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Jenny Cockell (born 10 July 1953 in Barnet, Hertfordshire) is an English podiatrist who in the mid-1990s came to fame for writing about her claims of reincarnation. [1]
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Jenny Cockell (born 10 July 1953 in Barnet, Hertfordshire) is an English podiatrist who in the mid-1990s came to fame for writing about her claims of reincarnation. [1]
In her book Yesterday's Children, Cockell discusses what she describes as past life memories of life as Mary Sutton in early-20th century Ireland. The book chronicles Cockell's research into Sutton's life and her subsequent reunion with Sutton's children, some of whom accepted Cockell as the reincarnation of their mother and all of whom accepted her memories as being those of their mother. Cockell describes how reporters from the BBC and The Society for Psychical Research interviewed witnesses who stated that she had spoken about her past lives in childhood and named Malahide as the location. [2] [3] She claims to have drawn a map of Malahide in childhood, in front of a witness. Cockell first started talking about her dreams and memories of "Mary" when she was 4 years old, and after corresponding with a local man whilst researching in 1989 [4] she found the family surname was Sutton. In 1988 she underwent hypnosis after which she claimed to have recovered a few more memories. [5] [6]
In 2000, CBS aired Yesterday's Children, which was a made-for-TV movie adaptation of Cockell's book, with Jane Seymour in the title role. For the TV movie, however, Jenny Cockell was referred to as "Jenny Cole," and the story was somewhat rewritten with, amongst other changes, Jenny Cole being an American rather than a British citizen. [7]
Cockell is also the author of Past Lives, Future Lives, in which she discussed her visions of what she believes could be her future lives obtained initially by precognition then added to by experimental "progression hypnosis" (future version of past life regression), among these a girl, Nadia in Nepal around 2050 [8] who was glimpsed in Across Time And Death and described as "what I now believe to be my next life". Journeys Through Time is about a past life in Japan based on alleged childhood memories.
Researcher Joe Nickell has written that Cockell's alleged past life memories and reincarnation claims break down under critical analysis, claiming that Cockell had a tendency to fantasize and that the evidence suggested her past life memories under hypnosis were not memories but the product of her imagination. [9]
Chris French, a professor who studies the psychology of paranormal belief, thinks it might be confirmation bias of life after death and cryptomnesia of the bits of information she researched which contribute to her belief that she has been reincarnated. [10]
Parapsychology is a field of research that studies a number of ostensible paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, and apparitional experiences.
Bridey Murphy is a purported 19th-century Irishwoman whom U.S. housewife Virginia Tighe claimed to be in a past life. The case was investigated by researchers and concluded to be the result of cryptomnesia.
A psychic detective is a person who investigates crimes by using purported paranormal psychic abilities. Examples have included postcognition, psychometry, telepathy, dowsing, clairvoyance, and remote viewing. In murder cases, psychic detectives may purport to be in communication with the spirits of the murder victims.
Ian Pretyman Stevenson was a Canadian-born American psychiatrist, the founder and director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
Xenoglossy, also written xenoglossia and sometimes also known as xenolalia, is the supposedly paranormal phenomenon in which a person is allegedly able to speak, write or understand a foreign language that they could not have acquired by natural means. The term derives from the Ancient Greek xenos (ξένος), "foreigner" and glōssa (γλῶσσα), "tongue" or "language". The term xenoglossy was first used by French parapsychologist Charles Richet in 1905. Claims of xenoglossy are found in the New Testament, and contemporary claims have been made by parapsychologists and reincarnation researchers such as Ian Stevenson. Doubts have been expressed that xenoglossy is an actual phenomenon, and there is no scientifically admissible evidence supporting any of the alleged instances of xenoglossy.
Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation is a 1966 book written by psychiatrist Ian Stevenson on claims of spontaneous recall of information about previous lives by young children. The book focuses on twenty cases investigated by the author. It has been translated into seven foreign languages.
Past life regression is a method that uses hypnosis to recover what practitioners believe are memories of past lives or incarnations. The practice is widely considered discredited and unscientific by medical practitioners, and experts generally regard claims of recovered memories of past lives as fantasies or delusions or a type of confabulation. Past-life regression is typically undertaken either in pursuit of a spiritual experience, or in a psychotherapeutic setting. Most advocates loosely adhere to beliefs about reincarnation, though religious traditions that incorporate reincarnation generally do not include the idea of repressed memories of past lives.
Joan Marshall Grant Kelsey was an English writer of historical novels and a reincarnationist.
Joe Nickell is an American skeptic and investigator of the paranormal.
Jenny Randles is a British author and former director of investigations with the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA), serving in that role from 1982 through to 1994.
Hans Holzer was an Austrian-American author and parapsychologist. He wrote more than 120 books on supernatural and occult subjects for the popular market as well as several plays, musicals, films, and documentaries, and hosted a television show, Ghost Hunter.
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Reincarnation is regularly mentioned in feature films, books, and popular music. The similar concept of transmigration has been used frequently to the point of cliché in the sense of people "switching bodies", in which the identity of a character transfers to another's body, either unilaterally or by exchange, or to an animal or object. This concept has been used many times in various films, particularly in Indian cinema and television.
Matthew Manning is a best selling British author and healer, alleged to have psychic abilities. As a child he and his family were allegedly subjected to a range of poltergeist disturbances in their homes in Cambridge and Linton and as a boarder at Oakham School in Rutland.
Brian Leslie Weiss is an American psychiatrist, hypnotherapist, and author who specializes in past life regression. His writings include reincarnation, past life regression, future life progression, and survival of the soul after death.
"Memories" is the forty-first episode and the sixth episode of the third season (1988–89) of the television series The Twilight Zone. In this episode, a specialist in past life regression enters an alternate reality in which reincarnation is real and everyone remembers all their past lives.
Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect is a 1997 book by psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, published by Praeger. The book is about birthmarks and birth defects ostensibly associated with reincarnation. Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect is written for the general reader and is a condensation of a two-part monograph Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects.
Shanti Devi, known as Lugdi Devi in her alleged past life, was an Indian woman who claimed to remember her previous life, and became the subject of reincarnation research. A commission set up by the Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi supported her claim, while another report by researcher Bal Chand Nahata disputed it. Subsequently, several other researchers interviewed her, and published articles and books about her.
The Bangs Sisters, Mary "May" E. Bangs (1862–1917) and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Snow Bangs (1859–1920), were two fraudulent spiritualist mediums from Chicago, who made a career out of painting the dead or "Spirit Portraits".
Geraldine Dorothy Cummins was an Irish spiritualist medium, novelist and playwright. She began her career as a creative writer, but increasingly concentrated on mediumship and "channelled" writings, mostly about the lives of Jesus and Saint Paul, though she also published on a range of other topics.
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