Pearl Curran’s Early Life

Pearl Lenore Pollard was born in Mound City, Illinois of English, Welsh, and Irish decent. During her infancy her family moved to Ft Worth, Texas, where her father was employed by a railroad company; she lived for a year with a grandmother in St Louis, Missouri before returning to Ft Worth at about age four.   She was confirmed in the Episcopal Church, although she later recalled that her parents did not attend church.  She took piano lessons and recorded she had a nervous breakdown of some kind at age thirteen as a result of ‘too much piano, elocution, Delsarte, school, and entertainments’, and was sent to St. Ignatius’s Academy, a Catholic institution, for rest.1 

Soon afterwards the family moved to St Louis and lived with her grandmother and aunt.  Pearl’s formal education ended with elementary school.  Sometime during her teens, she was sent to Chicago, Illinois to study voice and while there played the piano at her uncle’s Spiritualist church for a short time.  However, she later stated that she was never a Spiritualist and considered herself an Episcopalian. She worked in clerical positions in Chicago and also sold music.  Between ages 18 and 24, she taught voice and piano in Bismarck, Missouri, returning to Chicago each winter for additional lessons.  In 1907, at age 24, she married John H Curran, a successful businessman twelve years her senior. They settled in St Louis in an upper-class neighborhood.

Elle avait fait connaître qu’elle était née en Angleterre, dans le Dorsetshire, en 1646 (ou 1694), avait vécu dans le village où elle était née, et travaillé aux champs, jusqu’à ce qu’elle eût atteint l’âge de sa majorité ; elle avait alors émigré en Amérique, où, quelque temps après, elle tomba victime d’un raid d’Indiens.

Je remarquerai que dans certaines circonstances, dans lesquelles les expérimentateurs avaient admiré la beauté littéraire du texte médiumnique, Patience Worth avait dit que « au cours de son existence terrestre, elle possédait déjà ce même tempérament imaginatif et poétique ». Cette observation est intéressante, parce qu’elle servirait à éclaircir le mystère d’une petite paysanne décédée qui se manifeste médiumniquement en dictant des œuvres littéraires magistrales en vers et en prose. Effectivement, ces données nous feraient penser que le génie d’écrivain était inné dans cette paysanne du Dorsetshire mais que les conditions sociales très humbles dans lesquelles elle était née en avaient empêché l’émergence.

Les premières œuvres littéraires de Patience Worth ont été dictées en anglais moderne, mais ensuite elle se décida à en donner quelques-unes − dont le magistral poème que j’ai cité − dans la langue et les dialectes du XVIIe siècle, en déclarant qu’elle le faisait afin de prouver son indépendance spirituelle de la personnalité du médium, puisque personne au monde ne serait capable d’écrire un poème tout entier dans le grossier idiome anglo-saxon d’il y a deux siècles et demi ; et cela, sans jamais glisser dans quelque vocable devenu en usage après cette époque. Elle reprit plus tard sa manière du début en produisant ses ouvrages en anglais moderne en employant, de temps à autre, quelques vieux mots, lorsque cela pouvait contribuer à l’efficacité de ses descriptions. Cependant elle continua toujours − et elle continue encore − à causer couramment avec les expérimentateurs dans son patois natif.

En ce qui concerne le poème Telka, je dois dire d’abord qu’à l’époque où il fut transmis, Patience Worth avait cessé d’employer l’appareil médiumnique appelé Oui-ja et elle transmettait des romans et des vers par la bouche du médium ; c’est-à-dire que celui-ci, tout en gardant sa pleine conscience, percevait une voix subjective qui lui dictait un texte mot à mot ; le médium ne faisait ainsi que répéter à haute voix les paroles qu’elle entendait ; un secrétaire les enregistrait. Souvent la dictée était tellement précipitée, que le secrétaire ne parvenait pas à la suivre ; en ce cas Patience Worth répétait la dernière phrase et modérait son allure. Pendant ce temps, la mentalité du médium était tellement indépendante de ce qui se réalisait par son entremise, qu’elle était libre de fumer une cigarette, de s’interrompre pour prendre part à la conversation des assistants, de se lever et passer dans la chambre à côté, pour répondre à un appel téléphonique. Ces interruptions ne troublaient nullement la dictée médiumnique, qui reprenait au point précis où elle avait été suspendue. La même chose se réalisait d’une séance à l’autre : c’est-à-dire que la personnalité médiumnique reprenait également la dictée au point exact où elle s'était arrêtée, même lorsque des mois s'étaient écoulés d’une reprise à l’autre. Une fois qu’on avait égaré les premiers chapitres d’un roman, Patience Worth les donna une deuxième fois, et quand on retrouva la pièce égarée, on constata que la deuxième dictée était une reproduction littérale de la première. 

En revenant au poème Telka, voici en quels termes en parle le docteur Walter Prince, dans sa magistrale étude intitulée : The Case of Patience Worth : 

Pour moi − et des juges bien plus compétents que moi se sont déclarés de mon avis − il s’agit d’une œuvre extraordinaire, digne d’être définie un chef-d’œuvre. Que le lecteur essaye de se débarrasser de toute idée préconçue au sujet de la possibilité qu’il puisse y avoir des auteurs d’outre-tombe ; s’il y parvient, il se trouvera dans les meilleures dispositions pour apprécier le poème dans toute sa valeur. En outre, le lecteur devra se résigner à employer la vingtième partie de la patience et du travail que lui coûta l’interprétation de la langue vieillie d’un Chaucer, en la consacrant à l’interprétation des locutions et du vieux langage employé dans le poème. Si, à la fin du poème, on avait publié un Glossaire des termes moins compréhensibles, on aurait constaté que certains mots curieux sont des vocables authentiques, en usage à cette époque, ou des vocables vieillis ou rares, mais ayant quand même existé, et souvent vivant encore dans les patois.

 En tout cas, même sans Glossaire, tous les lecteurs s’étonneront de rencontrer des mots étranges, comme ils s’étonneront de la signification attribuée à certains autres mots, mais après avoir acquis un peu d’habitude, ils constateront que dans tout le poème on ne rencontre pas beaucoup d’expressions réellement incompréhensibles. (page 224)

Les personnages de Telka vivent ; nous les voyons, nous les connaissons ; aucun d’entre eux n’est la réplique d’un autre. Quelque personnage pourra manifester des tendances et des dispositions analogues à celles d’un autre ; mais, en même temps, il présente des traits caractéristiques qui lui sont propres et qui le distinguent de tous les autres. Par contre, les personnages de Maeterlinck (je me rapporte à cet auteur à cause de la grande réputation qu'il s'est méritée dans un genre analogue), sont presque toujours des ombres sans vie et qu'on peut difficilement individualiser d'après leurs propos, ou d'après tout autre trait caractéristique. − (page 237) Et cependant, nous reconnaissons tous en Maeterlinck un grand artiste. De toute manière, je ne puis m’empêcher de remarquer que, lorsque poindra l’aube du jour où disparaîtra la répugnance existant actuellement contre les productions médiumniques, on découvrira que Patience Worth, si nous devons la juger d’après son poème Telka, est bien supérieure à Maeterlinck... (page 239).

Après avoir parlé ainsi de la grande valeur littéraire du poème en question, je reviens au sujet dont il s’agit, c’est-à-dire au cas de xénoglossie consistant dans le fait que le poème a été dicté dans la langue anglo-saxonne d’il y a deux siècles et demi, harmoniquement combinée avec des vocables et des locutions des patois de cette époque.

Le Docteur Walter Prince a fait une étude comparative sur la langue ancienne parlée et écrite par Patience Worth, en trouvant qu’une partie considérable des locutions et des mots employés par la personnalité médiumnique se rencontrent chez les poètes et les prosateurs anglais des origines, depuis Chaucer jusqu’à Spenser, depuis Waller jusqu’à Pope. Il remarque, à un certain moment, que l’obstacle insurmontable pour les hypothèses de la cryptomnésie et de la cryptesthésie consiste dans le fait de la prononciation de ces mots hors d’usage depuis des siècles, prononciation absolument ignorée aujourd’hui, A propos du vieux mot scow (soulier), que Patience Worth avait dit devoir être prononcé shoo, il note que cette prononciation du vocable survit encore dans le Dorsetshire et ajoute :

« Il y a déjà un mystère dans le fait que l’esprit Patience Worth prononce le mot scow avec le son phonétique encore existant, mais il y a un mystère infiniment plus grand : c’est l’hypothèse d’une personnalité seconde subconsciente (même en accordant à celle-ci une puissance mnémonique sans borne), étant donné que la prononciation phonétique des mots vieillis ne peut constituer une réminiscence mnémonique, puisqu’il n’y a pas de glossaires apprenant la prononciation des vocables hors usage. (page 228).

Le même auteur est parvenu à trouver une brochure d’un poète en dialecte de Dorsetshire, province qui, ainsi que je l’ai dit, a été désignée par Patience Worth comme étant celle où elle est née. Il a alors constaté que dans ce dialecte vivent encore, quoiqu’avec quelques altérations, beaucoup de mots prononcés par la personnalité médiumnique. Entre autres choses, l’habitude d’ajouter un a en tête de beaucoup de mots, comme : a-drowen pour throwing ; a-vount pour found ; azet pour set ; a-blushen pour blushing ; a-vallen pour falling, et ainsi de suite (p. 341).

Toujours à propos du langage vieilli de Telka, le professeur Schiller, de l’Université d’Oxford, remarque :

On demeure ébranlé et impressionné en apprenant qu’un de ses romans en vers libres, intitulé Telka, constitué de 70 000 mots, est écrit en langue anglaise vieillie, contenant 90 % de mots d’une pure origine anglo-saxonne, tandis qu’on n’y a pas découvert un seul mot acquis à la langue anglaise après 1600... Lorsqu’on apprend ultérieurement que la première version de la Bible ne contient que 70 % de vocables anglo-saxons, et qu’il faut se reporter jusqu’à Layamon (1205) pour atteindre le pourcentage de vocables anglo-saxons employés par Patience Worth ; quand on réfléchit à tout cela, on ne peut s’empêcher de reconnaître qu’on se trouve en présence d’un cas qu’on peut appeler un « miracle philologique12».  

M. Gaspar Yost, qui a fait paraître un volume sur ses expériences avec Mrs Curran, écrit à son tour : « Telka est unique non seulement par la pureté de sa langue anglo-saxonne, la combinaison de formes en dialectes de différentes époques, et ses connaissances grammaticales, mais aussi par les altérations et extensions conférées à différents vocables... Patience Worth, comme Shakespeare, emploie parfois un adverbe à la manière d’un verbe, ou d’un nom, ou d’un adjectif... Cela s’explique par la situation transitoire dans laquelle se trouvait alors la langue anglaise ; mais cette remarque constitua une preuve supplémentaire pour démontrer que Patience Worth est en plein accord avec son époque, même dans les anomalies grammaticales... Il n’y a pas de doute que ce langage de Patience Worth doit être considéré comme étant chez elle absolument spontané ; ce qui est abondamment prouvé par la circonstance, qu’elle ne l’a pas seulement employé dans quelques-unes de ses œuvres, mais qu’elle s’en sert constamment dans ses conversations avec les expérimentateurs. (pages 363, 364, 368). 

Il me reste à signaler un autre détail qui est bien parmi les plus étonnants : c’est que ce poème de 70.000 mots (270 pages), en vers libres, jugé par des critiques compétents un chef-d’œuvre supérieur aux ouvrages analogues de Maeterlinck, a été dicté dans un ensemble de 35 heures !

De plus, en outre de ce poème, Patience Worth a dicté un admirable roman satirique intitulé The Merry Tale (Conte gai), dans la même langue anglo-saxonne. 

Maintenant, devant analyser et discuter les hypothèses naturalistiques que l’on peut formuler pour l’explication du cas en question, je me trouve dans une grande perplexité. C’est que j’ai déjà fait ce travail d’analyse et de critique dans ma monographie sur la Littérature d’Outre-tombe ; il n’occupe pas moins de dix pages du texte. Les hypothèses  que j’ai discutées sont au nombre de quatre : 1° celle des personnalités secondes subconscientes, entendues dans la signification strictement psychologique d’une fraction systématisée de la dissociation psychique du sujet ; 2° celle de la conscience subliminale de Myers, comprise dans le sens de l’existence en l’homme d’une personnalité intégrale subconsciente, beaucoup plus vaste et parfaite que celle consciente, douée de facultés supra normales de sens et de qualités intellectuelles dont l’émergence sporadique donnerait lieu aux « inspirations » du génie ; 3° celle de l’existence d’une Conscience Cosmique, dans le sens que lui attribue Hartmann, selon laquelle il s’agirait d’un réel attribut de l’Absolu, c’est-à-dire de Dieu ; en ce cas on devrait admettre que la conscience des médiums entre en rapport direct avec l’Etre Suprême, dans le noble but de mystifier son prochain ; 4° enfin celle de la Conscience Cosmique, dans la signification que lui attribue le professeur William James, selon qui, au point de vue métaphysique, on pourrait supposer l’existence d’un réservoir cosmique des mémoires individuelles, auquel auraient libre accès les médiums, et dont ils tireraient tout ce qu’il leur faut pour abuser les pauvres mortels.

Ne voulant pas me répéter, et ayant littéralement épuisé le sujet dans ces dix pages d’analyse et de critique serrées, il ne me reste qu’à renvoyer mes lecteurs à mon ouvrage, cité plus haut, pour la discussion complète des objections que peuvent formuler les partisans à tout prix de l’origine subconsciente de toutes les manifestations métapsychiques. Ici je dois me borner à remarquer que, s’il m’a été facile de démolir toutes ces objections en me fondant sur de nombreuses circonstances puisées dans les Ouvrages de Patience Worth, en réalité, le seul phénomène de xénoglossie existant ici, aurait suffi à faire triompher mon point de vue. En effet, ni l’hypothèse du subconscient psychologique, ni celle de la conscience subliminale, pas plus que la troisième, du réservoir cosmique des mémoires individuelles, ne parviendront jamais à expliquer la circonstance d’une personnalité médiumnique qui a écrit un poème et un roman dans la grossière langue anglo-saxonne du XVIIe siècle, et qui l’a fait sans jamais tomber dans l’anachronisme d’interpoler dans le texte des vocables latins venus en usage après 1600. Quant à l’autre hypothèse des médiums qui entreraient en rapport avec l’Absolu, c’est-à-dire avec Dieu, dans le noble but de tromper leur prochain, c’est là une hypothèse absolument blasphématoire, je considère même que c’est du temps perdu de la prendre en considération.

