The Great Afterlife Debate

Earlier this month Intelligence² hosted a debate on the question of the afterlife, with ground-breaking near-death experience author Dr. Raymond Moody and neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander arguing for the statement "Death is not Final", while countering that claim were physicist Sean Carroll and neurologist Dr. Steven Novella. With the event being a sell-out, Intelligence² graciously streamed the debate via video to the internet, and have since shared the recorded version on YouTube (see embedded video below).

I mentioned my concern over the choice of panelist arguing 'for' the proposition before the debate, and that concern was largely borne out. In my opinion, they failed badly and the negative side were worthy winners of the debate. Moody and Alexander seemed unbelievably badly prepared, given how obvious the arguments of the negative side were going to be. Neither seemed ready for the critiques, which certainly have vulnerabilities of their own which the positives could have responded with (see my examination after the video below). Both Moody and Alexander also seemed to be pre-occupied by their own personal interaction with the topic, and as such rather than surveying the whole landscape of the afterlife debate to bolster their case, they stayed within their own very narrow boundaries. Eben Alexander led off almost completely with his own, subjective (and not totally NDE-like) experience, which was no doubt profound for him, but is not a story which should win any logic-based debate. Raymond Moody - who is certainly owed a huge debt by us all for his contribution to the field with his seminal NDE book Life After Life- indulged in his predilection for deep philosophical musings, which may be fun over a casual drink, but in an hour-long public debate is an action doomed to fail. Moody got so lost in his musings in fact, that at one point he said point-blank "I believe parapsychology is a pseudoscience", and later was invited by the negative side to join their panel because he seemed to be arguing on behalf of their side!

You can watch the entire debate for yourself here:

I said before the debate that I would have preferred to see someone with the credentials of Dr. Bruce Greyson arguing for the positive, as he has a deep knowledge of these topics, understanding both the evidence for and the critiques against, and is a fairly unflappable character. Since the debate, I've thought of other possible candidates who would also have done a good job: Michael Prescott, Chris Carter, Janice Miner-Holden, Michael Grosso, Julie Beischel, Sam Parnia and Steve Volk. (Some of my Twitter followers suggested to me that I should have been on the panel (based on my examination of the evidence in my book Stop Worrying! There Probably is an Afterlife), but I am a poor speaker, and may have been a bit too ambivalent about certain aspects of afterlife evidence to be a powerful speaker for the positive side.)

Nevertheless, here's how I think Moody and Alexander should have conducted the debate:

The 'for' side needed to concentrate on the weight of anomalistic evidence in support of the statement. There is no killer (pun not intended) case to win the day – sorry Eben – but there is a preponderance of very curious cases which would have fascinated and likely swayed what was a very sympathetic audience. Alexander should have started the debate by giving a broad overview of all this evidence: firstly by introducing NDEs, then pointing out the multiple cases of veridical NDEs (where the person having the NDE reports back information that they should not have had access to, such as details about the operating theatre), then pointing out Peak in Darien cases (where the NDEr sees someone in the 'afterlife realm' who was thought to be alive, but was subsequently verified to have died shortly before that time). Rinse and repeat with end-of-life experiences reported by those on their death-bed shortly before they passed. Follow up on the end-of-life experiences of the dying with reports of strange phenomena at the death-bed witnessed by healthy individuals caring for the dying. Move on to mediumship, and the long history of research into that area - start with the conclusions of many distinguished scientists with the Society for Psychical Research that mediums did have access to those 'beyond', and move through to more recent research such as that conducted by Julie Beischel and Emily Kelly. In other words, come out swinging! The negative side were sure to counter those topics, but the skeptical arguments are fairly stock standard and predictable, and thus could have been answered in more detail in the following segments.

And truly, there was no surprise in the negative arguments. Carroll, the physicist, argued that these experiences are outside of physical laws. Novella, the neuroscientist, argued that we have a complete description of the mind as arising from the physical brain. The counter-argument to Carroll's 'physical laws' critique is quite simple: it needed to be pointed out that his claim is largely tautological: "we know these physical laws, thus our reality is defined, thus we know what the physical laws of reality are". A fun and accessible thought experiment based on the 'simulation argument' might have been a nice exercise to win the audience here. For example, get them to consider a person totally immersed in the world of id Software's first-person shooter Quake: within that game, the physics are slightly different to the physics of 'our realitiy' - you can swerve around corners as you jump, you can fire a rocket at your feet to jump higher, there is such thing as teleportation of the body, and so on. Only once that person 'unplugs' do they find a world where those things are inconceivable. (And to push the gaming analogy even further, in the gameCounterstrike: Source, when you die you have an out-of-body experience, able to fly around and watch what people are doing, far from your dead 'body', just as is reported in veridical near-death experiences.) So why should the existence of another reality – the afterlife one – either enclosing this one, or sitting beside it, require adherence to the physical laws of our living reality?

