You’re having a conversation with your
young son, who’s only three years old. Then, he mentions something that makes your blood run
cold: he starts talking about the day he died. That’s exactly what happened to a man named
Dan, whose son seemed to be able to recall, in intricate detail, someone else's final
moments. When Dan asked his son to tell him more, the boy described parts of a completely different
house to their family home: a green kitchen, a large backyard, and the driveway… the place
where the child claimed that he had died. Dan pressed the matter further, and that’s when
his son told him, with an eerie sense of calm, that the driveway was where his ‘old dad’
had run him over with the family car. “It was an accident though, Dad, so it’s
okay,” the young boy told his father, delivering one of the creepiest sentences
that Dan had ever heard his child say. But the tale recounted by Dan’s son is hardly
the only example of this strange phenomenon. All across the world, there are numerous cultures
that believe in the idea of reincarnation, particularly within Hindu and Buddhist
traditions. A lot of non-religious people also share a belief in reincarnation, mostly as a
means to bring themselves comfort when faced with the inevitability of death. But others believe
it’s actually possible, and even claim to have concrete evidence that they had a past life.
It can be easy to brush off a lot of these flimsy stories or people’s recounting of dreams
they believe are linked to who they were before reincarnation. But it’s another, far creepier
story when children seem to harbor knowledge of their supposed past lives. Some have recalled
details that they couldn’t possibly be aware of at such a young age, with a few having
even shared memories of places they’ve never been to before. And in rare instances,
the details of these children’s stories even align with the deaths of real people.
So, we’ve scoured the internet for some creepy stories of kids who can seemingly remember their
past lives, heading towards the one we think might be the scariest of all: a three-year-old boy who
may have solved the murder of his own past self! Take the son of a woman named Jodie, who was
having recollections of a supposed past life at only eighteen months old. According to the child’s
mother, he had developed speech surprisingly early, since most babies only speak their first
words after the first ten to fifteen months of life. Then again, it’s possible that Jodie’s
son had some memory of how to talk left over, or rushed the process because he just had
to get some of these unnerving details out. Jodie described how her child said he missed
his other mother, and his older brother, but seemed to also be aware that he couldn’t see them.
They wouldn’t know it was him, the boy had said, he was too young. When Jodie asked her son why,
he described getting on a motorbike and heading out to the shops to buy a sandwich. According to
the child’s story, in this supposed past life, he hit a dog while riding the motorcycle, causing
him to crash and die as a result. The child reportedly loathed dogs, and would even mutter the
phrase ‘stupid sandwich’ under his breath a lot. All across the internet thousands of people have
shared stories of creepy things their children have said, or about children they know telling
them details of the lives they used to live. Of course, as with a lot of things, just because
someone on the internet says something happened doesn’t make it true. We’re omitting details like
the full names of children or their families to respect their privacy, but we’ll leave it up
to you to decide whether these are legitimate tales of reincarnation or just examples of
kids saying silly things that coincidentally and creepily line up with the real world.
One Reddit user described a similar story about their nephew, who seemed to also harbor
eerie and vivid memories of his previous life and family. One day while babysitting the
boy, who was around three or four at the time, the user recalls their nephew pointing to a
refrigerator magnet that displayed a picture of rock formations in the Arizona desert. The nephew
asked where the place on the magnet was, and the user told him. At this point, the child described
that he had used to live near red rocks similar to those in the picture, with his ‘first family.’
