Past-Life Memory Sources of Dreams
Angela Grubbs’ Recollections of Francine Donovan, Recorded before Verification
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31156/jaex.25446Keywords:
memory reliability, past-life memory, reincarnationAbstract
Like memories of the present life, apparent memories of past lives may be incorporated in dreams. Past-life dreams seldom furnish enough information for a previous incarnation to be identified, but occasionally they do. The dreams of Angela Grubbs are exceptional in their extensiveness and consistency with what is known about the life of a deceased individual, a nurse named Francine Donovan who died in 1923. The memories are largely episodic rather than fragmentary autobiographical memories. Although many elements cannot be substantiated, the dreams contain no demonstrable distortions. The dreams of Grubbs are rendered more important by her having recorded them in emails before their details were verified. The majority appeared shortly after she saw the movie, What Dreams May Come, which may have served as a catalyst for them. This case not only adds to the growing evidence for reincarnation, it contributes to the study of the memory sources of dreams. The function of memories in dreams may involve more than memory consolidation. A key aspect may be subliminal emotional processing of past experience that includes past-life experience if it is relevant to, or remains unresolved in, the present life.
References
Birchfield, J., & Birchfield, M. (2022). Aylesford: Some historical chapters. James and Martha Birchfield.
Bolin, J. D. (2000). Bossism and reform in a southern city: Lexington, Kentucky, 1880-1940. University Press of Kentucky.
Esposito, K., Benitez, A., Barza, L., & Mellman, T. A. (1999). Evaluation of dream content in combat-related PTSD. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 12, 681–687. doi: 10.1023/A:1024725319777
Fosse, M. J., Fosse R., Hobson, J. A., & Stickgold, R. J. (2003). Dreaming and episodic memory: A functional dissociation? Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 15(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/ 10.1162/089892903321107774
Grubbs, A. (2006). Chosen to believe: Present dreams, past lives. Pink Elephant Press.
Hartmann, E. (2010). The dream always makes new connections: The dream is a creation, not a replay. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 5(2), 241–248. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsmc.2010.01.009.
Hassler, D. (2018). A new and verified case suggestive of reincarnation based on dreams and flashbacks. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 82(2), 81-102.
Hassler, D. (2020). Nah-Tod-Erfahrungen und mehr…/ Indizienbeweise für ein Leben nach dem Tod und die Wiedergeburt. Band 3: Nah-Tod-Erfahrungen, mediale Kommunikation mit Verstorbenen, Träume, Flashbacks, Déjà-vus, Spuk, Erscheinungen, Instrumentelle Transkommunikation (pp. 369-374). Shaker Media.
Krippner, S., & Faith, L. (2001). Exotic dreams: A cross-cultural study. Dreaming, 11(2), 73–82. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009480404011
Levin, R., & Nielsen, T. A. (2007). Disturbed dreaming, posttraumatic stress disorder, and affect distress: A review and neurocognitive model. Psychological Bulletin, 133, 482–528. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.3.482
Malinowski, J. [E.], & Horton, C. L. (2014a). Evidence for the preferential incorporation of emotional waking-life experiences into dreams. Dreaming, 24(1), 18–31. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036017
Malinowski, J. E., & Horton, C. L. (2014b). Memory sources of dreams: The incorporation of autobiographical rather than episodic experiences. Journal of Sleep Research, 23(4), 441–447. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.12134
Matlock, J. G. (2019a). Dreams and past-life memory. Psi Encyclopedia. https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/dreams-and-past-life-memory
Matlock, J. G. (2019b). Signs of reincarnation: Exploring beliefs, cases, and theory. Rowman & Littlefield.
Matlock, J. G. (2021). Reincarnation cases with records made before verifications. Psi Encyclopedia. https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/reincarnation-cases-records-made-verifications
Matlock, J. G. (2022). Apparent past-life memories in a recurring dream of the 1934 Los Angeles New Year’s Flood. Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition 2(2), 389–422. https://doi.org/10.31156/jaex.23577
Rawat, K. S., & Rivas, T. (2021). Reincarnation as a scientific concept: Scholarly evidence for past lives. White Crow Books.
Schouten, S., & Stevenson, I. (1998). Does the socio-psychological hypothesis explain cases of the reincarnation type? Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 186, 504-506.
Stevenson, I. (2000). Unusual play in young children who claim to remember previous lives. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 14, 557–570.
Wehrstein, K. M. (2017). Adult past-life memories research. Psi Encyclopedia. https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/adult-past-life-memories-research
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 James G. Matlock
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
All articles published in JAEX are open access, freely and universally accessible online, and archived in the open journal’s Lund University website (https://journals.lub.lu.se). Articles in JAEX can be distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License CCBY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, with appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, a link to the Creative Commons license, and an indication if changes were made.