Un philosophe, le professeur Schiller, à l’occasion d’un compte rendu qu’il a écrit du cas dont il s’agit, a fait allusion aux deux bifurcations de l’hypothèse de la Conscience Cosmique et il l’a fait dans les termes suivants :

II y a des philosophes qui, une fois engagés sur la voie commode de l’extension hypothétique de la personnalité humaine, ne se montrent guère disposés à s’arrêter tant qu’ils ne rencontrent l’Absolu. Il faut donc nous tenir prêts à apprendre de quelque critique que l’art littéraire de Patience Worth constitue une révélation authentique de l’Absolu ; tandis que quelque autre critique, plus modéré, parlera d’un art coulé d’un réservoir cosmique dans lequel se sont recueillis et croupissent tous les efforts littéraires des siècles. Je remarquerai que cette deuxième version de l’hypothèse en question ne tient pas assez compte du problème de la sélection des faits du réservoir dont il s’agit ; la première version, de son côté, se heurte contre une autre difficulté formidable, c’est-à-dire que Patience Worth constituerait une révélation plutôt humoristique et excentrique de cet Absolu infiniment parfait dont parlent les philosophes. Si l’on me faisait remarquer qu’une personnalité finie ne peut que constituer une sélection de l’Absolu, je répondrais que cet éclaircissement n’éclaircit que trop puisque, si Patience Worth est, en ce sens, une sélection de l’Absolu, alors nous tous, de la même façon, nous sommes des sélections de l’Absolu ; ce qui équivaut à dire que, dans les limites de l’argumentation ci-dessus, Patience Worth devrait être un esprit comme tous les autres13.  

Il me semble que ces argumentations du professeur Schiller sont assez justes et décisives pour me dispenser d’ajouter autre chose. Je remarquerai seulement qu’en ce qui concerne l’hypothèse du réservoir cosmique, l’objection présentée par M. Schiller, c’est-à-dire, que cette hypothèse ne tient pas compte de la sélection des faits que devrait opérer la personnalité subconsciente du médium, est une objection formidable dans le cas spécial de Patience Worth. En effet, si l’on devait supposer que dans le réservoir  en question se trouvaient recueillis et croupissants tous les vocables vieillis de la langue anglaise tombés en désuétude depuis 1600, cela ne représenterait encore qu’un matériel brut qui ne saurait être utilisé que par ceux qui connaîtraient bien la signification de chaque vocable, ainsi que la conjugaison des verbes, les déclinations des noms, les constructions grammaticales, les locutions spéciales des dialectes et les innombrables élisions inhérentes à l’idiome auquel appartiennent les vocables en question. Il faudrait en outre que celui qui emploie les mots soit en mesure de distinguer les vocables vieillis en usage avant 1600 de ceux entrés en usage après cette date. On ne voit vraiment pas comment la personnalité subliminale du médium pouvait faire tout cela, puisque la personnalité normale n’avait jamais possédé ces connaissances ; celles-ci n’auraient pu exister nulle part à l’état latent, étant donné que la structure organique d’une langue est une pure abstraction. Il s’ensuit que l’hypothèse fantastique du réservoir cosmique ne tient pas devant l’examen des faits, et doit être exclue à son tour du nombre de celles capables de rendre compte de l’ensemble du cas de Patience Worth.

Une cinquième, hypothèse resterait encore : celle de la mémoire ancestrale. Mais comme j’ai déjà fait remarquer qu’elle ne s’accorde point avec le fait des médiums qui ont parlé ou écrit en une douzaine de langues ignorées, mortes depuis des milliers d’années, il en résulte qu’il serait inutile de persister à discuter une hypothèse absurde, détruite par l’examen des faits.

En concluant : l’élimination de toutes les hypothèses naturelles, y compris celles plus que fantastiques de nature métaphysique, aboutit au triomphe inconditionné de l’interprétation spiritualiste des faits. On doit donc en conclure logiquement, forcément, que dans le cas de Patience Worth il y a eu l’intervention d’une personnalité spirituelle étrangère au médium, qui connaissait bien la langue qu’elle a employée si correctement. Cela établi, il importe de remarquer qu’au point de vue des phénomènes de xénoglossie,  le cas de Patience Worth doit être considéré comme l’un des plus importants, des plus incontestables, des plus concluants que l’on possède. Effectivement, cette fois il ne s’agit point de simples phrases, ou de quelques pages dictées par un médium dans une langue ignorée ; il s’agit de deux gros volumes qui, dans leur ensemble, sont constitués de 600 pages. Sans tenir compte que la même entité spirituelle, lorsqu’elle cause avec les expérimentateurs, s’exprime constamment dans son dialecte natif d’il y a trois siècles. Je répète donc qu’on ne saurait désirer mieux en fait d’exemples démontrant d’une manière décisive que les phénomènes de xénoglossie existent, et par conséquent, que les métapsychistes ne peuvent se défendre plus longtemps d’en discuter la portée théorique immense, en se retranchant derrière la supposition, désormais sans valeur, de leur existence encore douteuse.

Stevenson enlisted the aid of reincarnation researcher and professor P Pal, who spoke Bengali. He visited the family five times between October 1975 and November 1977, and spoke to ‘Sharada’ during four of the visits. In May 1975, Sinha travelled to Bengal and tracked down a family whose ancestors matched ‘Sharada’s’ statements. Stevenson and Pal later interviewed the head of that family.

Aided by Pasricha, Stevenson interviewed more than 25 people, and consulted with multiple experts, eventually devoting 81 pages of a book to a detailed account.1 He also co-authored with Pasricha two academic papers on the case.2

Akolkar also learned about the case from a newspaper story. Having discovered the family’s identity, he journeyed to Nagpur. His sources were twenty people he interviewed in Nagpur and Ahmedabad, correspondence from Uttara/Sharada and her father, Sinha’s account of his researches with people in Bengal thought to be related to Sharada, information drawn from two major Indian libraries and a 150-year-old real estate deed.

Akolkar also had Uttara undergo an electroencephalogram, which yielded no abnormalities, and a Rorschach test, which yielded a suggestion of an unspecified sexual abnormality (an outcome that so enraged Uttara that she threatened to commit suicide). He published a paper on the case in 1992.3

Uttara Huddar

Uttara was born in Nagpur, Maharshtra, on 14 March 1941, the second-youngest of six children.4 Her father, GM Huddar, was a landowner and farmer near Wardha, a smaller town near Nagpur. University-educated, he was active politically, participating in the resistance to British rule in India, for which he was imprisoned by the British for four years. He also fought against the Franco regime in the Spanish Civil War.

While pregnant with Uttara, Manorama Huddar had a recurrent dream of being bitten on the right toe by a snake. These dreams stopped when Uttara was born. As a child, Uttara had a phobia of snakes that her father described as ‘severe’ when she was between the ages of five and eight years.

The Huddar family spoke Marathi. Both Marathi and Bengali are major languages of India, descended from Sanskrit. However, speakers of each cannot understand the other without training. Uttara’s mother said Uttara never had any trouble learning Marathi, and did not have an accent or use unusual words.

Uttara did satisfactorily in school, studying Sanskrit for several years. She also studied rudimentary Bengali, along with a friend, Priyadarshan Dinanath Pandit, who was also a Marathi speaker. She had no Bengali friends, and no Bengalis lived in the areas the family frequented. She was fascinated by Bengali people and literature, however, admiring the Bengali heroes of the resistance as her father did, and enjoying Bengali novels translated into Marathi. She preferred Bengali heroines to Marathi, saying they were more courageous and feminine. One of her brothers learned to speak Bengali for career reasons, but did not speak it with Uttara prior to the emergence of the Sharada personality.

After completing high school, Uttara studied at private school for a year, then attended Nagpur University, completing an MA in English in 1969 and a second MA in public administration in 1971. She was then hired as a part-time lecturer by the university’s Department of Public Administration. Unmarried, she continued to live with her family according to Indian custom.

At about 24 Uttara felt the urge to marry, and pursued Priyadarshan Dinanath Pandit. He was not interested, however, and Uttara begged his father either to compel him to marry her or arrange for him to be married to someone else so that she could have closure. When, shortly after, the father died, she again tried to persuade Priyadarshan to marry her, but he remained uninterested. Tormented, she decided to throw herself entirely into spiritual life.5

Uttara’s health was normal until her twenties, when she developed asthma, a gynecological illness whose exact nature was not specified to researchers, and a skin disease that was likely eczema. Starting in 1970, JR Joshi (not his real name), a homeopathic physician, began treating her on an outpatient basis. Dissatisfied with her progress, he admitted her to his private clinic-cum-ashram in late 1973.

The first time Joshi touched her, Uttara felt inexplicably that his touch was familiar, and from then on she was drawn to him, in her own words, ‘like an iron particle to a magnet’.6 She shared her writings of the time with Akolkar, who quoted them copiously in his paper. They are poetic and shot through with high emotion and spiritual tension; they also contain a sense that something is about to happen to her.

After a meditation session conducted by a visiting yogi, Uttara’s behaviour began to change. She alternated between periods of excitability and silence and on one occasion wandered away from the hospital in search of ‘a place where she thought she belonged’. She also began speaking Bengali, and changed her attire to the Bengali style. During these spells she began behaving more towards Joshi as a wife toward a husband than a patient toward a doctor, and later would say that he was her husband reincarnated. Joshi had no past-life memories himself. In one incident Uttara, in her Bengali aspect, burst into a room where he was eating with a female assistant and berated him, after which he asked her parents to take her home.

Baffled by Uttara’s new ability to speak Bengali, and her corresponding inability to speak her native Marathi, the family sought help from Bengali speakers. Through them she now identified herself as ‘Sharada’ and gave many details about her life in several Bengali villages, the nearest of which was about 540 miles away from Nagpur. After some weeks Uttara’s normal personality returned, and she remembered nothing of what had happened. But ‘Sharada’ began emerging intermittently, sometimes just for a few days and sometimes for longer than a month. This was still happening thirty years later, although by this time the ‘Sharada’ phases were brief, occurred not more than once a year, and did not really affect her life.7

Statements and Verifications

Over the course of many interviews, ‘Sharada’ told her life story. Her ancestors had settled in a place named Kestopur; her grandfather had moved to Bansberia, one of seven villages that were together named Saptagram. She was born in Burdwan, Bengal, on Janmashtami Day in the month of Bhadrapad (August-September). Her father was a priest at a nearby temple. When she was two months old, her mother died. Her father remarried, but Sharada was raised by her aunt and uncle by marriage, who had no children of their own. She was taught to read and write by her father’s cousin.

When she was seven, her aunt arranged for her to marry her husband’s nephew, Vishwanath Mukopadhaya, an Ayurvedic physician. He and Sharada lived for two years with his parents, but his father opposed the marriage, leading to quarrels. The younger couple eventually moved out. Her father died when she was eighteen. The family moved back and forth between Khulna District, which was then part of Bengal but is now part of Bangladesh, and Saptagram.

Sharada suffered two miscarriages and then became pregnant a third time. When she was five months pregnant, she travelled by cart from Shivapur, where she was then living, to Saptagram, leaving her husband at home. She left her diamond nose-ring and 125 rupees in a cupboard for fear of bandits. While staying with her aunt in Saptagram, she wrote her husband asking him to take her on a pilgrimage to thank the goddess Tara Devi for a safely-completed pregnancy. But less than two months into the visit, she was bitten on the right toe by a snake while picking flowers. She recalled being carried on a litter or palanquin and then losing consciousness.

‘Sharada’ in Uttara’s body did not remember dying, or anything else, between losing consciousness and awakening in the body of Uttara in Nagpur. When Pasricha questioned her about this, she said ‘she came walking in search of her husband’.8

’Sharada’ gave the names of her father, mother, stepmother, her father’s cousin who had taught her to write, the husband of the aunt she’d been staying with when she’d been bitten by the snake, her husband and her husband’s father. She also mentioned several place names.

When Sinha travelled to Saptagram in May 1975, his inquiries eventually led to Satinath Chattopadhaya, who lived in Bansberia, and possessed a genealogy of male ancestors extending back to the early nineteenth century. This included the name that Sharada had given for her father. Sinha copied all the names and relationships of men whom Sharada could have known, and returned to Nagpur to quiz her. Without telling her that he had the genealogy, he asked her for the names of her male relatives, then checked her answers against it. She named Sharada’s great-great-grandfather, grandfather, father, brothers and uncle, and revealed another uncle’s name to Professor Pal later. All these names appear on the genealogy, related to each other as she had specified, with the exception of one brother. His existence was established by a real-estate deed dated 1827.

Unfortunately, since only males had been recorded, Sharada’s name does not itself appear. The name of her husband and father-in-law remain unverified, as Stevenson was unable to access historical records in Bangladesh. Sharada said that every male name in her birth family ended with ‘nath’ because one boy of the family had been initiated into the Nath order of monks. This tradition continues in the family.

