Lore - Lore 311: Twice Upon a Time

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Folklore is full of stories about people who seem to have lived more than one life. Which is why these true tales from history are so incredibly bizarre. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by GennaRose Nethercott, research by Cassandra de Alba, and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— PRE-ORDER EXHUMED TODAY: aaronmahnke.com/exhumed ————————— Lore Resources:  Get Ad-Free Lore: lorepodcast.com/support Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop ————————— Sponsors: Mint Mobile: For a limited time, wireless plans from Mint Mobile are $15 a month when you purchase a 3-month plan with UNLIMITED talk, text and data at MintMobile.com/lore. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. To advertise on this podcast please email: [e-mail]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2026 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

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There's a showroom in your area where you can get under double the shades. Ready to get started? Visit night and day decor.com or call 1-647-692-8602. That's night and day decor.com. Way back before the writer of this show, Jenna Rose, was born, her mother Helen had a strange dream. In the dream, she'd already given birth, but not to a regular baby. No, this was a giant baby. I imagine the kid looking like the one from spirited away, basically big enough to fill an entire nursery.

Anyway, Jenna Rose's mom addressed the giant baby by her name, only for the baby to angrily reply, my name isn't Jenna Rose, my name is Cookie Ann, and then Helen woke up. A little weird, for sure, but Helen shook it off. But then, something happened that would make her remember that dream forever. You see, not long after, she was on a walk with her close friend, who Helen had already asked to be her future child's godmother. Chatting away, Helen told her friend about the dream, to which her friend replied, that's funny, my dead grandmother was called Cookie Anne. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe our very own Jenna Rose is none other than the reincarnation of a long-gone lady named Cookie Anne. Whatever the case, we're glad that Helen went with the name she did.

But it does make you wonder, what if we aren't here for the first time? What if when it comes to life and death? Everything old really is. New again. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore. happens when we die? It's a question that's consumed human since the beginning of time. Do we go to heaven or hell? Do we simply stop existing? Or do our souls lather, rinse, and repeat, doing it all over again? Now, I have to wonder if there's something to that last one. Why? Well, because countless cultures around the world have hit on this same idea that some part of a person survives beyond their bodily death and can return to Earth in a different form. In other words, reincarnation. Now, most cultures that believe in reincarnation also believe your actions in this life will determine the

form you take in the next. Behave well, that'll earn you a physical upgrade. Think a noble tiger or a soaring eagle. Behave badly, though, and you might end up rather unfortunately cockroach-shaped the next time. But don't worry, you won't necessarily be stuck in the hamster. your wheel of birth and death forever. A number of cultures believe that if you complete enough cycles and level up far enough, you can graduate from the process altogether,

ascending to a higher plane. Take the Hindu tradition, for example. Hindus believe that the soul, aka the Atman, cycles through various physical forms, accumulating karma as it goes. By living in accordance with Hindu laws through enough cycles,

the Atman can eventually achieve a state called Moksha, in which we become free of all suffering. In Buddhism, the same release from the cycle is known as Nirvana, but unlike Hindus, Buddhists don't believe in the idea of an unchanging soul that hops from body to body. Instead, it's only a person's karma that persists after death, which holds a tiny germ of consciousness with it. And it isn't just the Hindus and the Buddhists.

In fact, every single one of the major Indian-Darmic religions believes in some form of reincarnation. In Sikhism, though, it's not always your actions on earth that determine your next form, but your last thoughts while dying. That's right. As if dying weren't stressful enough, the thought police are lined up, ready to shove you into, say, a snake's body, if you think about money while on the way out. Or if you think about children, you'll be reincarnated as a very fertile sow, which seems a little rude, if I do say so myself.

But my personal favorite, think about your house while dying, and you'll come back, as a ghost or a goblin. Suffice to say, it's not easy to reach that final higher plane. You have to die a lot, and while you're alive, you have work to do. In Jainism, another Darmic religion, you can only be liberated by following the Jane teaching of nonviolence to an absolute T. And I mean complete nonviolence, no swatting mosquitoes or stepping on ants. You can't even eat root vegetables, as pulling up the root kills the entire plant.

