The Telepathy Tapes - S3E2: When Reincarnation Leaves a Paper Trail | The Reincarnation Records

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Carol Bowman, a mother turned researcher of children’s past-life memories, begins with a question she can’t shake: if children are carrying memories from another life, could talking about them help them heal? When a frightened mother calls about her three-year-old son Blake, Carol gets a chance to find out. After months of unexplained pain, withdrawal, and memories of being killed by a truck, one conversation appears to change him overnight. The experience propels Carol onto the national stage and brings stories from families across America pouring in.But healing is one thing. Evidence is another. Years later, Carol encounters the kind of case she has been searching for: a young Louisiana boy plagued by nightmares of dying in a burning airplane. He begins offering specific details about a World War II pilot, an aircraft carrier, fellow servicemen, and where he says he was shot down. His Christian father sets out to find another explanation, until his investigation begins uncovering names, military records, eyewitnesses, recognitions, and a dead pilot whose life appears to match his son’s memories.When a child’s story comes with names, records, witnesses, recognitions, and a paper trail, does that mean reincarnation is real? Or is something else giving these children access to information they seemingly could not know?_______Join The Telepathy Tapes Backstage Pass to get ad-free episodes, never-before-heard interviews, behind-the-scenes documentary footage, and access to our private Discord community. This is your invitation to come closer. To help shape what’s next. To be more than a listener… to be a co-creator of this paradigm shift. So if you’ve felt moved, if you’ve felt seen, if you’ve felt the call, subscribe today and join us: thetelepathytapes.com._______Dive into the work of those interviewed in this episode:Bruce and Andrea Leininger:Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot. 2009, Grand Central Publishing.https://link.amazon/B0j2nfg29Jim B Tucker: Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives. 2005, St. Martin's Press.https://link.amazon/B08XQsoN6Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives. 2013, St. Martin's Press.https://link.amazon/B0651rvFPBefore: Children's Memories of Previous Lives. St. Martin's Essentials.https://link.amazon/B0arAPXerCarol Bowman:Children's Past Lives: How Past Life Memories Affect Your Child. 1997, Bantam.https://link.amazon/B00OX5sGkReturn from Heaven: Beloved Relatives Reincarnated Within Your Family. 2001, HarperCollins.https://link.amazon/B0e7untar_______Thank you to our sponsors!Alloy - Try the original estrogen-powered M4 skincare from Alloy. Visit myalloy.com and use code TAPES for $20 off your first order! HomeServe - Join the millions of customers who trust HomeServe, For 50% less your first year, got to homeserve.com/tapesKa'Chava - Go to kachava.com and use code TAPES for 15% off your first order.Luminara - If you’re curious about energy healing and ready to experience it for yourself, Luminara is offering 20% off your first session for listeners of The Telepathy Tapes. Just go to luminara.care and use code TAPES20.TruDiagnostic - If you are curious about longevity go to TruDiagnostic.com and use code tapes for 20% off your entire order. One Skin - Get 15% off OneSkin with the code TAPES at oneskin.co/TAPES #oneskinpod.Shopify - Start your business today with the industry’s best business partner, Shopify. Sign up for your free trial at Shopify.com/tapes.Quince - Find the fall pieces you’ll reach for most at Quince. Go to Quince.com/tapes for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.Zenni - That scratched up pair has done its job. Upgrade today with Zenni. Got to Zenni.com/podcast and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off your first order + free shipping on all orders over $65!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Season one of the telepathy tapes challenged everything we thought we knew about consciousness. Now we're asking an even bigger question. What if memory doesn't begin at birth? I'm Kai Dickens. In season three, the reincarnation records, we investigate children who report vivid memories of lives they say they lived before, and the researchers working to understand these extraordinary claims. If season one taught us that consciousness may extend beyond the body, season three, asks whether it might extend beyond death.

Discover the telepathy tape season three, the reincarnation records, now on Amazon Music. Hey everyone, this is Kai Dickens, and you're listening to The Reincarnation Records from TTT Media. Welcome back to episode two of this series. Last week, we met Carol Bowman, whose five-year-old son Chase described being a soldier on a battlefield. Chase started talking in the first person tense. I'm a soldier. I have a uniform on. It's a dirty.

I have a big gun with a sword at the end. After Chase talked through that memory, something extraordinary happened. His terror of loud booming sounds disappeared, and the severe eczema on his wrist, in the same place where he remembered being shot, cleared up within days. The event was so powerful and perplexing that for Carol, it was the beginning of a much larger question. Could some children's fears, phobias, and even physical symptoms be connected to memories they carried from a past life? And if so, could speaking about those memories help them heal? This question launched Carol on a multi-year search for other American families.

and evidence that healing was possible. I started taking these cases seriously and writing everything up. I wrote a few articles. And I had that ad in mothering magazine. And the cases were trickling in. And I was excited with every case that came my way, of course. You know, they were all little gems for me. And at the same time, I started graduate school.

I just felt I need the background in counseling to be. able to be taken seriously, too. Carol's family had just moved to Philadelphia from North Carolina. She was doing all the research on the side while also going to school and raising her kids. You know, we were in turmoil for a little while. Carol was trying to bring children's past life memories into the mainstream in the 90s, with no roadmap, no cultural permission, no internet or social media to find her people, and very little reason to believe that anyone would take her seriously.

