Bridey Murphy

The Bridey Murphy case attracted worldwide attention in the 1950s . The American businessman Morey Bernstein , who privately engaged in hypnosis , conducted a total of eight hypnosis sessions with the (native American) housewife Virginia Tighe in Pueblo (Colorado) .

At the third to eighth session (from November 29, 1952 to October 1, 1953) Tighe described a past life as Bridey (actually Bridget Kathleen) Murphy, daughter of Duncan and Kathleen Murphy, who died on December 20, 1798 in Cork ( Ireland ) was born. In 1818 she married Sean Brian Joseph McCarthy (* 1796) and moved with him to Belfast , where she died in 1864 after falling down stairs. The hypnotic regressions revealed a large amount of detailed information, which (as later research by William J. Barker in Ireland showed) could be confirmed many times. Bridey Murphy, however, and most of the people she named could not be explicitly proven.

Tighe also remembered a brief incarnation in Nieuw Amsterdam (the name of New York until 1664). However, it did not provide any information that could have been verified.

Virginia Tighe (born April 27, 1923 in Madison , Wisconsin , † July 12, 1995 near Denver , Colorado) acquired her family name through her second marriage to Hugh Bryan Tighe. Her maiden name was Burns until she was named Grung by adoption at the age of three. Bernstein used the pen name Ruth Simmons (née Mills) in his book.

criticism

The first printed report on the Bridey Murphy case appeared in Empire Magazine on September 12, 19, and 26, 1954 . The publication of the book The Search for Bridey Murphy by Bernstein in 1956 sparked for the first time worldwide discussions on the question of reincarnation . A journalistic campaign by the tabloid Chicago American against the story (which was widely published in other newspapers) meant that the case was soon generally accepted as having been resolved in the sense of the cryptomnesia hypothesis. A former Irish neighbor of Virginia Tighe, Mrs. Corkell, whose maiden name is supposed to have been Bridie Murphy, is cited as a source of pretense of consciousness about a past life in Ireland. Your information about contacts with Mrs. Tighe in her childhood were denied by Mrs. Tighe. Mrs. Corkell refused to interview William J. Barker and was eventually identified by him as the mother of an editor of the Chicago American.

The book

Bernstein's book saw numerous editions. Since the 1965 edition, it has been subtitled With new material by William J. Barker. The first German translation appeared in 1957 under the title Der Fall Bridey Murphy. Document of a Rebirth (a later translation title is Protocol of a Rebirth ). There are also translations into Danish, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish and Spanish.

filming

1956 The Search for Bridey Murphy was filmed in the USA under the direction of Noel Langley . Amber is played by Louis Hayward and Virginia Tighe (as Ruth Simmons) by Teresa Wright . William J. Barker is one of the cast members.