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Click on the thumbnail of the expert or experiencer to view the
interview with that person (Windows Media format except where indicated).
New interviews may be added from time to time.
See also the interviews I conducted for my internet radio show,
"Metaphysical Explorations."

 

Stephen Sakellarios, producer of "In Another Life" and webmaster of this website, discusses, in depth, his two new books, "Mathew Franklin Whittier in his own words" and "Loving Abby in Truth and Spirit," including how he came to write them and what his purpose was. I'd like to make a brief addendum: As regards the psychic reading by Candace Zellner, although I say I believed the reading based on the accuracy of her opening statement, in actuality there were many points that had been verified as correct even at that time--and by the time I am writing this, on 2/22/16, I have found corroborating evidence for most of the reading in the historical record. In the interview, I neglected to come back to the subject of recognizing the Whittier homestead. Several years after first seeing images of the modern, spruced up version, I found images of how it looked when Mathew grew up there, and these felt familiar. After several such incidents, I've concluded that in order for the sense of familiarity to be triggered, the stimulus image has to be precisely accurate. Also, I have found no direct evidence that Mathew was ever called "Frank," even in his family, and I feel that if he was, he disliked it. He appears to have been called "Franklin" as a Quaker formality, which he may also have disliked, except as regards Benjamin Franklin being his namesake. The evidence further suggests that he may have been known as "Franklin" in his hometown; however, I also found evidence that Abby probably called him "Matt" or "Mathew" in their personal life, reserving "Franklin" for her communications with the Whittier family. Note also that I have since uncovered a slightly different historical scenario for the marriage and move to Dover, NH, than I understood at the time of this interview. The picnic basket may well have been a large sewing basket, since small ones with this design seem to be fairly common; however, I did purchase a picnic basket precisely of the type I remembered (with leather straps to hold plates and silverware on the inside of the lid), which probably dates back to the early 20th century. These seem to be exceedingly rare. Finally, here is the link to Jeff Keene's psychic reading, as mentioned in the interview. I shot it in 1998 when, as near as I can tell, only the Spiritualist churches were recording such things (it was my idea, independently, as I had never seen such videos at the time).

Jim Tucker, MD of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, 6/25/07. Dr. Tucker, successor to Dr. Ian Stevenson, describes the Division's ongoing efforts to investigate the phenomenon of spontaneous past-life memories in children. Regarding the photos of bullet-wound birthmarks which I have permission to use here, Dr. Tucker writes that witness accounts varied, but that two witnesses indicated the mark on the side of the head had originally been further toward the front and had migrated back along the side (as they sometimes do). The widow of the previous personality, meanwhile, reported that he (the previous personality) had been shot from behind, leaving a small entrance wound in the back of the head and a larger, irregularly-shaped wound in the front. There was no autopsy report for this particular case, but stronger cases with such reports exist in Dr. Stevenson's publications. If you have seen this online, I'm the originator of it.

Tom Shroder, interviewed here on 5/1/1999, is an editor for the Washington Post who investigated Dr. Ian Stevenson's work as a skeptic by traveling with him on two research expeditions. Committed as he was to the journalistic ideal of objectivity, he had to admit he was convinced that the findings were genuine. (A portion of this interview appears in the documentary.) For those who complain that I didn't have more skeptics in "In Another Life," I can only say that as a skeptic, Mr. Shroder has impeccable journalistic credentials, and it's not my fault if he was convinced. My obligation was to provide a well-qualified skeptic--not to insist that he remains skeptical after seeing the evidence.

Philosophy professor Dr. Robert Almeder of Georgia State University discusses reincarnation and societal reactions, focusing especially on the work of the late Dr. Ian Stevenson. Interview conducted 7/24/2000.


Don E. Stevens, direct disciple of Avatar Meher Baba and co-editor of Meher Baba's most important work, "God Speaks," describes his personal journey both of discipleship, and of coming to terms with the concept of reincarnation. In particular, he describes how Meher Baba anchors reincarnation in the deeper teachings that are set forth in "God Speaks". Although Mr. Stevens is deliberately vague in this interview about a number of points in his personal history, I feel it's important for the viewer, in assessing his evaluation of reincarnation, to know that he was vice president of research for a major U.S. oil company, with degrees in physics and mathematics. He began his personal search with a systematic investigation of certain paranormal phenomena (during which time, as I understand, he met Dr. Ian Stevenson and became friends with Stuart Edward White, author of "The Unobstructed Universe"). He then became associated for some years with Sufism, Reoriented, and through that group, came under the guidance of Meher Baba. Read "God Speaks" online.

Angela Grubbs, attorney, 11/7/04, describes how she researched and verified her dreams of a past life in Lexington, Kentucky in the early 1900's. This is the only solid proof case I personally found, some years after I completed work on "In Another Life".

Donna describes her experience of undergoing past-life hypnotic regression and discusses what it meant to her, including how being gay relates to her past lives, 7/23/98. In the portion of this interview used to close out the documentary (not seen here), Donna nailed the entire theme of the program in a few sentences--I got chills as I was taping it, because I knew immediately where I would be using it.

Marge Rieder is a hypnotherapist and the author of "Mission to Millboro" and "Return to Millboro" (see Recommended Books section). The Millboro study is the most extensive research conducted to date on group reincarnation (although Dr. Rieder prefers not to use the label "reincarnation," speaking instead of past-life memories). This interview, videotaped on Nov. 10, 2001, was originally included in "In Another Life." However, Dr. Rieder didn't want me to use the video portion of the interview, and I didn't want to re-work it at the last minute so as to be narration-only, so the segment was pulled. However, I'm presenting it here substituting a still photograph of Dr. Rieder where the interview video was.

Swami Yogeshananda, a monk of the Ramakrishna Order, discusses reincarnation from the point of view of Vedanta, 2002. (Note the Swami appears in the documentary, but this interview was not used.)

Dr. Roger Woolger, author of "Other Lives, Other Selves" discusses past-life therapy and describes some of his own personal journey, 4/28/99. (Dr. Woolger appears in the documentary, but this portion of his interview was not used.)

Capt. Robert Snow, now-retired commander of the homicide branch of the Indianapolis police department, describes his efforts to try to disprove the facts that emerged in a hypnotic past-life regression he originally underwent as a dare--and how he ended up proving 26 of 28 points using police investigation methods. (See also Capt. Snow's book, "Looking for Carroll Beckwith," in the Recommended Books section.) This is one of the strongest reincarnation cases I came across in my five years of research on the project. I wasn't able to include it in the show because I couldn't obtain travel funds for the interview, but more importantly because no-one who held copyright for the images painted by James Carroll Beckwith, the former personality, would even answer my inquiries once they knew what I wanted permission for. (Audio interview, mp3 format) This interview was conducted over the phone during the period when I was working on my documentary, between 1998 and 2003, before Capt. Snow was publicly known. I obtained his name from the late Linda Adler, then president of the former IARRT, who is featured in "In Another Life." This is probably one of his first public interviews about this topic. See also a more recent radio interview I did with Capt. Snow on my show, "Metaphysical Explorations."


 

Music opening this page: "Over and Over Again," by the Richie Furay Band, album "I've Got a Reason"

 

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