I didn't know how I was going to jump from not being a writer. to being a writer. I never written anything more than a college paper. Even people who consider themselves writers find that authoring a book is daunting. And for Carol, whose time was being consumed with this mission, she needed to figure out how to make the work financially viable. And for that, she needed an agent. I kept getting rejection letters from agents. Who'd want to read this? However, when you're pushing against an accepted worldview or paradigm, there's often one person or moment that makes turning back impossible. I guess there was an event that really pushed me over the edge.

A family came along who needed help, and unlike many of the cases, we'll explore this season that are filled with evidential names and places, dates, and hobbies, and details that can actually be checked against the life of a real person who lived. This case was more ambiguous, but it was more reflective of the kinds of cases that Carol was actually hearing from parents all over the country. Confusing and emotional, difficult to prove, but deeply real, and to see. stressing to the people living through it. And so this family enters our story not because the case was easy to validate against a real life, but because Carol's work with them would not just

end up changing the child's life, but the course of Carol's. In 1992, I got a phone call from a mother mother in Chicago, Colleen, whose son was having what she believed were past life memories that were deeply troubling him. Colleen had found Carol through an ad she put in Mothering Magazine. I'm Colleen Hocken. I live in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area. And my thoughts on reincarnation were I had heard of it just slightly, and I thought it was pretty weird, like how could you be born again? I was thinking you're in the same body, you know, how would that work? So I thought it was like a very strange idea. Colleen had three sons. Blake was the middle child, and before the age of three, there was nothing really unusual about him. He was a very

fun, happy-go-lucky kid, always playing. He has two brothers and older and a younger. So the three boys are always playing, you know, and having a good time. He was just very active, very climbing. Your typical three-year-old little boy, happy. Then one day Colleen was in her kitchen when Blake shouted toward the street. So the first time he mentioned something, he was, He was at the front door. I was in the kitchen, and I heard him yell out the door. Trevor, which is his older brother, get out of the street. The bus is coming.

So I went to the door right away to make sure Trevor's okay. And when I got to Blake, he had his hand on his ear, and he said his ear hurt. And so I said, well, why does your ear hurt? I'm thinking he has an ear infection or something. He said, a truck hit me. And right away, I'm confused. and, well, who hit you with a truck? Here's Carol Bowman again.

Colleen assumed he was confused and meant a child had hit him with a toy truck in preschool. When she questioned him, he said, no, a real truck. He said, no, a big truck. I said, a big truck that drives on the street? And he said, yeah. You know, I'm thinking, did something happen with a babysitter or whatever? And I said, well, where were you?

And he said, in the street. And I said, well, where were mom and dad when this happened? and gone by-bye at the store. So I'm trying to put it together. Like, what in the world is he talking about? I'm thinking, well, maybe he saw something on TV. So I was like, oh, this happened on TV, right? And he said, no, it happened in the street.

And now he was irritated with me. Like, don't you know this happened? And I said, well, where were you hurt? And he pointed to his left side and all over. And then he said, the wheels went over. and he took his arms and just like waved over his head looking up like he could see from like the wheels going over him on top of him. And he was hurt all over, he said.

And so I said, did you die? Because I'm thinking, well, now he'll have to say that's silly. And he just said very matter of fact, yes. He just said yes. He died. He's not being silly about it. He really never made up stories anyway. But I'm thinking, well, if he thinks he died, then how to be he's.

How could he be here? And so I thought, I'm just going to, like, ignore it. Kids do sometimes say really weird things that parents dismiss, and Colleen didn't want to encourage it. But, as we'll discover over the course of this series, these memories don't usually need prompting or questions. Kids bring them up on their own. About a week later, a garbage truck went past the house, and he said, that's like the

truck that hit me. And I was like, wow, that's okay. It's not going away. He still remembers this. It's not just a story. But again, I thought, okay, well, we won't talk about it. And we didn't. And although the family stopped talking about the truck,

something in Blake appeared to change, and it wasn't good. He really had a complete personality change from playing and running and jumping. He'd be, just sit on the couch, kind of stare at the TV or stare at the window or just not really engage with his two brothers who might be playing. They kept telling me his head hurt, his arm hurt, his leg hurt. And so I thought, oh, well, he just wants attention.

So I'd say, oh, well, would you like me to rub that for you? Or no, go away. Blake was not just withdrawn. He was angry. And the anger was aimed directly at his mother. And she didn't know why. Nothing had happened between them that would explain it. But whenever she tried to comfort him, he pushed her away.

Is this this big middle child syndrome I did? not put two and two together as far as anything to do with what he told me about the truck hitting him. I'm just thinking, I must be doing something wrong. Where have I gone wrong as a mother? His demeanor was very flat. He really couldn't sustain any energy towards playing. I would even put on music. And the kids would get up and dance and we'd all dance and pop around. And he might do it for 30 seconds and then he'd sit down and he'd be done. The other two boys would still be dancing. and come on Blake and no, he would just sit on the couch, summon his mouth, just a very blank look on his face, not engaged.

