So the kid, obviously surrounded by fighter planes has some nightmares about plane crashes. He goes to a psycologist whose reputation and success depends on the fact that reincarnation is real. all of a sudden everything gets clear. The parents (ie. the mother) sent him down the path the shrink capitalized.

but if you want a religious view, Judaism has some traditions that support reincarnation, cant tell you exactly what they are its kabalah stuff. Ask Madonna

You didn't watch both parts before posting.

I know young child who is obsessed by dinosaurs. He knows everything about dinosaurs. So much it is freaky. Clearly this child is a reincarnated paleontologist. Maybe even Stephen Jay Gould? Freaky or what?!
I know another child who is obsessed by... would your believe it... racing cars. Now you joint the dots!

I did so

what exactly did i say that didnt get the sequence of events right

Santa, both parts have a total running time of 14 minutes, but you posted within ten minutes. Unless you're watching youtube videos at 2x speed, you would not have had time to watch them both before typing a reply.

1. I have actually seen this before 2. I got to the big reveal and made up my mind and there was nothing after that changed it

his is a kid that whether he was watching TV or not was surrounded with fighter planes, meanwhile the parents, purposely or not played a game of cold reading with their son..

There wasn't that much interesting in part 2. Except for the sister of dead pilot. That was proof!

Actually I was disappointed with part 2. I was hoping there would be a twist, but really it was more predictable nonsense.

And as for what you got wrong:
1) This TV special was shot about five years after the onset of the nightmares about plane crashes. There is no evidence the child was 'surrounded by fighter planes' when he was two years old.
2) "The parents (ie. the mother) sent him down the path the shrink capitalized." Okay. So who came up with the idea of naming an obscure escort carrier, when any of the 'big name' carriers of WWII would've sufficed for the story and been far, far easier to research? Was it the shrink who dug through the battle history of the USS Natoma Bay (which despite having read over a dozen books on the Pacific War, I had to look up) and fed the name of the single downed pilot from that carrier in the Okinawa invasion?
3) "Except for the sister of dead pilot. That was proof!" So the sister of the dead pilot - as well as one of the witnesses of Huston's death - are just playing along in a giant hoax so that they can co-star in a TV News piece 64 years after the fact? What is their incentive, exactly? Are they just stupid? Or clinging to some connection to the decedent out of grief over a loss that seven decades can't heal? I am genuinely interested in hearing a 'scientific' and 'logical' explanation for why the sister and crewmates of a pilot who died 64 years ago would play along with such 'predictable nonsense'.

"1) This TV special was shot about five years after the onset of the nightmares about plane crashes. There is no evidence the child was 'surrounded by fighter planes' when he was two years old."

No, wrong. the kid was being bought fighter planes, looking over WWII books with his dad going to museums, pointing out things on TV. There may not be hard evidence that the kid was surrounded with the stuff, but you are telling me the parents, as soon as the kid started having nightmares, started buying the kid Fighter Plane stuff? Give me a break.

2.) The shrink could easily have suggested it, or the kid could have seen it in one of the books he was flipping through with his dad, or heard about it at a museum or on TV. And if you noticed he never named the pilot, he would say his name is James, and they found a James on the ship and the family found James Houston from the fact the kids imaginary friend was "Jack" what do you think the odds are that an aircraft carrier had two pilots named James and Jack in WWII (Id say not that small), try again.

3)- "are just playing along in a giant hoax so that they can co-star in a TV News piece 64 years after the fact"

How about the book the parents wrote, and the desire to believe their kid (and the grandmother) isnt bonkers
The sister being old as sin probably wants to believe her brother got another chance at life and that she to will get another shot. Plus old people fall for that nigerian scam

"I am genuinely interested in hearing a 'scientific' and 'logical' explanation for why the sister and crewmates of a pilot who died 64 years ago would play along with such 'predictable nonsense'"

She isnt playing along, she got a whole bunch of information from the parents' research project and said "hey that is my brother!" she had nothing to do with it, and believed the nice people who told a nice story were telling the unabridged truth and the kid came up with this by himself.

