[2003-09-09] COLORADO'S BRIDEY MURPHY -- HOAX OR ERROR? by Pam North Morey Bernstein was a Pueblo, Colorado businessman who avidly engaged in an additional role as an amateur hypnotist. He had attempted to use hypnotism to treat cases of stuttering, insomnia, migraine headache, and excessive smoking. In 1952 he engaged in an age-regression hypnosis with an especially responsive subject, Virginia Tighe, a young housewife also from Pueblo. After several sessions of hypnosis that guided Tighe progressively back through the years of her childhood, Bernstein hypnotized her again and encouraged her into a past life regression. Tighe cooperated by giving a detailed account of herself as a child scratching new paint off her metal bed as revenge for a spanking she had received. Her voice had assumed an Irish brogue, and when she was asked her name she replied that it was Bridey Murphy. She claimed she had been born in 1798, the daughter of Duncan and Kathleen Murphy. The family lived in County Cork, Ireland, where her father was a barrister. During subsequent hypnotic sessions, her account continued, stating that at twenty she, although herself a Protestant, had married a Catholic man, also a barrister, named Sean Brian MacCarthy; the ceremony had been performed in St. Theresa's Church by a priest named John Joseph Gorman. The couple had moved to Belfast, where they had remained until Bridey's death in 1864 at the age of 66, following a fall down a flight of stairs. Various clues convinced Bernstein that Bridey's story was authentic; she used many genuine bits of Irish dialect, and claimed to have patronized several businesses that later were proven to have existed. She sang Irish songs, performed Irish jigs, and told Irish stories. Certain colloquialisms and anachronisms not immediately understood by Bernstein were found to be words and phrases commonly used in Ireland in the early to mid-nineteenth century Ireland. Although Tighe claimed that she had never been to Ireland, as Bridey Murphy she provided an abundance of commonplace details of life there in that time period. Bernstein recorded the numerous sessions and published a book in 1956, called The Search For Bridey Murphy. In the book Tighe was referred to as Ruth Simmons, a fictitious name designed to protect her real identity. The book became a bestseller, with 170,000 copies sold within the first two months. A popular song made the hit parade, the book was serialized in 39 newspapers, an abridged version appeared in True magazine, a movie was produced, and 30,000 copies of an LP recording of the hypnotic sessions (translated into more than a dozen languages) were sold. The double appeal of reincarnation and hypnotism effectively captured the interest of a curious public. It was inevitable that her story would be thoroughly investigated, and in that process parts of her story checked out and others didn't. Some of the churches and schools to which she had referred were identified as being legitimate landmarks. Newspapers sent reporters to Ireland to investigate, with no success, whether a red-headed Bridey Murphy had lived there in the nineteenth century. An investigation conducted by Life magazine found that few of the checkable pieces of Bridey Murphy's story could be verified; part of the problem was that no vital statistics were kept in Ireland prior to 1864, so many of the important details simply were not a matter of record. A man, claiming to be a childhood friend of Tighe's, reported that as a girl Tighe was in the habit of speaking in an Irish brogue, and also that on one occasion she was known to have scratched the paint off her bed. The next discovery was the fact that metal beds were not introduced into Ireland until the mid-nineteenth century, at which time Bridey Murphy would have been a middle-aged woman. Another damaging revelation was that one of Tighe's neighbors in her childhood days was named Bridey Murphy Corkell, a woman who had grown up in Ireland and who had told stories of life there to Tighe. Tighe had been involved in high school theater productions, learning to dance Irish jigs and to speak in Irish dialect. Bridey Murphy had recounted Irish folklore, had spoken of having an Uncle Plazz, a baby brother who had died, a fondness for the Londonderry Air and potato pancakes, and of having red hair. Tighe's own life had encompassed an uncle of the same name, a brother's death, and she herself professed a liking for the same song and potato pancakes; she had been taught Irish folklore by a relative, and she touched up her brown hair with henna in an effort to make it appear naturally red. It was proven that Bernstein had been somewhat leading and manipulative during his hypnosis of Tighe, suggesting to her that she would regress to another time and place. After the Bridey Murphy character had surfaced, he failed to be objective or scientific about the experiment, and apparently resisted researching too far into something that was providing him with fame and fortune. Many people initially had taken the tale as proof of reincarnation, but as the investigation progressed and its results became common knowledge, the general consensus was that either the hypnosis had brought up Tighe's confused childhood memories rather than recollections of a past life, and Bernstein had failed or refused to recognize that fact, or the entire scenario had been a blatant fraud. In either case, Tighe and Bernstein had been discredited, and they both faded once again into obscurity. The case of Bridey Murphy brought broad attention to the concepts of reincarnation and past lives, and the use of hypnotic regression to reveal hidden memories. It proved the human need for a purpose in life and the desire for concrete proof of an existence after death. The Bridey Murphy story is just another fascinating episode in the endless creativity of the human psyche. Photo to accompany article is at one of the following (take your pick): http://www.randi.org/jr/08-31-01.html Hypnotist Bernstein and a subject. or http://psychicinvestigator.com/demo/Reinc2.htm Scene from the film "The Search for Bridey Murphy."