1. Hypnotic regression

2. Book publication and response

3. Film adaptation

4. References in popular culture

5. Notes

6. References

7. Further reading

8. External links

Hypnotic regression

In 1952, Colorado businessman and amateur hypnotist Morey Bernstein put housewife Virginia Tighe (Ruth Simmons) of Pueblo, Colorado, in a trance that sparked off startling revelations about Tighe's alleged past life as a 19th-century Irishwoman and her rebirth in the United States 59 years later. Bernstein used a technique called hypnotic regression, during which the subject is gradually taken back to childhood. He then attempted to take Virginia one step further, before birth, and was astonished to find he was listening to Bridey Murphy.

Tighe's tale began in 1806, when Bridey was eight years old and living in a house in Cork. She was the daughter of Duncan Murphy, a barrister, and his wife Kathleen. At the age of 17, she married barrister Sean Brian McCarthy, who she claimed taught at Queen's University Belfast, to which she moved. Tighe told of a fall that caused Bridey's death and of watching her own funeral, describing her tombstone and the state of being in life after death. It was, she recalled, a feeling of neither pain nor happiness. Somehow, she was reborn in America, although Tighe/Bridey was not clear how this event happened. Virginia Tighe herself was born in the Midwest in 1923, had never been to Ireland, and did not speak with even the slightest hint of an Irish accent.

Book publication and response

The biographical details related by Bridey were not fully checked before the publication of Bernstein's 1956 book The Search for Bridey Murphy. However, once the book had become a bestseller, almost every detail was thoroughly checked by reporters who were sent to Ireland to track down the background of the elusive woman. It was then that the first doubts about her "reincarnation" began to appear. Bridey said she was born on December 20, 1798, in Cork and that she had died in 1864. There was no record of either event.^[3] Neither was there any record of a wooden house called The Meadows in which she said she lived, just of a place of that name at the brink of Cork. Indeed, most houses in Ireland were made of brick or stone. She pronounced her husband's name as "See-an," but Seán is pronounced "Shawn" in Ireland. Moreover Queen's University Belfast did not exist at the time Tighe/Bridey claimed that Brian was working there.

Brian, which is what Bridey preferred to call her husband, was also the middle name of the man to whom Virginia Tighe was married. Some of the details did tally. For instance, her descriptions of the Antrim coastline were very accurate. So, too, was her account of a journey from Belfast to Cork. She claimed she went to a St. Theresa's Church. There was indeed one where she said there was, but it was not built until 1911. The young Bridey shopped for provisions with a grocer named Farr. It was discovered that such a grocer had existed.

The experts who examined the case of Virginia Tighe came to the conclusion that the best way to arrive at the truth was to check back not to Ireland but to Tighe's own childhood and her relationship with her parents. Morey Bernstein stated that Virginia Tighe (whom he called Ruth Simmons in the book) was brought up by a Norwegian uncle and his German-Scottish-Irish wife. However, it did not state that her actual parents were both part Irish and that she had lived with them until the age of three. It also did not mention that an Irish immigrant named Bridie Murphy Corkell (1892–1957)^[4] lived across the street from Tighe's childhood home in Chicago, Illinois. Scientists{{who?|date=July 2018}} are satisfied that everything Virginia Tighe said can be explained as a memory of her long-forgotten childhood.^[5] They{{who?|date=July 2018}} are convinced that cryptomnesia accounted for the information.^[6][7][8] Because of these discoveries, scientists{{who?|date=July 2018}} consider any paranormal interpretation of the case "thoroughly disproven."^[9]

Virginia Tighe disliked being in the spotlight and was skeptical about reincarnation, although she said years later: "Well, the older I get the more I want to believe in it." She died in Denver in 1995.^[10] Bernstein gave up hypnotism after Bridey Murphy and began working in business. Success followed and he became a prominent local philanthropist. He died in Pueblo, Colorado, in 1999.^[11]

Film adaptation

References in popular culture

During the height of the Bridey Murphy craze, two popular songs were "For The Love of Bridey Murphy" and "Do You Believe in Reincarnation". There was a Bridey Murphy dance, "come as you were" parties^[13] and a Reincarnation cocktail.{{efn|A March 1956 issue of Life Magazine attributes the cocktail to Walt McCrystal of the "Doctors' Club" of Houston, and gives the following recipe: "a jigger vodka and a 1/2 jigger of maraschino liqueur shaken with lemon juice and crushed ice and topped with a cupful of flaming rum."^[14]}} The 1956 film I've Lived Before was inspired by her story.^[15] The film The Search for Bridey Murphy also came out in 1956.

"Bridey Murphy" was the name of a band consisting of Bill Cowsill, Paul Cowsill, Barry Cowsill, and Waddy Wachtel. In 1974 Capitol released one single, "The Time Has Come."^[17]

In Robert Wise's 1963 film The Haunting, Julie Harris' character is jokingly accused of being a reincarnation of Bridey Murphy by Russ Tamblyn's character.

Notes

References

Further reading

• Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science by Martin Gardner (Dover Publications, 1957)
• A Scientific Report on "The Search for Bridey Murphy" by Milton V. Kline et al. (Julian Press, 1956) (OCLC: 543329)

External links

• Bridey Murphy in the Skeptic's Dictionary
• {{IMDb title|id=0049729|title=The Search for Bridey Murphy}}
• {{isfdb title|id=826324|title=The Search for Bridey Murphy}}
• Cecil Adams on the Bridey Murphy controversy
• Time magazine: Yes, Virginia, There Is a Bridey
• The Search for Bridey Murphy, Research Recordings No. 101 (1956). LP with excerpts of the actual first hypnosis session. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue4t58yk2Gs Part 1]. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UrxKTkki9c Part 2]. Accessed September 15, 2017.
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2oj7psG_SM Virginia Tighe's appearance on "To Tell the Truth", April 4, 1966]. Accessed September 15, 2017.

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