I felt that he was clinically depressed. How can a three-year-old be clinically depressed when there's nothing that happened that would cause it? And I would say, Blake, I love you. And he'd say, I love you, then I hate you. And I'd think, gosh, so he's angry at me. I don't know why. I just was so confused.

I did not know what to do with him. And I think it's fair to interject here, especially as a parent. The kids have big feelings all the time. They get really moody and they say things they don't mean or that don't even make sense. And they melt down a lot over things that seem tiny to parents. But what Colleen was describing felt different. Her son had a personality shift. He became depressed and withdrawn and never went back to his happy, playful baseline like most kids do, often in minutes, if not hours.

So, Colleen, did you take him to a therapist? I did not take him to any therapist. I felt a lot of guilt and shame probably was the biggest reason. How do I go into a therapist? And will they think I've done something wrong? Will they blame me? I was very afraid, very ashamed. And this situation lasted for months.

Blake is depressed. He's complaining about the left side of his head and arm and leg hurting. Here's Carol Bowman again. She took Blake to the doctor, but there was nothing physiologically wrong with him. It wasn't until some months later when the family took a trip to London that Colleen started putting the pieces together. That's coming up after this break. A cold shower is one thing when you choose it. It's another when your water heater quits halfway through washing your hair.

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We went on a family trip to London for Christmas, so that was in December. And we were shopping with all the Christmas bustle and everything. and they had the three boys, and Blake was actually in the stroller that his younger brother, Dane, would normally be in. It was one of those umbrella strollers, so there's nothing in front of him. And we stopped on this traffic, this island. So all the people were crammed in on the island. You really couldn't even move.

And the traffic police blew her whistle. Everybody had to stop to let traffic come through. A truck came around the corner. It was going to come past us. Blake stood up and stood right in the street in front of the truck. And he just stood there kind of blank. Like we're yelling, Blake, Blake, get back. I tried to reach him, but my arms weren't long enough.

My husband grabbed him, pulled him back. And it was so frightening. The truck driver slammed on his brakes, beeped, yelled at us to watch our bloody child. That's swearing in England. bloody and it was so scary. And I want to pause here again to say that three-year-olds can be very impulsive and they certainly can step into danger without understanding what they're doing.

But what Colleen describes is not a child chasing a ball or trying to balance on a yellow traffic line. Blake stood up from his stroller, walked in front of an oncoming truck, faced it head on while staring it down. And obviously we don't know what was happening inside of his mind. But to Colleen, it did not feel like ordinary toddler impulsivity. it somehow felt connected to the memory he'd been repeating for months. And one thing I've learned, working especially on the telepity tapes,

is often mothers just have an instinct that's right. He just stood there, blank face, and I thought, does this have something to do with what he told me a few months ago that he was hit by a truck? And is he trying to be hit by a truck again? I was beside myself with fear and grief and pain and wondering, what is going on? When we did get back

from our trip in London, that's when I saw Carol Bowman had an ad in the back of Mothering magazine. And it said something to the effect, do you believe your child has had a past life? You know, something to that effect. And her name and number and to call her. So a seed was planted in her mind,

as far fetched as it seemed to her. Could Blake be having memories or pain associated with a past life? I was like, oh my gosh, like I was meant to see that ad and somebody who maybe can point me in the right direction can help me understand this, what is this? So I called her. Here's Carol again, and she remembers this case very well. She was just two going on three. I think Colleen was more frightened than anything.

She really didn't know what to do. By the things I was telling her, she validated that, you know, kind of the age of three is what. when children start remembering these memories and they can start verbalizing them. So he was at the right age. She explained how they'll be very matter of fact, which I had explained. Yes, it wasn't a fantasy story, it wasn't like silly making up. So just with how she was explaining how this worked with children and what she has learned from her research, it all did seem to fit.

So I felt like, okay, she knows what she's talking about. And I felt like she was just, you know, kind of a godsend. I explained that to a very young child, a past life memory feels and appears to be as real as something that happened days or weeks ago. Children carry beliefs and feelings with them from their previous lives into the present, the continuum of consciousness from death through rebirth. I explained to her my biggest fear was what had happened in London, where he got up and stood in front of the truck. And if she explained it, I forget the term she used, but how sometimes it's like a psychological term that sometimes people will repeat a trauma in order to try and fix it. She's referencing what psychologists sometimes call repetition compulsion or traumatic reenactment. The idea is that a person may unconsciously return to a scene or pattern or feeling of a trauma,

almost as if part of them is trying to master it or change the ending or make sense of what happened. Part of their consciousness is still stuck in that past life experience, usually a trauma, and they don't know that they made a transition into another body. They can't distinguish past from present. And to me, this tracked because over the course of working on this series, I found that many kids talk about their memories in first person or present tense. So from that perspective, if this really was happening, if his reincarnation memories were real, it must feel like there isn't a separation between one life and the next.

She said, when I go to comfort Blake about his aches and pains and his sadness, he pushes me away. At that point, I suspected that Blake was confusing the former mother with Colleen. That was a light bulb moment for me. I thought this is why he's behaving in such a clinically depressed way. He's angry at me for not being there, protecting him from being hit by a truck. And that's why, you know, I love you, then I hate you. That was the best way he could describe it is just facts. Mommy didn't save me.