Sharada also recalled geographical facts and details about temples and other buildings that were correct, and were highly unlikely to be known by anyone not local. Stevenson lists 24 such verified statements.9

Akolkar, who assumes Sharada died as a result of the snake-bite, calculated that her 24-year lifespan must have either been from 1805 to 1829 or 1807 to 1831.10 Interestingly, another member of the Chattopadhaya family told Akolkar that in the time of his great-grandmother, a woman of the family had died of snakebite.11

Behaviours

Uttara would transform into Sharada most often on the eighth day of the waxing or waning of the moon, the day on which she said she both was born and suffered the likely-fatal snake bite. A witness described the changeover thus:

Visiting the toilet; returning from it in a state of exhaustion and disorientation with pallor in the face; lying on the bed for quite some time, as though in a stupor. … After a while behaving as though she has found herself in a strange house and among strangers; taking a head bath with cold water; then putting vermilion in the parting of her hair; dressing up in a Bengali way, draping only a sari and covering her head with the sari.12

Unlike Uttara, who dressed in the style of an unmarried Maratha woman, Sharada dressed in the style of a married Bengali woman, covering her head with her sari. She would cover her shoulders with a shawl and go barefoot when going out, as early nineteenth-century Bengali women did. She wore her hair loose instead of in a bun as did Uttara, and anointed the part according to the Bengali style described above.

Observers noticed differences between Uttara’s and Sharada’s gestures, gaits, manners and personalities. Sharada appeared to be more shy and meek. She was friendly only with Bengali men, and would not let Uttara’s father or brother touch her. She bathed in cold water rather than warm. She was more religious than Uttara, and worshipped Durga instead of Ganesh. Her wish to adhere to Bengali customs and eat Bengali dishes revealed an extensive knowledge of both.

Conversely, modern technology was unfamiliar to Sharada. She demonstrated complete ignorance of trains, cars, electricity (she wouldn’t touch a light-switch), gas stoves, telephones, closed fountain pens, glass bottles, wristwatches and tape recorders (she would say there was an evil spirit or witch inside the box).

Sharada’s responsive xenoglossy – her ability to carry on a conversation in a language she had not learned to that degree – was attested to by eight different Bengali-speaking witnesses who had conversations with her. She muttered in Bengali while sleeping, and spoke it even when awakened with a splash of cold water.13 She could identify the different Bengali dialects of people she spoke with.14

P Pal noted that, unlike modern Bengali, her Bengali lacked English loan-words. It included more Sanskrit words and also  archaic words, features typical of nineteenth-century Bengali.

However, two other informants, one of them a trained Bengali linguist, listened to tape-recordings of Sharada’s speech and had less generous views of her ability, saying she did not sound like a native speaker. Stevenson wrote in response that he was more inclined to credit those witnesses who spoke with Sharada at length than those who had just heard recordings, one of which was quite short.

Sharada could also write Bengali script. Akolkar includes two samples of her writing in his paper on the case.15

Various people attempted to speak to Sharada in Marathi, Hindi and English, all spoken by Uttara, and found her unable to understand. When she was Uttara, they experimented with slipping Bengali words into Marathi conversations, and she did not understand them.

During some of the lengthier Sharada phases, Uttara would become incapacitated, unable to speak and care for herself, and sometimes unable to swallow. Three witnesses noticed her tongue and the inside of her mouth sometimes became black. On one occasion her lips and tongue became blue and her eyes closed as if she were intoxicated. She pointed toward her toe and said ‘A king cobra has bitten me’, and a black mark was observed on the toe. She appeared to be reliving the symptoms of a venomous snake bite.16

Criticisms and Alternative Theories

Psychological Motivations, Dissociation, Super-Psi

Critics have challenged Stevenson’s assertion that the Sharada case is one of genuine responsive xenoglossy and, as such, represents possible evidence of survival of bodily death. Some argue that it can instead be accounted for in terms of dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously termed ‘multiple personality disorder’ (MPD).

Investigators themselves acknowledge that certain features support such a view. As Stevenson notes, Uttara and Sharada appeared to all who met them both to be two different personalities, distinctive in appearance and behaviour as well as language, and were unaware of each other except through being told by others, as is typical of people with DID. Uttara’s childhood phobia of snakes, a recurrent childhood dream of a husband arriving on a pony and caressing her, and her appreciation for the Bengali heroines of Bengali novels could all fit with this hypothesis.17

Stevenson argues, however, that DID cannot explain responsive xenoglossy: Linguistic fluency is a skill that can be acquired only through practice, and there was no point in Uttara’s life when she could have practiced enough to attain the degree of proficiency Sharada showed.18 Pasricha adds that in cases of DID, a secondary personality generally presents as living in the same time and place as the original personality, not 150 years earlier and 540 miles away.19 For his part, Akolkar notes that Uttara was mentally normal in her capacity for honest introspection, managing the realities of her life and taking every setback as a challenge in her spiritual journey.20

Some critics take issue with Stevenson’s assessment of Sharada’s command of Bengali. Sarah G Thomason criticizes his tendency to prefer the testimony of those Bengali-speakers and experts who found Sharada’s knowledge of Bengali to be surprisingly extensive, over those who considered it to be unnatural and hesitant, as would be the case with a person who had learned it as a second language. She further complains that Stevenson provides too little evidence of Sharada’s command of Bengali to allow an independent assessment.21 Thomason’s critique has been faulted by reincarnation research specialists, for instance that it ignores the opinions of those Bengali-speakers who conversed with Sharada for hours.22

Philosopher Stephen Braude has proposed that the Sharada case can be explained by a combination of dissociation, the functioning of psi, or ‘super-psi’, and a latent linguistic ability akin to abilities that emerge in dissociative states. In his book Immortal Remains, he makes the case that Stevenson and other parapsychologists have failed sufficiently to explore purely psychological motivations on the part of subjects such as Uttara. He speculates that, ‘by developing an alter-like entity (Sharada), Uttara could express and experience emotional and physical urges she could not reasonably expect to satisfy as Uttara’, also that ‘the alter identity (or ego state) would allow Uttara to feel as if she (that is, Uttara) had become “spiritual” in the sense of transcending the physical and emotional needs manifested by Sharada’.

Braude accepts that there may be a paranormal element in the exhibition by Uttara of xenoglossy, but contends that this should be seen in terms of the unconscious operation of psychic functions on her part. He argues that this would facilitate a task that would be impossible by normal means, such as learning a language without practice, especially if, as in this case, the person already had some basic knowledge of it. He suggests that we lack true measures for language proficiency or even skill itself: Every child has natural abilities that are suppressed by cultural forces such as ‘the mind-numbing ordinariness and stupidity of teachers’.23

Reincarnation researcher James G Matlock disputes Braude’s supposition that Sharada’s ability to speak an archaic dialect of Bengali is possible through super-psi by noting that no supporting evidence of such ability is offered.24 He also contends that to analyze Uttara’s psychology alone, as if it were separate from Sharada’s, is a misguided approach. ‘If Sharada is reincarnated in Uttara, she is a part of Uttara’, he writes. ‘Sharada’s psychological needs have become Uttara’s’.25

Philosopher David Ray Griffin follows Braude in hypothesizing the presence of super-psi and in seeking psychological motivations on the part of Uttara. Griffin interprets this as a case of ‘retroprehensive inclusion’, the psychic act of reaching back retrocognitively to find a genuine personality from the past, and adopt it as part of one’s own, along with all its skills and abilities, in order to satisfy some psychological need.

Griffin suggested that Uttara perhaps was motivated by unrequited love and a desperate desire to fulfill her womanhood. As to why she chose the personality of Sharada, he cites such elements as her fascination with the Bengali language and people, her admiration of Bengali women, her desire to marry a doctor (since Sharada had married a doctor) and her snake phobia, which would have been psychically ingrained from her mother’s dream when she was in the womb.26 Matlock notes, however, that Griffin ultimately gave up retroprehensive inclusion as an explanation for reincarnation cases in favour of reincarnation,27 suggesting that he possibly revised his interpretation of this case.

Possession

The Sharada case has features typical of a case of possession, in which a discarnate being takes over a person’s body. Pasricha notes that certain other features make it unlike typical reincarnation cases:

the advanced age at which the past life emerged28

the trance-like state Uttara would enter at the start of a Sharada phase

the way the persona would completely take over

the length of time between the end of the past life and the start of the current one, some 110 years29

As Griffin points out, the case is unlike both possession and reincarnation cases in that Sharada apparently has no knowledge of having died.30

Akolkar questions the likelihood of a woman being possessed by a discarnate entity from so far away and so long before, and notes that three characteristics of typical possession cases are missing:

The deceased person is usually someone the subject knows or knows about.

The subject shows other signs of mental illness, such as schizophrenia or hysteria.

The subject’s motivation is usually obvious.31

Akolkar adds that, in possession cases, the possessing entity is generally aware of itself as being separate from the possessed, and knows its reasons for possessing. None of these apply to Sharada, who was not at all aware of Uttara until she learned second-hand.32 

Stevenson likewise argues that this is a case of reincarnation with unusual features. Sharada’s father once asked her, on Stevenson’s request, what she did when not manifesting. She answered, laughing, ‘I am here all the time’.33 He notes also the presence of related behaviours in childhood and youth, such the snake phobia and the fascination with things Bengali, is a feature of reincarnation cases.34 Akolkar contends that Sharada was in Uttara from the start as suggested by the childhood behavioural signs, living in ‘the deepest stratum of Uttara’s personality’.35

Matlock concurs that the Sharada case is one of reincarnation with unusual features. He argues that the unusual features are partly due to the fact that the Sharada personality began to manifest in adultood, when Uttara was 32.36

KM Wehrstein

Literature

Akolkar, V.V. (1992). The search for Sharada: Report of a dase and its investigation. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 86, 209-47.

Braude, S. (2003). Immortal Remains: The Evidence for Life After Death. Lanham, Maryland, USA: Rowman and Littlefield.

Griffin, D.R. (1997). Parapsychology, Philosophy and Spirituality: A Post-Modern Exploration. Albany, New York, USA: State University of New York Press.

Matlock, J.G. (2019). Signs of Reincarnation: Exploring Beliefs, Cases and Theory. Lanham, Maryland, USA: Rowman and Littlefield.

Pasricha, S. (1990). Claims of Reincarnation: An Empirical Study of Cases in India. New Delhi: Harman Publishing House.

Stevenson, I. (1984). Unlearned Languages: New Studies in Xenoglossy. Charlottesville, Virginia, USA: University Press of Virginia.

Stevenson, I., & Pasricha, S. (1979). A case of secondary personality with xenoglossy. American Journal of Psychiatry 136, 1591-92.

Stevenson, I. & Pasricha, S. (1980). A preliminary report of an unusual case of the reincarnation type with xenoglossy. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 74, 331-48.

Thomason, S.G. (1995). Xenoglossy. [Posted on the author’s website.]

Tucker, J.B. (2013). Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives. New York: St. Martin’s.

Source: https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/uttara-huddarsharada-reincarnation-case

Xenoglossy & Phobia Reincarnation Case of Sharada | Uttara Huddar, Sharada: A Past Life Personality Preserved Intact within the Soul

How Case Derived: Spontaneous Emergence of Past Life Personality

Researchers: Satwant Pasricha, PhD & Others, Research Summarized by Ian Stevenson, MD

From: Unlearned Language, New Studies in Xenoglossy, by Ian Stevenson, MD

Article from: Born Again: Reincarnation Cases Involving Evidence of Past Lives with Xenoglossy Cases Researched by Ian Stevenson, MD (2011) by Walter Semkiw, MD

This case involving Uttara Huddar is especially fascinating, as the past life personality, whose name is Sharada, would spontaneously take over Uttara’s body and would remain for varying periods of time.  In most reincarnation cases, the contemporary individual views the past incarnation as a distant memory and retains control of consciousness.

In contrast, in this case, Sharada, the past life persona, would completely take over the consciousness of Uttara’s body to the extent that Uttara had no memory of what occurred while Sharada was manifesting.  Sharada’s appearances occurred over a period of at least nine years.

As such, the Sharada | Huddar case demonstrates an interesting property of the soul, which is that the soul retains past life personalities within it.  This is discussed further in the section entitled Soul Evolution.

This case also shows that nationality and ethic affiliation can change from one lifetime to another.  An amusing aspect is that the past life personality, Sharada, showed prejudice and disdain towards the ethnic group that the contemporary personality, Uttara, belonged to.  This shows that it does not make sense to establish one’s identity too strongly on national or ethnic ties, as these can change from one incarnation to another.

History of Bengal in Relation to india

Uttara and her family lived in Nagpur, a city of 1 million, located in west central India. In the map provided above, Nagpur is seen near the center of India.  Sharada stated that she lived in Bengal, which is over 1200 kilometers or 750 miles from Nagpur.  In the map provided to the right, Bengal would be located in the area highlighted in yellow and in the area where Bangladesh is now situated.

The history of this region of the world is complicated.  Bengal is a region located between India and Myanmar, which formerly was called Burma.  In 1947, when India gained independence, Bengal was split into two countries along religious lines.  The western section became part of India, which came to be called West Bengal. Kolkata, previously known as Calcutta, is the principle city of West Bengal.  The eastern part of Bengal eventually became the nation of Bangladesh.  West Bengal and Bangladesh still share the common Bengali language.

In India, several different languages are spoken.  The major Indian languages are Hindi, Bengali and Marathi.  Though the three languages derive from a common ancient root language, in contemporary times, they are as different as are Spanish and Italian.  Bengali speakers do not understand Hindi or Marathi, nor do Marathi speakers understand Bengali or Hindi.

Xenoglossy in Reincarnation Case of Sharada | Uttara Huddar

Uttara, the contemporary personality, could only speak Marathi, the language of her parents, while Sharada, the past life personality, could only speak Bengali, a language that Uttara and her family members did not understand.  As such, this case represents an extraordinary case of xenoglossy.

Xenoglossy is the ability to speak a language without learning the language by normal means.  Sharada never learned Bengali, nor did she understand it in her normal conscious state.  Yet when Sharada took over Uttara’s body, she could speak Bengali fluently.

In addition, Sharada provided the names of her family members in Bengal to investigators, which were factually verified through Bengali genealogic records.  Uttara, the contemporary personality, had no knowledge of these family members from a past incarnation.