Additionally, on a separate tack, it might be worth mentioning that other respected scientists – such as Professor Henry Stapp and Stuart Hameroff – have actually argued that the physical laws of this world do not preclude the existence of consciousness surviving our bodily death (see this TDG story for example).

Sean Carroll also brought with him some neat debate tricks, such as when he asked a ghost to lift his glass of water to prove the afterlife. It was good for entertaining the audience – which is half of the challenge in winning a debate – but it really had no basis in logic and Alexander or Moody could have 'exposed' the ruse as a cheap trick for their own benefit. And Carroll's statement that "physicists used to think consciousness was involved in quantum physics, we've moved on now though" (paraphrasing) was his own personal viewpoint (which it must be said, however, is assuredly an expert one). There is no doubt that there are many very capable physicists who do not share that view, such as the afore-mentioned Henry Stapp, Sir Roger Penrose, and the authors of the book Quantum Enigma, Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, who have said that the link between consciousness and the quantum is physics' "skeleton in the closet". Pointing this out would have weakened Carroll's reputation with the audience considerably ("he's not telling us facts, he's just giving his opinion).

Steven Novella's gambit was also a predictable one, given his background in neuroscience, and his high ranking in skeptical circles: "we know the mind is a creation of the brain, because when the brain is damaged, mind is damaged". The obvious response to him here would have been to point out the error in his assumption: that correlation equals causation. In a transmission theory of consciousness, in which the brain acts as 'receiver' of consciousness from elsewhere, any damage to the 'receiver' (the physical brain) is obviously going to affect the 'transmission' (mind). The oft-used analogy is a television set - if you throw a brick into the TV, it's going to cause problems in seeing the picture in some way, but that doesn't mean the channel you were watching is contained with the TV. Another more up-to-date analogy might be the Mars Curiosity rover: smash the 'control centre' of the rover and it will 'die', a lonely inert piece of metal on the lifeless surface of the Red Planet. But the intelligence that was directing Curiosity (the driver of the rover) remains fully conscious and alive on the 'Earth plane' which is its origin, just unable to control its body anymore.

Novella did make a good point in asking if near-death experiences were truly happening during the 'death state' of resuscitation, or whether they might have actually been occurring during the short intervals of consciousness on either side (e.g. upon regaining heart function). The response here should have been along the lines of what Dr. Bruce Greyson told me (mentioned in the chapter on NDEs). Acknowledge that it's a good question, and requires further research, but that the accounts of veridical near-death experiencers appear to offer us with 'time anchors' which show us that these experiences happened during the 'death state'. It would have been good to give an example here, so that the audience could grasp the point, such as the veridical NDE of a patient recounted by pioneering surgeon Dr. Lloyd Rudy. Rudy and his assistant had done bypass surgery on the patient, but had been unable to get them back off the bypass machine, eventually being forced to give up. The anaesthesiologist left the room to get something to eat, and Dr. Rudy and his assistant removed their surgical gowns and began debriefing while others cleaned up the OR. Then, after showing a little bit of intermittent electrical activity, the patients heart began beating again on its own, and Rudy and his team leapt into action to stabilise the patient. Here's what happened afterwards, from Stop Worrying! There Probably is an Afterlife):

A few days later, Rudy was talking to the patient about the operation, asking him if he had felt or experienced anything during this strange situation. The patient told Rudy about having seen a bright light at the end of a tunnel – standard fare for an NDE – but it was what he related about the Earthly realm that “astounded” the experienced surgeon: “He described that operating room [and] floating around and saying ‘I saw you and the [other doctor] standing in the doorway with your arms folded talking…I didn’t know where the anaesthesiologist was but he came running back in. And I saw all of these post-it notes, sitting on this TV screen’.” This particular aspect was the most intriguing to Rudy – during a surgery, if he received any phone calls he would get the nurse to answer and then write down the name and number on a post-it note, and stick it to the monitor so that he could call them back once the operation was finished. Dr. Rudy laughs at this point and exclaims animatedly: “HE DESCRIBED THAT!! I mean there’s no way he could have described that before the operation because I didn’t have any calls…he described the scene, things that there is no way he knew”. With a flabbergasted look on his face, Rudy clarifies: “I mean he didn’t wake up in the operating room and see all this – he was out, and was out for a day or two while we recovered him in the Intensive Care Unit”.

