Did Adrian Howard ever exist? Past-life regression.
This relates to a past-life regression session I had under hypnosis way back in 1993. I’d not done anything similar before, and haven’t done so since.
I have no idea whether what I came up with whilst under hypnosis were real memories of past lives of mine, or whether they all came from my imagination, or from stories I’d read.
I seemed to be fully awake, and the whole interview, for that’s what it was like, was taped. The hypnotist had told me I would be unaware of any noises or sounds outside the room as he put me under. The only reason I know I must have been hypnotized was that on the tape I could clearly hear a dog barking outside the window somewhere, but when under hypnosis I didn’t hear the dog.
The hypnotist took me back before I was born to three supposedly past lives. The main one, which we spent most time on, was a man who I said was named Adrian Howard. He was born on 21st January during the 1790s in the Stirling area of Scotland, and died of pneumonia in 1877. He was married to Lily (or possibly Lizzie), and they had two children (Tom and Angela?) Adrian was a farmer who employed people to work his land – mainly growing crops. He also owned a butcher’s shop in Stirling.
I have searched the birth/death and census records on-line for Stirling around those dates, and can find no record of an Adrian Howard. Whether this means I made the whole thing up, got the dates wrong, the place wrong, the name wrong, or whether the records are not accurate is impossible to say. It could even be that Adrian Howard lived in the Stirling area, but was born and died elsewhere, but you’d expect him to show up in the census records.
Only today I learnt of an American skeptic who’d been hypnotically regressed to a past life, that of an obscure painter. After months/years of research he finally managed to trace the painter, and verify all the facts he’d recalled under hypnosis.
As I suspect census and other records, especially in past centuries, are not 100% accurate, I cannot be sure Adrian Howard, or someone with a similar name, did not exist in that area of Scotland at that time. I am sure there are hundreds of thousands of people, including illegal immigrants, unauthorized ‘lodgers’ and the homeless, who are left off census records even today.
Another past life I was regressed to was that of Else, an Austrian woman who lived in Vienna and who was born in 1881 and died in an Allied air raid in 1941, trapped in a basement or air-raid shelter when the roof caved in. She was married to Alfred, a cobbler, and they had a daughter who was in the Hitler Youth.
The other past-life I was regressed to was of a slave girl in Egypt who lived around 1550 BC. She came originally from Mesopotania (modern day Iraq) and was of Turkish descent. She became the mistress of the son of the Egyptian household, got pregnant by him and died from knife wounds during either a ritualistic killing or attempts at an abortion.
Of course I could have made all these characters up from my imagination, I just don’t know. Or they could be real past-lives of mine, perhaps with some of the details not quite 100% accurate. If the birth and death dates are fairly accurate, they could be past lives as none overlap. The girl in Egypt was 1550 BC, Adrian Howard lived from the 1790s till 1877, Else was born four years later in 1881 and died in 1941. I was born four years later in 1945. I just hope I don’t have to come back to this polluted, war-riven planet four years after I die this time. It’s time I moved on to a better place – a sort of Soviet Socialist Heaven where Socialism really works! I’m ever the optimist you see.
I’d like to have another session sometime and see if I come up with the same names, or if I can fill in any of the missing details. If I came up with completely different characters, overlapping the above dates, then I’d know at least one of these regression sessions just produced imaginary characters who never existed.