I don't think anyone is necessarily lying. People believe weird things for all sorts of reasons. Bur hey maybe it's all true. Maybe the kid really is a reincarnated fighter pilot. But as they say extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and it would take for than 14 minutes to present that extraordinary evidence.

i don't even think i'll waste my time on this thread - but since we're on personal anecdotes

i know as a child (around the age of 3) i had 'an old man in my ear' who told me stories of previous life. This invention gave me the ability to justify having input into any conversation which my family was having (i am the youngest child in my family, so it was not unlikely that my siblings or parents would have been talking about something which happened before i was born)

By receiving attention i found that this 'old man in my ear' was a useful concept and i kept using it for several months if not years. This was, of course, the point in my life when i was learning to speak. I was also learning about social interactions with my family and the kinds of things to say to get the kind of attention i desired.

This is a phase which every child goes through, and though it exhibits differently in different people it is not 'accessing past-life memories'. All of the 'evidence' is suspect to begin with, and burden of proof remains on the extra-ordinary claim. However i can see no physical basis for 'reincarnation'.

I can see many much simpler explanations, and this is based not just on a personal bias in favour of physical reality as being True, but also personal experience of being a child.

"I am genuinely interested in hearing a 'scientific' and 'logical' explanation for why the sister and crewmates of a pilot who died 64 years ago would play along with such 'predictable nonsense'."

Why don't you provide a scientific explanation for why the figther pilot reincarnated in a child's body 60 years after being shot down, and then i'll consider providing a counter example.

maybe the 'predictable nonsense' is something which some people are inclined to believe due primarily to their lack of understanding of the nature of reality. Poor education and understanding of the world around them has lead to 12 islamic men to crash a plane into a few buildings, why not something as simple as believing a story... we're actually built to listen to stories...

Tolstoy here are your assumptions

1. The parents arn't lying- which, however much we want to trust the nice looking white people, in the past with others has not always proved to be a safe assumption

2. That the Kid provided the information- This is simply not true in most cases in this story, the kid gives a word, an image, points to a picture, and the parents fill in the blanks, classic cold reading

3. The kid was uninfluenced in his statements. The mere fact that the parents had their suspicions (which the mom did from early on) suggests that a yound child could easily be influenced, especially as hes being inundated in fighter plane and WWII gear. These revelations didnt come at once or in a short time, but in bits and pieces, and as a story started to formulate the revelations started getting moe specific

4. All participants memory is perfect. Memory is a ficlkle thing, especially when you are trying to fit it into a neat narrative. The parents dont need to be lying to leave out important information, or maybe to fudge a fact here or there (or to unintentionally mess them up) They are putting their memories into narrative form which is at its core a process of picking and choosing, emphasizing and downplaying some facts. The father, the mother, the tail gunner, the sister, they are all subject to memories suggestive nature. When a narrative is provided you fit your memories into the narrative rather than visa versa.

also, the kid didn't start with a memory of being james the 3rd, he started out with some nigthmares, maybe he did not have any information about planes then, but as he grew up a little bit he was sure to learn a lot.

so whatever about not knowing anything about planes when he was 2, this changed drastically over time. And as i said, kids will make things up to get attention, and learn from what kind of attention they receive what kind of things to say.

vaguely relevant side-point 2 year olds don't have a concept of lying, but it develops (for 'normal' development by around the age of 4)

Just a point about memory, Alfred Young has a book about memory and the American Revolution which puts on blast the memory of the Boston Tea Party. its a story about a centinarian that is celebrated 60 years after the revolution for basically being one of the last guys alive from his generation. The centenarian was credited for taking apart in the Boston Tea Party, which, despite the prevalence it is given at the moment, was largely ignored for the first 50 years following independence. When he recalled the tea party he stated that several figures that could not have been involved in the Tea Party (John Hancock) were with him chucking tea into the harbor as he played into the mythology that surrounded the event which he had taken part in.

Now if our friend remembered one of the most famous American Revolutonarys standing next to him as he threw the tea into the harbor, can we reasonably say, that perhaps the tail gunner could be open to suggestion to where James Huston's plane was hit, especially while his plane was inches from being hit himself, can we rule out that the mother, who was committed to this narrative early enough to bring her son to a person "specializing" in reincarnation, can misremember the chronology of some important conversations (I know my dad does this often), I think its not only not out of the question but quite probable.