Mommy was gone when this happened. She didn't love me. Then Carol gave me suggestions on, how to help Blake through it. I told Colleen to wait until she was alone with Blake, and he was relaxed before bedtime or bath time. A quiet time where he'd be receptive. That was very important, not while he was busy doing something.

I imagine this must have sounded really strange to Colleen. I told her what I tell every other parent. Listen and acknowledge Blake's memory, join his reality, and let him know that she knew he was hit, by a truck. So I tucked him into bed, got them all comfortable, kind of gave him a little back scratch, and got them all just relaxed. And then, and I was scared to do this because I'm going to talk to my three-year-old son about when he lived a different life. So I started out and I said, Blake, were you hit by a truck? He said, yeah. And so he's still remembering. He told me his

head hurt, his arm hurt, his leg hurt. And I said, well, you know, when you were hit by that truck, you had a different body. And he kind of looked like, oh. And I said, and you had a different mommy. And you had a different life. And he was like, all of a sudden, eyes bright, just total different look on his face. I had a different mommy. I said, yeah. I had a different body. Yeah? And then I said something to the effect of, you know, and now you're safe. I'm your new mommy. And I love you very much. And you have a daddy and you have your brothers and I name his Nana and how everybody loves him and that he's safe.

Blake needed to know that he made this transition into a new life and that he was now protected by her. Listening to this, I had the same question that I imagine a lot of parents would. Would saying something like this to a toddler scare them? more? I mean, hearing that you had a different body, a different mother, a different life, from my point of view, it sounds like something that could really overwhelm or even freak out a child. But Colleen said the opposite happened. He just lit up, the look on his face was amazing. And I was thinking, this is going well. Now, this is something, I did not tell my husband I was going to do this because I thought, he's going to tell me I can't. You can't tell a three-year-old that,

that he has a different new body and all that. So I didn't tell him. And then I thought, well, okay, that went really well. He seemed to receive that nicely. And I'm thinking, well, this is probably going to be a lot of conversations where I have to remind him or just kind of keep going through it. I was hoping this would work because I didn't know what else Colleen could do. So the next morning, he gets up. His demeanor was very different. He's playing with his brothers, laughing and jumping around.

And I'm waiting for him to like sit down on the couch again. waiting for it to end, and it didn't. And I remember saying to my husband, I said, do you notice anything different about Blake? He said, yeah, he's playing. And I said, yeah, you want to know why? And then I told him. And I remember him saying, I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, this transformation. And I mean, I was nervous for the next few days, but he never went back. It was done. It was like healed, like, oh, we got our Blake back. She said Blake was back to. She said, Blake was back to his old smiley self as he had been before he started remembering the accident. And to me, one of the most interesting things about this case is what happened to his bodily pains.

All of the aches and pains that he had been complaining about for months on the left side of his body completely went away. So unbelievable. I remember saying to her how well it worked and how wonderful it was. And just with that one conversation, he got it and it just changed everything. And then I remember saying, you know, more parents need to know about this. I went through really hell. And without Carol, you know, I wonder what would have happened to Blake? If all through his life he felt his mom didn't love him or, you know, would he have ended up on drugs?

Or I don't know what would have happened. By that time, I'd been doing this for about, what, five years or so? And I knew that's what parents wanted. You know, no one was telling parents, this normal and here's what you do. And Colleen was going to become more than just another parent that Carol helped. Colleen was so deeply moved by the shift she witnessed in her son that she also wanted other parents out there to know that this kind of healing might be possible.

And I said, I'm going to write to Oprah. She's into this, a little bit of woo-woo. She was and all that. And he said, well, I'm going to write to Oprah. And Carol said, well, you do that. So I did. and nothing happened. She wrote a letter to Oprah,

and they had filed it away in a file that read children's phobias, which was not exactly what it was. Maybe a year later, a producer or somebody called me, I gave her Carol Bowman's number, so they called Carol, and this eventually turned into a whole episode on Oprah about children's past lives. Carol, how did that feel? Because up until then, you were kind of privately told,

toiling away. Did this feel like, you know, a big break? When I got the call from Oprah, I knew I had to do it, and I was petrified. I had never done any public speaking before, and I just found the steel in me. Carol Bauman says many children do remember their past lives easily and look for opportunities to express them. She spent the last six years researching and writing about children's past life experiences. Young children, as soon as they become verbal, like around age two to about age seven, can have these memories, and they're unrecognized in this culture. On this show, Colleen's case was also explored, and Oprah interviewed Chase, Carol's own son, whose battlefield memory

had started Carol's work in the first place. Now, Chase says he was just five when he first remembered being a black soldier in the Civil War. What I love is that the producers even brought in an illustrator to help Chase bring the visions trapped in his mind to life. And a Civil War historian took a look at the illustrations and the details that Chase had recounted. By nature, I'm skeptical. I need to see more evidence. Everything he says is consistent with things that could have happened, though. Oprah was balanced and thoughtful, and her taking it seriously was a game changer for Carol. It aired in 94 at the height of Oprah's popularity. And she was fantastic. She made it easy for us. Oprah certainly elevated me from housewife to researcher, and my research changed because I was getting so many more cases.