But honestly, the effort, is worth it, because those who do find themselves liberated from the cycle become formless, shapeless beings with infinite knowledge, vigor, and bliss. Now, sure, most Abrahamic religions steer clear of reincarnation in favor of things like good old heaven and hell. But that's not the case for every Abrahamic offshoots. Take Kabbalah, a type of Jewish mysticism. There, if you fail to follow the Talmud's 613 divine commandments while alive, you'll be plopped back into a new body to try again. What sort of commandments you might ask? Well, they range from obvious stuff like not holding hatred in your heart to more specific requirements like not consulting

wizards. In Islam, a few Sufi teachers have preached reincarnation while some early Christian sects were actually charged with heresy for believing in both reincarnation and the gospel at the same time. And it doesn't stop there. Theosophy, Santaria, countless indigenous traditions, reincarnation has made its mark all around the world. But belief is one thing, right? What about actual human experience? After all, if reincarnation is real, it means that every one of us has layers upon layers of past lives right inside of us. Past lives that, if these next stories are to be believed, might just be possible to remember. It was a tragedy. The year was 1907 when at only three years old, little Dorothy Eddie fell down the stairs in her family's

London home. The doctor was called, but it was too late. The girl was dead. I can only imagine her parents' shock and grief as they watched their child's lifeless body be carried to her room. The doctor laid her softly in bed, then he left, returning an hour later with a death certificate. A death certificate, it turned out, that he wasn't going to need. Because to the doctor's great shock there was the deceased girl, sitting upright and playing happily as if nothing had ever happened. Dorothy had come back from the dead. But let's just say she wasn't exactly the same as she was before. After the incident, the little girl started having dreams, or rather one dream, night after night. She dreamt of a massive building with columns, surrounded by a beautiful verdant garden and trees

in the distance. Her parents would find her weeping, and, insisting that she wanted to go home, but when they assured her that she was home, she wasn't comforted. She couldn't say where her home was exactly, only described the building, the columns, the garden. It went on like this for a while, until one day the family took a trip to the British Museum. Dorothy was pretty bored at first, being, you know, a toddler at a museum, but then they reached an exhibit on ancient Egypt, and there the kid went berserk. Dorothy suddenly dropped her parents' hands and sprinted crazily through the rooms, kissing the feet of all the statues she could reach.

Then she plopped down next to a mummy, and when her parents tried to get her to leave, she responded, and I quote, Leave me, these are my people. Dorothy had to be dragged out of the museum, kicking and screaming. Now look, we all had an ancient Egypt phase as a kid, but Dorothy took it to a whole new level. When she was seven, her dad bought her a magazine, containing pictures of the temple of the Pharaoh Setti I I first, the father of Ramsey's the

great. When Dorothy saw it, she started shouting, this is my home, this is where I used to live. Then she added sorrowfully, but why is it all broken? And where is the garden? Not long after she came upon a picture of Setti the First's rather well-preserved mummy, she insisted to her father that she had known the man and that he was a good-hearted and kind person. Over the years, Dorothy grew up, and as she did, her Egypt obsession grew with her. Which wasn't always easy. She was kicked out of Sunday school for insisting that Christianity was just copying Egyptian religion,

then expelled from another school for chucking a hymnal at her teacher because it included a line about cursing the Swart Egyptians. By the time she was 10, she was skipping lessons to hang out in the British Museum's Egypt galleries, where she even convinced the gallery director to teach her hieroglyphics. But it was at 14 years old. old, that things really amped up, because that's when Setti the first came to visit. It was a vision. Dorothy saw the dead Pharaoh hover over her bed, his mummified face drawing close. Later, she recalled that he had, and I quote, the look of somebody in hell who had suddenly

found a way out. And then, the Pharaoh tore open her nightgown. Soon, Dorothy began to have a new recurring dream. In this one, she was a young Egyptian woman in an underground chamber with a beautiful stone floor. There, a high priest interrogated her, and when she refused to answer his questions, he beat her with a stick. At this point, Dorothy would always wake up screaming. Understandably, Dorothy's parents decided that it might be time for a tainty vacation to a mental hospital, but it didn't help. Nothing would curb her obsession. Flash forward and Dorothy's all grown up, free to shape her life however she wants, which of course, for her could mean only one thing.

