In this case, almost every historical fact stated under hypnosis Moreover, she had no recollection of ever having read about either the period or the people.

Some early psychical researchers into hypnotic phenomena awoke their subjects and placed their hands on a planchette board, usually screened from the subjects’ view, and proceeded to interrogate them. The plan­chette — it is claimed — wrote down true answers to the questions from knowledge in the subjects’ subconscious minds. Under these conditions the girl revealed that she had just read an historical romance in which every person and fact, except for some minor details, had appeared, though she had de­vised a new setting for them.

If all cases were as straightforward as this, there would be no need for further investig­ation, and believers in reincarnation would have to look elsewhere for evidence. How complicated the majority of cases are, how­ever, is shown by the celebrated case of

Bridey Murphy. This is no more remarkable than a hundred other cases of hypnotic regression, but was brought to the public’s attention by a heated debate in a number of American newspapers and a film shown widely in English-speaking countries..

In a number of sessions from November 1952 to October 1953, Morey Bernstein, an amateur American hypnotist, regressed Mrs Virginia Tighe to a life in early 19th-century Ireland. Mrs Tighe, 29 years old at the time, a native of Maddison, Wisconsin, and re­sident in Chicago from the age of three until her marriage, had never visited Ireland, nor had much to do with Irish people (she strongly denied allegations to the contrary, and the evidence supports her denials). Under hypnosis she began to speak with an Irish accent, said she was Bridget (Bridey) Murphy, daughter of Duncan and Kathleen Murphy, Protestants living at the Meadows, Cork. Her brother Duncan, born in 1796, married Aimee, daughter of Mrs Strayne, who was mistress of a day school attended by Bridey when she was 15.

In about 1818 she married a Catholic, Brian MacCarthy, whose relatives she named, and they travelled ‘by carriage to Belfast through places she named but whose existence has never been found on any map.

The couple worshipped at Father John Gorman’s St Theresa’s Church. They shop­ped at stores that Bridey named, using coins correctly described for the period. In addition, Bridey produced a number of Irish words when asked, using some as they were used then, though their meaning had chan­ged since: ‘slip’, for example, referring to a child’s pinafore, not petticoat — the more common modern word. Bridey Murphy had read some Irish mythology, knew some Irish songs and was a good dancer of Irish jigs. At the end of one sitting, Mrs Tighe, aroused from her trance, yet not fully conscious,

typ­ical of regression cases. Some facts were confirmed, others unconfirmed, others proved incorrect. Memories of insignificant detail proved true, while Bridey displayed total ignorance of other important events. Confirmation of facts proved impossible in many instances. There was no possibility, for example, of confirming dates of birth, marriages and deaths, as no records were kept in Cork until 1864 and if the Murphy family kept records in a family Bible, a customary procedure, its whereabouts are not known. No information could be dis­covered concerning St Theresa’s Church or Father Gorman in Belfast, but the two shops mentioned by Bridey, Carrigan and Farr, had both existed. Bridey had said that uillean pipes had been played at her funeral and these were found to have been customarily used at funerals because of their soft tone.

So the neutral enquirer is left puzzled. Where did Mrs Tighe learn about uillean pipes, kissing the Blarney Stone and the names of shops in Belfast whose existence was only confirmed after painstaking re­search? Why should she have created a vivid picture of life in Ireland at the beginning of the 19th century, if this was simply a creation of some part of her subconscious? From where did she — along with many other regressed subjects with no pretence at acting ability — draw the talent to dramatise so effectively a life in another age and another country?

Yet, if reincarnation is a fact, why should trivialities be remembered and great emotional experiences that one would have expected to have contributed to one’s devel­opment in this life, be forgotten or go un­mentioned? The questions are as bewildering as they are intriguing.

Have our lives been shaped not only by experiences and impressions gained since birth, but also by those from some other, previous existence? DAVID CHRISTIE-MURRAY discusses this vexed question and describes the remarkable case of an American, Mrs Virginia Tighe, who, under hypnosis, regressed over a hundred years to become an Irish woman — ‘Bridey Murphy’

IN 1956 AND 1957, Emile Franckel conducted a series of live experiments for a Los Angeles television programme called Adventures in Hypnotism. Franckel’s aim was to bring to the public’s attention the possibility that individuals under hypnosis can relive pre­vious lives. His attitude was sceptical: he believed that recollections of previous lives arose from promptings from the hypnotist or deep subconscious memory. Some of the experiences he was able to draw from his subjects, however, seemed unaccountable by this explanation. Since the hypnotist did not know his subjects, he could scarcely have induced their responses except by a series of coincidences too remarkable to be statistic­ally acceptable as mere chance.

Yet Franckel was right to have remained sceptical. For although some of the results were so remarkable as to seem almost mira­culous, hypnosis is a mental state that almost anyone may experience given the right circumstances and which almost everyone can produce in at least some subjects ­provided, of course, that he has mastered a few simple techniques – techniques that should never be used merely as a party game nor for exhibition purposes, nor by anyone who is unaware of its dangers. This does not mean that hypnosis is fully understood by the medical profession. The following cases illustrate some of the areas where our know­ledge is still inadequate in explaining regres­sion into previous lives under hypnosis.

Assuming that the human personality consists of potentialities derived from a com­bination of factors – parents’ genes, plus, perhaps, racial memories and other ele­ments, if belief in reincarnation is to be established as fact, these ‘other elements’ will include memories of previous lives.

What appears to happen under hypnosis is that the layers of experience we have all acquired during our lives – experiences that have pushed our memory of previous ex­istences deep into the subconscious – comes to the surface. When the hypnotist suggests, for example, to a 30-year-old subject: ‘It is now 1970. You are now 20-you are waking up on your loth birthday. Tell me where you are, what is happening’, the subject’s life and development of the past so years are as if they had never been.

Practising hypnotists know that no two subjects ever behave exactly alike, for all human beings are unique in some way, and with many subjects there seems to be a `shadow’ personality—a fantasy personality that is only revealed sometimes in dreams or under hypnosis. And, the suggestion is, it is this ‘fantasy personality’ that is revealed, not recollection of a previous life.

How are we to distinguish between what may be mere fantasy and a true account of a previous life? As early as 1906 the Society for Psychical Research reported the case of an unnamed clergyman’s daughter who, under hypnosis, recounted her life during the reign of Richard II. In that life she was no great lady herself— despite the claim by cynics that all cases of regression imagine themselves to be famous people — but an acquaintance of Maud, Countess of Salisbury, her friend Blanche Poynings, née Mowbray, and Richard’s mother, ‘Fair Maid of Kent’.