Episode 126: “Mom, I was your Dad!”

Please be aware the thoughts and opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions only and do not reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast to Coast AM, employees of Premiere Networks, or their sponsors and associates. We would like to encourage you to do your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself. Hi. I'm Sandra Champlain. For over twenty five years, I've been on a journey

to prove the existence of life after death. Each episode will discuss the reasons we now know that our loved ones have survived physical debt, and so will we. Welcome to Shades of the Afterlife. Well, Hello, I hope you've been enjoying your day and whatever it is you're doing right now that you're choosing to listen to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm so grateful. I'm going to start out with a story and you'll pick up pretty quick. I

think of what this episode is about. John McConnell, a retired New York City policeman working as a security guard, stopped at an electronics store after work one night in nineteen ninety two. He saw two men robbing the store and pulled out his pistol. Another thief behind the counter began shooting at him. John tried to shoot back, and even after he fell, he got up and shot again.

He was hit six times. One of the bullets entered his back and sliced through his left lung, his heart, and the main pulmonary artery, the blood vessel that takes blood from the right side of the heart so that the lungs receive oxygen. He was rushed to the hospital, but he did not survive. John had been close to his family and had frequently told one of his daughters, Dorene, no matter what, I'm always going to take care of you. Five years after John died, Doreene gave birth to a

son named William. William began passing out soon after he was born, doctors diagnosed him with a condition called pulmonary valve atresia, in which the valve of the pulmonary artery has not adequately formed, so blood cannot travel through it to the lungs. In addition, one of the chambers of his heart, the right ventricle, had not formed properly. As a result of the problem with the valve, he underwent several surgeries. Although he will need to take medication indefinitely,

he has done quite well. William had birth defects that were very similar to the fatal wounds suffered by his grandfather. In addition, when he became old enough to talk, he began talking about his grandfather's life. One day, when he was just three years old, his mother was at home trying to work in her study when William kept acting up. Finally, she told him sit down, or I'm going to spank you. William replied, Mom, when you were a little girl and I was your daddy, you were bad a lot of times,

and I never spank to you. His mother was initially taken aback by this. As William talked more about the life of his grandfather, she began to feel comforted by the idea that her father had returned. William talked about being his grandfather a number of times and discussed his death. He told his mother that several people were shooting during the incident when he was killed, and he asked a lot of questions about it. One night, he said to his mother, when you were a little girl and I

was your daddy, what was my cat's name? She responded, you mean Maniac? No, not that one. William answered, the white one, Boston. His mom asked, yeah. William responded, I used to call him Boss, right, that was correct. The family had two cats, one named Maniac and one Boston, and only one John referred to as Boss. One day, Doreen asked William if he remembered anything about the time before he was born. He said that he died on Thursday and went to heaven. He said that he saw

animals there and also talked to God. He said, I told God I was ready to come back, and I got born on Tuesday. Doreen was amazed that William mentioned days, since he did not even know the days of the week. She tested him by saying, so, you were born on Thursday and died on a Tuesday. He quickly responded, no, I died Thursday at night and was born Tuesday in the morning. He was correct on both counts. John died on Thursday and William was born on a Tuesday. Five

years later, he talked about the period between lives. He told his mother, when you die, you don't go right to heaven. You go to different levels here than here than here, as he moved his hand up each time. He said that animals are reborn as well as humans, and that the animals he saw in heaven did not bite or scratch. John had been a practicing Roman Catholic, but he believed in reincarnation and said that he would

take care of animals in his next life. His grandson, William says that he will be an animal doctor and he will take care of large animals at a zoo. William reminds Dorene of her father in several ways. He loves books, as his grandfather did. When they visit William's grandmother, he can spend hours looking at books in John's study, duplicating his grandfather's behavior from years before. William, like his grandfather, is good at putting things together. Anne can be a

NonStop talker. William especially reminds Dorene of her father when he tells her, don't worry, Mom, I'll take care of you. Essed it. I knew you would. Children's Memories of previous lives is our topic. I have, as you may imagine, hundreds of books. This one is called Life Before Life with the fantastic Jim B. Tucker. I'll let you hear some words from Jim Tucker in the next segment, but just so you have the resource, Jim B. Tucker dot Com is his website. Let's go to the next story.