The user’s nephew, as is typical in stories like these, then went on to describe in detail the
family from their past life. According to the boy, his relatives had all had straight dark hair,
and he’d had a mother, father, and a brother. That was until he had wandered too far into the
desert one day, at a time too close to when it got dark. The child’s tale of their past life
concluded with a description of how they died, saying that they’d been eaten by animals that were
‘not dogs, not wolves, but smaller.’ While they’re not typically known to be a threat to humans,
Arizona just so happens to be home to coyotes, which are smaller than both wolves and dogs…
A lot of these children’s supposed recollections are dismissed as purely being fantasy, nothing
more than an overactive imagination or a child repeating something they’ve heard an adult talk
about, seen on TV, or perhaps even experienced in a dream. They might claim to remember
another family or a different set of parents, a home that isn’t the one they currently live
in, or even the circumstances of how a past version of them supposedly ‘died.’ But sometimes,
there are times when a child’s statements line up accurately with the life of a deceased
person. Such was the case with one couple, whose eldest son was named after a Marine that
the husband of said couple had served alongside. One day, on a drive towards the husband’s
sister’s house, the couple and their son passed a military base. This just so happened to
be the place where the Marine their son was named after had been buried after he was killed
in action during deployment. At the time, the couple’s son was no older than three, and
the family hadn’t taken him to the grave of the Marine he’d been named after. They had never
even taken him anywhere near the area where the base was located. But right as they were driving
past the site where this soldier had been buried, the couples’ son very casually pointed out:
“I’m buried over there.” This is far from the only story of a child
recalling a past life of military service. When her son was only four years old,
Patricia Austrian noticed that the boy, Edward, had developed a phobia of rainy, overcast
days. Hardly something unique to him of course, as the sound of rain or thunder can often startle
small children. But that doesn’t explain why, as a child, this one Reddit user reportedly
started asking, during a heavy thunderstorm: “When do the bombs drop? Are they gone yet?”
Unbeknownst to this user, who had grown up in Germany, their grandfather used to alert the
city of incoming air raids during wartime. He’d died three days before the user was
born, and at the time, they were unaware of their grandfather or either World Wars.
But back to Edward’s case, things started to become strange after he’d developed his
own hang-ups about rainy days. The boy reportedly began to experience severe pain
in his throat, and complained to his mother whenever he felt it hurting. Specifically,
he told her that it was his ‘shot’ that hurt. Naturally, Edward was taken to a doctor, to
try and determine a cause for the pain he was experiencing. However, unable to determine
the exact cause of it, doctors decided it would be best to remove the boy’s tonsils as
a precaution. It was after this happened that Edward developed a new problem: a cyst developed
in his throat. Normally, this too would be drained and removed surgically, but doctors found that
the cyst wasn’t reacting to usual treatment, leaving them baffled as to what to do.
It was then that Patricia asked her son what he had meant when he said his ‘shot was hurting.’
To her amazement, he started to give a detailed story about wading through mud, on a rainy day,
describing in frighteningly accurate detail the trenches of the First World War. It was then that
Edward told her that, on the battlefield, he had been killed… by a gunshot wound to the throat.
The story gets even stranger as, after Edward had explained all this to his parents, opening
up about his past life and describing how he’d supposedly died, the cyst that had formed in his
throat seemed to disappear. While not impossible for a cyst to clear on its own without any
treatment, this can take months or even years. The doctors were unable to provide a concrete
explanation for exactly why Edward’s had seemingly vanished, or how it seemed to line up with the
story of his apparent death in the trenches… Something similar happened in 2014, when a young
boy who we’ll refer to as ‘Andrew L’ made some statements that truly startled both his parents
– to the extent that they believed he might even be possessed by a ghost or some kind of demonic
entity. It all started when Andrew, at the age of only four years old, began to experience fits of
inconsolable crying. Now, it’s true that something like that tends to come with the territory
when you decide to have children, but what isn’t so typical are the unnerving things Andrew
was telling his parents when they tried to console him. Upon asking their son exactly what was wrong,
his mother recalls him responding tearily with: “Why did you let me die in that fire?”
Hearing such an unsettling question coming out of her son’s mouth had Andrew’s
mother, Michele, convinced that there was a spirit dwelling within the boy. Of course, it
could have just been the result of a bad dream, or even Andrew play-acting. This excuse was
thrown out of the window when he mentioned living at a specific address: 860 Main Street
in Sumter, Georgia. That was over 840 miles away from where the family lived in Virginia Beach.
From there, with her son recalling things that a child his age had no way of knowing, Michele
started researching. She tried piecing together the vague details Andrew was giving, but couldn’t
find anything concrete. Michele did, however, manage to reach out to a reality TV show titled
Ghost Inside My Child, which ran between 2013 and 2015 and focused on kids who had allegedly been
experiencing memories of their past lives. There’s been a little debate as to whether the producers
of Ghost Inside My Child came up with the eventual story that supposedly linked to Andrew’s past
life, or if Michele reached that conclusion without the help of the show. But regardless,
everyone seemed convinced that they’d found a match for the things Andrew had been saying.