That's right. She moved to Egypt. Dorothy even married an Egyptian man, but the marriage was rocky from the start. For one, the guy had no interest in the ancient world at all. And it probably didn't help that Dorothy was still having questionable nighttime encounters with Setti I, which soon blossomed into full-blown gal-on-ghost action. In fact, when she gave birth to his son, she insisted on naming him after the long-dead Pharaoh. Unsurprisingly, within four years, she and her husband divorced.

Meanwhile, Dorothy had picked up another strange habit, sleepwalking to her desk and writing in hieroglyphics in the middle of the night, hieroglyphics which, upon reading the next morning, appeared to be spelling out the details of her past life. According to these nighttime writings, Dorothy had once been a beautiful Egyptian girl named Bentrescheet, raised to be a virgin temple priestess, At which temple? Why the one right next door to Setti the firsts, of course.

Now, the Pharaoh noticed Ben-Rashit's beauty, and they had an affair. Bentreschit fell pregnant, and it was a terrible scandal when people found out, and as a result, she was interrogated and beaten by the high priest. That's right, just like Dorothy had seen in her dream. In the end, Ben-Rashit took her own life. Oh, and speaking of dreams, Dorothy ended up landing her dream job, working for the Egyptian Department of Antiquities. And honestly, she was good at it, like really good at it.

Her colleagues were amazed by the almost uncanny skill she had for piecing together fragments of texts and sculptures, as well as her brilliant extensive writings on Egyptology. Now, sure, she did have that little quirk where she thought she was the reincarnation of SETI the first lover, but, hey, she was talented enough that her coworkers let that one slide. One day, though, Dorothy received a new job offer. It came with a significant pay cut, and she'd have to work the low-grade job of draftsmen

while living in a mud hut with no plumbing or electricity, but she'd jumped at the offer without a second thought. Why? Because of the location, you see. This new gig just so happened to be in the temple of Setti I. This was it. The return she had longed for since she was three years old, dreaming of that grand-columbed building. Finally, she could go home.

It was dark when she first stepped inside the temple. Too dark to see by, actually. The other scholars looked on, though, squinting, as Dorothy passed through the column doors, and then they watched astonished as Dorothy Eaddy navigated perfectly through the Temple of Sedi I. First in pitch black, as if she had wandered those ancient halls

one thousand times before. Oh, and one other thing. When a restoration team came to do some digging at the temple, Dorothy pointed to a spot on the ground and insisted that's where they would find the lost beloved garden that she had dreamed of so many years before. The workman dug, and sure enough, their shovels soon struck something. The roots of ancient trees. Virginia Tig was in a trance.

The year, 1952, the place, Pueblo, Colorado. And this wasn't the first time the 29-year-old had been put into a hypnotic state. Ever since Virginia's friend, Morrie Bernstein, had gotten super into hypnosis, she, along with others in their social circle, had generously humored him as guinea pigs for his kooky new hobby. He would do this thing, lulling the participants into a dream-like days, and then he would try to regress them to their childhoods. Pretty standard mesmerism stuff for the 1950s. But this time would be different, because today, Mori Bernstein didn't stop with Virginia's childhood. No, he kept going back farther and farther and farther. I want you to keep going back

and back and back in your mind, Mori instructed, and surprising as it may seem, strange as it may seem, you will find that there are other scenes in your memory. There are other scenes from faraway lands and distant places in your memory. Finally, Mori stopped and asked Virginia what she saw. She described a metal bed frame, which she scraped. paint off of because she was angry at being spanked, and when he asked her name, she didn't say Virginia Tyg. Oh no, her name was Bridie Murphy. Yes, it was just as Morrie had hoped. Virginia appeared to have regressed all the way into a past life. With Morrie's prompting, and across a number of hypnotic sessions, Bridie slash Virginia detailed Bridie Murphy's life story.

