Bridey Murphy
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Bridey Murphy is the name of a woman that U.S. housewife Virginia Tighe (April 27, 1923 - July 12, 1995) claimed to have been in her previous life.
In 1952, amateur hypnotist Morey Bernstein hypnotized Virginia Tighe in Pueblo, Colorado. He 'regressed' her to her alleged past life as a 19th-century Irishwoman, Bridey Murphy, who had allegedly lived about 1798 – 1864. Mrs Tighe claimed to have never been in Ireland, but under hypnosis gave vivid accounts of Irish rural life and sang Irish songs. Unfortunately, Bernstein and Tighe listened to the recorded sessions during the series, so that "Bridey Murphy" was able to amend details as the sessions unfolded.
Bernstein published the book The Search for Bridey Murphy in 1956; in it he called Tighe "Ruth Simmons". The book and recordings made of the hypnosis sessions became very popular and were turned into an unsuccessful 1956 movie. The phenomenon spawned a rash of comparable reincarnations.
U.S. journalists made inquiries in Ireland and found no evidence of a Bridey Murphy in Cork, where she supposedly lived. However, journalists working for the Chicago American claimed to have found a Bridey Murphy Corkell, who had lived across the street from Tighe's childhood home. They concluded that Tighe's "memories" as Bridey Murphy were based on Corkell's tales of her childhood experiences. However, other researchers could not confirm that Mrs Corkell's maiden name had actually been Murphy.
It was later claimed that Tighe had been coached on details of 19th-century County Cork, Ireland. But supporters of Tighe say that some of the detailed information she knew about Irish life of the time could not have been obtained through ordinary means. She did name real people and real places and used little known terms of that period.
References in literature
In Thomas Pynchon's V. (1963), a character called Esther is reading The Search for Bridey Murphy as she is sitting on a bus. This occurs in the fourth chapter of the novel, "In which Esther gets a nose job".
References
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science by Martin Gardner (Dover Publications, 1957)External links
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