Sam Taylor is a boy from Vermont who was born a year and a half after his paternal grandfather died. When Sam was just one and a half years old, his father was changing his diaper one day and Sam told him when I was your age, I used to change your diapers. After his mother saw the puzzled look on the father's face, they discussed the comment, which they both found odd. Neither had ever given of an reincarnation

much of a thought. Though Sam's mother was the daughter of a Southern Baptist minister, his parents were not religious. Following the incident, Sam began saying that he had been his grandfather. He also said, I used to be big and now I'm small. While his father was initially skeptical about such a possibility, his mother was more open to the idea, and she began asking him questions about the

life of his paternal grandfather. At one point, she and Sam were even talking about the fact that his grandmother had taken care of his grandfather before he died. Sam's mother asked him what his grandmother made every day for his grandfather to drink, and Sam correctly said that she had made milkshakes and that she made them in a

machine in the kitchen. He got up to show her the food processor on the kitchen counter, when the mother showed him the blender in the pantry and asked if that's what he meant that the grandmother had made the milkshakes with. He said no, and he pointed to the food processor instead. In fact, his grandmother had made milkshakes for the grandfather in the food processor. She then had a series of strokes after the death of his grandfather, and Sam had never seen her make milkshakes for anyone.

At another time, Sam's mother asked him if he had any brothers or sisters when he lived before. He answered, yeah, I had a sister, but she turned into a fish. When she asked him who turned her into a fish, he said, some bad guys. She died. You know what, when we die, God lets us come back again. I used to be big, and now I'm a kid again. The sister of Sam's grandfather, in fact, had been killed

some sixty years before. Her husband killed her while she was sleeping, rolled her body up in a blanket, and dumped her in the water at the bay. At other times, Sam correctly said that his grandfather's favorite place in the home was the garage where he worked on inventions, and that Sam's father had a small steering wheel of his own. When they rode in the car. When the father was a boy, he did have a toy steering wheel that attached to the dashboard of the car by suction cups.

When Sam was four and a half years old, his grandmother died. His father flew out to her home to take care of her belongings, and returned with a box of family photographs. Sam's parents had not had any of the pictures of his father's family before then. When his mother spread them out on the coffee table one night, Sam came over and began pointing to the pictures of his grandfather and said, that's me. When he saw a snapshot that showed a car without any people, he said, hey,

that's my car. This was a picture of the first new car that his grandfather ever purchased, a nineteen forty nine Pontiac that was very special to him. His mother gave Sam a class picture from when his grandfather was in grammar school. The pictures showed twenty seven children, sixteen of them boys. Sam ran his finger across the faces and stopped it on the grandfather's face and said that

one's me. His father says, Sam's grandfather did not communicate very well about emotional issues with this, particularly when they were adults. Sam's father let his own father know how he felt about him, but his father had great difficulty reciprocating. He feels that if his father has come back through Sam, then his deceased father is reaching out to return his love. Sam's father is now very open with all of his children, and he and Sam seem to have a very good relationship.

So let's go to the break and I'll tell you more about Jim B. Tucker and let you hear some words about his findings about children and reincarnation. We'll be right back. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain.

The topic of reincarnation can be a hot topic. There are many that feel the stories of reincarnation are simply that the person is very attuned psychically in mediumistically and he or she can pick up on people in the afterlife. However, in most of children and reincarnation, the children remember that they were other people. Doctor Jim B. Tucker has done an awful lot of research into this, following the works

of doctor Ian Stevenson. It's also interesting to know that the stories of these children, there's always some sort of unfinished business of the life they possibly had before. What I don't want is anyone to be scared of this conversation. I do know there are some people in the world that think if we reincarnate right away, that they won't be able to see their loved one when they transition

to the afterlife. Through the years of my investigating, I have learned and really do believe that it is possible that part of us can stay in the afterlife, and perhaps part of us can choose to come back. If we look at the population on planet Earth, there are currently almost eight billion people living on our planet. Fifty years ago there was only about four billion. So if reincarnation was the only way we'd come back, well we'd

still have about four billion. I tend to think that part of us may remain, and part of us may choose to come back. In fact, people who have claimed to be reincarnated that deceased person has been reached through a medium. So again that may point to that part of us stays in the afterlife and part might choose

