My book is out!

A true case of reincarnation as told by the person who experienced it, this book chronicles the life of an eighteenth-century glee singer's wife, and offers supporting evidence that the author is in fact the modern incarnation of a reverend's daughter and Georgian housewife, Mary Carter.

Have you ever wondered if you've lived a past life? Ever thought about why you enjoy a particular talent, or what draws you to a certain time or place?

That was me in 1986. I'd always been an Anglophile, always enjoyed Georgian art and architecture, but I had no idea where those preferences came from. Then, during my first trip to London, I was overcome by a feeling of familiarity. I knew I had been in England before, and spontaneously I began to recall living there during the eighteenth century. Wandering the streets of Westminster, I had surprising flashbacks to the 1790s. I remembered being in love with an Irishman who wore poofy shirts and played the piano. When I got home to Seattle at the end of my stay, I began looking into the possibility that reincarnation might be real. I searched for proof that this dandified Irishman had really existed, and that I hadn't made the whole thing up.

I found that proof.

It turns out that I did live in London during the eighteenth century. My name was Mary Carter, and I was madly in love with my husband, Thomas, an Irish singer who performed for royalty.

How do I know this? Because, via self-regression and self-hypnotism, I've been able to recall a wealth of information over the last twenty-four years. I've matched these memories to real events and actual locations. I've since visited those places, delved into archives, researched the people I remember, and confirmed via a network of interwoven facts that I was the wife of a Georgian glee singer.

My story won't be enough to satisfy the skeptical, but that's not what my book is about. What is imperative is getting the word out there: that you, too, can recall your past life, and via careful journaling and further research, you can confirm what you've seen. It's possible. It's kind of neat. And if you're into self-discovery and questioning the meaning of life, it goes a long way toward explaining why you've landed where you are.

Does love last forever? In my experience, the answer is yes - if not forever, then at least two hundred and eleven years.

The Singer's Wife is available now in the Amazon Kindle store.

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Past Lives: A Session With a Hypnotist

Taplow Court in the 1840s.


I went to see a past-life hypnotist back in 1989. This session, my second, happened to bring up quite a few hits that I've since documented via my research:

Cottonwood trees, rutted road, big stone house, trees on one side with ornamentation on the corners, square white sash windows, gray, interior is dark wood. Breakfast table from Dangerous Liaisons. Big rose-colored satin/silk/taffeta swishing dress. 1750, young woman, brown hair, stiff knot-looking hairstyle on sides of head, embroidered front of the dress, flat-chested. Mother is very young. Big dark thick table. White dirty stable. Winter? (He’s wearing a) white shirt, long hair, longer than I thought, dark, rich, reddish-brown, stockings, blue breeches, hair has a cowlick in the front, dark skin, taller than I thought. I’m obsessed with him, and it’s not a good feeling. He’s not nice to me. See piano slam. He’s a passionate person, temper tantrums out of nowhere.

Medieval looking house with dark, oak paneling, Elizabethan interior, outside is rough stone, stucco is dark gray color. Older father, fat guy with a wig into hunting. Feel that I don’t know the father, he doesn’t speak to me. Stay out of his way. He’s in government in London. This is earlier 1700s. I’m in Southwest England, twenty miles from London.

The staircase from Batman. He plays piano but he has a lot to do with horses. My father is speaking to him. He must be a friend. He’s very sure of himself; he’s come from London. He walks around the house arrogantly with graceful gestures. He wears a sword; he’s a rake, not a musician by living. He’s here to visit another man, not my father – they ride together. I go with them sometimes. I’m the younger sister. They don’t want me around. He fools around with me, but it’s secret.

In front of a window that goes down to the floor. I’m upset, really depressed about him. Arms folded in front of me. I went to another house on a hillside, to another man, a husband, some years later – a man with a library. Had children with him. It was an impassionate marriage, polite but bored with each other. I died abruptly, not in my house, but an accident while driving; it was an accident on the road, but not necessarily a broken wheel. Turning around abruptly and screaming.

This session seems to describe Taplow Court, for it was a gray stucco-covered house in the 1780s and ‘90s, and quite outdated on the inside. It lies roughly twenty miles from London, although more west than southwest. The stable I saw was probably at Ellesborough, and the dark complexion on Thomas would be correct if he’d just spent over a year aboard a ship on his way home from China. In Calcutta, he did have a lot to do with horses, and once again, the arrogance shows itself in these earlier regression images, for I keep describing him so. And of course Thomas was of noble blood, but still forced to work for a living – not only at music, but at selling coal, too – and to hide his true paternity from the world. He could have known Dr. Wells before Mary, and he and Mary certainly could have ridden horses together around Cookham.

