The Search for Bridey Murphy

by Morey Bernstein

  Author’s Note

  This is a report of actual events involving real people. The facts have not been altered, but the proper names of most individuals have been changed for obvious reasons.

  PREFACE

  Tonight I will attempt an experiment in hypnosis that I have never before undertaken. The subject will be Ruth Simmons. This is November 29, 1952.

  I entered the note above into my personal record, and then I sat back and gave some thought to the technique I would use that night. It was late Saturday afternoon; I would be starting the experiment within a few hours.

  I decided that I would use an ordinary hypnotic age regression to take my subject back to the age of one year. And then I would suggest that her memory could go even farther back. It seemed rather simple, but maybe it would do the job.

  The term “age regression” refers merely to the directing of the memory of a person, under hypnosis, to recall or relive detailed episodes of the past, even such incidents as may have occurred when that person was an infant.

  It was one night after a club dance that I had discovered Ruth Simmons’ ability to enter an uncommonly deep trance while under hypnosis. After the dance a group, about a dozen couples, had gathered together at the home of one of the club members. Several of the group were insisting that I give a demonstration in hypnosis. I explained as courteously as I could that I did not favor hypnotic “shows” but that I would consent to guide them in an exercise in progressive relaxation which might at least show them how a trance begins.

  During the little experiment which followed, I spotted several among the group who were apparently good hypnotic subjects. But there was clearly one standout: it was Ruth Simmons. Weeks later I had still another opportunity to prove that my observation was correct; she was, indeed, a remarkable subject. She had the capacity, that is, for entering immediately into a deep trance.

  So it was no accident that she would be here tonight. For this particular purpose, I knew, I must have a splendid subject.

  This would be old stuff for Ruth Simmons; with me as hypnotist she had done the same thing twice before. On one occasion she had shown conclusively that she could, while hypnotized, recall events which had taken place when she was only one year old. But tonight I was going to attempt something more than an ordinary age regression.

  This time I would learn just how far back her memory could be taken.

  I remember how long it seemed waiting for our guests. Finally Rex and Ruth Simmons arrived. Rex looks and talks, my wife keeps reminding me, like Tyrone Power. He’s an insurance salesman; one of the best. Ruth is a vivacious brownette on the smallish side; she’s trim, attractive, and one of the most sought-after partners at every dance. The two were an understandably popular couple, and it was getting more and more difficult to get them over to the house. Besides, they were not particularly interested in hypnosis.

  I managed to sit through the conventional preliminaries of discussing everything from our new President-Elect to the fact that it was mighty cold outside. Rex explained that business was not quite what it used to be but he agreed with my sobering reminder that none of us had a right to expect it to continue at its past breakneck pace.

  After what I considered a polite interval of conversation I turned to Ruth and asked whether she was ready to be hypnotized. With a shrug of her shoulders, she indicated that she was ready if I was. So I told her that tonight I would prefer that she would, instead of remaining in her chair, stretch out on the couch. I would get her a pillow and blanket to make her more comfortable. She thought that would be fine.

  As soon as she had adjusted the pillow, pulled up the blanket, and become comfortable on the couch, I asked her to take seven deep breaths, just as deep as she possibly could. Because she was stretched out on the couch, I decided to use an old technique, the candle-flame method, to hypnotize her.

  When she had finished with her deep breathing, I lit a candle and held it at about a 45-degree angle from her head and about eighteen inches from her eyes. I asked that she gaze intently into the candle flame while she listened to my voice.

  It took only a few minutes to hypnotize her. No question about it, this girl was a rare subject; she slipped into a deep trance in a hurry.

  As soon as I was satisfied that the trance was sufficiently deep I turned on the tape recorder and began speaking quietly.

  “… Now we are going to turn back. We are going to turn back through time and space, just like turning back in the pages of a book… And when I next talk to you, you will be seven years old, and you will be able to answer my questions…”

  I waited for a few moments. Rex and my wife, Hazel, and I sat watching silently as Ruth seemingly slept deeply.

  Finally I asked, “Do you go to school?”

  Her voice came, clear and small, as she answered my questions.

  Later I asked, “Who sits in front of you?”

  “Jacqueline.”

  “And who sits behind you?”

  “Verna Mae.”

  In the same way Ruth was returned to her kindergarten days, when she was five years old. Asked who sat in front of her, she answered, “No one.” Then she explained that she sat at a long table; nobody, therefore, would have been sitting in front of her. But she gave us the names of those sitting on each side of her at the time. She told us, moreover, that her favorite game was hopscotch, that her doll’s name was Bubbles; and she described in considerable detail her black velvet dress with “little tiny” bows on the pockets.

  Then Ruth at the age of three! She gave an elaborate description of her colored doll, and remembered her dog, Buster.

  Farther and farther we went into memories stored deep, past the reach of the conscious mind, until Ruth remembered when she was only one year old. At the age of one year she had expressed her desire for water by saying, “Wa.” But when she was asked to tell us how she had asked for a glass of milk, she replied, “… can’t say that.”

