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This man, Ray Bryant, is looking for what he thinks is his own grave.

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For somewhere in this cemetery lies soldier Ruben Stafford, died 1879. Can Bryant, as he

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claims, be Stafford reborn? What else can explain the way he relives the dead man's life under

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hypnosis, like this moment from the Crimean War?

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Half asleep, half asleep, half asleep. According to the Army records, he was wounded in the

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left hand of that battle. Can Bryant, can we all have lived before?

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Mysteries from the files of Arthur C. Clarke, scientist, writer and visionary, the scientist

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who invented the communication satellite, the writer of 2010, and now in retreat in Sri

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Lanka the visionary who ponders the riddles of this and other worlds.

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This is the editorial office of The Sun, one of Sri Lanka's most popular newspapers. The

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journalists behind me are writing up tomorrow's edition, stories of politics, sports, human

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interests, the kind of material that sells newspapers all over the world. But there's

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one kind of story that The Sun thrives on that you'll hardly ever see in the Western

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press and there are bulging files on it here. These are stories of reincarnation. They tell

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of young children who often as soon as they can speak talk about their real parents and

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their other homes. They seem to recall previous lives often in such detail that they not only

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provide good copy for local journalists but they persuade researchers all over the world

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that there's a phenomenon here worth investigating. Here's a story of a little boy, Adjit, who

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remembers drowning five years ago. And here is a story about a little five-year-old girl

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who thinks she's a man who was killed in a road accident. But the story which most fascinates me

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is one that comes from the place I love most in Sri Lanka, the beautiful little bay of

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Unuvatuna on the shores of the Indian Ocean. The story is a tragic reminder of Sri Lanka's

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brief but bloody insurrection of 1971. A captured rebel, a young man named Robert,

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leapt to his death into the sea. His close companion, Johnny, had already been killed.

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These twin girls were not born until seven years later. Yet almost as soon as they could speak,

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they claimed to be reincarnations of Johnny and Robert.

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Sharomi recounts gruesome details of Johnny's death.

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Shivanti says she remembers leaping into the sea with a wrists wired together.

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Such stories are intriguing but for them to be accepted as evidence of reincarnation,

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every detail must be checked by a trusted investigator.

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Journalist Delrin Vigirattini covers many reincarnation stories. The latest comes from

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a jungle village, Pethiyagada. In this case, four-year-old Inoka is the child who claims to have lived before.

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The story goes that when she first began to talk, Inoka told her mother Rita Sriyani that she had

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another family. They lived in a town called Minawangada. She claimed to remember having two

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sisters and a brother. They lived in much less primitive surroundings. Their house had running

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water and electricity.

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Inoka's mother says she'd never believed in reincarnation and she certainly wasn't going

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to trek six miles through the jungle to Minawangada to check Inoka's claims.

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At first, we started ignoring her conversation because we didn't want our only daughter to

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talk about another family, another father and another mother.

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But Inoka's grandmother Kiriyama did listen to the tales of the little girl and in the end

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was persuaded to take her to Minawangada.

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At the Buddhist temple there, the priests were intrigued but not surprised for Buddhists'

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belief in reincarnation. They soon discovered that eight years before, an 11-year-old girl

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called Milani had died in a motorbike accident. She'd had one brother and two sisters and

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they'd lived in this modern house. It all fitted Inoka's description. When she was taken there,

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her first reactions amazed her mother, Rita Sreyani.

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She was no stranger in that house and her first question was, where's my daughter?

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She started calling the mother of her previous life, Mummy and Rita Sreyani was quite unhappy

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about it and she was asking for all the toys of her previous birth.

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Today, Inoka frequently makes the journey to Minawangada.

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Milani's father welcomes Inoka as a member of the family.

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Bandu accepts her as his reborn sister.

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The girls say Inoka knew their names the first time she came to play

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and she went straight to this cupboard for the dead girl's suitcase of toys.

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She identified Milani's photograph as my picture and she calls Mrs. Gaudagampala her real mother.

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And what difference did Inoka's arrival make to your life?

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I was really happy because I had three or four children, I lost one and I got her back again.

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I see no other explanation to this story other than reincarnation.

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I mean, how can you expect a girl from Pethya Gauda that's six miles away from this spot

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to talk of a family in Minawangada that she has never seen or heard before?

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So you have to accept it as reincarnation and nothing else?

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So the strange claims Inoka made when she began to speak

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have brought great happiness to a family that no longer mourns.

