2/2/25
For a few years, now, I have been attempting to introduce evidence that Mathew Franklin Whittier (myself in the 19th century) and his wife, Abby (my spirit wife, today), were the real and original authors of several literary classics. I thought if I could convince even 2% of the people who encountered my evidence, word would spread.

My approach doesn't seem to have worked, because it offended the incredulous; and if there were 2% out there who were convinced, they kept safely mum about it. But the sticking point, as I've suggested in the last few blog entries, is respect. Respect for me, personally, I can do little about. Cynicism is irrational, in such cases. None of these ridiculing people bother to get to know me, personally. If they did, they would find their theories about me disproved. I am not delusional, I am well-educated (i.e., in another field), I know my subject, I'm strictly honest (probably, more honest than they are), and despite being untrained, I am a careful researcher, who puts his own theories through the acid-bath of scrutiny before ever announcing his findings to anyone else.

I can say all that, and it will be found accurate if anybody bothered to follow up on it--but everybody likes their self-justifying assumptions better than they like the truth.

However, I may be able to do something about respect for Mathew and Abby's literary prowess. It may take a very long time. But I am finding that when I share their briefer poems--the ones that people will understand and relate to--on a Facebook group for English Literature, I'm getting some positive responses. After all, it's exceptional work. They'd be pretty dense not to recognize quality when they see it. This poetry is as good, or better, than 90% of what they are accustomed to seeing from the famous literary figures of the 19th century. And there's a reason for that--Mathew and Abby were right up there at the top. Only, they remained strictly anonymous, so nobody ever heard of them.

Yesterday, I shared one of Mathew's poems about a homeless man--I've posted it here, not too long ago. It's the one that somebody read aloud beautifully, and posted online. I didn't give them the audio version, only a graphic of the poem as it had first appeared in the newspaper. Already, this morning, it has 14 "likes." No comments, just likes. And they know what I claim for Mathew.

They also know top-flight poetry when they see it.

So this is a kind of "show and tell." Eventually, one or two of these people may get the idea, and communicate it to others. There were two "invisible planets" circling the 19th-century literary skies, and I have discovered them. That it happens to have been my past-life self, and that of my astral wife, would take the matter far beyond their "boggle threshold." The truth is, this discovery was so deeply buried in the historical record, that reincarnation research is just about the only way it could have been revealed. Reincarnation research has the peculiar attribute that it is utterly immune to cultural myth--and that means it entirely bypasses mythical mistakes.

Do you get my meaning? In reincarnation research, when you are delving into past-life memory, to the extent it's accurate, you are getting the information from an entirely independent source. You are getting what really happened. That does an end-run around all the mistakes that scholars, writers and the public imagination have made about history. And history, as we know it, appears to be absolutely riddled with mistakes.

So, for example, if the Whittier historians are amused that the boys in the Whittier family were known by their middle names, "Greenleaf" and "Franklin," and they are further amused that Mathew used to go by "Frank," but then I feel this is wrong, there's a problem. Here's what I feel from past-life emotional memory: Mathew hated being called "Frank;" and, the whole idea of calling them by their middle names was a weird superstition--something about not letting the Devil hear the boys' names, so he wouldn't catch them.

As deeply as I could investigate this little question, I found that the boys were only referred to by their middle names in third person, i.e., not when speaking to them directly. Thus, we have the historical anecdote of John Greenleaf Whittier, as a boy, day-dreaming when he was supposed to be hoeing the crops. His taciturn father told him, "That's enough for stand now, John." He is not recorded as saying, "That's enough for stand now, Greenleaf." And, I have also found evidence that one of Mathew's friends, in later life, wrote a poem about the two brothers in childhood, giving his name as "Mat." Here's a stanza from "A Story of the Barefoot Boy," by John Townsend Trowbridge, about John Greenleaf Whittier and Mathew as boys:

"Now I've a plan--I know we can!"
He said to Mat--another
Small shaver of the barefoot sort:
His name was Matthew; Mat, for short;
Our barefoot's younger brother.

Keep in mind that John Trowbridge knew both brothers personally; and that Mathew had told the story to Trowbridge in the 1860's, in person. This strongly suggests that Trowbridge knew Mathew as "Mat," at that time.

Thus, there is just enough evidence for me to conclude that my strong emotional reaction about this is accurate--that in the Whittier family, and even in his hometown, Mathew was referred to in third person as "Franklin," but that once he left home, he was called "Matt," or "Mat" by his friends. And that if anybody deliberately called him "Frank," he would bristle, because this showed disrespect to his admired namesake, Benjamin Franklin.

That's a very small example. But over and over, I've seen--in my own study, and even in other reincarnation studies--that past-life memory, when it is accurate, often trumps recorded history.

If this is true in the small things, it's also true in the big ones, like who really wrote "A Christmas Carol."

But first, people have to understand that Mathew and Abby were fully capable of writing at this level. It's no good my saying so--they have to actually see some of this work, for themselves. Then they might take me seriously.

I have had a book of Mathew and Abby's poetry offered for sale, for some years. Nobody ever buys it. You will find it under the title, "Soul-mate Songs," in the books section of this website, along with separate books featuring Mathew and Abby's short stories. If you were to read this material carefully and with a fair mind, you would see that they were quite competent to have been the real and original authors of the famous works I claim for them.

Perhaps that's the way in...

Sincerely,

Stephen Sakellarios, M.S.