If you'd like to remember your past lives, take a look at my instructions for past-life self-regression and self-hypnotism.

Past Lives: My Fifth Past-Life Memory via Self-Hypnotism

Recalled July 20th, 1988

This man comes to call, dressed very plain, unlike the musician. To match, he says only what is needed in public, is quiet, thought of as a kind of odd, unsociable, knowledgeable, businesslike person. His clothes are plain, pale colors, his hair is blackish and loosely wavy, short, and he wears high boots instead of the high-heeled dandy shoes (Carter) wears. He wears a sword. All I can see of his face is that it is thin, and he has a nose that is somehow remarkable, I can't really tell why. He has come to see my father. I am sure in a very polite, civil way he is courting me, or has intentions of marrying me. We don't really like each other – maybe we don't know each other at this time, only speak politely in public.

The identity of the Napoleon-like man is uncertain, but he might be Mary Wells's neighbor in Cookham, George Monck Berkeley. George owned a large library, wrote and published several books, received a bachelor degree in law from the University of Dublin, and was a member of the Inner Temple, London. His mother spoke several languages and his grandfather was a noted philosopher, so one would expect George to be a bit of an odd duck, although Mary’s father was on good terms with the Berkeleys (as evidenced by a letter in the British Library’s collection ). Given all these things, it would seem fitting that George Monck Berkeley might propose to Mary Wells.


Bishop Berkeley (George Monck Berkeley's grandfather) and his family c1731.

If you are looking for instructions on how to recall your own past life via self-hypnotism, please see my page on do-it-yourself past-life regression.

Past Lives: Finding the People You Recall

I vividly remember several unidentified people during my past-life regressions. There's an older gentleman, whom my husband and I visit in a rich, Adamesque-decorated house in London. There's a younger gentleman, whom I am greeted by boisterously as he comes in our house saying, "Where's Carter?!" And there's a young woman of whom I am terribly fond, a woman who is with the young gentleman and waiting for me at New Wardour Castle before a musical party.

How do I figure out who they are? Well, I've discovered that, of all the scores of scenes I could see from my life with these people, I am shown something very specific. Something that, in just the right combination, will lead me to these peoples' identities. I just have to put the pieces together.

Easier said than done.

The older gentleman, for instance, has a paternal feeling for Thomas, my husband. He's at least 50 years old, fat, probably tall, has bushy eyebrows, and what looks like a bulbous nose. The front of his house is on a wide street or square, and when you enter the front door, you can see a staircase rising beyond the entry hall. If you turn to the right (staying on the ground floor), somewhere in his house you will find a room with at least three windows, and this room will have sparing, Robert-Adam-like decoration and a dark-colored carpet.

How many people match these specifics? That Thomas Carter knew? Not many. I've currently got a short list which includes the likes of East India Director Sir Theophilus Metcalfe, the Marquess of Buckingham, and Lord Chancellor Edward Thurlow (among others). For the moment I've settled on Thurlow because, not only does he have the big, bushy white eyebrows, but he had a house on St James's Square that was situated at the corner of King Street. Thurlow loved music, and was the main patron of R.J.S. Stevens, one of Carter's good friends and musical colleagues. Thurlow also knew Edmund Burke pretty well, and Burke himself was a best friend of Carter's father, the Earl of Inchiquin, and Carter's mother, Abigail Aston. In addition, Thurlow was fond of the Margravine of Anspach, who was the hostess for Carter's friends at Brandenburgh House; and the Margravine's son, Keppel, matches precisely the personality and image of the boisterous young man who would visit us, saying, "Where's Carter?"

In 1781, Lord Thurlow was described this way: "In his person Lord Thurlow has an air of dignity, and a formidible appearance, when dressed in his senatorial robes, and attended by the pomp of office. But when relaxing from public business he throws off the trappings of state, he looks like a Kentish yeoman, or the master of a coasting vessel, so unfavorable is his external aspect, having a saturine complexion, large black eye-brows, a stern look, strong muscles, and a stature above the common size." Thurlow's eyebrows are reported by Stevens to have turned snow white soon after the clandestine elopement of his favorite daughter. The word saturnine, according to Johnson's famous dictionary, means gloomy, grave or severe.