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Stories of this kind are very rare in Britain.

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One of the most remarkable began in 1957 in Northumberland in the country town of Hexham.

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It was there one Sunday morning that tragedy struck John Pollock and his family.

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In the morning, the family was taken to the hospital.

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The family was taken to the hospital.

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It was there one Sunday morning that tragedy struck John Pollock and his family.

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His two daughters and a friend were killed by a car on their way to church.

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Jacqueline was six and Joanna eleven when they died,

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but John Pollock did not despair while Hexham grieved.

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He believed that his wife would conceive twins that the girls would be reborn.

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From the moment I knew she was pregnant, I believed that the girls would come back.

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And against all the doctor's predictions, Florence Pollock did produce twin girls.

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The first thing I noticed when I saw those twins was, we hadn't named them then,

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but the younger one of the two had the scar coming across her forehead down onto the bridge of her nose,

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which was the identical scar that Jacqueline, the younger one of the girls, had had

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when she fell off a little tricycle when she was about two years old.

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Also, I didn't see it at the time, but later, my wife said to me, it's an incredible thing,

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but she's also got the birthmark on her left hip that Jacqueline had.

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Jacqueline had a birthmark on her left hip which was like a brown thumbprint.

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To this day, Jennifer still has that brown birthmark.

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Mrs Pollock was astonished when she gave the twins the dead girls dolls.

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When I got these two dolls out, one said, oh, that's Mary and that's Susan.

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And it was exactly the same name as my other daughters had named them.

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And that was the sort of really turning point in my way of thinking.

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The family had moved away after the tragedy, but on their first visit to Hexham,

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the twins seemed to remember the landmarks.

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Well, when we came at the top of Battle Hill, they came over the brow,

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approaching St Mary's Church, which they couldn't see.

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One turned to the other and said, well, the school's around here, which we used to go to,

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and the playground's around the back.

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Now, they couldn't possibly have seen any sign of a school or a church even.

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I mean, they were so small, they couldn't even have seen over the wall.

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And sure enough, I mean, the school is around the corner.

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And this was the most incredible thing.

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And we continued to walk on. I mean, we were absolutely amazed at this.

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And as we came past the church, on the opposite side of the road is Hexham Abbey and the Abbey grounds.

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And one turned and said, oh, the playground's over there.

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And she was right. The playground was over there,

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but they couldn't see it from where they were standing

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because the brow of the hill was in the way.

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So convinced with the Pollocks that their daughters had been reborn,

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that even the children's grave no longer held any sorrow for them.

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There's a grave there, but it means nothing.

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To me, to bring flowers or anything but on the grave would be sheer ecoculture

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because I don't believe that they're here.

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I mean, it's just a symbol of two girls that lived that were reborn.

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Such accounts of rebirth are rare in the West

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where the most fruitful source of material is hypnotic regression.

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It was hypnotic regression that convinced Ray Bryant that he had lived before

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as color sergeant Ruben Stafford,

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who fought in the Crimea and was buried in this cemetery.

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Bryant hopes to find the truth in Preston.

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Fullwood Barracks is the headquarters of Stafford's regiment,

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the 47th Lancashire Regiment of Foot.

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Under hypnosis, Ray seems to remember living as Stafford,

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and many of his memories check out.

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There was such a person as color sergeant Ruben Stafford

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at the 47th Lancashire Regiment of Foot.

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He did actually exist.

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We began to find army records which proved it.

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We found his death certificate.

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Stafford drowned in London in 1879,

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but 25 years earlier he fought in the Crimean War.

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In the regimental safe are dozens of letters

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crammed with details of the Crimean Campaign.

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As far as anyone knows, they've never been published,

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so Bryant cannot have seen them.

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Colonel John Byrd hopes to check Bryant's apparent memories

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against the facts in these letters.

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They were written by Major Richard Farron,

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Second in command of the regiment.

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Every week he described to his mother the agonies of the Crimea.

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If I do remember what is in those letters,

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we still can't say that it really proves anything.

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We can't say that it's reincarnation,

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we can't say that it's inherited memory,

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we can't say that it's telepathy.

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We can't really say what it is,

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but at least it shows that something is there,

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and it is not all imagination.

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All right, let's do it.

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In the regimental museum,

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Bryant will be hypnotized and taken back in time

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for Colonel Byrd's interrogation.

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Until he goes under, he's blindfolded,

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so that he cannot pick up any clues from the museum's treasures.