to return. Either way, it's a fascinating subject and I want you to hear right now some words from doctor Jim B. Tucker as he is talking to John Clice actor who you may remember from Monty Python and a fish called Wanda. It's nice to know that he is an explorer of this topic. Now, this is Jim Tucker's an all well friend of mine, and he's got lots of academic We send us some of your academic Quotificurasally well, I'm a medical doctor, I'm a physician, and I'm a

board certified child psychiatrist. I am the director of the Division of Processional Studies, and I'm also the Bonnar Lowry Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. So shut up, listen to me more. No, I want to talk to you because you know about as much about reincarnation as anyone on the planet. I think. Start off by telling me about Ian Stevenson, and then why

you got interested in Yeah, yeah, So. Ian Stevenson was the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry here, having a perfectly successful mainstream career when he got intrigued by reports of young children who said they remember the past life. And these were from all over the world, and he went and investigated and numbered them, got more and more intrigued.

Eventually stepped down as chairman of the department and focused full time on this work, looking mainly to see could the children's statements be verified, to confirm the child actually did remember a past life. And he started this in the early sixties and we've been going ever since, and now it got over twenty five hundred cases. So what do use to this? Well, I got intrigued by the question of life after death, which is one that I

think contrigues everyone to at least some extends. Yeah, so the opportunity arose where I called here and volunteered to give some time to help with their studies. And at that point Ian Stevenson was in his late seventies and sort of unbeknownst to me, was hoping somebody could carry on this work with reincarnation memories. I actually called about near death experiences to begin with, but then my niche sort of ended up being with the reincarnation memories and

that's what I've been doing. An inderstand, So are those What can you say about the sort of pretty hard scientific fact. Well, in the strongest cases, we have been able to verify that the children's statements match with a past life and one of a stranger that the child and the family knew nothing about before the child started

making these statements. So we never take anything at face value, but we determine as carefully as possible what exactly the child has said, and then we go looking to see And how do you find out what the child has said? You asked the parents, friends, Yes, the parents and the friends, and sometimes the child him or herself. Some of them will talk to us, some won't, But we go sort of statement by statement and try to be clear about what the child has said, and then you go to

the village where the original person was. Well, that's right. So we start by studying sort of the side, the child side of the case, and then we go to the previous life side. And in the international cases, it might be to another village. Here it might be to another state or another town, or or by email with another family and try to see what we can find out. What I said, village, because I tend to think of these things happening more in places where reunca nation is

part of a religious faith. But do you you do get them from America? Yeah? I mean certainly the cases are easier to find in places with the belief in reincarnation because people talk about them and then they're not empowered here about them. That's right. So I mean Ian Stevenson had associates in various countries who were on the lookout for cases. Now with the Internet, the cases, the American cases find us. So we get emails from parents

a the time recording what their children are saying. So it's used to people would criticize Ian's work and say that it was just a cultural phenomenon. And we now have proof that is not just a cultural phenomenon because it happens here. Tell us one of the best best

research cases, just to show what the possibility. Yeah. Well, one thing I studied was a little boy named Ryan who started talking about a life in Hollywood when he was four years old, and he would beg and cry, cry and beg his mother to take him to Hollywood. So he was in Oklahoma. So eventually she got some books out of the public library about Hollywood to try

to help him kind of process this. And they were looking through one of them one day and they got to a picture from an old movie called Night after Night, and he pointed to one of the guys and said, hey, mom, that's George. We did a picture together. And then he pointed to another person and said, and that's me. I found me. Now. The first person he pointed to was George Raft, who was a well known actor back in the day. But the other one he pointed to that he said he had been was an extra with no

lines in the movie. So Ryan's mom wrote to me to see if I could help figure out who this person was, and as we were working on it, she was sending me emails, sometimes on a daily basis, with all these statements that Ryan was making. So we got documentation of everything he was saying, and then eventually, with the help of a Hollywood archivist, we were able to

find out who this person was. This archivist went to the library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, got all the materials on this movie night after night, and there was one shot that included him and gave his name a guy named Marty Martin. And Ryan had described quite a life, which, to be honest, I felt was unlikely for an extra with no lines in a movie, but it fit Marty Martin's life. So Ryan said how he had danced in New York and Marty Martin danced

on Broadway. Ryan said that he then went and worked in the movies, which Marty Martin did emotionally working on dance in the movies. He said that he then worked at an agency and Marty Martin started a successful talent agency. He described this life of going to Europe on ships and so forth, which Marty Martin did. He also said that the street address of his house had the word rock or mount in it, and Marty Martin lived on