More amazing is that Sharada, the past life personality, was not aware that she was dead.  Rather, she acted as if she was still alive, transported though time from the ninetieth century to the present.  Sharada did state that she was bitten on a toe of her right foot by a cobra, which was the last incident that she described in her lifetime, but she did not seem to realize that she had died from the snake bite.

Sharada had no understanding of modern inventions, such as kitchen appliances, tape recorders and motor cars, which should have made her realize that she was appearing in a different era.  Still, Sharada maintained that she and her Bengali family were still alive and well.

Uttara Huddar and her Family

Let us get to know the characters in this interesting story.  Uttara, the subject of the case, is the daughter of GM and Manoram Huddar.   As mentioned, the family lived in Nagpur, a city of one million people, where the main languages spoken are Hindi and Marathi, though 10,000 Bengalis also live in the area.  GM Huddar’s family had lived in the Nagpur area for generations.

GM Huddar fought for Indian independence and he graduated from Nagpur University, later becoming a landowner and farmer.  Mr. Huddar spoke Marathi.  He did not know Bengali.  Manorama, his wife, spoke Marathi and Hindi, but she spoke no Bengali.  Family members never went to Bengal and they had no Bengali neighbors.  The Huddar family worshipped the Hindu deity Ganesh, the being with the elephant head, who is pictured to the right.

Spirit Being Involvement in Reincarnation Case

When Manorama was pregnant with Uttara, she would often dream that a cobra was about to bite her right big toe.  Manorama would kick off the snake and then wake up.  It was as if Manorama was experiencing the persona of Sharada, Uttara’s past lifetime, in these dreams.  Sharada, it seems, was trying to communicate to Manorama, Uttara’s mother, that Sharada would be born to her.

This is reminiscent of the dream in the Hanan Monsour | Suzanne Ghanem reincarnation case, also researched by Ian Stevenson, MD.  In that case, Suzanne Ghanem’s mother told Ian Stevenson about a dream that she had, which occurred shortly before Suzanne was born.  In the dream, Ms. Ghanem saw that she would have a baby girl.  Then she saw a woman who appeared to be about forty years old, who she later realized looked like Suzanne.   This woman in the dream said, “I am going to come to you.”  In other words, Suzanne appeared to be announcing herself in the dream, just as Sharada seemed to announcing herself to her future mother though the dream with a cobra biting her right foot.

Ian Stevenson, in fact, called these dreams in which a soul seems to be signaling its upcoming incarnation to future relatives as “announcing dreams.”  Stevenson was told of announcing dreams by the relatives of subjects in many reincarnation cases.

The Monsour | Ghanem reincarnation case, by the way, is also important in that it shows that facial features can remain the same from one lifetime to another.

Reflections of a Past Lifetime in a Phobia, as well as in Dreams and Literature

Uttara was born on March 14, 1941.  Uttara had a normal childhood, though she did have a phobia of snakes.  The snake phobia was severe from ages to six to eight, as judged by her father.

Phobias related to past life trauma are observed in reincarnation cases.  For example, in the Rashid Khaddege | Daniel Jurdi case, Daniel had a phobia of fast moving cars.  In his past lifetime as Rashid, he died when a speeding convertible car he was in flipped over.  The Khaddege | Jurdi case is another reincarnation case which demonstrates that facial features can remain the same from one lifetime to another.

Uttara had a recurrent dream up until the age of eight, in which she saw her husband coming to her riding on a pony.  When he arrived, he caressed her pleasantly.  These dreams, we shall see, reflect the lifetime of the past life personality, Sharada.

As a child, Uttara had a special interest in Bengal and Bengalis, and she read translations of Bengali literature.  This interest appears to have been related to her past lifetime as Sharada, who lived in Bengal.  Note that Uttara read Marathi translations of Bengali literature; she did not learn the Bengali language.

Uttara, as a young adult, went to Nagpur University where she received a master’s degree in English and master’s in Public Administration.  She was hired as a part-time Lecturer in the Department of Public Administration at Nagpur University.  Her education and work history indicate that Uttara is an intelligent and grounded woman.

In 1973, when Uttara was 32 years old, she was admitted to a hospital in Nagpur for asthma and a gynecological problem.  She was under the care of Dr. J. R. Joshi, who was Bengali.  In the hospital, a yogi came to give lectures and instruction on meditation.  Uttara began to practice meditation in the hospital.

Uttara’s behavior then started to change and she began speaking a different language, which was determined to be Bengali.  She also began to dress differently, wearing a sari in the Bengali style, placing a portion of the sari over her head, creating a veil.  Maratha women, such as Uttara, did not wear saris in this way.  Uttara would leave the hospital, stating that she “wanted to go to a place where she thought she belonged.”  (1)

Her parents were completely baffled at this turn of events, as they had no connection to Bengal.  They puzzled at how their daughter could all of a sudden speak Bengali, a language that neither they, nor she previously, could speak.  Further, as their daughter now only spoke Bengali, they could not communicate with her.

Sharada Describes a Past Life in West Bengal

Through Bengali interpreters, Uttara gave details of what appeared to be a past lifetime.  She stated that her name was Sharada, not Uttara.  She said that her father’s name was Brajnath Chattopadhay and that he was a priest at the Kankalini Temple near Bardhaman, also called Burdwan, in West Bengal.  The existence of this little known temple was later verified.

Sharada said that her mother’s name was Renukha Devi.  She said her mother died when she was 2 years of age.  Her father then was remarried to a woman named Anandamoyi.  Sharada said that a maternal aunt named Jagadhatri Mukhopadhaya, who lived in Saptagram, raised Sharada after her mother’s death. As such, Sharada spent most of her childhood in Saptagram, in what is now West Bengal. 

Sharada said that when she was seven years old, she was wed in an arranged marriage to Vishwanath Mukhopadhaya, who was an Ayurvedic physician in the town of Shivapur.  Her husband moved from village to village on a pony to see his patients. Later, when Bengali interviewers again asked Sharada what her husband’s name was, as a gesture of respect typical of Bengali women, she would not speak her husband’s name, rather, she wrote it in Bengali.  Sharada could write, as well as speak, in Bengali, while Uttara could not.

Of interest, when Sharada first manifested in the hospital while Uttara was under the care of Dr. Joshi, Sharada acted towards him as a wife would, which made Dr. Joshi uncomfortable.   She seemed quite attracted to him.  When Uttara found Dr. Joshi dining with a female employee of the hospital, she turned into Sharada and scolded Dr. Joshi in a fit of jealousy.

As Dr. Joshi was a Bengali physician, as was Sharada’s husband, Ian Stevenson wondered if Joshi stimulated Sharada’s appearance.  As one point, Sharada stated that Dr. Joshi was her husband.  It is possible that Dr. Joshi was Sharada’s husband, Vishwanath Mukhopadhaya, in a prior incarnation.  This hypothesis, unfortunately, could not be verified or refuted.

Sharada said that she had two miscarriages and then became pregnant again for the third time.  When she was five months pregnant, she journeyed by cart from Shivapur, where she and her husband lived, to Saptagram to visit her maternal aunt who raised her.  She left a diamond nose ring and 125 rupees at home, for fear that bandits on the road would steal these valuables.

Less than two months after arriving in Saptagram, Sharada said that she was plucking flowers in the garden when a snake bit her on the right toe.  This is the last event that Sharada described in her lifetime.

Multiple Researchers Investigate Xenoglossy Reincarnation Case of Uttara Huddar

At this point, I would like to share that the Sharada | Uttara Huddar reincarnation case was studied exhaustively by multiple experts over a period of years.  A newspaper story regarding this case came out in 1975, which drew the attention of Ian Stevenson, MD, who collaborated with professors in India.

As examples, Professor P. Pal, a reincarnation investigator and a native of Bengal, as well as Dr. R. K. Sinha, also a native of Bengal, were deeply involved.  Dr. S.K. Das, a professor of Bengali, also testified that Sharada was truly speaking Bengali. Tape recordings of Sharada were made and studied.  Ian Stevenson worked with these various researchers and compiled their findings in his book, Unlearned Language.

Verification of Statements Made by Sharada, the Past Life Personality

In May 1975, Dr. Sinha, one of the researchers involved in the case, visited Saptaram in West Bengal and inquired about a family described by Sharada.  After much effort, he found Satinath Chattopadhaya, who produced a genealogy of ancestors extending back to the nineteenth century.  A beautiful and very ornate example of a geneological record or family tree is provided below.

Brajnath Chattopadhaya, the name Sharada stated to be the name of her father, appeared on the genealogy.

Dr. Sinha brought the genealogy back to Nagpur and asked Sharada to name her relatives. Sharada made the following identifications accurately:

Father-Brajnath

Mother: Renukha Devi

Stepmother: Anadamori

Brothers-Kailasnath, Srianth and Satinath

Grandfather-Ramanth

Uncle Devdas, corrected as Devanth

Based on Sharada’s ability to accurately name these relatives, as confirmed by the genealogy, Ian Stevenson became convinced that Sharada was referring the Chattopadhaya family as her past life family.  If this is correct, then her memories or statements were objectively validated.  Unfortunately, names for her husband and father-in-law could not be verified from the genealogy, as they belonged to a different family tree.

Of note, Sharada said that a monk took one of the male family members to become initiated in the Nath order.  She said that villages afterwards called the family the Nath family and that family members took on "nath" as a suffix.  The genealogy did confirm that nath appears as a suffix for all male family members to this day.  Again, Sharada’s statements were objectively verified.

Ian Stevenson makes the point that it was unlikely that the Huddar family could have had read the genealogy in advance of the case investigation, as it was written in Bengali, which the Huddars didn’t understand.

Xenoglossy: Sharada’s Bengali Language Skills

Whereas in some xenoglossy cases, vocabulary can be limited, Sharada could speak Bengali extensively.  Professor Pal reported: 

“I talked with Sharada for about ten hours.  Neither of us had any difficulty in understanding even a word of what the other spoke.  We were talking with normal fluency.” (2)

Professor Pal also noted:

“All the while she was talking fluently in Bengali like a normal Bengali girl and I did not notice any difference in intonation from that of a Bengali lady.” (3)

Dr. Roy signed a document that Sharada and he spoke for two hours exclusively in Bengali.  Her answers were sensible and she demonstrated complete command of the Bengali language.

As such, Sharada demonstrated what Ian Stevenson calls responsive xenoglossy, where the subject not only can speak a language that has not been learned, but the subject can also respond to questions in that language in an interactive way.  Sharada could also read and write Bengali.  In contrast, as noted, Uttara could not understand Bengali at all.

Sharada’s Past Life Knowledge of Bengali Geography and Places

In addition to being able to understand, speak and write Bengali, Sharada demonstrated extensive knowledge of Bengali geography and places, even remote and relatively unknown places.

Recall that Sharada had said that her father was a priest at the Kankalini Temple at Kanchanagar and that it was six kilometers from Burdwan, a city now called Bardhaman, in West Bengal.  The existence and location of this temple was verified, which was particularly impressive as the temple is not well known.  In fact, the village of Kanchanagar had been deserted, possibly after an epidemic, and had been overgrown by jungle for 50 years.

In another example, when an investigator showed Sharada a photo of the Bengali Hanserhwar Temple of Bamberia, Sharada identified it immediately by name.  When asked how many towers the temple had, Sharada correctly stated that there were 13 towers, even though the photo only featured a portion of the temple, showing only seven towers.

She knew that Kali was the goddess of the temple, that the Kali idol had four arms, that the idol was made of neem wood that was painted blue, and that the Rajah of Banberia brought the idol from Benares.  All these statements were correct.

Sharada also accurately described the geography encountered and travel time by boat from Shivapur to Shikarpur.  She also correctly described geographical details encountered in a trip from Calcutta to Shivapur.

Uttara and the Huddar family had no knowledge of the Kankalini or Hanserhwar Temples, or of geographical details regarding travel in Bengal.   Further, the information was obscure and it wound not have been found in the Bengali literature that Uttara read in her youth.

Sharada’s Past Life Knowledge of Bengali Foods

Sharada had a remarkable knowledge of food specialties of Bengal, which she preferred over the food of Nagpur, India.  While Uttara didn’t like sweets, Sharada loved Bengali sweets.  When asked what her favorite sweet is, she said sitabhog, which is made only in Burdwan, Bengal.  She was able to identify sitabhog when it was brought to her.  Further, Sharada could distinguish sweets imported from Bengal from imitations made in Nagpur.

When Sharada fasted, she asked for coconut water.  Coconuts in Bengal have water, whereas coconuts in the region where the Uddars lived do not.

Sharada preferred to eat rice and she put yogurt in her rice, which is a Bengali custom.  In contrast, Sharada and her family preferred bread made from wheat, which Marathi people typically eat.  Sharada reported to investigators a long list of foods that were only eaten in Bengal.

Sharada’s Ignorance of Technology

Sharada had no understanding of trains, cars, electricity, electric lights, electric fans or phones.  Ian Stevenson wrote that glass bottles baffled her.  In nineteenth century Bengal, food and water were kept in earthenware or metal vessels.  When asked if she would like to cook Bengalis meals, she said, “How can I cook?  There is neither an oven or firewood here?”  Cooking on the Huddar’s gas stove was incomprehensible to her.  (4)

When she heard a tape recorder play back songs she sang, she thought there was an evil spirit in the tape recorder

Sharada’s Past Life Bengali Behavior and Distain of Marathi People

Sharada behaved very much like a Bengali woman, in contrast to Uttara’s Marathi ways.  Further, in an amusing and ironic twist, Sharada demonstrated a prejudiced and judgmental attitude towards Marathi people.

Sharada called Marathi people “dasyus,” which means “looters” in Bengali (5).  She was demonstrating a typical Bengali attitude towards Marathi people, who Bengalis thought of as inferior.  Sharada refused to learn the Marathi language, which she considered a harsh language.