Cases such as this could have been used to call out Steven Novella's statement that "there are “no cases with evidence of when NDE happened”", and doing so would have been a useful tool in throwing doubt over everything else the negative side – who held the advantage of coming across as serious, knowledgable scientists – were saying. Similarly, discussing the correlation equals causation error, and explanation of how transmission theory shows it to not necessarily true, offered a fine way of rebutting Novella's statement that the available evidence about the relationship between brain and mind “can only lead to one conclusion”. Some really fine opportunities were not taken advantage of here by the positive side, who as I said seemed to be woefully prepared for their opponents' strategies. The negative side certainly overstated their case in many places, but the audience largely didn't know any better and it was up to the affirmative team to seize on those mis-statements and educate the audience, and in doing so win their trust – but they failed in that respect.

Not so much on the knowledge side of things, but the other area where the positive side could have been better was in the personal stakes. The negative side were a great combination of humour, confidence, and scientific information (although I think Carroll's confidence veered into almost being academically snobbish, which could have been played on strategically by Moody and Alexander). The affirmative side, on the other hand seemed (at least to me) rather self-interested, overly serious and too philosophical (especially in Moody's case). They may have even lost the argument simply on these grounds, as the crowd really seemed to want a reason, any reason, to vote for the positive, if they could just give it to them (witness the ovation Alexander got simply for mentioning the 'hard problem' of consciousness).

On the flip side, Carroll and Novella may well have had 'more gears', but their opposition was so poor that they didn't have to get out of first gear. Which is more the shame, because this could have been a cracking debate, both entertaining and educational. For me it was frustrating to watch the positive side fail to mention so much positive evidence, and fail to predict and counter the negatives' rather obvious strategies. But at least there was a public debate on this topic, which I would love to see more of. It's one of the biggest questions of our existence, and there is fascinating evidence supporting it as well as powerful critiques against. It deserves to be discussed properly.

To learn more about these fascinating topics, grab a copy of my book Stop Worrying! There Probably is an Afterlife as either a Kindle ebook or in paperback format.

Source: Daily Grail

Time Slip Mystery – Flight into the future

In 1935, Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard of the British Royal Air Force had a harrowing experience in his Hawker Hart biplane. Goddard was a Wing Commander at the time and while on a flight from Edinburgh, Scotland to his home base in Andover, England, he decided to fly over an abandoned airfield at Drem, not far from Edinburgh.

The useless airfield was overgrown with foliage, the hangars were falling apart and cows grazed where planes were once parked. Goddard then continued his flight to Andover, but encountered a bizarre storm. In the high winds of the storm’s strange brown-yellow clouds, he lost control of his plane, which began to spiral toward the ground. Narrowly averting a crash, Goddard found that his plane was heading back toward Drem.

As he approached the old airfield, the storm suddenly vanished and Goddard’s plane was now flying in brilliant sunshine. This time, as he flew over the Drem airfield, it looked completely different. The hangars looked like new. There were four airplanes on the ground: three were familiar biplanes, but painted in an unfamiliar yellow; the fourth was a monoplane, which the RAF had none of in 1935.

The mechanics were dressed in blue overalls, which Goddard thought odd since all RAF mechanics dressed in brown overalls. Strange, too, that none of the mechanics seemed to notice him fly over. Leaving the area, he again encountered the storm, but managed to make his way back to Andover.

The True Mystery

It wasn’t until 1939 that that the RAF began to paint their planes yellow, enlisted a monoplane of the type that Goddard saw, and the mechanics uniforms were switched to blue. Had Goddard somehow flown four years into the future, then returned to his own time?

The Smirking Airman

Goddard’s first venture into the world of the unexplained involved a photograph. In 1975, the seventy-eight year old retired Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard published the story of a photograph that he had kept for many years. It was a group photograph of his squadron. It was taken in early 1919 at the end of World War I and portrayed some 200 men and women who survived the fighting.

It was an official RAF photograph. Nobody could have tampered with either the photograph or its negative at any time. When the photo was developed, it was placed on the squadron bulletin board so that those who wanted copies could sign up for them. There was one thing wrong, though. There was an extra face in the photograph, a face belonging to the late Airman Freddy Jackson. Jackson was a mechanic, who died by heedlessly walking into a spinning propeller two days before the squadron, which was to be disbanded, posed for the photo. In fact, his funeral took place on the day the squadron gathered for the photo. In the photo (above), everyone is wearing a hat but Jackson. Everyone is looking grim except Jackson, who is smiling enigmatically. The others had reason to look grim-they had just returned from Jackson’s funeral.