"or heard about it at a museum or on TV"

Natoma Bay was one of about umpteen bajillion escort carriers built during the war, and did not by any means have a distinguished history. I doubt she's even mentioned in Morrison's "Two Ocean War", which likely would've been the starting point for any research the family (or Carol Bowman) did on the subject once they'd 'decided' that James Leininger was a reincarnated fighter pilot (I'd check, but unfortunately, my copy is 'on loan'). If the kid had said "I was Lieutenant so-and-so, flying from one of the most famous American carriers in the war and I was shot down in the famous Battle of ________", it may've been extremely believable to say that the whole story was picked up from some book or TV documentary. But this is probably one of the most obscure naval aviator combat deaths in all of WWII. Not the sort of thing that would appear in some made-for-TV documentary or even a museum which a 2-year-old (or 5-year-old) would've picked up on.

"The sister being old as sin probably wants to believe her brother got another chance at life and that she to will get another shot. Plus old people fall for that nigerian scam"

Oh, come now. Old people are stupid and will believe anything? And why would a prototypical Christian want or need to believe in reincarnation when Christianity already provides a nice "you'll be in heaven with Jesus if you're a good Churchgoer" narrative? Surely, there's a better argument here than that. (and some fairly young whipper-snappers have fallen for Nigerian email scams as well)

"But as they say extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

I agree. This isn't absolutely definitive, but it is more solid evidence than any other explanation that I have heard of for what happens to people after they croak. I challenge anyone to produce more evidence for an alternative explanation of the life (or lack thereof) after death.

"it would take for than 14 minutes to present that extraordinary evidence."

I would recommend at the very least the book this piece was based on:
http://www.amazon.com/Soul-Survivor-Reincarnation-World-Fighter/dp/0446509337

When you're done with that, I'd recommend Dr. Jim Tucker's "Life Before Life":
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Before-Childrens-Memories-Previous/dp/031237674X

Which in turn, is largely based on Dr. Ian Stevenson's extensive works on the subject, starting with "20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation":
http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Cases-Suggestive-Reincarnation-Enlarged/dp/0813908728
(Other books by Stevenson, the godfather of scientific inquiry into reincarnation, include such sensational titles as "Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects", "Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy", and "Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect").

"but since we're on personal anecdotes"

No need to knock anecdotes. They are, after all, the stories of our (and other peoples') lives.

"1. The parents arn't lying- which, however much we want to trust the nice looking white people, in the past with others has not always proved to be a safe assumption"

This is the 'parents are just making it up to get rich selling non-fiction paperbacks at $5 per copy' argument, although 'imagined' is substituted for 'lied'. I was hoping to get more than this. (and the authors are likely to get, if anything, less than $1 per copy. They would likely make more money, hour for hour, turning in shifts at the local McDonald's)

"2. That the Kid provided the information- This is simply not true in most cases in this story, the kid gives a word, an image, points to a picture, and the parents fill in the blanks, classic cold reading"
"3. The kid was uninfluenced in his statements."

"Natoma" isn't a name I would think a kid would conjure from his imagination; certainly not with names like "Enterprise", "Yorktown, "Hornet", "Wasp", or "Saratoga" floating around in the general consciousness. And in your explanation, the father would've had to track down the name of an unknown figher pilot and 'feed' it back to his son in such a way that (since we're assuming the father isn't lying) the father would believe the son had produced the name indpendently. I just don't see how that could happen, especially if we believe that the parents were skeptical to begin with.

"4. All participants memory is perfect."

No, it is *imperfect". The kid remembered the name of the ship as simply "Natoma", not "Natoma Bay", and he did not remember the last name of the previous (alleged) personality, among other things.

"Just a point about memory"

I wholeheartedly agree with you on the fallibility of human memory, but I would say there are simply too many specific details which were later corroborated (in contrast to your point about memory being contradicted by other evidence), such as: the name of the CVE, the full name of the pilot, the location of the downing, the location of the damage to the plane, the names of the other pilots, the childhood nickname of the sister, etc. to dismiss this on that point alone.

