he had clipped while still in high school. It concerned an eleven-year-old Indian girl named Shanti Devi, who claimed, and demonstrated with an impressive degree of evidence, that she could remember myriad details from her “previous lifetime” on earth.7

  When she was only four years old the girl began to make intermittent references to her former existence as the wife of Kedar Nath Chaubey, in Muttra, another city of India. By the time she was eleven, her numerous offhand remarks, including the comment that she had died only twelve years ago after giving birth to her second child (just one year before her entry into this lifetime), finally assumed such proportions that a lawyer, a publisher, and a teacher took interest in the case. This group, after learning that her former “husband” was still alive, arranged a series of tests.

  Shanti Devi quickly proved that she could recognize and give the correct addresses of all principals involved in her “prior incarnation,” and that, although she had never in this lifetime been in the house in Muttra, she could describe in detail everything there with which a woman who lived there twelve years ago would have been familiar. Then she gave her “husband” a description of their life together that none but the dead wife could have known—a description so intimate that it brought the husband to tears. “It was as though that wife, now twelve years dead, stood again beside him.”

  But the coup de grâce was delivered when the girl claimed that she had hidden some money in a corner of an underground room at the old house in Muttra. After she was taken to the house, she pointed to the location, then dug up the box. Finding no money inside, she was disappointed, because she insisted that she had left some there. At this point the “husband” admitted that he had taken the money from the box after the wife’s death!

  Just before taking off again for Pueblo I stopped at a bookstore to pick up something to read on the return plane trip. I reached for a book by a widely known English psychiatrist.8 Scanning the table of contents, I stopped at Chapter XVI. The chapter’s title: “Reincarnation Outflanks Freud.”

  Turning quickly to this part of the book, I observed that the doctor had for many years been conducting age-regression experiments with hundreds of subjects. But instead of stopping when the subject’s memory reached back to infancy or birth, the doctor had kept right on going, probing still farther back, investigating the mystery of memories before birth.

  Such a thought had never even occurred to me before. I had conducted age-regression experiments with dozens of subjects, but naturally I had always stopped when the subject returned to infancy. That was the end of the line, I had figured. But now I was learning that some hypnotists don’t stop there; they just keep right on going!

  Well, I was a hypnotist. I had some excellent subjects who were capable of age regression under hypnosis. What was I waiting for?

  There and then I decided to find out about this pre-birth aspect of the memory for myself.

  1Sherwood Eddy’s book, You Will Survive after Death, includes reports by doctors who used Cayce readings for their patients over a number of years

  2Approximately one billion people accept the principle of reincarnation

  3As of autumn 1952

  4Parerga and Paralipomena

  5James M. Pryse, Reincarnation in the New Testament (1900)

  6Attestations in corroboration were printed in Filosofia della Scienza, January 15, 1911

  7The Shanti Devi case is also reported in The Problem of Rebirth by the Honorable Ralph Shirley

  8Dr. Sir Alexander Cannon, author of Power Within (New York: Dutton, 1953)

  CHAPTER 10

  Returning to Colorado, I realized, after one quick glance at my desk, that it would probably be several weeks before I could find time to launch any new experiments in hypnosis. The desk was stacked high with what appeared to be endless letters, reports, inquiries, complaints, advertising proofs, salesmen’s cards, and catalogues.

  There was an unusually large batch of headaches. Our shipping manager, for instance, had shipped a truckload of corral wire to Trenton, New jersey, instead of Trenton, Nebraska…. A packing- house superintendent in the East wrote that the beef hoists we shipped him would lift cows into the air all right; but we had overlooked, he insisted, installing reversing devices so that he could get the animals back down again…. A farmer in Muleshoe, Texas, angrily called our attention to the fact that his pump, which had been guaranteed to deliver forty thousand gallons per hour, would not produce “enough water to irrigate a postage stamp.”

  And during my absence there had been, as usual, a parade of salesmen through the office, urging that we add their products to our line. There were, now that uranium mining was booming in Colorado, a dozen different offers from manufacturers of Geiger counters and other radioactivity-detection instruments. An inventor wanted backing for his electric cattle-branding iron and for his automatic farm gate that would open upon the approach of an automobile and then close mechanically after the vehicle had passed through.

  But somehow, little by little, the mountain on my desk leveled out and the headaches dwindled to no more than a daily dose. At last I could carry out my plans for hypnotic experiments with “memories before birth.”

  First I would have to select a subject, and for this purpose I had decided that I should consider only those who were capable of a somnambulistic trance—that is, those subject to complete amnesia during the trance. So I gave some thought as to the best subjects I had encountered during the past year. Immediately Milton Colin came to mind; he was twenty-two years old, intelligent, pleasant—and he could fall into a deep trance within the first few minutes of hypnosis.

  But he had just gone off to the Navy.

  Then there was my wife. But Hazel already knew too much about the whole business. She had helped me chase down the Cayce story, had read many of the same books as I, and would undoubtedly know in advance the purpose of the experiment.
No, she was not the likely candidate.

  Finally I remembered Ruth Simmons. I scarcely knew Ruth and her husband, Rex, but I recalled how quickly and deeply she had become entranced during two earlier demonstrations—long before I knew anything about the possibility of memories before birth. Furthermore, she had remembered absolutely nothing afterward that had taken place during the trance; she was, in short, a somnambulistic subject. It was doubtful, moreover, that she knew anything about reincarnation, and she would certainly know nothing of my recent research. Ruth Simmons, I decided, was the logical subject.

  But getting the Simmonses to come to the house was no easy job. In the first place I was forced to compete with bridge games, cocktail parties, and club dances, which had become standard routine in their lives. Then, too, Rex, who knew practically nothing about hypnosis and wasn’t eager to start learning, took no delight in the prospect of having his wife put into a deep trance; and I had told him frankly, in extending the invitation, that I was going to hypnotize Ruth.

  Finally, however, sandwiched between a Thanksgiving formal dance and a cocktail party, a date was set: November 29.

  When the Simmonses arrived—and after the preliminaries outlined in the first chapter—I set about the work of the evening. Into the microphone of the tape recorder I spoke the following introduction:

  This is Saturday, November 29, 1952. The time is 10:35 P.M. It’s a clear, very cold night. Present are Mr. and Mrs. Rex Simmons, and Mr. and Mrs. Morey Bernstein. The hypnotist is Morey Bernstein and the subject is Mrs. Rex Simmons, age twenty-nine. I have hypnotized this subject twice previously within the last six months, and during one session I took her back on an age regression to the age of one.