Reincarnation: Real or Delusion?

Dec. 2, 2008— -- I landed in a past life with sore feet. The first sensation was a pair of tight boots on my feet. Then I felt the tight breeches that made me sweat as I walked briskly through the streets of a grim English town.

Judging by my frock coat, luxurious mustache and splendid hat, this was the mid-1800s. I really felt myself sweat, I really felt uneasy as I imagined myself in a bedroom with a woman who was clearly not my wife. I really felt irritated as I was jostled in a dingy pub, trying to get a beer after a long day's work as an accountant.

I felt all of this while lying in a La-Z-Boy surrounded by scented candles and soothed by the mellifluous voice of David Wells, a medium who specializes in past life regression.

I am a full-time cynic. I am not spiritual. I am not religious. I am not "new age." Still, I felt myself giving in as David asked me to "imagine there is a rose bud on the top of your head."

I obeyed when he told me to "let it open up, opening up that energy center." I was not hypnotized, but I was very relaxed in what I can only describe as a trance. As it turns out, I was an uptight accountant named John Wigglesworth with a downtrodden wife named Mazie.

My final memory of John was feeling a door slam into my head. The blow killed me. And pushing that door murderously was my wife Mazie and her lover.

When David brought me back to reality, I felt embarrassed, bewildered and curious. John's life looked to me like a pastiche of an L.S. Lowry painting, a Jane Austen novel and a PBS costume drama. Throw in some sex and murder from the true crime books I love, and there you have it -- my past life.

"What seemed to be happening is crypto-amnesia, hidden memory," said Chris French, a professor who studies the psychology of paranormal belief.

"You take in an awful lot of information," French explained after I told him about my trance-induced recollections. "Sometimes you forget the source of the information, and when it comes bubbling back up in these sort of contexts, you might genuinely think this is a past life memory."