  And now–now at last I was in a position to try something I had never before attempted. I was ready, that is, to take her “over the hump.” In short, I was going to make an effort to determine whether human memory can be taken back to a period even before birth.

  Only a few months before, such an idea had never even occurred to me. I had directed other subjects to recall or relive episodes of the forgotten past in age-regression experiments. I had even regressed some subjects to the scenes of their births, but who would have supposed that one need not stop there? Logically that had seemed the end of the road.

  But several books and a couple of authorities changed my outlook. I had read the report, for instance, of a famous English psychiatrist and scientist who had over a long period of years performed pre-birth memory experiments with more than one thousand subjects! I had learned, furthermore, that there were many doctors, engineers, ministers, and others who were actively engaging in the same type of research.

  Now it was my turn.

  I instructed the entranced Mrs. Simmons, who was now breathing very deeply, that she should try to go still farther back in her memory… “back, back, back, and back… until, oddly enough, you find yourself in some other scene, in some other place, in some other time, and when I talk to you again, you will tell me about it.” I finished, and then waited anxiously for a few long moments.

  I returned to the couch and brought the microphone close to her mouth. This was the time, the important moment.

  “Now you’re going to tell me, now you’re going to tell me what scenes came to your mind,” I said. “What did you see? What did you see?”

  “… scratched the paint off all my bed!”

  I didn’t understand. I hesitated, and then asked the only q
uestion logical under the circumstances. “Why did you do that?”

  Then we listened to that small, relaxed voice, so remote and so close, telling the logical, touching story of a little girl who’d been spanked and who had taken her revenge against a grown-up world by picking the paint off her metal bed. She explained that they had just “painted it and made it pretty.”

  This little girl seemed part of another place, another time. And when I asked her name, the answer came from my subject:

  “Bridey… Bridey Murphy.”

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  PART ONE

  Hypnosis, the First Step on the Long Bridge

  PART TWO

  Another Step across the Bridge

  PART THREE

  The Big Step

  APPENDIX

  PART ONE

  Hypnosis, the First Step on the Long Bridge

  CHAPTER 1

  When the phone rang, it was night—a stormy night, at that—and I was at the office, in the middle of picking a winner in our slogan contest. I probably never would have answered the call had I known that it would send me spinning into a whirlwind investigation of hypnosis, telepathy, and clairvoyance; that it would have me experiencing electric shock treatment and truth serum drugs; and that it would start me, finally, probing the mystery of death.

  At the moment I was measuring the huckster power of two slogans that had reached the finals. I was trying to keep in mind that the winner must be one which would help merchandise everything from toilets to tractors. Then the phone rang again, so I gave up and answered.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “Hello. I’m trying to find Morey Bernstein.”

  “This is Morey.”

  “I didn’t mean to bother you. But I took off in my plane from the Denver airport about an hour ago, and because of this sudden storm I’ve been grounded at Pueblo. So I called the hotels in town, but it seems that Pueblo is a Colorado boom town. No rooms anywhere. Then I remembered that my cousin, George Taylor, had told me to call Morey Bernstein if I ever got stuck in Pueblo. So I’m stuck; so I’m calling. Can you help me?”

  When he mentioned the name George Taylor, I knew that the slogan contest was all over for that night. Taylor was a rancher, a big operator, and one of our best customers. Slogans were out; Taylor’s relative was in. So I assured Taylor’s relative that I would pick him up right away if he would only tell me where he was. And just before I put the phone down I remembered to ask his name. It was Jerry Thomas.

  Thomas turned out to be about twenty-five, pleasant, and personable. As soon as I took him out to my house and stowed his stuff in the guest room I suggested that we join a party that was already in progress at a friend’s house.

  Although the storm forced us to drive slowly, we were soon at the house of my friend. I observed that this boy Thomas was a real charmer. It was thoughtful of our customer to have such a pleasant cousin, even if he had messed up my progress in the slogan contest.

  At first the chatter was of the usual cocktail-party variety. I can’t remember how the conversation finally drifted to the subject of hobbies. But I do remember—I’ll never forget—the burst of laughter when it came Thomas’ turn to speak up. His hobby, he asserted, was hypnotism. We assumed, of course, that he was kidding.

  He was not kidding. Indeed, he patently resented the laughter and rebounded with a challenge: “If you don’t believe me, I ask only that one of you be my subject, and I will prove it!”

  While I was trying to decide whether he could possibly be serious, a tall, attractive blond girl spoke up and offered to be his subject. She had always wondered about hypnosis, she admitted, since the time one of her teachers had discussed the matter many years ago.

  This, then, was to be my first close-up of hypnosis. I had heard about it, read about it, seen it on the stage. But I did not believe in it.

  During my college days, for instance, I remember walking out on a stage demonstration of hypnosis; I wanted to make sure that my college chums understood that this silly business was beneath my intelligence. If they were willing to waste their time on such foolishness, fine and well, but it was not for me.