North Roxbury. And then also one time he said he didn't see why God would let you get to sixty one and then come back again as a baby. And Marty Martin's death certificate actually said he was fifty nine. But when I looked into it, I found Census for records and marriage listings and passenger lists that all gave ages, which meant, in fact, he was sixty one when he

died in nine fifty nine. So all together we were able to verify that over fifty Ryan's statements match Marty Martin's life, and Marty Martin was an obscure person who died in nineteen sixty four, and then there was no information anywhere big Well, that's right, and now there is more on the internet because of this case, but at the time there was nothing on Marty Martin on the internet.

So what conclusion do you have, Well, what we can conclude from that case is that most conservatively we can say that Ryan had knowledge of this life in the past. Now his experience of this knowledge, that it was memories of a life he experienced, and that's certainly the most straightforward explanation. But clearly we have very good evidence that he had knowledge of a life that it would have been impossible for him to gain through some sort of ordinary means. So that's the kind of case that we

are trying to explore. Can we rule out that the knowledge that there were no ordinary means where the child learned it, and in a case like this there could be ordinary means, absolutely has to be some kind of PSI explanation somewhere in all the line. That's right. It certainly seems to be something um sire or psychic, like you say, to explain it, because there's no way to explain it away. Thank you, short but sweet and a

little laugh from John Clice. Of course, if you want to hear more about that study of the five year old with the memories of Hollywood, go back two episode seventy two. I give even more detailed account of that from Jim's work. Let's go to the break and then we'll hear more stories. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast, a paranormal podcast network. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain and we are on the subject of children's

past life memories, here's another story for you. This one is the case of Nazi from Lebanon. At a very early age, Nazi described a past life to his parents and his seven siblings. Nazi described the life of a man that his family did not know. He said that the man carried pistols and grenades, and that he had a pretty wife and young children, and that he had a two story house with trees all around it and there was a cave nearby. Also that he had a mute friend, and that he had been shot by a

group of men. His father reported that Nazee demanded that his parents take him to the previous house in the small town ten miles away. They took him to that town along with two of his sisters and a brother, when he was only six years old. About a half mile from the town, Nazee asked them to stop at a dirt road running off of the main road. He told them that the road came to a dead end where there was a cave, but they drove on without

confirming this. When they got to the center of the town, roads converged and Nazi's father asked him which way they should go. Nazi pointed to one of the roads and said to take it until it came to a road that forked off upward, where they would see his house. When they got to the first fork, they went up, and the family began asking about anyone who had died

in the way that Nazi had described. They quickly discovered that a man named Fuad, who had a house on that road before dying ten years prior to Nazi's birth, seemed to fit Nazi's description. Fuad's widow asked Nazi who built the foundation of this gate at the entrance of the house, and Nazi correctly answered a man from the Farage family. The group then went into the house, where Nazi correctly described how Fuad had kept his weapons in

a cupboard. The widow asked him if she had had an accident at their previous home, and Nazi gave accurate details of the accident. She also asked if he remembered what had made their young daughter seriously ill, and Nazi correctly responded that she had accidentally taken some of her

father's pills. He also accurately described a couple of other incidents from the previous personalities life the widow and her five children were all very impressed with the knowledge that Nazi demonstrated, and they were all convinced that he was the rebirth of Fuad. Soon after that meeting, Nazi visited Fuad's brother, sheik Adib. When Nazi saw him, he ran up saying, here comes my brother Adib. Sheik Adib asked Nazi for proof that he was his brother, and Nazi said,