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Before long, Bryant is unconscious and ready for regression.

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First, hypnotist Joe Keaton takes him back through his own life.

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Everything you tell us must be things that have actually happened to you personally.

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Nothing you've read, nothing you've watched, nothing you've been told.

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It's Christmas Day today and you're three years old.

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It's Christmas Day today and you're three.

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Hello Ray.

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How are you?

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What are you doing?

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What are you doing?

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I'm looking at the tree.

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What tree?

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You trying to get in there for you?

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What is that?

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It's a pass.

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Oh, do you watch any?

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I don't know. Who brought it?

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Um, I...

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But even more remarkably, it seems he can be regressed to before he was born.

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I'll go back further still.

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Go back further still.

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I want you to go back to the year 1855.

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It is the year 1855.

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In 1855, the 47th faced a bitter Crimean winter.

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Under hypnosis, Brian seems to re-experience every hardship

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suffered by the ill-equipped infantry and his accent has changed.

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I am bloody cramp.

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Why have you got cramp?

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Because it's bloody cold.

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Very convincing, but can he recall simple details like the names of the men in command?

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Can you give me the names of any of your officers?

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Lownds, Captain Lownds.

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There's Company Commander.

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Hmm.

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There's Simon Irving.

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There's a second in command.

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And who was commanding the 47th?

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Colonel Villiers.

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Colonel Villiers? I see.

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Sadly, he was only partly right.

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The army list for that year shows that there was a Captain Lownds, but no Lieutenant Irving.

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There were two Captains called Villiers, but no Colonel.

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In command of the 47th was Colonel William O'Grady Hayley.

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And curiously, he's wrong about something Stafford must have known.

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You carry a rifle?

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What sort of rifle?

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Hammond.

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Hammond?

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Hmm.

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A Hammond rifle?

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In fact, the regiment had just been issued with Minier rifles.

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There was a Hammond rifle, but the army didn't even test it until more than ten years later.

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But his description of a drum captured from the Russians was uncannily close.

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Did you capture any drums?

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No.

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No.

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Have you seen them?

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Side drums.

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Side drums, were they?

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What were they like? Like our own?

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Gold or brassy sort of ornament.

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I saw them on churches. I saw animal head.

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It's the 20th of September, 1854.

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Now, what's going on around you? What are you doing?

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I'm camped on El's...

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...above Alma.

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Above the Alma?

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Aye.

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What's the Alma?

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Alma is...

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...Alma River.

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And which, where is the Alma from where you are at this very moment?

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It's down Blorta.

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Well, oh...

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The Alma River was the scene of one of the most ferocious battles of the Crimean War.

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Bryant's description of crossing the river is so vivid, it's hard to believe he isn't there.

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Major Farron wrote home,

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the heavy guns of the enemy were placed on the high ground beyond the river.

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And the moment we came within range, he fired away round shot, grape and shells,

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which rattled like a storm of hailstones.

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You're crossing the Alma with your regiment.

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What's going on?

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I'm coming on under fire.

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From where?

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From El's.

236
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Where are the El's?

237
00:18:29,960 --> 00:18:32,960
Hurry up, hurry up. El's up the front.

238
00:18:32,960 --> 00:18:35,960
Yes, go to sleep. Go to sleep.

239
00:18:35,960 --> 00:18:38,960
What was it like crossing the river?

240
00:18:38,960 --> 00:18:40,960
It was horrible.

241
00:18:40,960 --> 00:18:43,960
There were a lot of shrapnel all about.

242
00:18:43,960 --> 00:18:46,960
What was the crossing like? Was it deep?

243
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Waste.

244
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Up above waste.

245
00:18:50,960 --> 00:18:52,960
And...

246
00:18:52,960 --> 00:18:54,960
..and...

247
00:18:54,960 --> 00:18:56,960
..and...

248
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What's the ground like on your way up the hill at the other side, where you are now?

249
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Sand and mud.

250
00:19:02,960 --> 00:19:05,960
I mean, you can't grip hardly.

251
00:19:05,960 --> 00:19:07,960
Farron wrote,

252
00:19:07,960 --> 00:19:10,960
The river is a difficult one for troops to forward under fire.

253
00:19:10,960 --> 00:19:13,960
The banks were steep and precipitous and slippery with mud.

254
00:19:13,960 --> 00:19:16,960
Bryant's exactly right about the mud.

