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Here's an interesting example of past life recollection under hypnosis combined with xenoglossy -- the ability to speak a language that one has never learned -- as reported in Chapter 14 of Robert S. Bobrow's worthwhile book, The Witch in the Waiting Room: A Physician Investigates Paranormal Phenomena in Medicine. Bobrow, an M.D., covers a wide variety of paranormal phenomena with an inquiring mind and a puckish sense of humor.
This particular case concerns Dolores Jay of Mt. Orab, Ohio. In 1970 her husband -- a Methodist minister and amateur hypnotist -- hypnotized Delores in the hope of curing her back pain. Bobrow writes:
During this session, when her husband [Carroll Jay] asked her if she still had pain, Dolores replied "nein" -- the German word for "no."
The problem was that neither of them spoke German. Intrigued, Reverend Jay re-hypnotized his wife three days later and tried to expand upon what had happened. Encouraged to speak German, in trance, she did. The minister asked the questions in English; Dolores replied largely in German, and in the voice of a young child. Since he could not understand her, Carroll found some friends who could speak German and had them listen to the sessions, which he had taped.
Dolores spoke German, under hypnosis, responsively, meaning she answered in German whether the query was posed in English or in German (some sessions were attended by German-speakers). Only she wasn't Dolores; she was Gretchen. And the time in which she lived, placed by events of which she spoke, would have been the late 19th century.
Bobrow acknowledges the difficulties in confirming past life regressions: the known tendency of hypnotized subjects to confabulate, and the scarcity of historical records necessary to verify the patients' claims. He goes on:
Suffice it to say that Gretchen's accounts were more or less consistent, including her last name (Gottlieb), the town in which she lived (Eberswalde), and her death -- a murder -- at about the age of sixteen. Not to mention the fact that she could speak German, and even used some archaic and obscure words.
At this point, Ian Stevenson enters the picture. Stevenson was a University of Virginia professor of psychiatry who traveled the world studying cases of children who spontaneously remembered past lives. He collected more than 2500 such cases, many of which included verifiable details.
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