The Search for Bridey Murphy (15 page)

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.
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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.
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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.

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:

Ruth was made comfortable in a reclining position on the couch. Then I lighted a candle and turned off all the lights with the exception of one lamp.

I asked Ruth to take seven very deep breaths, to inhale as deeply as possible, and to empty her lungs as completely as possible with each exhalation. As soon as she had finished with the deep breathing, I held the lighted candle at about a 45-degree angle above and in front of her head and not more than eighteen inches from her eyes.

I explained that while she was staring at the candle flame I would soon begin to count. When I began with the count of “One,” I told her, I wanted her to close her eyes and imagine that she could see the candle flame in her “mind’s eye.” Then when I said, “Num
ber two,” she should, I suggested, open her eyes and once more look into the candle flame. And while she was looking at the flame, I added, I would eventually toll the count of three, at which signal she was to again close her eyes and once more pick up the image of the flame in her mind.

A recording of the session at this point would have read thus:

“Keep your eyes on the candle flame. You will notice, as you look at the flame, that one portion of the flame is especially bright, a sort of glowing central heart of the flame. Focus your attention on that bright, glowing core of the flame, and in a few moments I shall begin to count.

“When I count ‘One,’ you will close your eyes but you will continue to see the candle flame in your imagination. Even in your imagination you will focus upon the brightest portion of the flame. And while I talk to you, you will become sleepier and sleepier, because that flame is becoming for you a symbol of sleep. The flame means sleep; the flame means sleep. Your subconscious, even now, is beginning to associate the image of the flame with the process of sleep. In your subconscious the flame is becoming a signal for sleep, deep sleep. Whether you actually look into the flame or merely see the flame in your mind’s eye, you will grow sleepy—your limbs will become heavy, your eyelids will get heavier and heavier, and you will want to drift off into a pleasant sleep. The flame means sleep. Flame and sleep. Flame and sleep.

“Then when I reach the count of two, you will again open your eyes and look directly at the flame of the candle. But even as you do you will notice that the very glance at the actual flame makes you even sleepier; it will impress even more deeply into the sub conscious that the flame means sleep, that the flame is a symbol of sleep, that the flame is a signal for you to grow sleepy and to drift into a pleasant, relaxing sleep.

“And so I will reach the count of three, at which time you will again close your eyes and pick up the image of the flame in your mind’s eye. By this time you will be very, very sleepy. You will keep your eyes closed and drift into a deep, pleasant, relaxing sleep as I continue to talk to you.”

Then I asked my subject, who was already drowsy, whether she clearly understood my instructions. In a sleepy voice she indicated that she understood.

So I started the counting, monotonously repeating after each
count all the suggestions designed to set up the association between “flame and sleep.” (I am not at all convinced that monotonous repetition is essential to trance induction, but it is the stock in trade of most hypnotists, and I didn’t care to deviate on this occasion.) Finally, after the count of three, Ruth’s head fell to one side on the pillow; her breathing was deep and regular.

At this point I employed a technique for deepening the trance. After that came the ordinary age regression. The tape recorder plays it back like this:

TAPE I

“… Deep asleep… deeper and deeper asleep… deeper and deeper asleep. Now we are going to turn back. We are going to turn back through time and space, just like turning back in the pages of a book. And when I next talk to you… when I next talk to you… when I next talk to you, you will be seven years old, and you will be able to answer my questions. When I talk to you next, you will be seven years old, and you can answer my questions. Now. Now, you are seven years old. Do you go to school?

Yes.

What school do you go to?
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Adelphi Academy.

All right. Who sits in front of you?

Uh… Jacqueline.

And who sits behind you?

Verna Mae.

Verna Mae what?

Booth.

Do you know any boys in the class?

Uh-huh.

What is the name of one?

Donald.

Donald what?

Barker.

And what is your favorite study? What is your favorite subject?

Uh… reading. Reading.

Can you read well? Are you a good reader?

Fair.

All right.

Fair.

All right. Now rest and relax. We’re going to turn even farther back through space and time. We’re going back now to the time when you were five years old. We’re going back to the time when you were five years old. When I talk to you again, you will be just five years old. Now, now you are five years old and you can answer my questions.

Do you go to school?

Uh-huh… yes.

What is the name of the school?

Adelphi Academy.

In what town do you live?

Brooklyn.

What grade are you in?

Kinder… garten.

All right. Who sits in front of you?

No one.

Why is that?

Oh… we sit at long tables…. Nobody sits in front of me.

Who sits on your left?

Uh… Violet.

Violet who?

Crosby.