|
|
 |
|
|
‘Bridey Murphy’ witness remembers
|
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
 UNITED STATES. Hazel Higgins, now aged 91, can still remember the first words uttered by “Bridey Murphy” during a hypnosis session in Pueblo, Colorado, the early 1950s. In trance was Virginia Tighe, a 27-year-old mother-of-two. But the words that came from her lips when Hazel’s then husband, Morey Bernstein, asked her to go back in time to a previous life, were uttered in an Irish accent.
“I just scratched the paint off my bed,” declared a childish voice which claimed to be that of Bridey Murphy.
“You couldn’t listen to that and not be shocked,” Higgins told “The Pueblo Chieftan” in a 53rd anniversary interview to mark the very first of those hypnotic sessions, held on 29 November 1952. And her husband, she says, was “in a state of shock” when it first happened.
Virginia Tighe was regressed to this past life in six more tape-recorded sessions before the experiment was terminated when she became pregnant with her third child. But by then Bernstein had enough material for a book, The Quest for Bridey Murphy”, first published half a century ago, in January 1956.
The book was an instant hit and hypnotism enjoyed a new lease of life as well as opening many minds to the possibility of reincarnation. But there was plenty of criticism from sceptics who regarded it as a hoax or he dismissed the “Bridey Murphy” sessions as no more than the colourful outpourings of a woman with a vivid imagination.
Hazel Higgins says simply that it was greeted with “such a hullabaloo”. A Denver man, Bill Barker, went to Ireland to check on the information provided under hypnosis and the confirmation he found for some of the material helped quieten the critics.
“I think at first it bothered Morey, but then he considered the source. He was able to prove that those (the detractors’) claims weren’t right. There was no question in my mind she was making it up. There was no way she could be tripped up. Everything she said dovetailed perfectly with what she had said before. She spoke in the voice of a little lady from Ireland, and as she got older, her voice aged.”
Since then, Dr Ian Stevenson – the world’s leading reincarnation investigator who is not usually well-disposed to hypnosis as a research tool – is among those who have commented positively on the “Bridey Murphy” case.
Interestingly, Hazel Higgins also proved to be a good hypnotic subject while the couple were together – they divorced in 1963 – but he was never able to regress her to a past life. But her belief in reincarnation has never wavered and she still looks back on the Bridey Murphy says with fondness.
“I think it was one of those things that was meant to happen,” says the last-remaining witness to those sessions. “I think it was great. I'm sorry it didn't change more people. I think if they believed in reincarnation, it would help in many respects.”
The book’s initial print run had been an optimistic 10,000 but within two months 200,000 copies were in print and it spent 26 weeks in the New York Times’ best-sellers list. It was reissued in 1965 and was eventually published in 30 languages in 34 countries. It was also made into a film, “The Search for Bridey Murphy”, in 1956.
Morey Bernstein was a successful businessman, running a scrap metal business with his brother, at the time he experimented with hypnotism. He later made a fortune on the stock market, after selling his business in 1970. He became a major Pueblo philanthropist, donating land for the city’s convention centre and an arts centre, as well as giving millions of dollars to the University of Southern Colorado.
Despite the controversy surrounding the “Bridey Murphy” case, he was convinced his subject had lived a previous life in Ireland. He died in his Pueblo, Colorado, apartment on April 2, 1999, aged 79.
Virginia Tighe’s identity was not revealed in the book – she was referred to, instead, as Ruth Simmons. After a later marriage she became known as Virginia Morrow. She didn’t share Morey Bernstein’s certainty about her apparent past-life memories but remained open-minded about the possibility.
She died in a Denver suburb in 1995 … perhaps not for the first time.
|
Posted on Monday, September 04, 2006
Category: Reincarnation
|
| Return |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|