Here are my memories of the mystery man (separated here from the other memories that were recorded on these dates):

January 24th, 2003
Then, out of nowhere, a vision: a man, seemingly small and corpulent and flat-nosed, with bushy brows and moles, a man sitting at a writing desk in a London room. Rich house. Sash windows to the floor and covered with sheer curtains to dim the day outside. A turkey carpet under his feet of primarily red and blue, and he's wearing a frock coat that won't meet in the front, buckled shoes, hose, waistcoat, feet splayed out on the carpet in front of him. He's turned toward Thomas beside me (to my right), calling him "my boy." He hands him something. The room is fairly large, and nothing else is visible to me except the wooden chair and writing desk he's sitting at, a small desk. Thomas is taller than me, wearing hose and heels and maybe a green coat. His hair is pulled back. I'm wearing dark colors. I could see the man handing a piece of paper to Thomas. The man's hair was grey and a little unkempt.

April 13th, 2003
In the room with the old, fat man again. Thomas wearing green. The man is writing something on a piece of paper. "Give this to him, my boy, and you'll be admitted..." Or something like that. Definitely a paternal feeling from the man. Bushy eyebrows. Messed, white hair, short on top, and a squidgy, wide nose. We're excited when we leave. We are in a London carriage with the piece of paper between us somewhere, or it's in our thoughts, and we're thrilled about what lies ahead. Something about the Prince of Wales enters my thoughts at this point.

November 27th, 2010
Saw the house of the older man, and it either took up a corner of a block, or it occupied the whole block, in front of either a wide street or a square. The front door was reached upon ascending about three or four steps, and it seemed to have white columns on either side of the front door, or something white, while the building itself seemed yellowish gray. Inside, there seemed to be narrow corridors, and the room where we met the older man was to our right upon entering the house, not facing the street from which we’d just come, but the cross street. The room seemed extraordinarily bright, which didn’t seem right to me, given the windows we were facing (a row). I could see no details at all about the room. The man himself seemed to have white hair, very messed and short on top, and his nose seemed big, his eyebrows bushy but not overly so. He seemed to be wearing a medium blue-colored frock coat, very plain, and white hose and shoes. He was pretty large, and when he was standing, he seemed taller than me and Thomas. He shook Thomas’s hand. I was reminded of the King’s advisor in Amadeus, only with white hair. He sat down to a writing desk on the right side of the room facing the windows.


Kappelmeister Bonno in Amadeus


Edward Thurlow by Thomas Lawrence, 1803, painted for the Prince of Wales.

Since having these memories, I've learned that the Prince of Wales was a great friend of Lord Thurlow's. The Prince used to ask Thurlow to dinner often, and solicit his advice, which the Prince never took and Thurlow always resented. Thurlow never hesitated to give his opinion to the Prince, even if it made the Prince angry, and he somehow got away with putting the Prince of Wales in his place on more than one occasion. If anyone was to provide a letter of introduction for Thomas Carter to the Prince of Wales, Lord Chancellor Thurlow would be that someone. And as it happened, the Prince was renting Crichel House in Dorset, not far from Encombe, where Thomas and Mary Carter went to aid in Carter's recovery from his worsening liver disease. The Prince was at Crichel on and off between early 1797 and early 1799 -- which exactly corresponds with my memories of a musical party within a carriage drive's distance from Encombe at the time my children were three and four years old.

See how these specific things shown to me in my self-regression have led me to one specific person? For Lord Thurlow must be the elderly gentleman of my visions. I might not have gotten all the details right, but certainly most of them. I find it interesting that I have been shown exactly the configuration of facts and images that will lead me in the right direction, if only I dig far enough.

If you are interested in finding out about your own past lives, you can follow my instructions for self-regression here.

Past Lives: Karma and Why I Believe It Doesn't Exist

The more I look into the reasons for our existence, the more I am convinced there is no such thing as Karma. Sounds positively blasphemous, doesn't it? Especially since I'm such a huge proponent of past-life investigation, you would think I'd be a believer in Karma and all its implications. But I'm not. Let me tell you why.