And in many cases, the public was teaching her about this phenomena. One thing she learned from parents writing in was that not all cases were centered on trauma. In fact, there were often just sweet, small little stories that caused Carol to marvel. I remember a case of one little boy who lost a button on his pants, and he went into his mother's sewing kit, got the thread, needle, and sewed the button perfectly on his pants. He was four years old, by the way. And when his mother asked him, how do you know to do that? I never taught you how to sew. He said, well, I used to do it before when I was a sailor on a boat. And he described an old wooden boat that creaked at night when he was trying to sleep. He told his mother

exactly where he learned this. And I thought that was amazing. We're going to take a quick break right there. but when we get back, Carol's journey changes forever as more cases flood in, including a case that would become one of the most well-known and carefully investigated American cases in reincarnation history. Around 3 o'clock each day, I'm ready for a little treat, and I'm definitely one of those salty and sweet people. And one of my absolute favorite flavors is salted caramel. And salt seems like such a small thing, but it brings the whole flavor to life. Suddenly something sweet becomes so much more interesting. And that's why I'm so excited to try Kachava's new salted caramel flavor. Chachava is already part of my afternoon routine, so this sounds like a delicious way to mix things up.

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Your menopause specialized doctor will tailor your treatment to your exact needs. Plus, you get unlimited messaging with your doctor. Head to myalloy.com and use code tapes to get 20% off your first order. This code is valid on products only. Welcome back to the reincarnation records. After Oprah, I was doing a lot of interviewing. I got a good publishing contract. So it's kind of like a rags to riches story with the publishing, and everything just fell into place.

The cases Carol had been collecting over the past six years, the research, the phone conversations, the dream of writing a book that could help parents was suddenly on its way. My first book, Children's Past Lives, was published in March of 1997. And with that greater exposure, came what would become one of the best-known and most widely publicized American cases of a child who appeared to remember a past life. In 2001, I found a remarkable case, rich in verifiable detail. It's being called the case for reincarnation. Two down-to-earth parents who, thought they understood the mysteries of life. That is, until their toddler began to talk. But long before it reached a national audience, the story unfolded outside of public view,

with two confused and concerned parents who sought Carol's help privately. The James Lininger case. It became the best-known American case of a child's past life memories. Carol had found the case she'd been searching for, an American modern case with names and places, military records, eyewitnesses, surviving members, and making. maybe most importantly, parents who didn't believe in reincarnation and did not want any of it to be true. James Leidinger was born in 1998 to Andrea and Bruce, a Christian couple living in Louisiana. And from almost the beginning of James' life, he had one obsession, airplanes. One of James' first words was airplane, and the only toys he wanted were airplanes.

And that in and of itself is not extraordinary. Lots of little kids become fixated on trains and fire trucks and planes. But with James, the fascination had a strange edge to it, which became really apparent when he was able to talk. When James was two, Andrea was shopping with him and found a toy plane and said, oh, look, here's a plane. It even has a bomb at the bottom. She handed it to James, and he turned it upside down and said, that's not a bomb, mama, that's a drop tank. I'd never heard of a drop tank. I didn't know what a drop tank was. That's the voice of James's mom, Andrea, from an interview she did on ABC primetime in 2004, almost four years after James first started to have his memories, we could not reach the liningers for an interview, so we're going to rely on some of these archival news interviews

to help tell their story. But it's important to know that Carol and the family were deep in this mystery for years before it went public. And here's his dad, Bruce. I took him to the Kavanaugh Flight Museum that every time we went to the area where the World War II aircraft were located, he would just stand there in point, mesmerized. Little James recognized the steely war machines with a certain familiarity and comfort. This trip to the flight museum happened when he was 22 months old, and there's old home video of James inspecting the planes,

knowing things about them, pointing at them, and that's obviously not enough to build a case on. But then the nightmares began. Here's Carol Bowman again. He would scream and thrash and cry saying airplane crashed, plane on fire, and he would repeat it again and again. And wake him up and he'd be screaming and he'd always be laying on his back, kicking his feet up at the ceiling. And I'd say, maybe what were you dreaming about? He said, airplane crash on fire. Little man can't get out.

When Andrea and Bruce asked him who Little Man was, he said, that's me. They asked, do you remember Little Man's name? He would always say, James. Which I want to add was the little boy's name. So that doesn't necessarily seem odd. At least not yet. He was having these nightmares four to five times a week and no one was getting any sleep. One thing that gave me pause when going through all the old tape of interviews by the parents was a moment when his dad, Bruce, asked why his plane went down in the first place. And James said, very matter-of-factly, because it was shot. And then when Bruce asked who shot the plane, young James seemed flabbergasted and annoyed that his dad didn't know. I'll never forget the look on his face. He went,