255
00:19:16,960 --> 00:19:18,960
It's an extraordinary performance.

256
00:19:18,960 --> 00:19:21,960
And yet he's got many simple facts wrong.

257
00:19:21,960 --> 00:19:25,960
So do regressions really provide evidence for reincarnation?

258
00:19:25,960 --> 00:19:30,960
The key to these regressions may have been discovered as long ago as 1906.

259
00:19:30,960 --> 00:19:34,960
Under hypnosis, a woman recalled intimate details

260
00:19:34,960 --> 00:19:37,960
of her past life as a medieval lady,

261
00:19:37,960 --> 00:19:39,960
Blanche Pointings,

262
00:19:39,960 --> 00:19:43,960
a close friend of Maude, Countess of Salisbury.

263
00:19:43,960 --> 00:19:47,960
However, the case was blown when she was re-hypnotised

264
00:19:47,960 --> 00:19:50,960
and asked where she'd obtained the information.

265
00:19:50,960 --> 00:19:53,960
She answered from a book, Countess Maude,

266
00:19:53,960 --> 00:19:55,960
by Emily Holt.

267
00:19:55,960 --> 00:19:57,960
And here it is.

268
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The closing pages are an historical appendix

269
00:20:02,960 --> 00:20:07,960
about Blanche Pointings, born before 1349.

270
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It turned out that she'd read this book many years before.

271
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And although she'd completely forgotten it,

272
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the facts have lugged themselves in her subconscious mind.

273
00:20:19,960 --> 00:20:23,960
Under hypnosis, not only did she recall the plot,

274
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she wrote herself into the script.

275
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This amazing ability of the human mind

276
00:20:29,960 --> 00:20:33,960
to remember yet to forget that it is remembering

277
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is called cryptomnesia.

278
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These secret memories, when triggered by hypnosis,

279
00:20:40,960 --> 00:20:45,960
can sometimes be so vivid that they're mistaken for reality.

280
00:20:45,960 --> 00:20:48,960
A remarkable case of cryptomnesia

281
00:20:48,960 --> 00:20:51,960
was shown by a Finnish teenager in the 1960s.

282
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Lisa spoke no English then,

283
00:20:56,960 --> 00:20:59,960
but when Dr. Reimer Kampmann regressed her,

284
00:20:59,960 --> 00:21:03,960
she described life as an innkeeper's daughter in medieval Norfolk

285
00:21:03,960 --> 00:21:06,960
and suddenly burst into song in English.

286
00:21:06,960 --> 00:21:13,960
Summer is a common in loud sing-go-go

287
00:21:13,960 --> 00:21:20,960
Grow a seed and glows, meet and sing as old and old

288
00:21:20,960 --> 00:21:25,960
Sing-go-go

289
00:21:26,960 --> 00:21:29,960
But how had she learned an English song?

290
00:21:31,960 --> 00:21:34,960
Kampmann hypnotized her again and asked her.

291
00:21:34,960 --> 00:21:37,960
She said from a book, the story of music,

292
00:21:37,960 --> 00:21:39,960
she'd seen it in the library.

293
00:21:41,960 --> 00:21:44,960
One glance at this page and this old English song,

294
00:21:44,960 --> 00:21:49,960
foreign words, music and all, were imprinted on her mind.

295
00:21:49,960 --> 00:21:51,960
Since then she has learned English

296
00:21:51,960 --> 00:21:54,960
and a distrust of hypnotic regression.

297
00:21:55,960 --> 00:21:57,960
I think it is nonsense.

298
00:21:57,960 --> 00:22:05,960
And if we think these personalities, I have had many.

299
00:22:05,960 --> 00:22:08,960
It's not a question of reincarnation.

300
00:22:08,960 --> 00:22:11,960
It's just productive imagination.

301
00:22:11,960 --> 00:22:13,960
That's my opinion.

302
00:22:13,960 --> 00:22:16,960
We're all bombarded with masses of information

303
00:22:16,960 --> 00:22:20,960
from radio, TV, movies, books.

304
00:22:20,960 --> 00:22:23,960
People who claim to have lived past lives

305
00:22:23,960 --> 00:22:26,960
may have unconsciously absorbed the facts

306
00:22:26,960 --> 00:22:30,960
and stored them somewhere in the recesses of their minds.

307
00:22:30,960 --> 00:22:34,960
What these stories of reincarnation do prove

308
00:22:34,960 --> 00:22:37,960
is that our brains have a truly amazing ability

309
00:22:37,960 --> 00:22:40,960
to store huge blocks of information

310
00:22:40,960 --> 00:22:43,960
and to reproduce them with complete accuracy.