She'd been born, she claimed, on December 20th of 1798. far across the sea in Cork, Ireland. Now Virginia had never been to Ireland, nor had any Irish family, and yet as she spoke, her voice slid into a full-on Irish brogue. She described the house called the Meadows, where she had spent her childhood as a barrister's daughter. She spoke of her parents, Duncan and Kathleen, and her siblings, including one who had died in infancy. She explained how, at 20 years old, she had married a man named Brian McCarthy, whose father John McCarthy was also a barrister, and how she and her beau had lived in Belfast where Brian had taught at Queen's University. And then, she described the fateful day in 1864,

when, at the age of 66, she had fallen down the stairs and died. But the memories did not end there. Bridie went on to share tales from after her death, how she had watched her own burial, how she had seen her own tombstone, the lettering of which she described an intricate detail. She even said that she spent years haunting the house where her still-living husband resided, tragically unable to communicate with him. Now, to Morrie Bernstein's credit, he didn't just take this wild story at face value. He wanted to prove that Virginia really was recalling a past life, and so he decided he'd have to find a skill Bridie possessed that Virginia didn't.

That skill? Why, that would be dancing. Apparently, Bridie claimed to be a great dancer, specifically in july. enjoying a dance called the morning jig. Virginia, on the other hand, was famously pretty bad at dancing, and so one day, Mori did an experiment. He instructed Bridie to go through the steps to the jig in her mind over and over, and then he woke Virginia from her trance and told her to dance. Now, if you were to wake up from a dream state only for your hypnotist to tell you to do a little jig, you'd probably be confused, which Virginia certainly was, at least at first, but then she stood up from the couch and she began to move. In Mori's own words, suddenly her whole

expression changed. Her body became vibrantly alive. Her feet were flying in a cute little dance. And then, Virginia's dance ended. She stood there utterly confused, having no idea what she had just done. And that was all the proof that Moray needed. Bridie Murphy, he decided, was real and the world needed to know. In 1956, Morrie published a book called the search for Bridie Murphy. In it, he outlined the entire case, plus provided research that backed up a ton of Bridie's claims. There was a barrister named John McCarthy in the 1830s. She'd accurately reported niche aspects of Irish culture. She'd even named stores in Belfast like John Carrigan and Fars that did actually exist. Bridie Murphy, Morrie promised to his readers,

was the real deal. And what do you know? The book became an instant sensation. It spent a whopping 26 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list. There was a movie based on it, and it inspired multiple pop songs with titles like The Ballad of Bridie Murphy. Heck, folks were so hungry for Bridey content that Mori even released a recording of that first hypnotic session on vinyl, which you can still listen to, by the way. Seriously, look it up. But that wasn't all. People had gone bananas for the entire concept of past lives. All across America, folks started gathering for their own hypnotic regression sessions. Sessions that invariably produce new tales from old lives,

including, by the way, a Californian woman who believed that in 1800, she had been a horse. Meanwhile, bars began to serve reincarnation cocktails. While socialites hosted past life-themed Come As You Were costume parties, per one newspaper report, Bridie Murphy-Parfies had become the rage at fraternities and sororities. Students came to these parties dressed as Prince Albert, Queen Victoria, Robin Hood, and similar characters. One student came to a party with a bow of bamboo leaves, wrapped around his waist, calling himself Adam.

But not all the reactions to the Bridie Murphy case were quite so lighthearted. Amidst the hubb of soirees and seances, one 19-year-old kid in Shawnee, Oklahoma, was quietly penning a note to his family. I am curious about the Bridie Murphy case, he wrote, so I am going to investigate the theory in person. And then he took his own life. It's a tragedy that reveals the danger behind these stories, doesn't it? Focus too much on the other lives, and you might just forget to live, the one you have. There is a kind of comfort in the idea of reincarnation. The thought that perhaps death isn't an ending at all, but a beginning.

