What is it? Fighter planes and Irish brogues: what reincarnation means"The soul comes from outside into the human body, as in a temporary abode, and comes out of it again passes into other abodes, because the soul is immortal." - Ralph Waldo Emerson The Curious Case of James Leininger James Huston was a World War II Navy fighter pilot from the aircraft carrier Natoma Bay. On March 3, 1945, he died after his plane's propeller was blown off during the Battle of Iwo Jima. James Leininger was born more than forty years later, on April 10, 1998. He developed an early fascination with airplanes like many boys, but his parents, Bruce and Andrea Leininger, noticed that he was much more knowledgeable about World War II technology Globally compared to the average for two-year-olds. Despite a relative lack of exposure to World War II history, he knew some obscure terminology on the subject, as was evident when he corrected his mother's reference to a drop tank on a toy plane as a bomb, and when he corrected a narrator on History Channel about the names of several Japanese aircraft. He knew that Corsair planes banked left during takeoff and that Japanese fighter planes were given boys' names while bomber planes were given girls' names. Around the same time, James began having a recurring nightmare in which he was unable to go outside. of a burning plane. He woke up several nights a week screaming, “Plane crash! Plane on fire! The little man can't get out!” When questioned by his parents, he said that the "little man" was him and that he had been shot down by the Japanese on Iwo Jima. The boat from which his plane took off was called Natoma. It was Andrea Leininger's mother who suggested that nightmares were combined with... middle of paper... Bridey Murphy. She was skeptical, unsure if her past life character was actually a real person. However, she told her daughter, “The older I get, the more open I am” (Stacy Horn, Unbelievable: 125). We cannot know what Tighe really thought, but his statements reveal the fear he had of dying as he approached age and the subsequent hope he had of being reincarnated again. That's what it ultimately comes down to. We are far from proving that reincarnation is a reality, and there is enough inexplicable evidence to keep us from completely ruling out the possibility, but what really matters is that it shows how much we humans always have and will always want to live forever.** Note : I intend to delve into the psychoanalysis of belief and disbelief in the last section, and from there write a suitable introduction.