Since she would not learn the Marathi language, Sharada could not communicate with the Huddar family.  She spent much of her time alone, reading Bengali books and epics in the Bengali language, which Uttara didn’t understand.

It is amusing and ironic that Sharada was being judgmental and prejudiced towards the Marathis, who would be her own ethnic group in her future incarnation as Uttara. As noted, this case demonstrates that it is not wise to establish identity on one's nationality or ethnic group, as these can change from one lifetime to another.

Ian Stevenson Validates of Tania’s Xenoglossy: Lie Detector Tests Employed in this Reincarnation Case

Ian Stevenson, as usual, studied this case in meticulous detail. He had three different Swedish people sign statements confirming that the language Tania was speaking was indeed Swedish. In the statements, it was noted that the accent was that of a natural Swedish speaker.

Stevenson also had transcripts and tape recordings analyzed by Swedish linguistic experts, who confirmed that Tania was speaking Swedish in a conversational manner. These experts also testified that an excellent Swedish accent was being spoken and that the language was an old form of Swedish, identified as Middle Swedish. Stevenson counted a vocabulary of over 100 Swedish words spoken by Tania.

In addition, Ian Stevenson had Ken and Tania take polygraph or lie detector tests to rule out fraud, which they passed. Stevenson concluded that this was a genuine case of responsive xenoglossy, in which Tania could carry on a conversation in Swedish.

Past Life Personality Jensen Jacoby Emerges and Describes Being Driven into Water & Struck on the Head

In Tania’s first hypnosis or past life regression session, she went back into a lifetime in which she, and a group of old people, were being forced into a body of water. Tania then felt she was being hit in the head and she experienced severe head pain. Due to her apparent suffering, Ken took Tania out of the hypnotic state. Still, Tania experienced head pain for the next two days and she repeatedly felt her head, looking for a lump.

In a subsequent session, Ken told Tania to go back ten years before the episode in which she was hit on the head. Tina then said, in English, in a deep masculine voice, “I am a man.” The personality with the deep voice stated that his name was Jenson Jacoby and that he was a farmer. (1)

In eight sessions that were held between 1955 and 1956, Jenson Jacoby appeared. In the first five sessions, he could understand and reply in English, but his English was halting and it was spoken with a heavy Swedish accent. Jenson could also speak and understand Norwegian. In sessions 6 through 8, Jenson only spoke Swedish. Tina had no memory of what happened in the hypnosis sessions when Jensen appeared.

On the Swedish Coast, Past Life Personality Jenson Jacoby Raises Livestock, Eats Salmon & Hunts Bears

Jenson described that he lived in a tiny village called Morby Hagar, which was near a harbor town called Havero. Another nearby town was called Torohaven. Jensen related that he raised cows, horses, goats and chickens. He baked bread and made goat cheese. Jenson said that he would take his produce to be sold at Havero, the town with a sea harbor. At times, his family would eat salmon, which presumably came from the harbor town.

Jenson related that he was one of three sons. He had a wife whose name was Latvia, who made poppy-seed cakes and poppy-seed juice. The couple had no children. Jenson related that he built his own stone house, that he hunted for bears and that he liked to drink at a tavern. Jenson related that he worshiped Jesus Christ.

Past Life Personality Jenson Does Impersonations

In one session, Jensen, speaking Swedish, did a comical impersonation of a drunken man at an inn trying to sing. Jenson also showed strong emotion when he was shown a picture of a horse, apparently as it reminded him of home.

Xenoglossy: Jenson Knows Swedish Terms, Including a Skuta

Jenson knew of Swedish things from prior centuries. For example, when shown a model of a Swedish seventeenth century sailing ship, Jenson correctly called it a “skuta” or “skute.” He also correctly named a Swedish container used to measure grain. When shown a picture of a wolf, he correctly named it in Swedish.

In contrast, when shown a modern tool, such as a pair of pliers, Jenson could not name it.

Jenson’s Past Life Hatred for War & Russians

Jenson described a hatred for warfare and a fear of Russians. When asked how his life ended, Jenson related that he was engaged in some type of fight with enemies, was forced into a body of water and received a blow to the head, which apparently killed him.

This statement corresponds to the memory that Tania experienced when she was first put under hypnosis, as well as her subsequent headache, which made her search for a lump on her head.

Reincarnation versus Possession

Ian Stevenson, firmly believed in the legitimacy of the case of Jenson Jacoby | TE. He notes that the physician who conducted the hypnosis sessions on his wife, KE, who we have named Ken, never sought publicity for the case. Based on the polygraph testing and his familiarity with the couple involved, Stevenson rejected that any fraud was involved.

Stevenson concluded that Jenson Jacoby had once lived on the west coast of Sweden, near Norway, in the seventeenth century. Gothenburg is the largest city in this area. Place your cursor on the map to enlarge it and arrow keys to scroll up and down.

As Tania, or TE, had no memory of what occurred when Jensen appeared, Stevenson did raise the question of whether this represented a case of reincarnation or of possession by a discarnate spirit. Either way, Stevenson commented that the case represented strong evidence for the survival of personality after death.

Stevenson did feel that reincarnation may be the more plausible explanation. In defense of this position, he posed the following question:

If Jenson was a discarnate spirit, why would the Christian, Swedish spirit from the seventeenth century, Jenson Jacoby, show up in Philadelphia in 1955, speaking through a Jewish woman of Russian descent?

To verify that Dolores had not come by her knowledge of German in a normal way, Stevenson travelled to Clarksburg, West Virginia, where she and her husband had spent their early lives, and interviewed 19 people with relevant knowledge.  He also consulted with a local historian on the settlement of German-speaking immigrants in the area, and determined with certainty that German instruction was not available in schools Dolores had attended.  Researching Dolores’s ancestry, he turned up some German ancestors who had all died before she was born.

In 1974, a lie-detector test confirmed that Dolores sincerely believed she had not acquired her knowledge of German in a normal way.  She also visited the University of Virginia’s Department of Parapsychology laboratory, where she had further conversations in German while regressed.  However, she then declined to undergo further experimentation, because of fatigue and criticism by the family’s Christian community.

Stevenson estimated his time interviewing the Jays at about 25 hours.  With the help of an assistant, he transcribed and translated 19 taped regression sessions, resulting in 346 pages of transcript.  The couple also provided a 40-word German passage Dolores Jay had written while in an altered state.

Because Stevenson was unable to identify the previous person by use of historic records, he published the case as one of responsive xenoglossy rather than reincarnation, and included it in his book Unlearned Languages: New Studies in Xenoglossy. All information in this article is drawn from this report except where otherwise noted.

Carroll Jay published a book on the case in 1977.1

Gretchen’s Life

The personality identified herself as Gretchen Gottlieb. She further stated that she lived in Eberswalde, Germany, with her father Hermann Gottlieb, the mayor of the town, who had white hair. The family had a day-time housekeeper named Frau Schilder, or Schiller, who had four children. Her mother, Erika, had died when Gretchen was eight, and she had no brothers or sisters.  They lived in a stone house on a street named Birkenstrasse. The town had a college, church, butcher shop and bakery.

Gretchen further stated that she had brown hair and either blue or green eyes, wore a brown dress and helped Frau Schilder take care of her children, the youngest of whom was three.  She did not attend school, and seemed to have little background knowledge, being unable to name a large city nearby (Berlin is just 45 kilometers from Eberswalde), or the nearest large river, or the current head of state. She was sure that the Pope’s name was Leo, and spoke negatively of Martin Luther, holding him responsible for religious strife in the area (she was Catholic); she frequently expressed worry about being overheard talking by authorities. 

Gretchen would not shift to an age older than sixteen when requested to, indicating that she probably died at about that age. She gave conflicting accounts of the cause, sometimes referring to an illness, other times suggesting it happened during a period of imprisonment.

Certain details suggested to Stevenson that Gretchen had lived in Germany in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. She used German words not in common usage until then, notably Bundesrat, a ruling body in German states from 1867. A political struggle took place between the government and the Catholic Church in the 1870s – the strife that Gretchen was apparently referring to – and Leo XIII became pope in 1878.

However, independent efforts by Stevenson and a journalist failed to discover any traces of a historical Gretchen. Mayoral records for Eberswalde showed there had never been a mayor named Hermann Gottlieb, a birth record for a Gretchen Gottlieb could not be found, and there is no street named Birkenstrasse in Eberswalde.  Stevenson considered other possibilities: that Gretchen had been illegitimate and given a different surname; that she lived in a different town named Eberswalde; or that she had actually lived in Eberstadt, which matched the geographical details more closely. But none of these leads proved fruitful.

James G Matlock notes that Carroll Jay’s interpretation of Gretchen’s geographical statements differs from Stevenson’s, in part because of a later regression in which she mentioned a town named Heppenheim. If Eberswalde referred to a region rather than a town, Matlock suggested, she could have been saying Burgenstrasse rather than Birkenstrasse, as Heppenheim has a street of this name.  A Bundesrat was formed in Heppenheim in 1848 and figured in the Catholic-Protestant political strife at that time, which would place Gretche’s life somewhat earlier that Stevenson believed.  Matlock writes: ‘I do not know what reason Stevenson may have had for ignoring this information but, if accepted, it would mean that Gretchen was a great deal more accurate in her statements than Stevenson portrays’. 

Xenoglossaic German

Stevenson and two native German speakers who spoke with Gretchen attested that her German was responsive: she could answer questions and carry on conversations.  It contained grammatical errors, and attempts to broaden the topic beyond what she said spontaneously generally failed.  One native German noticed a heavy accent and statements that did not entirely make sense.  When Stevenson analyzed this session, he found that she made eight pertinent responses for every one inappropriate one when asked questions in English; when asked questions in German the ratio was twelve to seven.

Gretchen mostly spoke only in response to questions, and would sometimes take a long time to do so, occasionally answering after the next question had been asked (Stevenson attributed this to her deep hypnotic state).  When she did speak spontaneously, it was usually about how dangerous it was to talk, since the Bundesrat might be listening, or about the religious struggle that scared her.

The fluency fluctuated from session to session.  The total number of German words she uttered before anyone used them while speaking to her, was 237; half of these she uttered before any German at all was spoken to her.  She never spoke grammatically-correct sentences longer than five words, or any sentences longer than seven. They were generally in the present tense and of primitive construction; sometimes the word order was wrong or words were omitted. 

Her pronunciation ranged from satisfactory to excellent, in Stevenson’s estimation, and she would sometimes firmly correct others’ mispronunciations or misinterpretations. Some words were pronounced in an American English accent, but generally she pronounced words as a German speaker would, ruling out the possibility that she had learned German only by reading it.

Dreams and Spontaneous Emergences

More than a year before Gretchen’s first appearance, Dolores Jay had a dream which she later felt must refer to Gretchen.  She saw a girl wearing a long dress with a lace front, riding sidesaddle on a horse, with an older man who was on foot. An angry crowd attacked them with sticks and stones, and while the man escaped, one of the crowd grabbed the horse’s bridle, at which point Dolores awoke.  She began the dream as a spectator to the scene, but by the end of it was experiencing it from the point of view of the girl.

During the winter of 1971-2, Dolores experienced nightmares in which she saw Gretchen beckoning to her, inviting her to join her on another plane of existence.  She also sensed Gretchen’s presence during the day, feeling that if she turned around she would see her.  Dolores recounted that while she found these experiences frightening, she was never frightened by Gretchen as a person, feeling she was friendly but in distress.

When, two years later, Gretchen emerged spontaneously, she described a vision of a small girl taken by her father to a strange city where a man was addressing a crowd in front of a church. A policeman on horseback arrested the speaker and dispersed the crowd, including the girl and her father, who fled.  When asked who the girl was, Dolores answered ‘it was me’, but without mentioning the name Gretchen.

German Writing

Dolores Jay wrote a few words in German in the early stages of a session in April 1971. Before she’d been regressed to the Gretchen personality she seemed to stare at something, and when her husband asked her what she was seeing, she replied, ‘a girl’.  At this point he was called out of the room and in his absence Dolores spoke 39 words in German, which were picked up by the tape recorder. When he returned, Dolores said Gretchen wanted her to write, and, reluctantly, she attempted it: she wrote 40 German words, almost the same as those that had earlier been recorded. The meaning is unclear. The passage shows a mix of German words spelled as if an English speaker were spelling them phonetically, and German words spelled correctly, as if the writer knows how to write in German. The letters were separate, unlike Dolores’s usual handwriting which was joined up.

Criticism and Controversy

Stevenson formed the view that the Gretchen personality referred to a past life of Dolores Jay. He held that skill in speaking a language responsively cannot be transferred from one person to another either psychically or through normal means, but only acquired through practice.  However, because he could not identify the previous person he presented the case as evidence of responsive xenoglossy rather than as evidence of reincarnation.

Controversy followed the publication of a detailed 1975 account of the case in the Washington Post, which was based on interviews with Carroll Jay. Some criticized Jay for having sought out publicity, accusing him of having faked the case for commercial gain. Stevenson denied this, claiming that Jay’s motivations for approaching the media were to counteract accusations from his Christian community that he was ‘consorting with the devil’ and to make a public contribution to parapsychology.

Some critics dismissed the case as fraudulent, without providing substantive arguments.2  Others acknowledged Stevenson’s painstaking efforts to rule out fraud, but contested his claim that this was a case of genuine xenoglossy. Sarah G Thomason focuses on the weakness of Gretchen’s German: she describes the vocabulary as ‘minute’ and the pronunciation ‘spotty’, referring to Gretchen’s anglicized mispronunciations of the German words blau (blue) and schön (beautiful) as examples, and noting her use of the Germanized English word ‘schicken’ for ‘chicken’.3

Gretchen’s answers to questions, Thomason states, are ‘largely confined to utterances of one or two words, and many of them are simply repetitions of the interviewer’s question’. Thomason characterizes Gretchen’s writing as containing ‘spelling errors that one might expect from an English speaker who had learned only a little German’.4 She points out that Gretchen seemed to speak German better than she understood it, which is inconsistent with the normal tendency for people to understand a non-native language than to speak it.