 Is the face in the photo really that of Jackson’s spirit? Goddard and others of the squadron were convinced that it was. Goddard, in his book Flight Towards Reality, suggests that Jackson’s expression seemed to say: “My goodness me-I nearly failed to make it-They didn’t wait, or leave a place for me, the blighters!”

See also:

Top 7 People Who Claimed To Be Time Travelers

Source: Unexplained Mysteries

The Mysterious Skeleton Lake of the Himalayas

Some historical mysteries have lain forgotten for centuries by man, buried by the sands, or snow, of time. Be it the remoteness of the location or the danger involved in reaching it, for whatever reason, these places have kept their mysteries to themselves over the ages, hidden in their dark corners of the world from the outside as time marches on around them. It is often pure accident that saves these historical oddities from eternal obscurity and dredges them into the light for us to finally take a look at

One such place lies high in the Himalaya Mountains of the Uttarakhand state of India; a small glacial lake called Roopkund. The lake is located in a remote area of craggy glaciers, rocky chasms, and snow blanketed mountains, at an altitude of 5,209 meters (16,499 feet).

Other than the stark remoteness of the barren, windswept locale, there is not much that is immediately peculiar or special about this lake. It is small, at only 2 meters deep, and typically remains completely frozen over throughout most of the year. One could typically go trekking past this lake and hardly even know it was there. Yet for one month a year, when the snow melts and the ice thaws, it becomes apparent why the lake has gained its other namesake “Skeleton Lake,” for one can peer into the clear water and find hundreds of skeletons peering back.

The ancient skeletons, which are over 1,200 years old and in varying stages of preservation, can be found scattered around the landscape and lurking at the bottom of the lake, visible through the frigid, crystal clear water. It is truly a haunting sight to hike among the majestic peaks and find oneself among this bleak grave of a lake and its numerous skeletons strewn about, like some open air, forgotten tomb.

Although whispered about in rumors from as early as the 19^th century, the official discovery of this gruesome, skeleton filled lake in the middle of nowhere was made by chance in 1942 by a British game reserve ranger, who stumbled across it while conducting a survey. During that summer, the ranger came across the thawed lake and went to investigate it, only to make the horrifying discovery of over two hundred human skeletons lying at the bottom, floating through the water, and strewn about haphazardly among the rocky shores.

The puzzling discovery of a skeleton filled lake nestled away in the Himalayas far from any human settlement immediately captured the public’s imagination. People scrambled to come up with theories as to how all of these enigmatic skeletal remains had ended up in such a cold, remote place and as to what their identities were.

One of the earliest ideas put forward was that the skeletons were the remains of missing Japanese soldiers from World War II who had died from the harsh conditions while trying to sneak across that route through the mountains. This theory was later discounted by an expedition sent by a British government spooked at the idea of a possible land invasion, as the bones were determined to be too old to date from that period, and had merely been well preserved by the frigid cold. Even so, it was still uncertain just exactly how old the bones were.

Another idea was that the skeletons were the lost remains of the doomed Kashmir warrior Zogawar Singh and his army, who had mysteriously disappeared without a trace while returning from Tibet. Still other theories suggested that it had been groups of religious zealots killed in some sort of ritual group suicide, the result of a battle, or groups of travelers who had succumbed to landslides, avalanches, or disease.

For decades, the skeleton lake of Roopkund baffled scientists and no one was able to shed any light on just what exactly had happened at this far flung icy lake. Many studies of the lake were conducted over the years, including one carried out by the Anthropological Survey of India in the 1950s, yet more questions remained than answers.

It wasn’t until 2004 that a major expedition was mounted by National Geographic to try and discover more through thorough DNA testing and scientific investigation. The investigation found that the skeletons, around three hundred of them in total, all dated to around 850 AD, suggesting they had all been from the same group and had all died at the same time. After death, the freezing water and dry, icy conditions had kept the bodies in a state of remarkable preservation for the next 1,200 years. Some grisly remains unearthed in the frozen ground were surprisingly well preserved. These bodies amazingly still had hair, flesh, jewelry, and leather clothing that were shockingly intact.