I gave you a check i Si sixteen. A check I sixteen is a type of pistol from Czechoslovakia that is not common in Lebanon, and Fuad had indeed given his brother one. Sheikh Adib then asked Nazi where his original house was, and Nazi led him down the road until he said, correctly, this is the house of my father, and this the next house, is my first house. They went into the latter house, where Fuad's first wife still lived, and when sheik Adib later asked who she was, Nazi

correctly gave her name. Sheik Adib then showed Nazi a photograph of three men and asked him who they were. Nazi pointed to each of them and correctly gave the names of Adib, Fuad, and a deceased brother of theirs. Sheikh Adib showed Nazi another picture and Nazi said correctly that the man in it was the father of those men. Later, Sheik Adib visited Nazis home and he took a handgun with him. He asked Nazi if this was the gun that Fuad had given him, and Nazi correctly said that

it was not. Doctor Haroldson investigated Nazi's case and he was able to verify most of the statements that Nazi made, including the claim that the previous personality had a mute friend. He also found out that Nazi's description of Fuad's house matched another one in which Fuad lived in for several years, including the time during which the house in town, which was not fully completed at the time of Fuad's death,

was being built. The former house was by the dirt road that Nazi had pointed out during the family's first visit to the previous town, and a cave was also at the end of it, just as Nazi had said. If the families in this case are remembering events correctly, then Nazi's statements are very difficult to explain by normal means.

His spontaneous recognitions of the locations of the two houses that the previous personality had owned are quite impressive by themselves, adding his ability to correctly point out the previous Personalities first house makes coincidence seem an unlikely explanation. On top of these, his statement to Fawad's family about the various

small details are also notable. His statement about the Chechi sixteen pistol is particularly impressive in a number of ways, one being that this knowledge could not have arisen from any environmental cues. His ability to state the names of the men in the picture is more impressive than cases in which a child simply points to a member of the previous Personalities family, since environmental cues would not lead

him to know the names that he gave. The informants stated that Nazi had not seen pictures of the previous personality before he identified him in the photograph, and Sheikh Adeeb was certain that, with the possible exception of his wife, no one knew that Fuad had given him a CHECKI sixteen pistol. I think you'll find this interesting too. Subjects in other cases have described experiences in another realm during the interval between death and rebirth. A boy named Lee

said that he remembered deciding to be reborn. He said that other beings helped him with his decision to come down to earth. He also said that his previous mother was prettier than his current one, who accepted the comparison with good humor. One boy said that he floated up after dying, and he talked about being in heaven where he saw God as well as the animals. Another boy, who picked his grandfather out of a grammar school class picture,

also talked of seeing God. He said God gave him a card to come back from heaven, and as he described it, it looked like a business card with green arrows on it. Along this rather fanciful sounding detail, he said that his body shot up to heaven when he died, and that someone else died at the same time he had. In addition, he talked about seeing his uncle Phil in heaven. His grandfather's best friend was the husband of his wife's sister,

and the grandfather called him Uncle Phil. This boy meanted that in his previous life he had made Uncle Phil's feet hot. His grandfather and Uncle Phil enjoyed playing pranks on each other, and his grandfather would give Phil a

hot foot by warming his shoes before Phil put them on. Similarly, Patrick Christiansen, with three birthmarks that matched lesions on his deceased half brother, spoke of talking in heaven with a relative named Billy the Pirate, who he said told him about being shot at close range and dying while up

in the mountains. Patrick's mother reported that she had never heard of such a relative, but when she called her mother to ask about Patrick's statements, she learned that a cousin with the nickname Billy the Pirate had in fact died this way. Other particularly vivid descriptions of another realm include of a girl named Disna, a girl in Sri Lanka who made numerous statements about the life of an elderly woman who died in a village three miles away.

She described being lifted up even though her body was buried, she felt like she was flying like a bird. She talked about meeting a king or a governor whose reddish clothes and beautiful pointed shoes were never taken off, never dirty, and never washed. The same was true for her own clothes, except that they were golden. She said that she played at the king's house, which was made of glass and

had beautiful red beds. She said that when she got hungry there, she simply thought of food, and it appeared the sight of the food satisfied her appetite, so she did not need to eat it. She said that the king took her to the home of her new family after asking her to go there. Another child who made similar statements in India talked about the life of a woman in a city two hundred and twenty miles away. She reported that, after a fatal fall from a balcony, I went up. There was a baba, a holy man

with a long beard. They checked my record and said send her back. There were some nice rooms there. I have seen God's house. It is very nice, and you do not get to know everything that is there, oh through the mouth of babes. Don't you just love these stories? Kids are just so natural and say things just as they are. Have you started thinking that there's more to life than meets the eye, and there's more to you