Thomason also likens what she calls ‘Gretchen’s anachronistic concerns about religious persecution’ to historically-inaccurate statements from a separate regression case by another hypnotist. However, she does not mention that Gretchen’s declared Catholicism, use of terms introduced into German by certain dates, and mention of a Pope named Leo all fit well with a time period in which Catholics were being persecuted in Germany.5 

Thomason further attributes Dolores Jay’s apparent German knowledge to ‘the subject’s ability to use clues in the conversational context to make educated guesses about the interviewer’s intent’ as well as the fact that many of the exchanges involved yes-or-no questions about facts which only the subject could know and are therefore impossible to judge for accuracy, or involved her repeating back questions.6

In a letter responding to criticisms, Stevenson writes: ‘Almost anyone might pick up casually a little German, but not the amount – small as it was – that Gretchen knew’.7

Karen Wehrstein

Literature

Matlock, JG (1987), Review of Unlearned Languages: New Studies in Xenoglossy. Journal of Parapsychology, vol. 51, pp 99-103.

Rogo, DS (1985). The Search For Yesterday: A Critical Examination of the Evidence for Reincarnation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Stevenson, I (1984). Unlearned Languages: New Studies in Xenoglossy. Charlottesville, Virginia, USA: University Press of Virginia.

Thomason, SG (1995). Xenoglossy.  

Retrieved June 24, 2017 from http://www-personal.umich.edu/~thomason/papers/xenogl.pdf .

References

• 1.Jay, C. E. (1977). Gretchen, I Am. New York: Wyden Books.

• 2.Rogo (1985) p 227.

• 3.Thomason (1995).

• 4.Thomason (1995), pp 5-6.

• 5.Thomason (1995), pp 12.

• 6.Thomason (1995), p 14.

• 7.Stevenson (1987), Letter to the Editor, Journal of Parapsychology 51: 373.

The beautifully strange mystery of Iris and Lucía

by Christopher Laursen

Historian Christopher Laursen lauds the research done in the case of a 15-year-old Hungarian girl who was mysteriously possessed or transformed into a Spanish washerwoman who had died in Madrid in 1933.

Iris practiced as a Spiritualist medium. She regularly became possessed by spirits, some of whom remained in control after the séances were over. When she was fifteen, a 41-year-old Spanish charwoman who called herself Lucía Altarez de Salvio took control, but did not leave, as earlier communicators had done. Lucía spoke Spanish, understood no Hungarian, and only gradually learned German, the language spoken by Iris’s family. She said that she had died three months earlier in Madrid, leaving behind a husband and several children.

After the transformation, Iris found a new talent in cooking and enjoyed singing Spanish songs and flamenco dancing. Investigators were never able to find a record of Lucía in Madrid or elsewhere in Spain, however. Some people who came into contact with Lucía doubted that she really was from Madrid, although it was discovered that besides speaking Spanish responsively, and singing and dancing in a Spanish style, she was acquainted with devices that would have been appropriate to a Spanish woman at her putative station in life. In any event, as with Sharada, although the previous personality could not be identified, there seems to be no question about Lucía’s ability to speak Spanish responsively after she took over Iris’s body.11

What happened to Iris Farczády? The 15-year-old Hungarian girl was an excellent though shy student with a penchant for math and languages, fluent in German and French in addition to her mother tongue. At home, the teenager would partake in family séances with her mother - maybe a little something extraordinary in an otherwise typical upper middle class upbringing. British psychical researcher Mary Rose Barrington wrote that "her attendance at school became erratic, owing to her participation in family Spiritualist circles, an activity encouraged by her mother and also, possibly, by a prediction made a year earlier that she would undergo 'a great psychic miracle.'" 

Practising trance mediumship, Iris would channel many different personas, even beings she claimed to be from other planets. Some of them were difficult to dislodge, one of them remaining in Iris for a full week; virtually all of them mentally exhausted her for long periods after séances. "Then one day in 1933, a Spanish-speaking entity barged in and took over Iris's body," Guy Lyon Playfair wrote in this month's Fortean Times, "showing every sign of intending to stay in it."

Iris Farczády had transformed in an instant into Lucía Altarez de Salvio, a washerwoman from Madrid who had died at the age of 41 three months prior to possessing the teenaged girl's body, leaving behind in her past life fourteen children and passionate Communist ideals. All traces of Iris had vanished. The new Iris - Lucía - no longer had knowledge of Hungarian or German, but spoke amazingly fluent Spanish. She did not return to school, became preoccupied with household duties (especially cooking and washing) and later had a career as a Spanish-style dancer and Spanish language tutor. Lucía had to relearn German and ended up marrying a German-Hungarian man when she was 21, bringing up three children of her own (all of whom were resistant to people studying their mother). After the Second World War, she studied to become an electrical engineer.

Playfair's article is largely drawn on the research Mary Rose Barrington, Peter Mulacz (an Austrian psychology lecturer) and Titus Rivas (a member of the Dutch Society for Psychical Research who fluently spoke Spanish) did when were brought together and ended up meeting Lucía/Iris in her Hungarian village not far from Budapest in 1998.

Even after thorough investigation, psychologists, linguists and psychical researchers were still unable to explain what happened to Iris Farczády in the 65 years since her transformation. Moreso, they have never been able to accuse Iris of consciously assuming a new personality. Despite inconsistent details she gave of her past Spanish life every bit as unusual as the case itself and the failure to turn up information that corroborated her claims, evidence demonstrated that Lucía indeed was a poor washerwoman from Spain who had inadvertently taken possession of Iris's body three months after death. Her knowledge of little known Spanish terms, recollections of her past life and the stark transformation in every respect of her personality appear to be astonishing proof in favour of Lucía's story. It seems that the knowledge Lucía possessed of life in Madrid, politics, religious life, Spanish saints and obscure linguistic details that most non-native speakers would not know were beyond anything a 15-year-old - or anyone, it would seem - could ever invent.

The things she did not know so well seemed quite human, especially when asked about things long ago. "Pressed about locations, she said she had no more idea about the layout of Budapest streets and statues than she had now or ever had of those in Madrid," Barrington, Mulacz and Rivas reported in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. "It was clear that she was not trying to impress us with her memories of her claimed previous life, and one could get the impression that she was bored with the whole subject of Lucía Altarez de Salvio and her life in Madrid."

The three researchers theorized: "The case of Iris Farczády might be seen as an extreme member of a wide class of phenomena that fall under the general heading 'change of personality.' In trance mediumship the ostensible replacement of the medium's identity by that of a 'communicator' claiming to be have survived death is very familiar, but the (apparent) total replacement of the host personality by a persistent 'guest' for the remainder of the original person's life, which appears to have occurred in the case presented here, may be unique." Ian Stevenson, a well-known American academic researcher of past life phenomena, had documented a similar case in India in which a woman had a near death experience, and returned as a different persona, a woman named Shiva from a village 60 miles away, a strange event which appears verifiable. Such permanent identity changes are extremely rare anomalies. Those who have them claim to have died and been reborn. We don't know for certain.

Playfair wrote that early attempts were made to get Iris back through hypnosis, to no avail. "In trance, the original Iris re-emerged complaining indignantly about the woman who had taken her over, but apparently becoming resigned to the fact that the invader was not going to go away," he wrote.

Lucía could not recall details of Iris's life. "She remembered floating happily in space, rather like a small boat on water, in a state of contentment, and then suddenly there she was in the body of this attractive young girl, a virgin again, as she put it, after having given birth to 14 children; and when she looked down she saw lovely young hands, not the worn-out hands of a 41-year-old washerwoman," wrote Barrington, Mulacz and Rivas.

In Fortean Times, Playfair invites the readers to come up with clues that may help verify Lucía's identity since no records of her life in Madrid can be found. During the psychical researchers' visit in 1998, Lucía obliged them with a song no one has been able to recognize, with lyrics like:

Hace mucho tiempo que haces embrazos

(You've been causing problems for ages)

Pero en el corazón vive todavia el amor

(but love is still alive in the heart)

"Rivas did not recognize the song," Playfair wrote, "and would be glad to hear from anybody who does. If it is a genuine Spanish song form the 1930s or earlier, it will be an important piece of evidence."

What happened to Iris Farczády remains an enigma, as do the facts presented by her "replacement" persona, Lucía Altarez de Salvio. Researchers tried hard, but could not find evidence of Lucía's past life. If her story were true, and she were a woman with strong Communist ideals, it would be hard to say if her family could have survived the brutal Spanish Civil War and its fascist aftermath. They may have even escaped Spain, where the search for Lucía's family was limited.

No doubt this is one of the most amazing mysteries, among the strangest ever documented.

Further reading:

"A Stolen Life" by Guy Lyon Playfair in the April 2007 issue of Fortean Times, pp. 30-34. Website: http://www.forteantimes.com/

"The Case of Iris Farczády - A Stolen Life" by Mary Rose Barrington, Peter Mulacz and Titus Rivas in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, April 2005, pp. 49-77.

Everyone is, no doubt, acquainted with this case: Judge Edmonds had a daughter in whom mediumistic faculties were revealed by the spontaneous phenomena which occurred in her presence, which soon aroused her curiosity to such an extent that she began to frequent séances. When another personality manifested through her she sometimes spoke different languages of which she was ignorant.

One evening when a dozen persons were assembled in Mr. Edmonds' house, in New York, a Mr. Green, a New York artist, was present, accompanied by a man whom he introduced under the name of Mr. Evangelides, of Greece.

Soon a personality manifested through Miss Laura Edmonds, who spoke to him in English and communicated to him a large number of facts, tending to prove that the personality was that of a friend who had died in his home several years ago, a person of whose existence even no one present could ever have known. From time to time the young girl uttered words and entire phrases in Greek, which suggested to Mr. Evangelides to ask her if she could speak to him in Greek. He himself, as a matter of fact, spoke English with difficulty.

The conversation was carried on in Greek on the part of Evangelides, and alternately in Greek and in English on the part of Miss Laura. Now and then Evangelides seemed to be much affected.

The next day he resumed his conversation with Miss Laura after which he explained to those present that the invisible personality who seemed to be manifesting through the medium was one of his intimate friends, who had died in Greece, the brother of the Greek patriot, Mark Botzaris; this friend informed him of the death of one of his own sons, who had remained in Greece and was in excellent health at the time that his father left for America.

Evangelides returned several times to Mr. Edmonds' house, and, ten days after his first visit, he informed him that he had just received a letter announcing the death of his son; this letter must have been already posted when the first interview of Mr. Evangelides with Miss Laura took place.

"I should like," writes Judge Edmonds on this subject, "that some one should tell me how I should regard this fact. It is impossible to deny it, it is too obvious. I might as reasonably deny that the Sun shines on us … This happened in the presence of eight or ten persons, all educated, intelligent, reasonable, and all as capable as anyone of distinguishing between illusion and real fact."

Let us, however, make an effort in psychical acrobatism: Let us suppose that Evangelides had telepathically received tidings of the death of his son, and that this information had remained latent in his brain until the clairvoyance of Miss Laura Edmonds managed to evoke it, in connection with that which related to Mark Botzaris and all the rest. Still it would be illogical to attribute to the medium the gift of speaking the Greek language, and the knowledge of the death of the boy to two distinct causes. How came it that Miss Laura spoke Greek? The hypothesis that can explain this phenomenon has not yet been invented!

Mr. Edmonds informs us that his daughter had never heard a word of modern Greek up to that day. He adds that on other occasions she spoke as many as thirteen different languages, including Polish, Italian, Indian, whilst, in her normal state she only knew English and French – the other only so far as it can be learnt in school. And this J.W. Edmonds was not a nobody, far from it. He was President of the Supreme Court of Justice of New York, and President of the Senate of the United States. No one has ever thrown a doubt on the absolute integrity of his character; his writings prove his brilliant intelligence. There is, therefore, no more reason for refusing to give credence to his accounts, so well authenticated, than to those of the savants who experiment with Eusapia Paladino and others.

Published on Dec 21, 2015

Walter Semkiw, MD, is founder and president of the Institute for the Integration of Science, Intuition, and Spirit. He is author of Born Again, Return of the Revolutionaries: The Case for Reincarnation and Soul Groups Reunited, and Origin of the Soul and the Purpose of Reincarnation.

Here he points out that some of the strongest evidence supporting the concept of reincarnation comes from rare, but well-documented, cases of xenoglossy – the ability of an individual to speak a language that they did not learn in their present lifetime. He describes some of these cases in detail. He also discusses some of the possible alternative explanations to reincarnation, such as possession, mediumship, or super-ESP. He explains why he feels that reincarnation offers the best explanation. He notes that “announcement dreams” often precede cases that are identified as reincarnation. He also discusses the notion that many people believe themselves to have been famous personalities in a past lifetime.

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in "parapsychology" ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He serves as dean of transformational psychology at the University of Philosophical Research. He teaches parapsychology for ministers in training with the Centers for Spiritual Living through the Holmes Institute. He has served as vice-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, and is the recipient of its Pathfinder Award for outstanding contributions to the field of human consciousness. He is also past-president of the non-profit Intuition Network, an organization dedicated to creating a world in which all people are encouraged to cultivate and apply their inner, intuitive abilities.