The Japanese! James was two at the time. And if you talk to most parents out there, toddlers do not know that America and Japan were ever at war. Here's an interview that James' mom did with ABC. I knew what he watched on television. I knew what stories I read to him. I'm a protective first time, Southern mother. But James kept talking, and the parents started to ask simple questions to try to understand more. You know, where was this coming from? Why was he saying it? They asked, do you remember what kind of plane you flew? He would always say a corsair. The corsair, the plane that young James mentioned,

was a World War II fighter plane. It entered combat in 1943. and was heavily used in the Pacific, especially by the Marines. Not only did James remember flying a corsair, he demonstrated knowledge of the plane's peculiarities, like the time he was flipping through a book about planes. He got to the corsair, and he said, that's a corsair. And he goes, you know what, they used to get flat tires all the time. And here's Carol Bowman again,

recounting from her notes some of the early questions the parents asked. They asked, do you remember where your plane took off from a boat? Do you remember the name of the boat? The Natoma. Bruce said, that sounds Japanese. James replied, it's American. This period of question and answering did not just happen in a single day. But as this detailed information trickled in, his dad, Bruce was searching for an explanation. How did his son know all this information about World War II? And was any of it even correct?

Bruce went to his computer to see if you could verify any of this information. He found that there was indeed an American aircraft. carrier called the Natoma Bay that served in the Pacific in World War II. And then came a really weird moment. During the Christmas holiday, Bruce had received a book about the Battle of Iwo Jima and was reading it while James sat on his lap. They got to a page with an aerial shot of Iwo Jima and two-year-old James said, Daddy, that's where my plane was shot down. And he repeated that statement. And in Carroll's records, it was noted that his dad, Bruce, felt shocked. I mean, what two-year-old says that. He was even more shocked when he found through an internet search that

Matoma Bay, the aircraft carrier was in that battle, the battle of Iwo Jima. I mean, at this point, someone in the periphery had a certain thinking past life. Andrew was putting together the pieces, and she believed that James was remembering a past life. But Bruce felt it was heresy to believe that this was a case of reincarnation, and he was on a mission to disprove his son's statements. and protect his own beliefs. And because Reincarnation feels so beyond the boundaries of what many of us are taught, we'll spend time later in the series exploring where reincarnation fits into the world's religious traditions.

Because it's more complicated than many people realize, many of the monotheistic faiths like Judaism and Christianity and Islam, actually debated the validity of reincarnation throughout their history and have some sex that believe in it. But now back to Carol. So Carol, when did you come into their lives? Andrea's mother sent her a copy of my first book, Children's Pastoral. lives because they were desperate for guidance. The most pressing issue was his nightmares. These nightmares persisted for months. Carol emailed back, willing to help. I told her what I tell

every other parent. Join his reality. Ask open-end questions. Ignorged what he was saying. Assure him that that was something that happened before and that he was now in a new life and a new body. And it did seem to help because a few weeks later, Andrea emailed Carol to thank her. She followed my advice and the techniques worked. The nightmares immediately started reducing in frequency. He went down from three or four times a week to maybe one a week, one every other week. And at that point was when he started to articulate more about these past life memories. More details came.

It was almost as if by his parents joining his reality, he felt more able to share. He began to draw pictures of propeller planes being shot down from boats. In these frenetic drawings, which Andrea shared with me, There was fire and enemy flack in the sky. Here's his mom again from an interview she did on Fox and Friends. It was almost a pathological process. He would put the planes and the ships, and then he would almost be acting out of battle.

He would be shooting and firing. And he would always sign the drawings with James 3. When his parents asked him why he signed his drawings this way, he said, because I'm the third James. They asked if he could remember the names of any of his friends. He said, Jack. Jack Larson. He's a pilot, too. Jack Larson. That name will matter later.

But at this point, it was just one more impossible-sounding detail from a toddler, and none of this was sitting well with Bruce, James's dad. I was not just skeptical. I was adamant that this was not happening in my house, and my belief system rebelled against the concept and the idea of reincarnation and past lives. Bruce was so intent in figuring out this moment. mystery, that he started going to reunions of the Natoma Bay veterans in the guise of doing research for a book about the Natama Bay. Okay, I kind of love that. Yeah, I know, but he actually needed more information about the crew that he couldn't find in his online searches. There was a veteran

named Leo Pipe, now in his 80s, that served on the Natoma Bay, the aircraft carrier that James talked about as a toddler, and Bruce initially reached out to him to kind of put an end to this reincarnation nonsense. I wanted to disprove it. And here is Leo Pipe talking about his conversation with Bruce, James's father. He asked a few questions about, did I know some of the people? Oh yeah, I remember those people. And he got very quiet. Jack Larson was a real person. And here's Bruce recounting that story on Fox and Friends in 2004. What I found out by contacting a veterans organization, never expecting to confirm this name Jack Larson. I ask a guy named Leo Piot,

you remember a guy named Jack Larson? And he says, oh, yeah, he blew off one day and we never saw him again. So it led me to believe initially that that's who had been killed. Meaning his dad was thinking Jack Larson was the pilot who was shot down in the Pacific

and possibly the memories that his son was tapping into somehow. And if that was the case, it would disqualify the reincarnation theory because his son kept saying his name was James. However, the family soon discovered that Jack Larson was

not actually shot down over the Pacific. He was alive and well in living in Arkansas, so they were back to the drawing board. Jack Larson was real, the name checked out, but it wasn't who died. But with the help of veterans, Bruce was able to find out something he could not find online, or anywhere, in fact. It was Ralph Carver, a veteran in his early 80s, who helped fill in the missing piece. Carver had also flown from the deck of the Natoma Bay. On March 3, 1945, he took part in a strike against the Japanese during the battle of Iwo Jima. Flying beside Ralph Carver that day was another Natoma Bay pilot, Lieutenant James Houston Jr.