There are quite a number of websites which discuss this case, most of which enthusiastically support the parents claims.

I did find one skeptical blog which claims the tv special left out some details:

http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/07/reincarnation_a.html

Point one: the nightmares and fascination with airplanes started after a trip to a flight museum (according to the skeptic blog).
Point two: after the nightmares the mother took the child to a therapist who his also the author of several books on reincarnation, and it was she who encouraged the little boy "to share his memories".

I don't really know. My default position is that most fantastic stories are probably bullshit... So I am biased... But I guess you never know.

Check out the link for a different perspective.

"Point two: after the nightmares the mother took the child to a therapist who his also the author of several books on reincarnation, and it was she who encouraged the little boy "to share his memories"."

If anyone wants proof the mother was anything but neutral to this as I said her first reaction was to bring the kid to a reincarnation expert.

Bottom Line: We were told a story that can only be corroborated by 3 people, the kid, the mother and the father. I cant mount an argument suitable for you (though i think I did plenty a good job) because this special did not try to give us all the sides, all I heard was one. You make the assumptions listed above and tell us to challenge them, we cant provide definitive proof because we were provided with nothing.

I think the Kid was fed these things, I think the Mother and her mother and the therapist wanted to believe, which eventually dragged the Father along for the ride. I know from the show the parents did a lot of research plugging things in, the kid was immersed in fighter lore the way I was immersed in baseball at an early age, and 3 people in this kids life made a profit off of it.

What Im quite positive of is that memories are housed in the tissue of the brain. Did this kid sprout another guys brain?

"Point one: the nightmares and fascination with airplanes started after a trip to a flight museum (according to the skeptic blog)."

Started *several months after* the trip to the flight museum, and involved nightmares which were a bit more graphic and disturbing (like burning up in a doomed airplane hurtling towards the surface of the Pacific Ocean) than an 18-month old is likely to conjure up from scratch. (this is assuming the blog is accurate. I do not know this to be true.)

"Point two: after the nightmares the mother took the child to a therapist who his also the author of several books on reincarnation, and it was she who encouraged the little boy "to share his memories"."

A serious allegation of professional misconduct, with no real evidence behind it so far as I can tell. Just "she is the author of several books on reincarnation, so she must be manufacturing the whole story to sell books". You could just as easily say "this psychiatrist is the author of several works on child sexual molestation, so the victim in this case of child molestation is simply being coached to invent the whole story to sensationalize claims of molestation and sell books".

"My default position is that most fantastic stories are probably bullshit... So I am biased..."

Once upon a time, it was considered fantastical that millions of people could be forced into concentration camps to be killed en masse through poison gas, with their skins used as lampshades and their fat to be rendered into soap. But today in some countries it is against the law *not* to believe this. The line between fantastical stories and truth can be fairly thin, even indistinguishable. It all depends on the evidence before us, and that evidence is always going to be imperfect.

"Bottom Line: We were told a story that can only be corroborated by 3 people, the kid, the mother and the father."

Plus the sister of James Huston, and many of the survivors of the Natoma Bay, none of whom had any investment in seeing the story proved in favor of reincarnation (many of them in fact, being observant Christians and all, had a religious incentive to debunk the claims).

"this special did not try to give us all the sides, all I heard was one"

Once again, it is obvious you did not watch the whole thing. They gave air time to a skeptic of the story. I'll grant you that the story was slanted in favor of the reincarnation theory, but to say that alternative explanations were not offered would be untrue.

"we cant provide definitive proof because we were provided with nothing."

I think the general problem is that you're trying to prove a negative ('reincarnation doesn't happen'), which is generally considered to be impossible.

"3 people in this kids life made a profit off of it."

Really? You of all people here I would think should know that writing non-fiction is generally not a profitable enterprise unless university professors force their students to buy your book (which in the case of a book of this type is not likely to happen). I highly doubt there was much of a profit made out of this, if any.

"What Im quite positive of is that memories are housed in the tissue of the brain. Did this kid sprout another guys brain?"