another chance at life, or in the case of past lives, another version of ourselves. But let's look back at the case of Dorothy Eddie, convinced that she had been a beautiful Egyptian priestess in a past life. In reality, Dorothy herself had been an overweight teenager who was frequently mocked for her size, including by her own parents. I can't help but wonder if her priestess alter ego was a sort of escape, a more exciting, adventurous, and yes, beautiful self than the drab London girl she was forced to be. Now look, I'm not saying that she was necessarily a fraud. I'm just saying that there are logical explanations. And I know what you're thinking. What about that stuff where she knew where the garden was buried? But consider this. If you've done nothing but

meticulously study and obsess over one specific Egyptian temple since you were seven years old, don't you think you might develop a pretty intuitive understanding of its architecture? And speaking of Dorothy, she in the village of Abedos beside the Temple of Sedi the First for the rest of her life, passing away in 1981 at the age of 77. She even lived out the remainder of her life under a brand new name, trading in Dorothy Eddie for Om Setti, or Mother of Setti. And whether her reincarnation story was true or not, I'd call that a happy ending. That is, if you believe in such things as endings.

Of course, we don't actually know what happens after we die. Theologians have theories, as do scientists. Some quantum physicists have argued that consciousness may be able to exist outside the physical world, and there are even a handful of academic institutions dedicated to studying things like reincarnation and past life regression. Take, for example, the Kessler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh, or the Division of Perseptial Studies, aka DoPS, or Dops, at the University of Virginia. The co-founder of Dops, Dr. Ian Stevenson, spent his entire career studying and publishing on the subject. Now, yes, Stevenson did seem to believe something strange was going on beyond our current understanding.

But when it came to past life regression techniques, like the one that Mori was using, techniques, by the way, that are still popular in the New Age circle today, well, he thought that it was all a bunch of bunk. As Dr. Stevenson wrote, nearly all such hypnotically evoked previous personalities are entirely imaginary, just as are the contents of most dreams. They may include some accurate historical details, but these are usually derived from information the subject has acquired normally through reading, radio, and television programs, or other sources. So, if that's the case, what was the deal with Bridie Murphy?

If past life regression is fake, how did she know all that stuff about 1800s? Ireland, a place that she had never been to, remember. Well, science may have the answer to that. Because you see, while Mori may not have resurrected a past life, you have to recall what he was doing originally. That is, childhood regression, trying to dredge up old memories from youth. And that, it turns out, is very real. What memory, you might ask, might have risen in Virginia that day to conjure up Miss Bridie Murphy from Cork? Well, that would be a tiny detail she had forgotten from her childhood. The fact that, as a little girl, she had had a long-time neighbor from Ireland, a woman named Bridie Murphy, Corkle. I hope you've enjoyed today's turn through the revolving

door of life and death, but the cycle's not over just yet, because according to one last story, while most of us can only speculate about what happens after we die, some people have actually done it and returned to tell the tale. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode was made possible by Mint Mobile. There are things in life that you don't want to be transparent, like your swimsuits or your search history. But when it comes to your wireless bill, transparency is everything. That's why Mint Mobile's wireless plans have no gimmicks and no gotchas, just high-speed data and reliable coverage on the T-Mobile 5G network. And right now, all plans are 15 bucks a month, even unlimited. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it

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Travel through time and space with me. We are in Italy in the year 400. A young boy named Armentarius lies on his deathbed, writhing with sickness. His family knows that this is it. The final moment has come, and sure enough, the child falls still and the life drains from his body. At least it does for a moment.

But then his eyes spring back open. Somehow he has fought his way back to life. And it just so happens that he has a report to deliver from the other side. One by one, he names every single person in the house who will go on to die during the current plague. And on top of that, he's able to speak several languages that he previously had no knowledge of. Three days later, a fevered rage comes over Armento.

