Some passages from a book by Annekatrin Puhle
In November 2004 I met Annekatrin Puhle, who together with Adrian Parker studied the case of Jesper Bood. Here are some translated passages from her book
Lexikon der Geister (Munich, 2004):
In the second part of the Swedish TV-series "Tidigare Liv" (Previous Lives)
the 29-year-old literature student Jesper Bood from Jönköping (South-Sweden)
is looking for signs that he has lived before. Led by therapist Jörgen
Sundvall he is really transferred to a former age by a so called regression
session. (...) He tells that he used to live in the Scottish town of Dunber
as the fisherman John Smith. (...) After his regression he writes down what
he's experienced: in what part of Scotland Dunber is located and what the
buildings and other things look like over there. It turns out that Dunber is
written as Dunbar (...) but the town is exactly located on the spot
indicated by Jesper.
Jesper (...) does not know that we have really found the town. He told us a
lot about his early childhood, that he lived close to a swamp and described
what the town looked like from that spot. He mentioned a church and a school
to which he used to go. Jesper even mentioned that both girls and boys went
to his school and that his father used to earn his money as a blacksmith.
During his search for signs Jesper gets help from the local historian Roy
Pugh. (Parts from Internet summary of the second part of the series Tidigare
Liv").
Annekatrin Puhle goes on to say that Jesper Bood had never been in Scotland before the
regression and that it was the TV-team that took him there. There would have
been lots of facts that were verified during his stay. Apart from the ones
mentioned in the summary:
(...) he mentioned his year of birth, 1852. (...)
Through the assistance of historian Roy Pugh it was possible to trace the
John Smith, which was not very common in this part of Scotland, in the
church records: A person called John Smith was born in September 1852 and
baptized on October 18th. His father's name was also John Smith, his
profession blacksmith, the name of his mother was Mary Craig, just like
Jesper had stated.
Puhle also mentions that he would have had a
friend with the surname Wilson and that there would have been several
families of fishermen by this name. Bood would also have said that he lived
in a brown wooden house in the Public Road, Gateside, and it was found out
that there really used to be such houses there. It would even have been
established that there used to be a blacksmith there.
Then, he would have recalled that it took half an hour to reach his school
and described the Parish Curch, the first building that he used to see on
his way to school, close to a sea. He could see it through the window of
his class room.
The school would have had a U-shape and three floors. According to Roy Pugh,
he would also have given a correct description of the old church (glass)
windows and of the former Woodbush School, broken down after 1950.
He also described a pub, the
Fisherman's Tavern in the Lamer Street with a
green shield. Bood recognised the tavern in The Creel Restaurant that used to
be called
Jersey Arms, a well-known pub for fishermen. They served a very
old type of beer which reminded him of the symbol of Fisherman's friend. He
had mentioned that it was run by a woman, and this turned out to be correct.
Finally, Jesper Bood drew a sketch of five places after the hypnotic session: church,
school, high street, methodist church and harbour. The spatial relations
between these places exactly corresponded with the geographical location of
all these five places.
Just one of his statements was found to be incorrect, namely about the
shape of the contemporary church tower. He also recalled that he drowned
and this could not be verified either.
Jesper Bood responded to this as follows:
As I see it, the statements above are correct, but there were things left
out of course, that were not possible to verify: a loveaffair with a married
woman in a textileshop, that could POSSIBLY have been on the main street,
but not varified.
One thing I find interesting is that another church we visited, close to the
one I mentioned where only the absid was correct, where I pointed out that
it had been a sort of a monks-place where they helped locals in a samaritan
way. This is not very wellknown today, but could have been common knowledge
a hundred years ago....
Titus
...