Furthermore, DNA testing determined that there were two distinct groups represented among the bones, one group of taller people who were all related, and another separate group of shorter local people who are speculated to have been porters or guides. Examination of personal belongings and artifacts at the scene also seemed to suggest that these people had all been on some sort of pilgrimage.

In addition, the expedition found that the skulls all exhibited evidence of similar blunt trauma to the head, which showed that these mysterious people had met a rather violent demise. Closer forensic analysis of the skull fractures revealed that the injuries were caused by some sort of heavy, rounded object. Adding to this mystery was the fact that all of the remains only showed such traumatic injuries to the head and shoulders and nowhere else, as if they had been struck suddenly and violently from above.

These brutal findings all seemed to support some of the earlier theories of death by landslide or weapon, but after compiling all of the data and information they had gathered, researchers came to a rather bizarre conclusion as to how these people had died. It was theorized that the only way so many people could have died so suddenly from such similar injuries at the same time was that they had been caught in the open during a freak hailstorm of immense hailstones that came down with such ferocity that all three hundred pilgrims were pummeled to death.

It was estimated by scientists that in order to cause the injuries observed in the skulls, the hail would have have been around the size of cricket balls, or around 9 inches in diameter. Some have disagreed with these findings, but the scientists have claimed that this is the only plausible, rational explanation given the observable evidence.

In recent years, Roopkund, once so shrouded in mystery, has become rather well-known and is a fairly popular destination for trekkers, who brave a five day ascending trek to reach the icy lake and its grim denizens. Many of these people are thrill seekers there specifically to see the mysterious skeletons, looking for a peak at the macabre.

It is said by officials that the increasing number of these trekkers is threatening the integrity of the site as a good number of the skeletons have gone missing, and it is believed that this is the result of curious people taking them home as grisly souvenirs. Authorities have a difficult time policing and preserving the site from such thefts due to the inaccessibility of the lake.

Looking at the skeletons lost in this inhospitable landscape it is easy to find oneself imagining just what happened here all of those centuries ago. What were these people really doing so deep in the mountains all that time ago? Where were they headed? Did they really die of giant hail or is there a chance something else occurred?

If the bones keep getting plucked away at the current rate it seems the mystery of the high altitude frozen lake of Roopkund, which has lasted tucked away here in the mountains for over a thousand years, may very well disappear with them forever.

Source: MU

Aliens Plan To Take Over Earth By 2029

Phil Schneider was vocal before his death about what he says he learned about aliens while working under a high-level security clearance for the U.S. government. The source does not make any claims as to the veracity of his story, but rather presents his extraordinary claims for the reader’s entertainment and contemplation.

Schneider met with ridicule from many, but there are also many who believe him after watching his videos, such as Veterans Today senior editor Gordon Duff who calls him a “UFO whistleblower.” Schneider was found dead in his apartment in 1996. Though it was ruled a suicide, some believe he was murdered.

In 1954, then-President Dwight Eisenhower made a pact with three species of aliens, said Schneider in a lecture at the 1995 Preparedness Expo. In exchange for alien technology.

Eisenhower allegedly gave aliens permission to abduct some cattle and a limited number of human beings.

For decades livestock have been found inexplicably mutilated across the United States. More than 10,000 attacks have been recorded throughout the country, according to KLAS-TV Las Vegas. Some say these mutilations are done by cultists. Some say it’s predatory animals, although livestock have been found with their organs removed in a precise manner. Some say it’s aliens.

As for human abductees, Schneider said many of the thousands of people missing worldwide may have been taken by aliens. He said there are nine races of aliens that see a human being as “a bag of food.”

The technology aliens gave to uphold their end of this exchange includes a kind of metal that is nearly indestructible. Schneider showed the audience what he said was a piece of this metal. It is made of niobium, an element we have on the periodic table, and marinite, an alien element you won’t find mentioned in Earth’s textbooks.

He said the government also developed a spy satellite with the help of aliens that could spot a dime on your kitchen floor. It used infrared technology and had a resolution factor of 99.99961.

The aliens violated the pact, said Schneider, by taking more humans than agreed upon. A war with the aliens has been fought ever since. He said the aliens plan to take over Earth by 2029 and he called on the government to tell citizens what it knows.

He said: “We don’t have a whole heap of time left.”

Strong evidence’ Nazis developed a UFO

Nazis. UFOs. Put these two words together, and you have one heck of a conspiracy theory. But supposedly, it’s more than just a theory. Because according to a British newspaper, “there is ‘strong evidence’ that a Nazi UFO programme was well advanced.”