In October of 1983, there was a bombing attack in Beirut, Lebanon, one that claimed the lives
of multiple US Marines. Among them was Sergeant Val Lewis. Apparently, when shown photographs
of six different Marines who had died in the bombing, all from Georgia, and thus all sharing
a story that could have linked with Andrew’s, the child felt a strong connection to Val’s picture.
According to producers working on the show, Andrew kept going back to the picture
of Val Lewis even after the cameras had stopped rolling. When prompted, he even referred
to the photos of the other Marines as his friends. Some have called into question the legitimacy of
Andrew’s story, given that in the show itself he parrots back a lot of the same phrases his mother
uses, possibly feeling uneasy with the cameras on him. Naturally, the producers of Ghost Inside My
Child’s primary concern was making a show for TV, and there are plenty of non-scientific
ghost-hunting shows that rely on lacklustre investigations and debunked, pseudoscientific
methods in order to reach a hasty but definitive conclusion without any loose ends. Still,
Andrew’s parents took their son’s word as confirmation that the source of his apparent
past life memories was indeed Sergeant Lewis. The family took Andrew to visit Val Lewis’ grave
in Georgia, hoping it would provide the young boy with some closure over his supposed past life
experiences. Andrew lay flowers at the gravesite, and even remarked that another of the
graves, belonging to another Marine, was his friend. However, there are still critics
who remain skeptical, pointing out that the show could have done a better job at determining
what the source of Andrew’s worrying memories of ‘the fire’ were, rather than jumping to
the conclusion that it was Sergeant Val Lewis. This could have been achieved by showing
him photos of various different people from different eras. Additionally, despite Andrew
supposedly providing Val’s Georgia address, none of the show’s staff were able to get in
touch with the Marine’s family. And on top of all that, many worried about the potential
repercussions of allowing a small child to believe he’s the reincarnation of a dead
Marine. That’s a profoundly scary idea for a young kid to grapple with, and is arguably
far creepier than the question he asked that caused this whole rabbit hole to open up.
Still, Andrew’s story isn’t the only time a little boy who was widely believed to have
been the reincarnation of a deceased member of the military. In fact, people were so
convinced by this next story that even the surviving friends of the dead pilot
in question believed that six-year-old James was their fallen comrade reincarnated.
From an early age, according to James’ parents, Andrea and Bruce, their son loved nothing
more than playing with toy airplanes. However, once he reached two years old, these were
the very things that seemed to plague the boy with regular nightmares. He would wake up
screaming, and Andrea even recalled the way he described the dreams he was having:
“Airplane crash, plane on fire, little man can’t get out.”
According to Andrea, her mother was the first to suggest the possibility that these
could be memories of James’ past life. However, his parents were quick to dismiss the idea,
until even more strange details started to present themselves. In one instance, James
started going over one of his toy planes as if he was doing a pre-flight check. His knowledge of
planes seemed to be way too advanced for a young boy. This surprised his mother when she bought him
a new plane with an object that she thought was a bomb on the underside of the toy. Without missing
a beat, Andrea’s son corrected her, telling her it wasn’t a bomb, but a drop tank. Similarly, while
watching a History Channel documentary, a narrator referred to a Japanese plane as a ‘Zero’; only
for James to insist it was called a ‘Tony,’ the Allied nickname for the plane. In both instances,
James was right, even though his parents had never even heard these terms before, and there seemed
to be no way that James should know details like these. He had only watched children’s shows,
and neither of his parents had been watching anything relating to military history that
contained the details he was referring to. Then, his nightmares started to get more intense.
Multiple times a week, the boy would be troubled by violent dreams about a plane crash, and being
shot down by a plane with a red sun on it – a Japanese plane. He began to talk more about
it when he was awake. From what he described, it sounded a lot like he’d been a pilot in
his previous life. According to his story, his past self had also been named James, who had
flown off a ship named the Natoma. The story got much creepier, though, when James’ parents looked
further into what their son had said. Andrea and Bruce were able to discover that there was, in
fact, an aircraft carrier used by the US Navy during World War Two called the USS Natoma Bay,
and among their squadron was a twenty-one-year-old fighter pilot from Pennsylvania named
James Huston, who was killed in action after being shot down by Japanese artillery in
Iwo Jima over the Pacific Ocean. That was over 50 years before young James was even born.
