Bridey Murphy
Bridey Murphy was a 19th century woman from Cork, Ireland, who began speaking through Virginia Tighe in Pueblo, Colorado, in 1952 when Morey Bernstein, a local businessman and amateur hypnotist, hypnotized her. Bernstein encouraged past life regression of his subject and she cooperated by speaking in an Irish brogue and claiming to be a 19th century woman in Ireland. Bernstein hypnotized Tighe many times after that. While under hypnosis, she sang Irish songs and told Irish stories, always as Bridey Murphy. Bernstein's book, The Search for Bridey Murphy, became a best-seller. (Tighe is called Ruth Simmons in the book.) Recordings of the hypnotic sessions were made and translated into more than a dozen languages. The recordings sold well, too. The reincarnation boom in American publishing had begun.
Newspapers sent reporters to Ireland to investigate. Was there a red-headed Bridey Murphy who lived in Ireland in the nineteenth century? Who knows, but one paper--the Chicago American--found one in Wisconsin in the 20th century. Bridie Murphey Corkell lived in the house across the street from where Virginia Tighe grew up. What Virginia reported while hypnotized were not memories of a previous life but memories from her early childhood. Whatever else the hypnotic state is, it is a state where one's fantasies are energetically displayed. Many people were impressed with the details of Tighe's hypnotic memories, but the details were not evidence of past life regression, reincarnation, or channeling. They were evidence of a vivid imagination, a confused memory, fraud, or a combination of the three.
It is indicative of the typical lowering of the standards of critical thinking when it comes to belief in the supernatural that defenders of preposterous stories such as this one find easily accessible information to be incontrovertible proof of their veracity. For example, Tighe talks about kissing the Blarney stone and knew that the act requires the assistance of someone who holds you as you lean backwards and face up to kiss the stone. This is common knowledge and photos of this are available in hundreds of sources, yet this fact has been cited as strong evidence that Tighe really kissed the stone in a previous incarnation.* Yet, these same proponents of the strange and occult are not concerned that the kind of reincarnation they are considering contradicts everything we know about how memory works, not to mention that it is impossible to explain without rejecting everything we know about human consciousness and the brain. Such beliefs are works of pure imagination, which we tolerate in cartoons and for entertainment, but which any rational creature should rebuke in those who claim to be seeking the truth.
As Martin Gardner says, "Almost any hypnotic subject capable of going into a deep trance will babble about a previous incarnation if the hypnotist asks him to. He will babble just as freely about his future incarnations....In every case of this sort where there has been adequate checking on the subject's past, it has been found that the subject was weaving together long forgotten bits of information acquired during his early years" (Gardner 1957).
Bridey Murphy was a 19th century woman from Cork, Ireland, who began speaking through Virginia Tighe in Pueblo, Colorado, in 1952 when Morey Bernstein, a local businessman and amateur hypnotist, hypnotized her. Bernstein encouraged past life regression of his subject and she cooperated by speaking in an Irish brogue and claiming to be a 19th century woman in Ireland. Bernstein hypnotized Tighe many times after that. While under hypnosis, she sang Irish songs and told Irish stories, always as Bridey Murphy. Bernstein's book, The Search for Bridey Murphy, became a best-seller. (Tighe is called Ruth Simmons in the book.) Recordings of the hypnotic sessions were made and translated into more than a dozen languages. The recordings sold well, too. The reincarnation boom in American publishing had begun.
Newspapers sent reporters to Ireland to investigate. Was there a red-headed Bridey Murphy who lived in Ireland in the nineteenth century? Who knows, but one paper--the Chicago American--found one in Wisconsin in the 20th century. Bridie Murphey Corkell lived in the house across the street from where Virginia Tighe grew up. What Virginia reported while hypnotized were not memories of a previous life but memories from her early childhood. Whatever else the hypnotic state is, it is a state where one's fantasies are energetically displayed. Many people were impressed with the details of Tighe's hypnotic memories, but the details were not evidence of past life regression, reincarnation, or channeling. They were evidence of a vivid imagination, a confused memory, fraud, or a combination of the three.
It is indicative of the typical lowering of the standards of critical thinking when it comes to belief in the supernatural that defenders of preposterous stories such as this one find easily accessible information to be incontrovertible proof of their veracity. For example, Tighe talks about kissing the Blarney stone and knew that the act requires the assistance of someone who holds you as you lean backwards and face up to kiss the stone. This is common knowledge and photos of this are available in hundreds of sources, yet this fact has been cited as strong evidence that Tighe really kissed the stone in a previous incarnation.* Yet, these same proponents of the strange and occult are not concerned that the kind of reincarnation they are considering contradicts everything we know about how memory works, not to mention that it is impossible to explain without rejecting everything we know about human consciousness and the brain. Such beliefs are works of pure imagination, which we tolerate in cartoons and for entertainment, but which any rational creature should rebuke in those who claim to be seeking the truth.
As Martin Gardner says, "Almost any hypnotic subject capable of going into a deep trance will babble about a previous incarnation if the hypnotist asks him to. He will babble just as freely about his future incarnations....In every case of this sort where there has been adequate checking on the subject's past, it has been found that the subject was weaving together long forgotten bits of information acquired during his early years" (Gardner 1957).
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