Divine Intermission. Exploratory Studies in Reincarnation.

Our first article on Reincarnation ‘The Boy Who Was His Own Grandfather’, from Dr. Jim Tucker’s book ‘Life before Life’ published on April 5, brought to you the case of John McConnell of New York who died of gunshot wounds in an encounter with robbers. He was reborn to his daughter Doreen as William and went on to recall his life as Doreen’s father. Continuing the series of excerpts on Reincarnation from the book, today we present to you another extraordinary case of Reincarnation where  brothers Bobby and Donald Hodges remember their previous lives as twins from the womb of their mother from past life. Bobby Hodges has sharp, vivid memories of his struggle to be born to his previous life mother and accuses his brother of preventing that birth. Read on to learn about this almost shocking case of Reincarnation of twin brothers.

The Case of Bobby Hodges and Donald Hodges, North Carolina

Bobby Hodges, a boy from North Carolina, frequently talked about wanting to live with his cousins. His cousins’ family consisted of one boy, the oldest child, and three girls. In addition, Bobby’s aunt had miscarried a set of twins after her son was born. Bobby said that the boy was his big brother and asked why his mother was keeping him from his real family. He repeatedly said that he belonged with his cousins. His parents, thinking that he liked his cousins’ family because it had more children in it than his own, never gave his statements much thought until he began talking to his mother one night after his bath when he was four and a half years old. 

He asked her if she remembered when he was in her tummy. She said yes and asked if he remembered when his two-and-a-half-year old brother Donald was in her tummy. He then asked if she remembered when he and Donald were in her tummy at the same time. When she told him that they had not been in her tummy at the same time, he said they were in her tummy at the same time but did not get born. She told him that he did get born and later Donald was born. He responded that he and Donald had been in his Aunt Susan’s tummy at the same time, rather than his mother’s, and asked why Aunt Susan did not give birth to them. 

Bobby then became very upset and began screaming at Donald. He said, “Donald, it is all your fault. I told you I wanted to get born real bad, and you didn’t want to. How did you take me out of there, Donald? Why didn’t you want to get born? Tell me how you did it. Tell me how you took me out of there.”

At this point, Bobby’s mother had to restrain him to keep him from going after Donald. She told him not to scream at Donald and that Donald did not know what he was talking about. Bobby screamed that Donald did know and asked him again why he had taken Bobby out of Aunt Susan’s tummy. 

Donald then took his pacifier out of his mouth and yelled, “No! I wanted Daddy!” before popping his pacifier back in. Bobby yelled back, “I didn’t want Daddy, I wanted Uncle Ron!” 

After Bobby calmed down somewhat, he told his mother that after the failed pregnancy, he had tried to get back in Aunt Susan’s tummy, but Rebecca, his cousin, was there. He told his mother, “I wanted to be in there, and she wouldn’t let me. I tried to kick her out, but it didn’t work. She got to be born, and I didn’t.” He said that he then got in his mother’s tummy and was born. He said, “I sure did have to work hard to get here, Mom.” 

To give some background, Bobby’s Uncle Ron is his father’s brother. Ron’s wife Susan became pregnant with male twins seven years before Bobby was born. At thirty-three weeks’ gestation, Susan did not feel any movement from the twins, and when she went to the hospital, the doctors found that both had died. The hospital records indicate that the attachment of one of the umbilical cords to the placenta did not have adequate coverings around the blood vessels and so was very susceptible to being compressed. The doctors told Susan that they suspected that one of the twins rolled over on the cord there. This stopped the blood flow, killing one twin, and because of shared circulation, the other one died soon thereafter. 

Since the miscarriages were understandably upsetting to the parents, the family never spoke of them, and Bobby’s parents feel sure that he had never heard about them. Susan and Ron became pregnant again a few months later, and they subsequently had three girls. The last one, Rebecca, was born eighteen months before Bobby was.

In addition to his talk of being one of Susan’s twins, Bobby made a few comments about other lives that he said he remembered. He said that in one, he died from a gunshot wound, and in another, he was a teenager who died in a motor vehicle accident. One time, after recovering from the flu, Bobby told his mother, “Mom, people in the other world don’t get sick.” She responded, “The other world, Bobby?” and he said, “The world where I was waiting to get born. People don’t get sick there. They are just happy and never get sick. I wish we didn’t get sick in this world.” 

Another time, he talked about his parents’ wedding, which occurred when his mother was pregnant with him. Since she was noticeably pregnant at the ceremony, she does not have any wedding pictures on display in their house. She and her husband got married in a gazebo on a hill, and they had to climb steps up to the hill and again into the gazebo. They do not believe that Bobby had ever seen a picture of the wedding or heard them discuss it, until one day Bobby saw his mother looking through a pile of pictures. She gave him a picture of his parents’ wedding—a close-up shot of them standing in front of a railing. It is the railing of the gazebo, but that is not obvious from the picture. His mother is holding flowers, and his father is wearing a boutonniere. They are standing in profile, apparently facing the minister, but the back of a woman, presumably a member of the wedding party, blocks the viewer from seeing the person in front of them. 

When Bobby’s mother asked him if he knew what it was a picture of, he answered, “Yes, Mom. It’s a picture of you and Dad getting married. I was there. I saw the whole thing.” She asked, “You did?” and he answered, “Yes, Mom, you walked up the stairs, and then you gave each other rings, and then you ate cake.” 

I happened to call her immediately after this exchange, and she told me what Bobby had said. She did not see any way he could have known that she and her husband walked up stairs to start their wedding. At the one wedding he had attended, cake had not been served because of an air-conditioning problem. His mother does not normally even eat cake, but she did so at her own wedding, because she thought that not eating it might bring bad luck. 

On his fourth birthday, Bobby had talked about being born. His mother reports that he was born by cesarean section after a prolonged labor. He had presented in a face-up position, called an occiput-posterior position, and nurses were unable to get him to turn. When Bobby talked about his birth, he said that he had been kicking in the womb because he was trying to get out. His mother responded that he had to wait to get born, and he said, “I know, and it was making me mad, and I was pushing to get out and then they were pushing on my head, Mom, trying to get me to go back in, and that was making me really mad, ‘cause I wanted to get out, but I couldn’t ‘cause I was stuck.”

His mother was shocked and said, “Yes, you were stuck, and they were pushing on your head to get you to turn over. All you had to do was turn over, and you could have gotten out.” 

He responded, “Oh, I didn’t know that. I would have turned over, but I thought they were pushing me back in. Anyway, then I saw the light, and then the doctor took me out of your tummy, and then they cleaned all that slime off, and then they put me in a bed, and then I could get some sleep.”

Bobby’s case is an example of one in which the child talks about the interval between the death of the previous personality and his birth. In his case, he talked about events that took place when he was in his mother’s womb and made one reference to being in another world before coming to his mother. Most of the subjects in our cases do not make such statements. In 1,100 cases, sixty-nine subjects reported memories of the previous personality’s funeral or the handling of the remains; ninety-one described other events happening on Earth; 112 reported memories of being in another realm; and forty-five reported memories either of conception or of being reborn. Some of the children are counted in more than one category since they described more than one type of experience, and only 217 out of the 1,100 reported having at least one of these experiences.

[Source: Jim B. Tucker, Life before Life. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin]

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