Understanding The Paranormal Can Help With Anxieties

When my husband Dr. Eric Haseltine and I interviewed national radio and TV broadcast veteran and celebrity host Connie Willis (week-end radio host of the biggest nighttime radio talk show Coast To Coast AM and digital host of Blue Rock Talk her own internet show both covering strange phenomenon) about her personal experiences with the paranormal, she said:

“I was always aware of the presence of a ghost in my house in Louisville, KY, ever since I was a little girl and I never slept much because I was afraid. The ghost was female and was standing next to me when I was lying in bed. She was there every night, but she ceased to appear when my dad died.”

Connie postulates the entity could have been her dad’s mother who committed suicide at a younger age and who probably stayed around the house until her son died.

There are many stories about paranormal phenomena—such as ghosts and past lives (having a past life is like being a ghost in a living body). And sometimes, these paranormal events can give valuable clues to unexplained anxieties.

One such story is about Sujith Jayaratne, a little boy living in the suburb of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Sujith had an intense fear of trucks that became obvious when he was around 8 months old. When he was two and a half years old, just old enough to talk, he spontaneously (without being asked) talked to a monk and described, with very sharp details, a previous life in a town named Gorakan, 7 miles away.

The monk, curious to explore the veracity of Sujith’s details, went to Gorakana and found out that a man called Sammy Fernando died at the age of 50 after being hit by a truck eight months before Sujith was born. The details about that man’s life matched exactly what Sujith described, including an addiction to the liqueur Arrack (which Sujith himself really liked).

This story and many similar stories were studied by Ian Stevenson, a Canadian-born US psychiatrist (1918-2007) who was chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia and who founded the University’s Division of Perceptual Studies (which investigates the paranormal).

Dr. Stevenson investigated over 2,200 cases of children in many countries around the world (including the USA) and wrote about 20 cases strongly suggestive of reincarnation. In those cases, the children, usually around 2 or 3 years old, described with precise, at times verifiable and verified details their previous life. By the time they reached 6 or 7 years old, the children talked less about their previous lives.

Stevenson also investigated 200 cases of children with birthmarks and birth defects that corresponded to wounds of deceased people. In the case of gunshot wounds of the deceased person, Stevenson noticed that the child often had two birthmarks, one corresponding to the entrance wound, the other corresponding to the exit wound.

One example is the case of Chanai Choomalaiwong, a little boy living in Thailand, who was born with a small birthmark at the back of his head and a larger more irregular one on his forehead. When he was 3 years old, he talked about a previous life in which he was a teacher who, as he rode his bicycle to school, was shot in the back of his head and died. He said that in his previous life, his name was Bua Kai and that he lived a few miles away. He described Bua Kai’s parents, wife and two daughters. Chanai asked his grandmother to take him to his previous life family.

When the grandmother took him to his previous life hometown, Chanai directed his grandmother to the house he said he lived in. It was indeed a house in which Bua Kai had lived with his family. Chanai identified his parents, his wife, and two daughters who were still living there.

The parents confirmed that their son had died 5 years before Chanai was born. Their son was a teacher who had died from a gunshot wound as he was riding his bicycle to go to work. The entrance wound was at the back of his head and the exit wound was on his forehead. This matched exactly Chanai’ birthmarks. Three-year-old Chanai insisted that the 2 daughters call him daddy.

Very recently, David Presti, neuroscientist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, describes in his book Mind Beyond Brain (2018), Ian Stevenson’s research. Presti says that “in the unnatural death cases, about 35 percent of the children show intense fear towards the mode of death of the previous person”. For example, Stevenson and Presti mention the case of a little girl in Sri Lanka who hated water. It was impossible to give her a bath when she was an infant. In order to wash her, she had to be held by 3 adults. When she was old enough to talk, she described the life of a girl in a nearby village who had drowned.

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Stevenson and Presti also mention that past-life behavior can show up during play where, for example, a child play-acts the occupation of being a shopkeeper when in a past life, the child was a shopkeeper.

In addition to play-acting, Stevenson and Presti mention interesting gender details, namely cross-gender behavior. They say: “9 percent of the children report a life as a member of the opposite sex.” In those cases, Stevenson describes that the children sometimes identify themselves as being from the opposite sex.

A lot of people don’t believe in ghosts or in past-lives and most of those people will find alternate explanations for the described-above phenomena.

But in the case of unexplained phobias, I like to explore all possible causes and methods of treatment. If a child shows a puzzling fear and spontaneously talks about a past-life experience, my suggestion is to listen (like in my book The Listening Cure) and to treat that fear as a post-traumatic stress disorder.

In summary, we have many documented cases of unexplained phenomena that indicate that there is a lot we don’t know, and that, as we learn more and more about the mind, the body, and about science in general, we need to keep open minds.