That might seem pretty conclusive, but not everyone was completely convinced. Desperate to
help rid her son of his perpetual nightmares, Andrea contacted a therapist who already
believed in the possibility of reincarnation, Carol Bowman. She told Andrea not to dismiss
the worrying things that James was saying, but to instead reassure him that these things had
happened during another life and in another body, and that his parents should remind their son that
he was safe now. To his credit, this advice seemed to work, and James’ nightmares diminished soon
after. It’s also worth mentioning that the death of James Huston would have been forgotten in
history had it not been brought up again by being connected to James’ nightmares, whether
he truly was the reincarnated pilot or not. But skepticism is abound when it comes to
these supposed tales of reincarnation. For one, generally speaking, research into cases like
James’ only really begins after a point where families have already accepted that their child
is genuinely a reincarnated person. Plus it’s worth noting that, while they might have not
watched many Second World War documentaries, James’ family had taken him to a
flight museum at eighteen months old, and this began his fascination with planes,
particularly those from the World War Two era. It’s entirely possible that the specific details
he was able to recall had been subconsciously implanted when he was much younger. A lot of what
children say is often ambiguous, leaving it open to interpretation, and even James’ own father
Bruce wasn’t without his own sense of disbelief. But he considered the information given by his
son to be so striking and unusual that it all but confirmed the idea that he had, in fact, been
US Navy pilot James Huston in his previous life. Details of past lives and nightmares
certainly have a link in more than just Andrew’s story. One online user’s father
experienced many sleepless nights after they made a creepy statement. While watching
a war documentary, the user – a child at the time – reacted strangely to the mention of a tube:
“You mean the tube from when I was a grown-up?” When the father asked for a further explanation,
he was left wishing he hadn’t. The child described being placed in a tube with another person, and
given a knife. Both were tasked to kill each other, but the supposed past self of the story
was stabbed in the chest… a detail that apparently still keeps this user’s dad awake at night.
That’s creepy enough, but another dream described by a Redditor detailing their past life
might be much more harrowing. They explain that, as a young child, they had always used the
wrong words for ‘stop’ and ‘come back.’ When their parents eventually asked them about it,
the child described a reoccurring dream they’d experienced. In this dream, they were a man in
his late twenties, with a female partner who stood in a long line on a road curving around the edge
of a hill. They also distinctly remembered being worried about papers, and that there were men
in uniforms checking these important documents. As the uniformed men came towards the man
that this child seemed to remember being, they heard a gunshot. Grabbing the hand of their
partner, they remembered turning to run down the hill, distinctly aware they needed to get to
a nearby river to escape from dogs that were pursuing them. The men in uniforms were also
yelling as they gained on the escaping couple, using the same words the child had
used for ‘stop’ and ‘come back.’ Their dream ended with the man being shot
in the back, before everything suddenly went white. Even as a child, they recalled an
overwhelming feeling that everything would be better now. The online user recalls their parents
asking around about the words they had been using in the place of ‘stop’ and ‘come back’; as
it turned out, they were using Czech phrases. Much like Andrew’s story from earlier,
we uncovered another reincarnation tale on Reddit that was surprisingly spurred on
by a Navy vehicle. According to the user, they had been watching their friend’s son,
when a large Navy aircraft carrier caught the child’s attention. The boy stared
at it with a vacant, faraway expression, before saying that he remembered when his boat had
sank… and that there had been so many sharks. When the user later mentioned the incident to the boy’s
mother, she simply replied by casually stating: “Yeah, he does that sometimes.”