311
00:22:43,960 --> 00:22:46,960
This seems to me almost as amazing

312
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:50,960
and as improbable as reincarnation itself.

313
00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:52,960
And just in case you do live again,

314
00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:56,960
you can be sure of an invitation to come as you were

315
00:22:56,960 --> 00:23:00,960
to the Los Angeles Reincarnation Party.

316
00:23:00,960 --> 00:23:04,960
Her Majesty, Queen Isabella of Spain.

317
00:23:09,960 --> 00:23:11,960
Anne Boliv.

318
00:23:13,960 --> 00:23:16,960
Whenever they can, the party guests try to dress up

319
00:23:16,960 --> 00:23:18,960
as the people they believe they once were.

320
00:23:18,960 --> 00:23:21,960
Talk naturally is of days gone by.

321
00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:24,960
Your right to do as the majority of the country dictates.

322
00:23:24,960 --> 00:23:26,960
No.

323
00:23:26,960 --> 00:23:28,960
We'll fight you for that.

324
00:23:28,960 --> 00:23:30,960
Bad gum, Yankee.

325
00:23:30,960 --> 00:23:32,960
Fetert Scum.

326
00:23:32,960 --> 00:23:34,960
We have all day to join us.

327
00:23:34,960 --> 00:23:36,960
Some very fascinating people.

328
00:23:36,960 --> 00:23:37,960
What about you?

329
00:23:37,960 --> 00:23:39,960
I am Escalopius,

330
00:23:39,960 --> 00:23:44,960
which is Apollo's mortal son.

331
00:23:44,960 --> 00:23:47,960
Oh, that's how I recognize you.

332
00:23:47,960 --> 00:23:50,960
I was coined in China, 4,000 BC.

333
00:23:50,960 --> 00:23:52,960
I know this was my life.

334
00:23:52,960 --> 00:23:54,960
I was a simple woman as a temple healer,

335
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:56,960
and I was killed by the Mongols,

336
00:23:56,960 --> 00:23:58,960
strung up, and I became a goddess

337
00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:01,960
because the people came back and saw what had happened.

338
00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:04,960
You know, I was James Dean of my past life.

339
00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:11,960
I had deja vu experiences,

340
00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:13,960
and I asked a lot of other people who were psychics

341
00:24:13,960 --> 00:24:16,960
what that meant, and they said it must be a past life.

342
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:19,960
So I went into some history books,

343
00:24:19,960 --> 00:24:22,960
and I just automatically went to the history of Spain,

344
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:25,960
and I picked out the books of Isabella and Ferdinand,

345
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:28,960
and as I glanced through those books,

346
00:24:28,960 --> 00:24:30,960
the things that I was remembering were written in history.

347
00:24:30,960 --> 00:24:34,960
It explains more to me than my Midwest upbringing ever did.

348
00:24:34,960 --> 00:24:36,960
I thoroughly believe in it.

349
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:40,960
I feel that many of the traits that I have today

350
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:43,960
are direct bearings on what I did in past life.

351
00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:46,960
I'm like, oh, we go back all the way to Greece,

352
00:24:46,960 --> 00:24:50,960
ancient Greece, when Arti was a senator,

353
00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:52,960
and I was his daughter,

354
00:24:52,960 --> 00:24:56,960
and if he's nice, that's fine.

355
00:24:56,960 --> 00:24:58,960
If he's not nice, that's fine.

356
00:24:58,960 --> 00:25:00,960
I have to be where he is.

357
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:03,960
I find about 10% of my patients

358
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:07,960
have brought some garbage with them from a past life

359
00:25:07,960 --> 00:25:11,960
that does not respond to age regression in this life

360
00:25:11,960 --> 00:25:14,960
and taking the person all the way back to the womb,

361
00:25:14,960 --> 00:25:17,960
searching for the original episode,

362
00:25:17,960 --> 00:25:20,960
and they still have the emotional problem,

363
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:22,960
then there's only one place to go to,

364
00:25:22,960 --> 00:25:25,960
and that's to a past life, and there I find it.

365
00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:27,960
Case history after case history.

366
00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:29,960
There is something to this.

367
00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:45,960
Next week, Dowsing. An element of the divine.

368
00:26:11,960 --> 00:26:18,960
Thank you.