Responsive, Recitative, and Passive Xenoglossy

The term xenoglossy was coined by French physiologist and psychical researcher Charles Richet at the beginning of the twentieth century. He used it to refer to words in languages unknown to the writer that appeared in automatic scripts.1 In 1974, Ian Stevenson distinguished between responsive and recitative xenoglossy in speech. In responsive xenoglossy, a person can converse intelligibly in an unlearned foreign language, whereas in recitative xenoglossy, the language is deployed in an uncomprehending, rote way only.2 Most recently, James Matlock introduced the term passive xenoglossy to describe the unconscious influence of an unlearned language on pronunciation and other aspects of speech production, reading, and writing.3 Written xenoglossy is also called xenography.4

Xenoglossy involves the use of a real language, unlike glossolalia, or ‘speaking in tongues’, which is the utterance of nonsense syllables in a form that sounds like a real language. Xenoglossy is sometimes called xenoglossia, especially when it refers to the Biblical ‘gift of tongues’, a miraculous, divine bestowal of the ability to understand and speak an unlearned language.5

Many cases of apparent xenoglossy are demonstrably false. In one case studied by Stevenson, a set of Norwegian triplets thought to be speaking Finnish amongst themselves turned out to have developed a private language understandable only by them.6 In other instances, case subjects used words of actual languages to which they had been exposed earlier in life. In one famous example, a young man under hypnosis spoke and then wrote some words in Oscan, an extinct language of southern Italy. Upon investigation, it was found that he had taken the passage from a book that lay open on a library table within his view, although he was not consciously aware of having seen it.7

True xenoglossy in reincarnation cases occurs frequently when there is a difference in the language spoken by the previous person and the case subject, but it is not invariably present. When it is not, subjects may nevertheless learn the foreign language more readily than their peers do. The converse phenomenon, in which a case subject resists or is slow to learn the language of his or her birth family, also occurs. Stevenson called the latter phenomenon xenophobia.8 Xenophobia is most likely to present when there is a radical difference between the languages of the previous and present lives, such as with a group of Burmese children who recalled having been Japanese soldiers killed in Burma during the Second World War.9 Xenoglossy and xenophobia may appear together in the same case.

Xenoglossy has been reported in relation to mediumship as well as reincarnation, but this article is restricted to reincarnation. The following cases demonstrate the varieties of xenoglossy in spontaneous and regression reincarnation cases, some of them ‘solved’, with identified previous persons known to have spoken the languages in question. All of the cases were studied in the field by investigators, who tried to address the issues regarding authenticity that arise in their connection.

Xenoglossy in Spontaneous Reincarnation Cases

Uttara Huddar (Sharada)

Uttara Huddar is a Maratha woman from western India. Her mother dreamt, during her pregnancy, of being bitten on the right toe by a snake, and from a young age, Uttara greatly feared snakes. She had a few imaged memories of a previous life in childhood, but did not talk much about them. At 32, she entered a residential clinic to deal with some recalcitrant physical problems. Whilst at the clinic, she began to meditate intensively and her behaviour changed radically. She became excitable and would wander away from the clinic, saying she wanted to go to the place  she belonged. She began wearing her saris as Bengali women did, different from the Maratha fashion, and spoke in a language identified as Bengali.

Uttara would return to her own personality after a bit, but on one occasion, after she discovered the clinic director dining with another woman in his private quarters, her alternate personality emerged in an especially profound way. Uttara felt unaccountably drawn to the clinic director, but he did not return her interest, and following this incident, he asked her family to take her home.

The alternate personality did not recognize any of Uttara’s family and was unfamiliar with their modern way of life. She could not understand their Marathi language, nor could they understand her Bengali, so Uttara’s parents arranged for Bengali speakers to meet with her. These people discovered that she could converse freely in Bengali, albeit in a somewhat archaic style in a particular regional dialect. She believed that her name was Sharada and that she was living in early nineteenth-century Bengal. She claimed that the clinic director was her husband. The last thing she remembered was being bitten on the right toe by a cobra.

A few weeks later, Sharada vanished and Uttara resumed control. Thereafter, for as long as the case was monitored by Stevenson, Sharada periodically took over, once for as long as 42 days. This circumstance permitted her to be observed by a succession of eight Bengali speakers, all of whom reached the conclusion that she was using Bengali responsively, although sometimes she seemed to be searching for words. Sharada was also able to read and write Bengali. Two tape recordings were made of her speech, and transcriptions allowed other experts to assess her proficiency. Only one dissented from the consensus view that Sharada’s Bengali was consistent with her having lived at the time and in the place she said she did, holding that she spoke more like a modern Indian who had learned Bengali as a second language than like a native speaker, although he too had no doubt that she spoke Bengali responsively.

Stevenson’s investigation showed that Uttara had studied Sanskrit, the extinct parent language of both Marathi and Bengali, and for a few weeks had taken lessons in reading Bengali. Her instructor spoke Bengali with a Marathi accent, however, so this brief exposure to the language would not have accounted for her being able to speak it in the dialect Sharada employed, and certainly not as well as she did.

Despite the wealth of detail Sharada supplied about her life, including the names of her husband and several members of his family, her existence remains unconfirmed. The family to which she said she belonged was traced and many of the names she recalled found listed in a private genealogy, but the genealogy was restricted to the male line. Stevenson and other researchers believe she was likely a previous personality of Uttara, who manifested almost like an alternate personality in a case of dissociative identity disorder, her initial appearance facilitated by Uttara’s meditation at the clinic.10

Iris Farczády

Hungarian Iris Farczády was the subject of a case of replacement reincarnation, in which one personality leaves and is succeeded by another. Replacement reincarnation differs from the Sharada manifestations, which were more like the surfacing of an alternate personality out of Uttara Huddar’s subconscious mind, and from transient or temporary states of spirit possession.

Iris practiced as a Spiritualist medium. She regularly became possessed by spirits, some of whom remained in control after the séances were over. When she was fifteen, a 41-year-old Spanish charwoman who called herself Lucía Altarez de Salvio took control, but did not leave, as earlier communicators had done. Lucía spoke Spanish, understood no Hungarian, and only gradually learned German, the language spoken by Iris’s family. She said that she had died three months earlier in Madrid, leaving behind a husband and several children.

After the transformation, Iris found a new talent in cooking and enjoyed singing Spanish songs and flamenco dancing. Investigators were never able to find a record of Lucía in Madrid or elsewhere in Spain, however. Some people who came into contact with Lucía doubted that she really was from Madrid, although it was discovered that besides speaking Spanish responsively, and singing and dancing in a Spanish style, she was acquainted with devices that would have been appropriate to a Spanish woman at her putative station in life. In any event, as with Sharada, although the previous personality could not be identified, there seems to be no question about Lucía’s ability to speak Spanish responsively after she took over Iris’s body.11

Bongkuch Promsin

Laos borders Thailand to the north and east and there are many ethnic Laotians living in Thailand. Bongkuch Promsin was a Thai boy who recalled the life of a murdered Laotian youth from one of these expatriate families. His memories were clear and specific enough to allow the youth to be identified. In addition to his verified memories, Bongkuch behaved in ways out of keeping with his family but in accord with Laotian practices. He ate with his hands rather than with a spoon and washed his hands by immersion in a bowl rather than running water over them. Asked to account for this behaviour, he said, ‘I am not Thai. I am Laotian’. He referred to fruits and vegetables by words his mother did not recognize but came to find out were Laotian, and used other Laotian words. He was seen to converse in Laotian with the friends of the person he believed he had been. He spoke Thai with a Laotian accent, an example of passive xenoglossy.12

Tutkhorn Chitpricha

A Thai boy from Bangkok, Tutkhorn Chitpricha, identified himself with his father’s elder brother, Dang. Dang Chitpricha had lived in another part of Thailand, where a different dialect was spoken. He had owned a company that supplied construction vehicles, but had died in an automobile accident a few months before Tutkhorn was born. Tutkhorn suffered from nightmares and phobias related to Dang’s death, and when he was between 18 and 27 months old, he recognized two of Dang’s employees. He called them by their nicknames and spoke to them in their dialect, using a linguistic form appropriate for a man addressing an inferior. He understood them when they spoke to him and replied appropriately, although his vocabulary was limited.13

Nawal Daw

A Lebanese Druze girl named Nawal Daw was intensely fond of Indian music and had a strong preference for Indian styles of dress. She refused to learn Arabic and chatted away to herself in a language her parents did not recognize. When she was four, her parents took her to a popular tourist site in Lebanon. There she spotted a group of Indian Sikhs and ran over to them, speaking her language to them. They seemed to understand her and to interact naturally with her. Unfortunately, they did not speak Arabic, so were unable to communicate effectively with Nawal’s parents, who had to drag Nawal away when it was time to leave. For a while thereafter, Nawal did not talk at all. The following year she began to speak Arabic with her parents and by the time Stevenson met her, when she was nine, she had forgotten her childhood language. When Stevenson introduced her to a native speaker of Hindi and Punjabi, she showed no signs of understanding either.14

Simone

Nawal Daw encountered native speakers of the language she recalled and was able to demonstrate her responsive command of it. Most other children who have used words strange to their families have had no such opportunity. One is Simone, a Brazilian girl whose case was studied by Stevenson and Hernani Andrade.

When her Portuguese-speaking grandmother picked her up for the first time, she surprised herself by greeting Simone with the Italian phrase, ‘amore mio’, ‘my love’. Simone appeared to respond with a happy smile as if she had understood. When she started talking, Simone herself used Italian words and phrases from time to time. Once when her mother came to wake her up, Simone called her ‘mamina’ rather than ‘mamãe’. Later that day, her mother happened to tell a friend what Simone had said. The friend commented, ‘nobody here speaks Italian’, to which Simone replied, ‘lo parlo’ (‘I speak it’), and afterwards used it frequently. Her grandmother made notes of everything she said about her life in Italy. Between the ages of two and five, Simone used 30 different Italian words, but since there were no Italian speakers around, she did not have a chance to use it in conversation. Nor was it possible to identify the person whose life she recalled, even though she described the neighborhood where she had lived and apparently died in Rome.15 

Wijanama Ariyawansa

Wijanama Ariyawansa was a Sinhalese Buddhist village boy who recalled having been a Muslim from Kandy, the capital city of Sri Lanka. He was about four and a half years old when he began to talk about the previous life, which he contrasted with his present one. His previous family ate meat, he said; they had electricity and running water in the house, and worshipped without idols. Wijanama’s eating habits and dress preferences differed from his family but were in keeping with those of the Muslim community of Kandy. Unfortunately, he did not give names or enough specific information to permit the person whose life he was remembering to be identified.

Beginning when he was three and a half, a year before he started to talk about the previous life, Wijanama would sit up in bed during the night, cross his legs, and mutter words in a variety of Tamil spoken by Sri Lankan Muslims. After about five minutes, he would lie down and return to sleep. Wijanama was still doing this at eleven, when Stevenson met him. He also sometimes used Tamil during waking hours, although the most extensive use of it came during his interrupted sleep. Stevenson obtained a tape recording of Wijanama’s nocturnal speech and played it for a Muslim man from Kandy. The man identified several of the words as characteristic of his community. He was strongly impressed by Wijanama’s pronunciation, which he judged to be that of a native speaker. Wijanama was never introduced to Sri Lankan Muslims or other Tamil speakers, however, so the extent of his ability to speak the language responsively is unknown.16

Kumkum Verma

Differences of caste and socioeconomic circumstance figure prominently in the case of Kumkum Verma, an Indian village girl who recalled being a woman from a nearby city. Her memories were extensive enough for the person she recalled to be traced, and her many statements about her past life confirmed. Kumkum recognized people from the previous life when she met them. Her personality was very similar to and she behaved in several ways like the woman she believed she had been. She was noticeably more religious than her siblings, she stayed in the family shrine longer than they did, and she showed an unusual concern for beggars, all habits of the deceased woman. Many of these behavioral traits persisted into her teens, well after her imaged memories had faded.

When she was young, Kumkum tended to talk about the previous life in the present tense and became so absorbed in narrating her memories that she seemed at times to be oblivious to her surroundings. She spoke with a city accent and used several dialectical expressions common in the city, but not found in the surrounding villages, including her own.17

Bishen Chand Kapoor

Bishen Chand Kapoor, an Indian boy, had many memories of a previous life that were recorded in writing before the person he was talking about was identified. In addition to his verified memories, he behaved in many ways like this person, a man named Laxmi Narain who had died of illness when he was 32. Bishen Chand demonstrated great affection for Laxmi Narain’s mother and animosity toward his uncle and other relatives with whom Laxmi Narain had been engaged in a lawsuit. He recognized several of Laxmi Narain’s family and addressed them by the names Laxmi Narain had used for them.

The families of Bishen Chand and Laxmi Narain belonged to different castes. Bishen Chand’s family were vegetarians; Laxmi Narain’s were not, and Bishen Chand wanted to eat meat. His family also were teetotalers, but kept a small amount of brandy in the house for medicinal purposes. This was noticed to be declining in quantity, and then Bishen Chand’s sister found him surreptitiously drinking it. Laxmi Narian had enjoyed music and dancing, and Bishen Chand could play a pair of tablas drums without instruction. He spoke a few words of Urdu, a language not used by his family, but known to Laxmi Narain. According to his older brother, he could also read Urdu before being taught it.18

Tomo

Tomo is a Japanese child who claimed to remember having lived in Scotland in a previous life, although it proved impossible to trace the person he was talking about. When he heard the Carpenters’ song Top of the World for the first time during his second year, he surprised his mother by singing along to it. He learned to read Latin letters before Japanese characters and wrote his name in Latin letters for the first time when he was about 34 months old.19

Stephen Stein

Stephen Stein is American. When he was three, his mother and her sister took him to a Mexican restaurant. Stephen had been born in Philadelphia and had never before been exposed to Mexican food or culture, or to the Spanish language. At the restaurant, he saw a large map of Mexico on the wall. After studying it quietly for a while, he pointed to a town, pronounced the name correctly, and said that is where he was from. A short while later, still not yet four, whilst watching a television programme on the siege of the Alamo with his mother, he traced his finger around the screen and told her what it had been like to be there. He pointed to a specific place and said that is where he had been killed. Stephen has maintained a fondness for Mexican food, music, and culture. Although he has never studied Spanish, as an adult he finds that the meanings of words sometimes ‘just come’ to him, and more than once corrected his mother’s pronunciation as she was trying to learn the language.20

Bianca Battista

Recitative xenoglossy differs from responsive and passive xenoglossy in lacking any suggestion of an underlying mastery of an unlearned language. Many cases of apparent recitative xenoglossy have turned out to be grounded in cryptomnesia or are otherwise false, as in the Oscan example described above. 21 True recitative xenoglossy reflects language employed in a similarly rote way in a previous life, for instance in memorized songs or chants. The earliest example on record occurred in the 1911 Italian case of Bianca Battista.