than you know. I don't know if we will ever learn all the knowledge there is to learn, but it sure is exciting hearing some of these stories. Now, when we get back from our break, you've heard of child prodigies, right, little kids who can play piano or do magnificent things beyond their years. Is it possible that a child prodigy is having a memory of someone from a previous life? A very exciting thing to think about, isn't it. So let's take our last break, and when we come back,

we will hear more for sure. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast, a paranormal podcast network. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain. If you are enjoyed this conversation, I wholeheartedly recommend that you go to the website Jim Btucker dot com and also get a copy of his book. It's called Before Children's Memories of Previous Lives and it includes two volumes, both his book Life Before Life and

Return to Life. I'd like to continue on with some words from doctor Tucker. Before the last story, he has a section called does Everybody Reincarnate? When we see evidence for reincarnation, one reaction is to think about how it could affect us individually. Clearly, we would all love the opportunity to see our deceased loved ones. Again. Unfortunately, we must remember that what is true about the children who report past life memories may not be true for the

rest of us. They may be a unique group, and even if they have reincarnated, no one else may have. For instance, they may have had issues that kept them connected to their earthly experiences so that they came back while others do not. As I discussed earlier, seventy percent of the previous personalities died by unnatural means in cases where the mode of death is known, and of course a number of those dying by natural means died suddenly

as well. This suggests that a violent or sudden death is much more likely to produce a future case of a child with past life memories than other types of deaths. Such a death may be one factor that can cause our subjects to have a connection to the earth and lead them to be exceptions to the normal state of affairs. After death, the consciousness may typically blend into a larger universal consciousness or go off to another realm of existence,

Heaven for example. For all we you know, the traditional Judeo Christian views of life after death may be correct. On the other hand, reincarnation may normally occur but without memories coming from the previous life. In that case, we may all have had previous lives, even though most of us do not remember them. If this is true, then the usual process may get disrupted, either by a factor in the previous life, like an unexpected death, or by

some factor in the next life. This may lead some memories to be present in the next life, and therefore, even though everyone may reincarnate, our cases are unusual because of the presence of the memories. The cases do not answer which possibility is more likely, even though they indicate

that reincarnation occurs in some circumstances. Although we would all like to see our deceased loved ones return to us, or to return ourselves to our children or grandchildren after our deaths, these cases do not answer the question of whether reincarnation is universal. They provide evidence that we can reincarnate at least under certain circumstances, which is certainly a significant finding, but they do not indicate if all of

us actually do. Even if we all do reincarnate, the patterns we see in the cases with memories may not apply to the rest of us. The type of death or some other factor might change the normal process to produce patterns that could go along with the enduring memories. For instance, the children who have had past life memories may be more connected to a certain location than others

would be. These children tend to reincarnate close to where the previous personality lived, Yet others who reincarnate without memories may not similarly be constrained. Likewise, the children who describe staying in one location for years between line may not be typical of all who reincarnate. We should remember that other differences could occur as well, between the cases of children who have past life memories and any others who

reincarnate without such memories. The great inventor Henry Ford once said, I adopted the theory of reincarnation when I was twenty six. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or a talent, but actually it is the fruit of a long experience in many lives. While that being said, let's go on to our last story. This next case is most notable for the child's behavior and abilities. I first heard from his father when the boy was three.

He reported that his son Hunter had received a set of plastic golf clubs when he turned two. He loved the clubs and played with them incessantly. A few months later, his father was running through the television channels when he passed the golf channel. Neither of Hunter's parents played golf, and his father hadn't even known the family had the golf channel, but once Hunter saw it, he told his parents to go back to it. From then on, he had no interest in children's shows and wanted to watch

nothing but the golf channel. His parents had to limit him to thirty minutes in the morning and thirty minutes again at night. One day, there was an infomercial about Bobby Jones, a famous golfer in the nineteen twenties whose name is now used by a company that makes golf equipment and accessories. When Hunter saw the program, he told his parents that he had been Bobby Jones when he was big. He said this repeatedly, and when someone would ask him what his name was, he would say Bobby Jones.