  Now, however, I couldn’t walk out. Thomas was my guest. Besides, I was curious to learn just how he was going to pull himself out of this hole. So I sat back and watched.

  The volunteer was told by Thomas to stretch out on the couch and make herself comfortable. He then removed a ring from his finger and asked her to stare at it. He explained that she must focus her attention upon the ring and continue to stare at it until it became hazy and obscure. He merely held the ring above her eyes and waited. We all waited.

  Eventually we became restless, almost bored. Nothing was happening. The girl looked at the ring. Thomas looked at the girl, and we continued looking at Thomas. As the uneasiness mounted, some of the group stopped watching and began to whisper among themselves. Others drifted out into the kitchen. It looked as though our hypnotist had drawn a blank.

  Then suddenly he was talking softly to his subject. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be going to sleep. He continued talking, but I was not close enough to hear the words. In a few minutes he turned around and walked into the kitchen, where the majority of the group were evincing more interest in food than in hypnosis.

  Thomas confidently proclaimed to the gourmets in the kitchen that they would soon have evidence of his hypnotic ability.

  He urged all of us to sit down at the large kitchen table and go to work on the food. He assured us that his subject was sleeping comfortably, but that he would soon awaken her. After she awakened, he promised, she would be perfectly natural. Natural, that is, with one exception.

  “After she has taken two bites of her food,” Thomas said, “she will suddenly reach down and remove her left shoe and stocking.”

  This I wanted to see.

  I had not long to wait, for Thomas went back to the girl, and after more soft words he finally awakened her. Immediately upon getting up she went into the kitchen and took the place that had been left to her. As she started to eat she told us how much she had enjoyed her little nap. “Wonderful relaxation,” she testified. “I’m ready for that any time.”

  After her second mouthful of food she abruptly dropped her fork and removed her left shoe and her left stocking. There wasn’t a sound in the room; everybody was staring at her.

  As a result of the staring and the sudden silence she soon grew self-conscious and looked around, asking what was wrong. There she was with her shoe and her stocking, just removed, clutched in her hand, and she wanted to know why everyone was so quiet and staring at her. What had she done?

  Finally her escort spoke up. “What about your shoe and stocking? You’re sitting at the table eating. Why did you take off your shoe and stocking?”

  For the first time she looked down at her leg and then at the shoe and nylon hose in her hand. I shall always remember her blank, incredulous expression because I have seen it on others, perhaps a thousand times, since then. She was completely bewildered. For a minute she said nothing, then she looked up and slowly shook her head. She just didn’t know; she couldn’t explain why her shoe and stocking were in her hand. She didn’t even try to explain.

  Thomas, clearly pleased with the performance, glanced at me. He seemed to be remembering that it was I who had laughed the loudest at his assertion that he was a hypnotist. Now he was silently suggesting that I swallow some crow as gracefully as possible. Actually, he said nothing. But I answered him anyway.

  “I don’t believe it!”

  Thomas looked puzzled; he really didn’t understand what I was talking about. “What don’t you believe?”

  “I don’t believe that she was hypnotized.”

  Now Thomas was really puzzled. He simply didn’t understand my skepticism. He got up and walked back and forth in front of the table, wondering how to handle my challenge. Then he turned to me and asked whether there was anything he coul
d do to convince me that his subject could actually be placed in a hypnotic trance.

  “Put her back under, if that’s what you call it,” I said. “After all, we aren’t sure that there was no collusion between you and her. We didn’t hear everything you said. You may have suggested to her that you could both have some fun if she went along with the gag. So put her back under, and we’ll think of some tests.”

  He promptly obliged. This time he did the job quickly. He merely counted to three, snapped his fingers three times, and the girl apparently “went out.” As I learned later, the speed of this second induction was made possible by what are known as post-hypnotic suggestions. In other words, before Thomas had awakened her the first time, his soft whispering had included the suggestion that in the future she would slip immediately into the trance state when he counted to three and then snapped his fingers three times.

  So here it was again; our “test case” was ready. Thomas repeated his earlier question: “Now what do you want me to do to prove that she is really hypnotized?”

  Then the girl’s fiancé spoke up. “Let me try something. I know her well enough to be sure that I can make her burst out laughing if she’s just faking.”

  So our hypnotist instructed his attractive subject that she would not laugh under any circumstances, that she would maintain a poker face, that she would show no emotion whatsoever. Further more, he had her open her eyes while he kept her in the trance state.

  Then the boy went to work. He commenced by kissing her, in a rather silly fashion intended to evoke laughter. But when she did not so much as blink an eye, he launched into a series of wild antics.

  But the girl might as well have been far away.

  Before we conceded, however, I asked for still more proof. I wanted, for instance, to see how she would react to tests concerned with pain. So the unfortunate subject was forced through another series of tests which included having a needle passed through the skin on the upper portion of her hand. But, regardless of the nature of the test, it was clear that she was in a state that I had never before thought possible.