Bianca was recognized as the reincarnation of a sister who had died a few years before she was born. Her mother was three months pregnant with her when she saw the apparition of her deceased daughter, who announced that she would be returning as the child she was carrying. Bianca looked physically very much like her sister and had a similar personality. She never claimed to have any memories of her sister’s life, but one night her parents heard her singing a French lullaby that their former nanny had often sung in trying to put the child to sleep. Bianca knew only a few words of French she had picked up from her older sisters. Her father asked who had taught her the song. She replied, ‘No one. I just know it by myself’, and resumed singing with a perfect French accent.22

Swarnlata Mishra

Swarnlata Mishra was a Hindi-speaking Indian girl who recalled two previous lives. Her memories of the earlier one were more detailed and were verified, but she performed songs and dances from an intermediate life she said she had lived in Bengal. Neither she nor her parents spoke Bengali.  She did not understand the words and could sing them only when she performed the dances, but her singing was good enough for the songs to be transcribed and identified as Bengali folk tunes.23

Duminda Ratnayake

Recitative xenoglossy was displayed also by three Sri Lankan boys who claimed to have been Buddhist monks and who chanted stanzas in Pali, the extinct Buddhist ritual language, without ever having been near a temple or seen monks engaged in this behaviour. One of these boys, Duminda Ratnayake, held a fan in front of his face as he recited the stanzas, as monks did. He liked to carry his clothes like a monk and wanted to wear a monk’s robe, which his mother rarely allowed him to do. Every morning and evening he went to a chapel near his house and there placed flowers he had plucked, in typical Buddhist fashion. He insisted on cleanliness and asked to be called ‘little monk’. From the age of three, he spoke about the life he remembered, in sufficient detail for the person he was talking about to be identified. When he grew older, he entered a monastery, but when he was 21, he left it, disrobed, and took up computer science.24

Responsive Xenoglossy during Age Regression under Hypnosis

Foreign words in putatively unlearned languages are regularly used by persons undergoing age regression to previous lives, but these cases of apparent xenoglossy have rarely been studied with the same care spontaneous cases of past-life memory have been. Stevenson25 briefly reviewed two cases that received some scrutiny, Whitton26 described two more, and Thomason27 examined three others. The most extensive investigations of xenoglossy during age regression are the three cases summarized below.

Jensen

Jensen is the name given by the previous person in a regression case studied by Stevenson beginning in 1958, on the basis of tapes and transcripts of sessions conducted in 1955 and 1956. Jensen manifested and spoke Swedish in five sessions during this period, the last three when native speakers of that language were present. He rarely used complete sentences but seemed to understand the Swedish spoken to him and gave appropriate replies in Swedish. An analysis showed that he introduced a considerable number of words before they were employed by his interlocutors, in the same or earlier sessions. For the most part his grammar was correct, yet there were occasional solecisms. His accent was judged to be native, although sometimes tinged with Norwegian. Both his words and accent suggested an archaic Swedish dialect, perhaps from an area near the Swedish border with Norway. He claimed that his mother was Norwegian, so his speech might have been influenced by hers also.

Jensen talked in fair detail about his life, albeit in a disconnected way. He could understand questions put to him in English and sometimes replied in heavily accented English. Stevenson concluded that he was most likely talking about a life in seventeenth-century Sweden but that he might have emigrated to New Sweden, a group of Swedish colonies along the lower Delaware River (which runs through the of the American states of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania), in existence between 1638 and 1655. The subject of the case was born in Philadelphia in 1918.28

Gretchen

Stevenson studied the case of Gretchen, a German-speaking trance personality, in the 1970s. He participated in some of the hypnotic sessions, and because he had some facility with German, was able to assess Gretchen’s language proficiency for himself. He also introduced three native speakers of German to her. Gretchen spoke German during four sessions before Stevenson or any other German speakers were present. Two of these German speakers as well as Stevenson were convinced that she did understand and speak German responsively, although she never answered questions in complete sentences and made a number of grammatical errors. On the whole, her pronunciation was good, more suggestive of a native speaker than of someone for whom it was a second language. The case subject, Dolores Jay (DJ), and her husband, Carroll, the hypnotist, denied that DJ had had any exposure to German before Gretchen’s first appearance, and Stevenson’s extensive probing of her background turned up no reason to doubt them.

Before Gretchen first appeared, DJ dreamed of a girl she later identified with Gretchen, and at times, she had a sense of Gretchen’s presence around her. Once she believed she caught sight of her apparition. Although Gretchen otherwise manifested during age regression under hypnosis, Stevenson was not convinced that she represented DJ in a previous life. Gretchen’s account of herself did not allow for her to be identified with anyone who had lived and Stevenson came to believe that ‘the phenomenal Gretchen personality could be a mixture blended from parts of D.J.’s own personality and elements of a discarnate Gretchen lying behind and influencing the manifest communicator’. Regardless, he was convinced that the German the Gretchen personality spoke was authentic and responsive, its lack of fluency and grammatical flaws nothwithstanding.29

Rataraju

In keeping with Stevenson’s practice of naming regression cases with xenoglossy after the manifesting previous personality, we may call this third example the case of Rataraju. Rataraju represented himself as a Nepalese village chief. The hypnotic subject was a Japanese woman named Risa. The first author of the report, Masayuki Ohkado, a Japanese linguist, invited a linguist familiar with Nepali, an anthropologist who worked in Nepal, and a Nepalese-speaking graduate student to study the case with him.

Rataraju spoke two sentences in Nepali in one session and then talked for 24 minutes in Nepali in another session arranged for Ohkado. The team concluded that Rataraju did comprehend and respond appropriately in Nepali, although his command of it was not at the level of a native speaker. Rataraju responded to questions about his life and gave a sufficient number of names and other details to warrant an effort to trace him. Ohkado travelled to Nepal with the anthropologist, but unfortunately, although they went to the village Rataraju claimed he led, they could not identify him with any specific person. Many of the details of his life were plausible, but his story as a whole did not hang together, as if it were a fantasy constructed from an array of disparate facts.30

Questions about Xenoglossy in Reincarnation Cases

Ohkado was impressed by the similarities between the Rataraju case and the cases of Jensen and Gretchen. The three personalities gave detailed accounts of their lives that should have allowed for verification, if they had existed, but upon checking, the stories were full of inconsistencies. Matlock observes that this is typical of regression accounts in general. The identity of the previous person often seems to be intentionally obscured by the subconscious mind of the person undergoing regression.31

Ohkado also noted similarities in the expression of the xenoglossy in the three regression cases. Jensen, Gretchen, and Rataraju all had limited vocabularies, employed defective grammars, and frequently responded to questions in monosyllables or sentence fragments. Sometimes they did not seem to understand what was said to them, but at other times, they gave sensible replies, and they introduced a good number of new words into the conversation. Rataraju was more limited than Jensen and Gretchen, but he had less opportunity to speak than they did. The xenoglossy of both Jensen and Gretchen improved over their sessions, and so it might have been with Rataraju, had it been possible to schedule other sessions with him. In Ohkado’s estimation, the major difference between Rataraju and Jensen and Gretchen is that the Nepalese language has no genetic relation to Japanese, so its use by Risa is more surprising and harder to explain.32

The overall assessment of Ohkado’s team was that Rataraju did speak Nepali responsively, although the language was far inferior to what one would expect of a native speaker. They imply, as Stevenson did, that the deficiency in linguistic expression is a feature of the hypnosis facilitating the past-life memory, if not of the reincarnation process itself. Their conclusion stands in strong contrast to the opinions of other linguists who have examined Stevenson’s regression cases, based on published transcripts and summary accounts, rather than on firsthand acquaintance with the speech or recordings of it.

Sarah Thomason’s dismissals of the Jensen and Gretchen cases33 are often cited by the skeptical community. Thomason accepts that Stevenson’s investigations were sufficient to rule out fraud, but believes that he did not demonstrate a capacity for Jensen and Gretchen to speak their respective languages. She says that Stevenson’s ‘notion of “responsive xenoglossy” is fatally flawed as a methodological criterion for determining a person’s ability to speak a language’ because ‘his subjects show no sign of any extensive exposure to Swedish or German, in any lifetime’.34 She reaches this conclusion because their vocabulary is restricted and their syntax simplified. Matlock points out that Thomason and other linguists want to see signs that Jensen and Gretchen can perform like mature native speakers, whereas Stevenson is looking only for evidence that they possess some degree of language proficiency. The linguists assume that language transmitted across lives will be structured like language spoken in any given life, but Stevenson is open to a wider range of possibilities.35

The case of Uttara Huddar or Sharada presents a different set of challenges to critics, and they have responded to it in a different way. Thomason acknowledges that Sharada is said to have spoken mostly in full, grammatically-correct sentences, but emphasises the dissenting evaluation of the linguist who judged her speech on the basis of a tape recording and concluded she had learned it as a second language. Thomason appears to embrace the idea that Uttara’s lessons in reading Bengali and her study of Sanskrit, a language no longer spoken anywhere, led to Sharada’s speaking ability.36 She fails to offer a proper counter-explanation to this complex case, evidently content to raise questions about it, which she does by selectively citing some facts, whilst ignoring many others that support Stevenson’s point of view better than her own.37

Philosopher Stephen Braude takes a very different approach. He supposes that Uttara was motivated to imagine the Sharada personality as a vehicle for the expression of her own emotional needs and that she could have acquired her ability to speak Bengali through extrasensory perception during the altered states of consciousness in which Sharada manifested.38 Braude is not deterred by the fact that there is no independent evidence that skills of any sort may be acquired through extrasensory perception. His idea that Sharada is wholly a figment of Uttara’s imagination is untenable as well, according to Matlock. Matlock takes reincarnation to mean that the consciousness of the previous person has outlasted death and is now part of the subconscious of the case subject. From this perspective, Uttara and Sharada and Uttara are parts of the same person, and both have roles to play in the expression of past-life memory. Although Uttara’s emotional state might be a contributing factor to the emergence of Sharada, so was Sharada’s encounter with the man she believed to be the reincarnation of her husband.39

No critics have dealt with xenoglossy in spontaneous cases other than that of Uttara Huddar, but these cases are hugely interesting and instructive, Matlock thinks. In them, the xenoglossy may be accompanied by a range of other memories and behaviors, and in some cases, the previous person has been traced. Interestingly, apart from Uttara Huddar and Iris Farczády, both exceptional cases, the spontaneous cases reveal the same linguistic deficiencies as the regression cases. Usually it is only a few words that are spoken, and when responsiveness in conversation is attested, the level of proficiency is low. An important caution is due here, however. Although the testimony seems sound in these cases, in most of them investigators had no opportunity to observe the subject speaking, and only rarely have voice recordings been made for evaluation later. Much more work must be done before we can be confident that responsive xenoglossy is possible, but these spontaneous cases suggest that it is, and that makes the xenoglossy of the regression cases more plausible.40

Acceptance of the xenoglossy phenomenon by linguists will come faster if a satisfactory theory of the transmission of language in reincarnation is developed, in Matlock’s view. Vocabulary and language skills might be carried in the subconscious mind along with other sorts of memory and be passed through reincarnation from one person to another. The problem then is explaining how these things move from the subconscious into conscious awareness, and why they do so in different ways with different people and in different situations. It should not be surprising to find that higher order language skills, such as the rules of grammatical inflection and sentence formation, are the first to be lost, even by a former native speaker. Basic vocabulary can be expected to be retained the longest, and to be retrieved most easily by association. In fact, this is what we see in many xenoglossy cases.

Another issue is speech production, which involves not only the mobilization of a vocabulary according to grammatical rules, but brain structures and control of the larynx as well. The many reports of the proper pronunciation in xenoglossy suggest that practised patterns can be impressed on a new brain somehow, but how that happens is not yet clear. In any event, it is probably unreasonable to expect to find fully developed languages appearing after reincarnation, either in spontaneous cases or under hypnosis. Even in the most extraordinary cases, such as Uttara Huddar’s Sharada, the language competency is not routinely at the level of a native speaker.41

James G Matlock

SPR

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Thomason, S. G. (1987, Summer). Past tongues remembered? Skeptical Inquirer, pp. 367-375.

Thomason, S. G. (1996). Xenoglossy. In G. Stein (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal (pp. 835-844). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Whitton, J. L. (1978). Xenoglossia: A subject with two possible instances. New Horizons, 2(4), 18-26.

Wikipedia

ooper-Rompato, Christine F., The Gift of Tongues: Women's Xenoglossia in the Later Middle Ages (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010).

Samarin, William J. Review of Ian Stevenson Xenoglossy: A Review and Report of a Case. Language 52.1.270-274. (1976)

Stevenson, Ian. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. (1966). (Second revised and enlarged edition 1974), University of Virginia Press, ISBN 0-8139-0872-8

Stevenson, Ian. Xenoglossy: A Review and Report of a Case. Charlotte: University Press of Virginia. (1974).

Stevenson, Ian. Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy. (1984). University of Virginia Press, ISBN 0-8139-0994-5

Stevenson, Ian. Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Quest of Reincarnation. (2001). McFarland & Company, ISBN 0-7864-0913-4

Thomason, Sarah G. "Do you remember your previous life's language in your present incarnation?" American Speech, 59:340–50, 1984.

Thomason, Sarah G. "Past tongues remembered?" The Skeptical Inquirer, 11:367–75, Summer 1987.

Thomason, Sarah G. "Xenoglossy" in Gordon Stein (ed.) The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal. Buffalo: Prometheus Books. (1996)PDF 

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