And here's a clip of an interview with Ralph Carver. We experienced pretty heavy in airbrow fire, but this was the most intense that I experienced at any time. And then there was a bright light at the front of James Houston's plane. I saw the hit. I would say he was hit head off. Yeah, right on the night. middle of the engine. There was one pilot, just one pilot whose plane was shot down in the way James

described near Iwo Jima. His name was James Houston Jr. And because this veteran's name was James Jr., then Little James Lininger's signature suddenly made sense. He would have been the third James if he truly felt like he was the reincarnation of James Jr. He died in 1945 at the age of 21, and he flew a corsair. And at this point, looking over the notes of the case and talking to Carol, Bruce, having tried desperately to not allow reincarnation to be the answer, seemed to relent. It just crystallized in my mind. This has to be who we're talking about.

You know, my meter of skepticism was starting to go over toward belief. Here's Carol Bowman again. I felt so fortunate to be able to follow this amazing case as it unfolded. With each new discovery, Bruce and Andrea called me to keep me informed. I became as excited as they were with each new revelation that authenticated James' memories. Through Bruce's investigation and a new connection to James Houston's former squadron, the family finally began getting answers. But what they discovered next was shocking.

So here's the backstory. Young James Lininger played constantly with G.I. Joe Dells. He named his three dolls, Billy, Leon, and Walter. his parents thought they were unusual names for little boy's toys. When they asked him why he gave them those names, he replied very matter-of-factly, because that's whom met me when I got to heaven. Then he went back to playing with his toys. Bruce went to his computer where he had files with dates and details of the men from the Natoma Bay,

who were killed in battle. There he found that there were three men all in the same squadron named Billy, Leon and Walter, who were all killed in 1944. James Houston died in 1945. I feel like I've read and watched every account of the story, and that piece often gets brushed over, but to me it's wild. That little three-year-old James named his GI Joe Dolls,

three names of people he said met him in heaven. And then his father found out that the names matched three men from the same squadron in which James served, who died in battle a year before James Houston Jr. died. And this story also created a major cognitive dissidence for me. Starting with, if reincarnation is real, what does that mean about the afterlife in heaven? Are the two ideas even compatible? But if you've been with me over the last few seasons, we've explored many stories that

suggest consciousness survives death. Whatever your interpretation, the evidence has repeatedly pointed toward the possibility that something continues beyond this life. So then came this moment where heaven and reincarnation, don't seem to compete with one another at all. At least in this recollection from James, they appear to be part of the same larger story. And on this show, I'll never tell anyone what to believe. It's not what the series about. It's not what I'm about. But I did find myself wondering, you know, what if a merciful God or universe gives us more than one opportunity? Because if a life

ends before someone ever experiences love or purpose or parenthood or the chance to be who they were meant to be, it just feels so unfair, and that's why the death of a young person can just feel so brutal. And in this case, James Houston Jr. never came home from the war. He never started a family, to my knowledge, he never fell in love. He never had the chance to discover who he was or what he might accomplish. But if reincarnation is real, maybe those experiences and opportunities aren't lost forever. But for now, back to our story. Andrea wanted to know if James Houston Jr. had any living relatives who could validate James' memories of his life before he was a pilot. And she eventually found that James Houston Jr. had a surviving sister, Anne Houston Barron, who was alive and in her

80s. Andrea contacted Anne and told her that she and her husband were writing a book about the Natoma Bay. And I just want to interject a reminder here that the family's first contacts with most of the people involved started with them claiming they were writing a book about the Natoma Bay. Andrea and Ann established a rapport on the phone, and Anne sent Andrea her photos of her brother. One of the photos was of his squadron, and a James Houston proudly stood in front of a course air. The type of plain young James told his parents he flew. The family had been getting really interesting information, validating James' memories, and the case was becoming so evidential that it was top of mind for Carol when she was contacted by a news channel looking to cover a case of past life memory.

I was in touch with a producer at ABC TV who wanted to document a case of a child's past life memory. I introduced her to the Liningers, and by 2004, there was an abundance of evidence that this was a real case of reincarnation. The Linerers and I were interviewed for the segments on ABC Prime Time. But before the piece was broadcast, I called Andrea to suggest that she revealed to Anne Barron there really weren't writing about the Natoma Bay. Rather, they believed that their son was the reincarnation of her brother. I told Andrea that if Anne happened to see this on TV, she might have a heart attack. So Andrea called her and explained everything.