Hearing a child claim to have died in war or been eaten by sharks is frightening enough,
but another Reddit user reportedly received an ominous statement from her five-year-old
daughter… one that linked to a real personal tragedy. According to the user, one day, out of
the blue, her five-year-old had told her that: “I was in your belly twice, Mama. The first time
I died before I came out... but I came back.” The Reddit user instantly connected
this frightening statement to a very real miscarriage she had suffered, eight
months before falling pregnant a second time with her daughter. She had never told this
to her five-year-old, and yet somehow, the girl seemingly claimed to have been the reincarnation
of the woman’s prior unsuccessful pregnancy. You can come across a lot of terrifying tales
about possible reincarnations like this over on certain Reddit threads. Of course, that does
make it hard to determine exactly which ones are legitimate and which ones are just
ploys to garner some coveted upvotes, or even some Reddit Gold. But occasionally there
are those that make our blood run a little cold; occasionally even our cynicism gets pierced too.
In one such story, a different user describes their son talking about his previous life as a
ballerina. Even at the young age of around three or four, the boy seemed to be able to recall
in immaculate detail things like the lights, the music, and even the audience’s applause
during the performances. Then, the boy’s next words chilled his parents to the bone:
“I was at a party on a boat, and I fell into the water, then – poof! – I was here.”
Some people online have speculated that this particular reincarnation story is eerily
similar to the death of Emma Livry, one of the last ballerinas of the Romantic era, who died all
the way back in 1862. However, rather than falling off of a boat and drowning thanks to a heavy
costume as some have claimed, Emma Livry actually died as a result of infected burn wounds that
were caused when her costume caught on fire thanks to the open flames of candles on stage.
That brings us to one of the stranger of the creepy past life stories we came across: a
child who seemed to remember not just one, but two of his lives prior to reincarnation –
and in both, he wasn’t human… A boy in Thailand had such vivid memories of existing as multiple
animals before his birth, that it even caused him to attack the hunter he thought was responsible
for the end of one of his previous life. Dalawong, only three years old at the time, became the
focus of numerous studies after he made claims that he’d had two past lives. In the first of
these, the boy said he had previously lived as a deer until he had been killed by a hunter.
This is what led directly into the second of the two lives Dalawong seemed to be able to
recall, wherein he was reincarnated not directly into a human body, but into that of a cobra.
This came to light three years after Dalawong was born, as a human child this time, when he
spotted a man at a neighbor's party. The child became enraged, and started frantically searching
for a weapon with which to attack the adult, which is already creepy enough in and of itself.
The man in question was one Mr Hiew, and although Dalawong had never met him before,
and neither had his family. Yet, the child insisted he recognized the man. Intervening before
any harm could befall Mr Hiew, Dalawong’s mother insisted that her son should explain what was
wrong. That was when Dalawong recounted an event that he would have had no way of previously
knowing about. Prior to their meeting, Mr Hiew had an encounter with a cobra, which had
been attacked by two dogs that he owned. He had stepped in and killed the snake, suffering a bite
to the shoulder that left Mr Hiew with a scar. Later, he took the cobra’s remains back home,
in order to cook and eat it, sharing some of the meat with a friend… a man who, as it turned
out, ended up being Dalawong’s father. The three-year-old child’s explicit retelling
of the snake being cornered by two dogs, and then being killed and cooked for food, was
attributed to him having been that very same snake in his previous life. The boy was aware of
acute details of the story too, touching Mr Hiew’s shoulder where the man had been bitten, and even
being aware that his father had eaten a piece of the snake, which both were able to verify. And
the strangest detail in all of this? Dalawong was reported to have suffered from a rare skin
condition that left the lower half of his body covered in scales, not unlike those of a snake.
While there are many more stories of supposed human-to-human reincarnations, Dalawong’s isn’t
the only human-to-animal one that’s been reported. Another boy by the name of Peter supposedly had
a memory from a past life triggered when he was given a candy necklace. According to his story, he
had been a chimpanzee, and described to his mother in detail how he’d been captured in the wild and
later brought to a zoo. It was while in captivity that a visitor had thrown a similar candy necklace
into the enclosure. Being unsure what to do with the necklace, the chimp threw it back.