The concept of Karma goes back thousands of years, and in its simplest terms, means "deed" or "act." It is a universal law somewhat like cause and effect, or action and reaction. Karma is not a punishment, but a consequence; dropping a watermelon from a rooftop causes it to shatter on impact with the pavement below, and this is neither right nor wrong, but a consequence of gravity, much like being murdered in this life is a consequence of your murdering someone else in a previous life. To put it another way, you reap what you sow. You make choices, and the universe conspires to put you in a position to feel the consequences of your choices. If you spread love everywhere you go, at some point that love will come back to you. If you reap hatred, that hatred will catch up to you, if not in this life, then the next.

I have several problems with this "reap what you sow" scenario. The first is the concept of free will. Studies have been done which seem to suggest we do not consciously make decisions, but instead all decisions originate in the subconscious; then, to make us feel better, our conscious mind plays catch up and "decides," as if the choice was made deliberately when in fact it was not. Our subconscious is also, it seems, privy to information about what will happen five seconds into our future. At least two experiments have been performed in which subjects were shown a randomly selected photo, and the subjects' physical responses were measured in reaction to that photo. Most subjects had an emotional, physiological response five seconds before unpleasant photos were randomly selected and shown to the subjects.

Five seconds. That doesn't seem like much, but in fact, if most of us can see five seconds into the future, then why not five years? People like Christopher Robinson (a UK resident who has had several accurate premonitions) become much more believable when one considers the results of these experiments. And if we can see into the future, doesn't this imply that our choices have already been made? Or that the probabilities are so strong, we cannot deviate from the path laid out before us? In which case, what role would Karma play? And could we really be held accountable for choices originating within our subconscious?

The second issue I have with Karma is how it relates to the concept of linear time. If time is linear and constantly moving forward, an effect cannot occur before its cause. If precognition has been proven real, a reaction could occur before its corresponding action (e.g. a person dreams about the World Trade Center's collapse before the first terrorist boards an airplane), and this violates our understanding of time and causes a paradox.

According to Irish aeronautical engineer J.W. Dunne (1875-1949), time is an illusion. In reality, past, present and future are all occurring simultaneously, and consciousness somehow experiences this simultaneity in a linear fashion. A good analogy might be a paperback book. You know the entire book exists, all of it, with its many chapters and pages. Yet you are only physically capable of reading one word at a time. The rest of the book, while existing simultaneously with the words you are reading, is outside your consciousness. If it were possible to read the entire volume at once, then you’d be closer to an approximation of how time really operates. We are conscious of only one moment in time, while the past and future lie outside our awareness...or at least that’s how the theory goes.

If time does not really exist, then lives aren’t lived in succession, making the concept of reaping what you sow null and void. Karma doesn't make sense in a world without time.

The third issue I have with Karma is how this law relates to animals. Unless human souls only came to this earth recently and began attaching themselves to animals in order to feel, then all laws of physical existence must apply to all animals, in all eras of our earth's history. Karma must then apply to both dinosaurs and trilobites, slugs and human beings.

To say that animals progress upwards (by exhausting bad Karma) into human form is to say that people are better than animals, which we are not – just different. This seems to me to be some left-over Imperialist, Victorian, white-man’s view, only the Imperialism is lording over animals instead of Indians or Blacks – such people can only aspire to be like us. The reality is, we are all equal in the eyes of the universe. We are all just animals, some of us with more complex social systems than others.

Slugs do not make moral choices; therefore they cannot reap what they sow. A slug might make a choice to preserve its own life -- diverting its course away from a beer bottle, for instance -- but this could hardly be considered an action worthy of reaction, unless you count keeping the slug alive at that moment.



In a world where time does not really exist, where free will is an illusion, and any laws of cause and effect would have to apply to the lowest of creatures, Karma does not make sense. Our object on this earth is to feel. And that's it. There is no other reason to be here. Love, hate, fear, pleasure, anxiety, compassion...the list goes on. The more complicated the social life of the animal, the more capable it is to feel all the emotions.

Just what we do with these emotions is the million dollar question. They obviously benefit our own souls, but how? Is it specific, in that we feel, so we raise our vibration level and enlarge or strengthen our souls? Or is it simply that we long to pass eternity doing something other than sitting around in the exquisite beauty of the other side, surrounded by love, having no cares or worries in the world?

I welcome your comments.

And as always, if you are interested in learning how to regress yourself to a prior life (prior being a term I shouldn't use, as I don't believe in the concept of linear time), please visit my page about past-life self-hypnotism.