Andrea also shared some of the comments James made about the Houston family, details that no one outside of the Houston family could possibly know. After the ABC Primetime aired and the truth came out to the veterans of the Natoma Bay that they were actually writing about James and not the boat. The Leininger family attended another reunion. I just have to jump in here. I just want to give props to the veterans of the Natoma Bay for hearing this about Little James and still extending an invite for the family to go to a reunion because that could

have gone sideways. On the first day of the reunion, Andrea Bruce and James were walking down the hall. And a man they hadn't seen before stopped and asked James, do you know who I am? James looked at him in the eye and said, You're Bob Greenwald. The man looked shocked and said, That's right. Andrea asked him,

Are you really, Bob Greenwald? He said yes. Later, Bruce asked James how he knew who the man was. James told him, I recognized his voice. This is what, 50, 60 years later. But someone else was invited to this reunion as well, James Houston's sister and Houston Barron.

who was 85 years old when little James Lininger met her at the 2004 VC-81 Squadron Reunion in San Antonio, Texas. And he goes, it's not Anne, it's Annie. She wasn't my oldest sister. I had an older sister than that. And I said, you did? Who is that? And he goes, Roof. I mean, Ruth.

And that was true. And here's James Houston's sister. Eddie is what they called me when I was little, knowing my name and my sister's things that my brother did when he was a kid. It's too amazing to describe how he would feel that way, but he does. He considers me his sister. But despite all the things little James Lightinger said to her, does she consider him to be the reincarnated soul of her brother?

I think it's probably a reincarnation of my brother. There was just no other explanation for how he knew all of this. She even sent some of her brother's belongings for James. One was a model of a Coursair airplane. Leo, James Houston Jr.'s old comrade, was also shown some of the three-year-old's drawings from a plane crashing and burning, and Leo responded to them with conviction. He was right on the nose. I'm sure, in my mind, that he was there. At this point, James Lightinger's parents, many of the former surviving squadron members, and Ann Houston, were convinced that James Houston Jr.'s soul, or consciousness, was back and inside the body of a little boy. The details were too specific, and they bore out under scrutiny.

and that case became national news. But the moment may be most important to this whole journey and to Carol Bowman's working thesis was a moment of healing transformation that finally happened when James was eight years old. A Japanese production company wanted to fly the liners to Japan and have a memorial service where James Houston's plane was shot down. The family and a film crew took a boat to the site of the crash.

When they arrived, eight-year-old James burst into tears. He recovered enough to throw up a bouquet of a fire flowers in the water, which Anne Barron had requested. As they threw the bouquet, James said, Goodbye, James Houston. I'll never forget you. Andrew said that at that point, everyone on the boat was crying. But did it work, or did it retramatize him? After the trip, James' memories started to fade, and his drawings of planes being shot down changed. Instead of boats firing at airplanes, he drew happy scenes of dolphins jumping. In one of his drawings, An intact plane was flying over a field of flowers.

So you think that it was good for him to go to the place of his death? That image said it all. James finally seemed to have closure on his former life. He was finally able to let go. And he no longer signed his drawings James III. It was just James. A book about the Lightinger's experience was written by Bruce and Andrea and published in 2009. It was called Soul Survivor.

These stories have such power to open people's minds. to this reality because it is a real phenomenon. For Carol, the James case was not just extraordinary. It was a turning point. She had helped bring a remarkable modern case into the historical record. She had become a trusted voice in the field, and along the way, she even entered the orbit of Dr. Ian Stevenson, the University of Virginia psychiatrist,

who has spent decades investigating the claims of children who say they remember past lives. It took me 10 years to find a verifiable case that meant something like Stevenson's requirements for a legitimate case. Carol even helped Dr. Stevenson and his then assistant Dr. Jim Tucker with several critical cases, including introducing them to the James Lightinger case. But Stevenson did not just have one case like James Lininger. He had shelves of them. Next week, we meet the researchers carrying on Dr. Stevenson's work

and dive into the cases in the University of Virginia archives, and they have thousands of them. There's very little ambiguity. the kids say. Including children who remember previous names, where they lived, how they died, in some cases even who had killed them, or things that they had hidden in a previous life. It could manifest physically, biologically, in numerous ways. It could be a language. It could be a birthmark. Could be a phobia. Some seem to remember incredible skills that no one in this life had taught them. Children being able to speak a foreign language that they shouldn't be able to

speak, purportedly a language from a life they had lived in a foreign country. At the At the University of Virginia, Dr. Ian Stevenson and his team were asking very different questions than Carol was, not if memories can heal, but can they be studied and verified? Based on 60-plus years of studying a phenomenon, you suddenly get real data. What patterns emerge when you stop treating each story as an isolated mystery and start looking at the metadata? If Carol's work was past-life research for families, University of Virginia's work is past-life research built for the skeptics among us. It's mind-blowing. and next week we dive into their files. Thank you to the small team who made this season possible.

Our amazing producer, Cooper Mal, our audio mix and sound design was by Jeremy Cole, music was by Mike Robino, my right hand was Selena Kennedy, and I'm Ken Dickens, your executive producer, writer, editor, and host. And if you haven't listened to our last season of the podcast, the Consciousness Cassettes, I highly recommend you do so,

as it will give even more context to this season. And if you want to go in deeper, subscribe to our backstage pass by visiting our website. With it, you'll unlock access to bonus content. Ask me anything interviews with myself and guests. You'll be able to connect with other members on our Discord. You'll be able to enjoy the podcast ad-free

and hear and see exclusive content from the telepathy tapes vault. Visit our website at the telepathy tapes.com for more info on how to subscribe to our backstage pass. This is the Reincarnation Records from TTT Media.