He wanted to be called Bobby and would correct people if they called him Hunter. He would also correct them if they called him Tiger or any other name. He knew of Tiger Woods and the other golfers from the Golf Channel, and although he liked them all, he was much more passionate about Bobby Jones. His parents initially laughed at him. They were both raised Christian. His father had read some about Buddhism, however, and was intrigued by the

idea of rebirth. He decided to test Hunter. He showed Hunter pictures of six golfers from the nineteen twenties and asked him which one was Bobby Jones. Hunter pointed at the picture of Bobby Jones and said, this is me. That might not sound so surprising, but then he pointed to the picture of another golfer, Harry Varden. Hunter said, this is Harry Garden, my friend. Hunter's father printed pictures off the Internet of several houses, including Bobby Jones's childhood home.

When he showed them to Hunter, he said, how house as he pointed to each picture until he got to Bobby Jones's home. He suddenly appeared wistful as he said home. His dad knew that Hunter had not seen either Harry Varden or Bobby Jones's childhood home before, so he was shocked. Hunter would take his little golf clubs wherever he went. When he practiced at the beach. He would call it the Samtrap. Golfers would see him practicing and comment on

what a great swing he had. His parents gave him a set of real golf clubs for Christmas, and he then began taking lessons at a golf club. The usual starting age for lessons was five, but when the staff saw Hunter's swing, they accepted him while he was still two years old. His instructor called him a golf prodigy. Several older golfers commented that Hunter's swing reminded them of Bobby Jones. When was three, his mother was putting him to bed one night. As they talked about him being

his parents child, he said, just like my child. When his mother asked him his child's name, Hunter said, Bobby Jones. He was my son. Bobby Jones did indeed have a son named after him, Robert Jones the third, and he was referred to as young Bobby. When I got the report from Hunter's father, I quickly asked about visiting the family. His parents were agreeable to a meeting, and we soon worked out a time for me to visit them at

their home in sunny southern California. Hunter's parents were very pleasant and cooperative and Hunter, a few months past his third birthday, was very cute. I brought along some pictures of Bobby Jones with other golfers, but I wasn't able to get Hunter engaged enough in looking at them to give me any feedback. We finished out in the yard as I watched Hunter hitting golf balls into an net.

Even if the visit didn't produce any new information, it was useful in that it gave me the chance to review the history with Hunter's parents and to see that they came across as reasonable, responsible people. I received an update from Hunter's father a year later. Hunter had said very little in the interim about Bobby Jones or any memories,

but he did remain obsessed with golf. Not only did he enjoy playing it, he would also spend time at night designing golf courses with his blankets, which he would then show to his parents. His favorite real course was Augusta National, home of the Master's Tournament. Bobby Jones founded the Augusta National Golf Club and helped design that course. After another year passed, Hunter's father sent me a video of Hunter playing golf. Although I'm not a golfer, even

I could tell he was exceptional. It was hard to believe that this smooth swing was coming from a five year old. Hunter is now seven. At last count, he had won forty one out of fifty junior golf tournaments, including twenty one in a row. It's a pretty great story, isn't it. Hunter is not this boy's real name to keep his identity private. Just for kicks. I looked on YouTube for child golf prodigy and there's a video of

a three year old boy that's amazing. Now, I'm not saying that this is the same boy as in the story, but I think you will find what you see fascinating. So if you want to go to YouTube, it's titled is this three year old golf Prodigy in the next Tiger Woods? These stories give us something to really think about, don't they. Regardless of if reincarnation is real or how it works, I think we can both agree that this

points to the reality of the afterlife. I hope you've enjoyed this episode as much as I've enjoyed delivering it to you. As a reminder, our homebase is we Don't Die dot com. Perhaps some of the buttons we have at home medium courses you can join our Facebook group with over seven thousand fabulous members who speak this same language. Come to our weekly Sunday gathering, which is free and

includes a medium demonstration. Also, if you go to the store page be my guest, use coupon code free for my audiobook We Don't Die, a skeptics discovery of life after Death. In closing, my name is sand Or Champlain and it has been my supreme pleasure to be your host of Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast am Paranormal Podcast Network. Thanks so much for listen. Thanks for listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast

to Coast Day and Paranormal Podcast Network. Make sure and check out all our shows on the iHeartRadio app or by going to iHeartRadio dot com