Another child, named Sam, seemed to have had memories that linked to the life of his deceased
grandfather. His dad, Ron, recalled a particularly creepy incident where, at only eighteen months
old, Sam was asked if he’d had any siblings in this past life. The boy seemed to be aware of
his grandfather’s sister – despite having no way of knowing about her. Sam told his father that
this sister had been ‘turned into a fish’ by some ‘bad guys.’ Sam’s grandfather had, in fact, had a
sister. She’d been murdered 60 years earlier, with her body being recovered in the San Francisco Bay.
One of the better-known stories of reincarnation is that of Ruth Simmons. We’ve already been over
a lot of cases of children saying things that are unnerving about how they died in a previous
life… Now imagine a child speaking in an entirely different voice, one that wasn’t their
own, but that of their past self! Back in 1952, Ruth Simmons was put under a series of hypnosis
sessions, which is an often disputed treatment for dealing with these memories of reincarnation.
It’s commonly referred to as past-life regression hypnosis, however, nowadays it’s not recommended
that young children undergo this treatment. When Mary Bernstein, Ruth’s therapist, subjected
her to past-life regression hypnosis, it regressed the young girl all the way back to her birth.
Suddenly, Ruth started speaking in a heavy Irish accent, recalling many specific details about
her previous life as a woman named Bridey Murphy, who had lived in Belfast, Ireland, during the 19th
century. It wasn’t possible to verify everything Ruth – or Bridey – said, apart from one detail:
she recalled buying food from a Mr Farr and a Mr John Carrigan. The Belfast town directory from
1865 to 1866 lists both men as local grocers… This brings us to arguably the most unnerving
of all the reincarnation stories we were able to uncover. In 2014, in the Golan Heights
region near the border between Syria and Israel, a three-year-old boy revealed details of a
past life that actually led to the discovery of a real unsolved murder. The child isn’t
named in any of the sources we could find, but what is known is that he was a part
of the Druze ethnic group, and sported a long red birthmark on his forehead. This is pretty
significant in a lot of cultures around the world, as many hold the belief that a birthmark like the
one this child had is a physical representation of how somebody died in a past life.
The Druze just so happens to also believe in this superstition, considering these birthmarks to
be indications of death wounds. As a result, if a child is found to have a mark like this, they are
closely observed in case they reveal any potential details about their past lives. If they do, then
it’s customary, in the Druze culture, for village elders to take children to the home they lived
in during their previous life when they reach the age of three. This is provided they’re able
to speak, are known to have birthmarks like the boys in this s,tory and, crucially, are already
able to remember details of their past lives. Sure enough, this young boy had already
mentioned something crucial about his past life: he remembered that he was murdered.
He didn’t fully remember the village he’d previously lived in, so the elders escorted him
through the nearby villages close to where the boy had been born, until one started to feel familiar
to him. As he was shown around one village, the boy approached a particular house and suddenly
found himself able to recall more details about his past life. It triggered memories of
him having lived in this specific house, and he even became aware of his old
name, and shared it with the elders. However, upon hearing it, the elders became
troubled; not only did they recognize the name, but the man the boy claimed to have been was known
to have gone missing four years earlier… But that wasn’t all the boy was able to remember: he
also remembered being killed. The man he’d been in his past life wasn’t just missing, he
had been murdered – and the boy seemed to know his killer’s name. The boy confronted the man in
question, a man he’d never met before in his life, and confronted him with the accusation. He
recited the surprised man’s full name, then the boy told the man he used to be his neighbor…
“We had a fight, you killed me with an axe.” The accused man immediately turned white, refusing
to confess to any wrongdoing. But that was when the child told the elders he could even take
them to the exact spot where he had been buried before reincarnation. So, fully believing him at
this point – after all, the boy had been right so far – the elders let the child take them
to where he claimed his body was. There they came across a pile of stones. And sure enough,
after clearing the stones and digging a few feet into the dirt, they uncovered human remains.
A skeleton had been left there, exactly where the child had said it would be. There was even a
murder weapon left behind too… an axe. Upon this discovery, the elders instantly noticed something:
the killer had used the axe to leave a deep wound embedded in the victim’s skull… a wound that bore
a striking resemblance to the boy’s birthmark. The man the boy had accused had no choice
but to confess to the murder. Creepy right? For more creepy stories like the ones
you’ve just heard check out “Kids Who Remember Their Past Lives.”
Or watch this video instead!