That would be fairly difficult, seeing as James Huston's brain was likely completely devoured by fishes of the western Pacific by 1947. I suppose a case could be made that someone in Japan maybe ate the brain cells of James Huston in a fresh shipment of sushi in 1946 or '47, but how they managed to survive the digestion process intact and how they got from there to America in 1998 (when James Leininger was born) is a curious mystery in need of explanation.

Another good story on this case:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1209795/Reincarnated-Our-son-World-War-II-pilot-come-life.html

Fascinating quotes:
"At a toy shop, they admired some model planes. 'Look,' said Andrea. 'There's a bomb on the bottom.'
'That's not a bomb, Mummy,' he replied. 'That's a drop tank.' Just a toddler, he was talking like a military historian. How had he known about the gas tank used by aircraft to extend their range?"

"Next, little James unnerved his father by telling him: 'I knew you would be a good daddy, that's why I picked you.'
'Where did you find us?' asked a shaken Bruce.
'In Hawaii, at the pink hotel, on the beach,' he replied. Eerily, he described his parents' fifth wedding anniversary - five weeks before Andrea got pregnant - saying it was when he 'chose' them to bring him back into the world."

"Something new emerged every day. On a map, he pointed out the exact location where James's plane went down. Asked why he called his action figures Billy, Leon and Walter, he replied: 'Because that's who met me when I got to heaven.'
Sure enough, on the list of the Natoma dead, alongside James Huston, were Billie Peeler, Leon Conner and Walter Devlin. Uncannily, photos of the men showed their hair colour matched those of their GI Joe dolls."

You know that the whole soap story has been debunked? (My source for that is Michael Shermer, "Why people believe weird things")
But that is a side issue. My default position is before the presentation of serious evidence. Sometimes fantastic stories do turn out to be true.

"Started *several months after* the trip to the flight museum, and involved nightmares which were a bit more graphic and disturbing" - really, because the youtube video at the start implied that the 2 year old was only watching barney and teletubbies and didn't talk to anyone else outside of the family...

if he went to a flight museum at any point in his life this gives a much easier explanation for the nightmares... and from there you've got parent's behaviour leading him on...

the simple explanation is usually the correct one.

oh and also the simplest explanation is usually the most compelling and thus easiest to believe. Which some people here clearly do, they believe 'reincarnation' is a very simple explanation, except i don't think you have fully explain, or even attempted to explain HOW reincarnation works.

How do memories form in the human brain?

"Really? You of all people here I would think should know that writing non-fiction is generally not a profitable enterprise unless university professors force their students to buy your book (which in the case of a book of this type is not likely to happen). I highly doubt there was much of a profit made out of this, if any."

Writing about child molestation is very different than writing about reincarnation and the unknown, its a popular topic, much more akin to fiction than non-fiction.

Again, we are getting a narrative, everything that goes against that narrative or calls it into doubt will be left out.

""I am genuinely interested in hearing a 'scientific' and 'logical' explanation for why the sister and crewmates of a pilot who died 64 years ago would play along with such 'predictable nonsense'."
I am interested why people would play along about a guy got nailed to a cross and died for our sins.
I am interested as to why people would play along with the idea that god created the world in 6 days.
There are so many religions out there, with so much 'evidence' proving/disproving all of them, any person could say that everyone else's religion (as in the one they don't believe in) is just something they would 'play along' in a giant hoax.

The fact is, this is another religion. and some people, like yourself, will believe it, and most people, like me, will not believe it.

Tolstoy, even if science couldn't provide an explanation (which I'm sure has been posted already, or will be soon), the idea that therefore reincarnation must be true is asinine. Those who subscribe to scientific thought don't claim to have all the answers, or at least shouldn't do! This isn't a criticism of the scientific method - in fact, it is quite the opposite; claiming knowledge of causal relationships when no such knowledge is held is dumb, yet it is exactly what you are doing here. People used to say things like "Khepri is pushing the Sun across the sky again" because they didn't understand exactly what was happening. The correct course of action in these situations is to withhold judgement until detailed exploration has occurred and sufficient evidence has been gathered; not to jump eagerly to outlandish conclusions at the slightest hint of a difficult question.

@Tolstoy: I have the explanation. I'll sell it to you for $200.