The movie Iron Sky riffs off the premise that Nazis created flying saucers. But per the German magazine PM, as reported in The Telegraph, it’s more fact than fiction—evidence exists in an interview given by an eyewitness of the prototype, as well as in the form of UFO sightings during World War II:

The PM report quotes eyewitnesses who believe they saw a flying saucer marked with the Iron Cross of the German military flying low over the Thames in 1944.

At the time the New York Times wrote about a “mysterious flying disc” with photos of the device seen travelling at extremely high speeds over the high-rise buildings. …

Eyewitnesses captured by the Allies after WW2 claimed to have seen the saucer produced in Prague fly on several occasions in early 1945.

As the scientifically minded know, “evidence” is not “proof.” The alleged UFOs were common enough to be given the nickname “foo fighter” (also known by the politically incorrect term “kraut fireballs”). The scientifically minded also know these sightings can be explained by ball lightning, airplane discharge, aviation vertigo and the V-2 rocket.

And as for the eyewitness account, the Nazis were likely developing a new source of propulsion. As we know from the long-range V-2 rocket , the Nazis were forward-thinking when it came to technology. But it’s not likely they managed to succeed.

See also: The legendary 2006 Russian documentary 'Third Reich - Operation UFO' 

Source: Unexplained MYSTERIES

Mystery footprints found over 1km in Malaysia

A trail of large, humanlike footprints has been discovered near the Endau Rompin forest reserve.

The mysterious footprints were found by Sia Chwee Khim and her husband while they were driving along a tarred road through the region. There were several sets of tracks, including some that appeared to be made by tigers and elephants, but it was one set in particular that caught their attention.

Measuring 48cm long and 11cm wide, the prints, which resembled those of a human but were much larger, didn't seem to conform to any known species native to the area. The couple's daughter and her friends later decided to follow the trail to see how far it went and discovered that the footprints stretched along the road for more than 1km.

"We tried to mimic the steps but could not stretch our legs to match the distance of the stride," said Sia. "We also ruled out the possibility of the tracks being left by an elephant because they were quite oblong, like human feet, and had four protruding sharp toes."

The discovery of the prints follows on from the sighting of a large bipedal hominid by workers in Kampung Mawai in 2005. The men had attempted to follow the creature but eventually lost sight of it, but not before finding a set of large footprints in the mud measuring up to 50cm in length. 

Source: Unexplained Mysteries

3-Year-Old Remembers Past Life, Identifies Murderer and Location of Body

A 3-year-old boy in the Golan Heights region near the border of Syria and Israel said he was murdered with an axe in his previous life. He showed village elders where the murderer buried his body, and sure enough they found a man’s skeleton there. He also showed the elders where the murder weapon was found, and upon digging, they did indeed find an axe there.

In his book, “Children Who Have Lived Before: Reincarnation Today,”German therapist Trutz Hardo tells this boy’s story, along with other stories of children who seem to remember their past lives with verified accuracy. The boy’s story was witnessed by Dr. Eli Lasch, who is best known for developing the medical system in Gaza as part of an Israeli government operation in the 1960s. Dr. Lasch, who died in 2009, had recounted these astounding events to Hardo.

The boy was of the Druze ethnic group, and in his culture the existence of reincarnation is accepted as fact. His story nonetheless had the power to surprise his community.

He was born with a long, red birthmark on his head. The Druse believe, as some other cultures do, that birthmarks are related to past-life deaths. When the boy was old enough to talk, he told his family he had been killed by a blow to the head with an axe.

It is customary for elders to take a child at the age of 3 to the home of his previous life if he remembers it. The boy knew the village he was from, so they went there. When they arrived in the village, the boy remembered the name he had in his past life. 

A village local said the man the boy claimed to be the reincarnation of had gone missing four years earlier. His friends and family thought he may have strayed into hostile territory nearby as sometimes happens.

The boy also remembered the full name of his killer. When he confronted this man, the alleged killer’s face turned white, Lasch told Hardo, but he did not admit to murder. The boy then said he could take the elders to where the body was buried. In that very spot, they found a man’s skeleton with a wound to the head that corresponded to the boy’s birth mark. They also found the axe, the murder weapon.

Faced with this evidence, the murderer admitted to the crime. Dr. Lasch, the only non-Druse, was present through this whole process.

To read more of Hardo’s stories, read his book, “Children Who Have Lived Before.”

See also this amazing video Children Remember Past Lives: Is Boy His Own Grandfather?