Sample "before cases": Nahm excerpt #9

Michael Nahm, in his Bigelow award-winning essay, "Climbing Mount Evidence: A Strategic Assessment of the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death," writes: 

From a scientific perspective, numerous CORT have a vulnerable point: They had already been solved by members of the involved families or other local people before the researchers who investigated and published the case reports appeared on the scene. Hence, when the two families had already met and talked to each other, it is possible that the information obtained in the later interviews had been retrofitted, embellished, or otherwise contorted to present a respectable case. Seeking to avoid these problems, CORT researchers are especially intrigued when they learn about cases in which a child’s statements about the remembered life were documented before the case was solved. Retrospective tampering is much more difficult and unlikely in these cases, thereby rendering their essential features much more authentic. These important cases are called before-cases.

To date, I am aware of 31 published reports of before-cases. On their travels through India, Stevenson, Shroder, and Pasricha followed up such a case, visiting 24-year-old Sunita Chandak and her family. The case was originally solved by Indian journalist Padmakar Joshi when Sunita was five years old, and Stevenson independently investigated it later.

Sunita was born in a town named Verni Kotha. At the age of four, she explained she came from a village called Belgaon and insisted on being taken there. Her father, however, had never heard of such a village. After she provided further information about it, her father contacted Joshi and asked him for help in finding a matching location. The latter identified 28 villages named Belgaon in the region, nine of which appeared to fit the rough description given by Sunita. Her parents took her to three of these Belgaons in the course of several months, but each time, Sunita claimed these weren’t the correct one. Thereafter, Joshi published a public note on Sunita’s case along with some of her statements. And indeed, a reader from one of the remaining Belgaons recognized several items that matched a fitting family: A girl named Shanta Kalmegh had died 24 years before Sunita’s birth at the age of six. When Sunita’s family took her to this Belgaon in 1979, a town 90 miles away and requiring multiple bus changes to be reached, she immediately identified it as the correct one. She recognized the Kalmegh house and family members. Moreover, because Shanta had died about 30 years previously, Sunita correctly described numerous details of this house and the neighborhood that had been present at the time but no longer existed. The Kalmegh family eventually became convinced that Sunita was Shanta reborn, and a lifelong friendship commenced. When Stevenson and his team visited Sunita in 1998, Joshi also joined them. Sunita was now married and lived with her husband, having children of her own. But she still maintained close relationships with both parents whom she called her “Verni Kotha parents” and her “Belgaon parents.”

Below, I briefly summarize two other CORT that are among the most compelling and best documented before-cases. One of them is the American case of Ryan Hammons of Oklahoma.

When Ryan began to speak in 2009, he talked about a previous life and a family he had in Hollywood. He explained that when he died he saw an awesome bright light that one should go to, a feature familiar from Western NDEs. Ryan would often cry and beg to be taken to Hollywood to see the people he loved and missed. When his mother Cyndi bought books about Hollywood, he stated he knew some of the people displayed in them. In a picture of a movie showing many people, he pointed to one of the actors, saying “Mama, that guy’s me.” At that stage, Cyndi contacted Jim Tucker, Stevenson’s successor at the University of Virginia, because she was looking for help in identifying the apparently quite unknown actor for whom no name was given. From then on, the case developed intriguingly. Cyndi Hammons and Tucker were in constant contact, documenting many more statements made by Ryan. They were furthermore in contact with film producers who hired an archival footage consultant who finally succeeded in identifying the actor in question. His name was Morris Kolinsky, but he later called himself Marty Martyn. This man tried his luck as a dancer and actor, but finally ended up running a successful talent agency in Hollywood. He died 40 years before Ryan was born. In photographs, the boy recognized several people known to Martyn, and the documented descriptions of the buildings that had been “his” home and office proved to be correct. Even before Marty Martyn was identified, Cyndi Hammons had recorded no less than 55 statements that perfectly matched his life.

The second case to be summarized concerns a young Sri Lankan girl named Gnanatilleka Baddewithana. It was investigated and solved by Dr. H.H.S. Nissanka, who always ensured that he was accompanied by academics and other esteemed personalities from the area. Nissanka vividly described the course of his investigations in a book. He tape-recorded his most important interviews and hired a photographer to take pictures of the most significant events, such as Gnanatilleka’s first meeting with members of the family she claimed to have been part of.

Gnanatilleka was born in 1956 in a remote settlement in the Central Sri Lankan highlands located about 15 miles from the town she remembered having lived in. She made dozens of statements about this past life that could be verified after the matching previous personality, a boy who died at the age of 13, was discovered by Nissanka in 1960. The two families hadn’t known each other before and were initially quite disinclined to participate in the investigation. When finally introduced to several members of her previous family one by one in a separate room of a guesthouse, Gnanatilleka identified all of them correctly without being asked leading questions. She also showed affectionate behavior towards them—with one exception: She became angry and fearful when the brother of the previous personality entered the room. This fitted: These brothers had a hostile relationship with each other. The photographs included in Nissanka’s book impressively document the behavior of four-year-old Gnanatilleka when she met all these people for the first time; the entire episode was also tape-recorded.  

Ian Stevenson later investigated her case as well, but completely independently of Nissanka. Nevertheless, Stevenson’s report matches Nissanka’s report, and he added further pieces of information. The case can therefore be regarded as quite authentic. 

 

Michael Nahm is a German biologist and parapsychologist whose psi research has focused on terminal lucidity, near-death experiences, cases of the reincarnation type, physical mediumship, hauntings, the history of parapsychology, and various other riddles of the mind and the evolution of life. In 2018 he accepted an appointment at the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene (IGPP) (Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health) in Freiburg, Germany. His publications are available at http://www.michaelnahm.com/publications-and-downloads and his Bigelow essay may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes have been deleted in these excerpts but are available in his text posted on the Bigelow website.