He starts ripping at his hands and arms, biting his wrists, until he tears wounds deep enough that he bleeds out and dies. And after that, why one by one, every single person that he said would die of the plague does die. In fact, the names he gave are the only people in the household who would perish. It's a wild story, no doubt about it. But believe it or not, it's far from unique. In fact, many people who've experienced near-death experiences or NDE's have had similar

uncanny stories to tell. Across cultures and history, people who briefly die or get very close to death tend to describe the same experiences. There's a feeling of being detached from the physical body, for one. Some have even found themselves watching from above while people attempted to resuscitate them, or bearing witness to their own surgeries. And even more bizarre, it's not uncommon for NDE survivors to accurately describe events that took place not only around their unconscious bodies, but in other rooms or even other parts of town. Then there's that famous idea of the light at the end of the tunnel, in which it feels as if the person is passing rapidly from darkness into light.

Whatever fear or isolation they may have felt before suddenly falls away. Instead of dying, the person is surrounded by overwhelming joy in a sense of homecoming. In fact, I find this really comforting. Numerous studies have concluded that the process of dying is much more frightening to onlookers than it is to the person themselves. And then, of course, there are run-ins with otherworldly beings. Now, this is where cultural bias starts to play a role. While people all over the world report having some kind of encounter with spiritual or divine entities,

exactly who those beings are differ depending on your belief system. Christians tend to see Jesus, while in Thailand, folks have felt the unseen presence of the Buddha. Many Hindu-N-DE experiencers report being conveyed. by messengers to another realm where they meet the Yama, the god of death, and Shia Muslims often remember encountering important imams from Scripture. So what's happening here? Is it just that our brains are merely hallucinating in our final moments, populating the afterlife with exactly who we think we'll see there?

That's the easiest explanation for sure. And yet, visions that people tend to experience are far more vivid and intense than typical hallucinations. Or another explanation is that that we're all having the same genuine spiritual experience, but we perceive it differently based on our cultural expectations. And then again, evolutionary biology has yet another theory. Have you ever accidentally scared a possum?

It's relevant, I swear. When certain members of the animal kingdom, possums included, get spooked, they exhibit a survival strategy known as fanatosis, or death feigning, you know, when possums play dead. It's been observed in everything from beetles, and snakes to dogs and monkeys. Heck, even humans have been known to go involuntarily limp in the face of life-threatening danger. But this limpness isn't the only symptom. Thanatosis also induces a dreamlike stupor protecting the endangered creature from pain and fear. Could

NDE be related to this phenomenon, merely a means for the body to protect itself from suffering? Maybe. But then again, how do you explain cases like Armentarius, who was able to name every person in his household who was about to die of the plague. If you ask me, there's still something missing. And researchers tend to agree, which is why no official conclusion around NDE's has ever been reached. And with all of that, I want to leave you with one last case study. It's the story of Anna Atherton, an English teenager who, in the year 1670, fell into a coma. She was unconscious for quite some time, and when she finally woke up, she reported that an angel had come and taken her to the gates of heaven. where she saw a number of acquaintances that she knew from life.

Those acquaintances told her that she couldn't be admitted and had to go back, but not to worry, she'd be let in soon. And here's the eerie thing. She was let back in soon, because Anna died only two years later, and this time, it stuck. And what's even spookier? As for those acquaintances that she had seen in heaven,

by every single one of them had died, while Anna was in her coma fast asleep. This episode of lore was produced by me, Aaron Manky, with writing by Geno's Nethercote, research by Cassandra de Alba, and music by Chad Lawson. My brand-new history book, Exhumed, is coming out in less than two weeks. On August 4th, it explores the story of Mercy Brown and the roots of the New England vampire panic through the lens of strange folklore, weird medicine, and wacky pseudoscience. And you could still pre-order it right now.

And if you pre-order the hardcover, there's a web page where you can submit your receipt and get a free towbag with artwork from the book. Head over to Aaron Mankey.com slash exhumed to lock in your copy today. I'll put a link in the description for this episode. Don't like hearing ads on lore. Well, there's a paid version on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Subscribers also get weekly mini bonus episodes called Lorebytes, and Patreon subscribers get discounts on lore merch.

Learn more over at lorepodcast.com slash support. And of course, you can follow the show on places like YouTube threads, Blue Sky and Instagram, just search for LOR podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.

And as always, thanks for listening.