ChrisR said:
To validate is to authenticate, verify, prove. But what about personal validation? little nuggets of evidence that prove nothing to anybody else, but mean so much to you personally? [...]Does anybody else have any similar experiences?
I love this thread...not sure why I didn't see this before.
I don't talk too much about myself on CPL, but the verification aspect of the journey is pretty big with me. I remembered quite a bit when I was a child and fortunately have been able to research through books, historical forums, and travel several things. I'm very proud of that.
One reason I like this thread is because the OP is asking of 'little nuggets' of evidence that mean so much personally. Anyone can look at a list of verifications and say, 'Well, you must of read about that before or saw it on television!' And sure, the skeptic asking this could have a point...but these personal verifications, these little prized glimpses of the past are usually so specific and, unless you were there, usually not too interesting to another person. Unlikely anyone saw this stuff on TV.
I have two 'nuggets' that I am comfortable sharing here:
1. One memory involved my receiving a pair of salt and pepper shakers as a gift. I was polite, but inwardly thought that they were hideous and turned one upside down to see who the heck created such an ceramic nightmare. Under the shaker was a stamp in black or blue that read 'Hohenzollern'.
Though I recognized this as a past life memory, I didn't think too much about it because I had other things going on. Later, I was able to use the internet to verify the mark. I was stunned to find some 'Hohenzollern' items for sale on eBay (turn of the century stuff) and I found a website called Porcelain Marks and More that showed the various marks the company used (and the mark from my memory did exist...that sent me reeling for days).
There was skimpy information about the company due to the fact that it was owned by a Jewish family who was either forced to stop production in 1938 or had sold the company in 1932 and was taken off the registry.
I emailed the site owner off and on to find out more information and was so excited by this little verification, bought my own set of Hohenzollern shakers off of eBay with the mark:
(No longer available)
2. Another memory I had always assumed happened when I was little, yet when I was 13 or so and started to think I had a past life, I had to accept the fact that maybe it hadn't. This was one of the first memories where I started to come to terms with the fact that things I remembered didn't add up to my current life because I was too tall, talking to people I didn't know now, or they were taking place in surroundings that didn't make sense.
The memory was from WWI and the obvious element in it to research was a piece of equipment. I won't go into that here. The little gem that means so much to me was the surroundings. I had always remembered knowing there was a large body of water nearby, fields of something being grown that always look grey and lifeless to me, and tall slim trees planted in a row in the distance. I had assumed that the trees were a windbreak for whatever crops were being grown in those fields.
But yeah, when I was younger the obvious thing was to verify what is actually happening in the memory and the piece of equipment being used. Since it was WWI without a doubt, I had to assume that the fields were in either Belgium or France.
Last year I was browsing online casually about WWI and came across a modern day photo without a caption of a WWI graveyard. The graveyard wasn't what grabbed my attention, but it was the background. It was similar to that place I had 'known' since childhood, right down to the distinctive-looking, slim and tall trees. I was interested in where the photo was taken and asked the site's owner where it was. They told me it was near Tyne Cot Cemetery in Passchendaele.
Now, this didn't necessarily mean that I was exactly right there in my memory, but a quick jaunt on Google Earth made me realize that I was probably near the correct area. What is grown there looks like a lot of corn and the place is littered with lines of these tall trees. In my mind, it just fits.
I used to have several Google Earth screenshots of the area that tugged at me and the places pinned on Google Earth itself. However, my computer crashed not that long ago and I lost the information. However, I just now took a screenshot of the sort of thing I am talking about to share with you all:
(No longer available)
I wish I could find a better shot, but you'll get the general idea from this.
There was something about seeing the place in color, in modern times as opposed to those inky period photos that made my heart skip a beat.