‘Dead Girl’ Comes Back To Life, Knows SECRETS She Shouldn’t

Unexplained Returns: 8 Extraordinary Cases of Reincarnation

In the early 1900s, a young girl named Dorothy Eady did the impossible—twice. First, she seemingly returned from the dead. Second, she came back with the memories of an ancient Egyptian priestess, possessing an inexplicable awareness of a distant past life. How is this possible? Her story, along with several other bizarre, real-world accounts, pushes the boundaries of what we understand about life, death, and reincarnation.

1. Dorothy Eady: The Ancient Egyptian Priestess

Born in London in 1904, Dorothy Eady was a normal child until a terrible accident at age three changed her life. She fell headlong down a flight of stairs, lost consciousness, and stopped breathing. A doctor pronounced her dead, but shortly after he left, Dorothy awoke—alive and healthy. However, she was no longer the same little girl.

She began speaking with a foreign accent and constantly begged her parents to take her “home,” though she couldn’t describe where that was. The strangeness escalated during a family visit to a museum. While browsing an Egyptian exhibition, Dorothy pointed at an image of the Temple of Seti I—a pharaoh of the 19th dynasty and father of Ramesses the Great—and insisted she had lived there. She even pointed out the location of the temple’s now-missing gardens.

As she grew older, her beliefs caused friction; she was banned from attending local Catholic events after comparing Christianity to ancient Egyptian religions. At 16, while playing the Egyptian goddess Isis in a theater group, she recalled more details: her original name was Bentreshyt, a priestess of Isis who had a secret affair with Seti I. Because priestesses were forbidden to have children, her ensuing pregnancy resulted in her demise.

At 27, Dorothy married an Egyptian man, moved to Egypt, and eventually assisted archaeologists in Abydos. Her claims gained incredible credibility when she helped excavators locate the exact ruins of the lost gardens she had described as a child. Furthermore, she correctly identified the exact locations of unpublished, hidden wall paintings inside the Temple of Seti I to a stunned chief inspector of antiquities.

While skeptics argue she might have subconsciously absorbed early 20th-century Egyptomania or snuck into the sites to view unpublished materials, her drastic personality change at age three and her impossible knowledge of unexcavated sites remain difficult to explain. Dorothy lived out her days in Abydos, dying in 1981 at the age of 77.

2. Sherrie Lee Laird: The Memories of Marilyn Monroe

When Canadian rock singer Sherrie Lee Laird was 12, her aunt randomly sang “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” Hearing the name of the original singer—Marilyn Monroe—triggered something profound in Sherrie’s mind. She began experiencing vivid dreams and flashbacks, reliving snippets of the Hollywood icon’s life.

These visions often featured the terrifying moments just before Monroe’s death, eventually causing Sherrie to suffer a psychiatric breakdown. In 1998, she reached out to Dr. Adrian Finkelstein, a California-based psychiatrist known for his research on past-life regression. Under hypnosis, Sherrie answered hundreds of questions about Marilyn’s life, identifying maternal aunts in obscure photographs and insisting that no foul play was involved in Marilyn’s death, but rather a deep depression following a breakup with President John F. Kennedy.

Dr. Finkelstein noted striking similarities between Sherrie and Marilyn in their voice patterns, handwriting, and facial features. However, psychiatry largely dismisses past-life regression, as hypnosis can easily induce false memories. Undeterred by the skepticism, Sherrie remained convinced of her past life.

3. James Leininger: The WWII Fighter Pilot

Born in San Francisco in 1998, James Leininger had an intense, inexplicable obsession with airplanes. By age two, he could name various aircraft models and began suffering recurring nightmares about crashing a World War II fighter plane.

He told his parents his dream-self was named James, and he had flown off an aircraft carrier called the USS Natoma Bay. He also used highly specific aviation terminology, such as referring to fuel storage devices as “drop tanks.” Baffled because they had never exposed him to WWII history, his parents investigated. They discovered that a real WWII pilot named James Huston had indeed been stationed on the USS Natoma Bay and was fatally shot down over Iwo Jima—exactly as young James had described.

While the story is compelling, skeptics point out that James’s parents consulted a reincarnation author for guidance, raising the possibility that they inadvertently fed the child information or that he picked up aviation terms from television.

4. Billy Campbell: The Royal Reincarnation

In 2019, Australian TV presenter David Campbell revealed that his four-year-old son, Billy, claimed to be the reincarnation of Princess Diana. It started when Billy saw a card featuring Lady Diana and proudly announced, “That’s me, when I used to be a princess.”

Billy possessed an uncanny knowledge of the British royal family. He accurately described Balmoral Castle in Scotland, noting it was adorned with unicorns (the national animal of Scotland, heavily featured in the castle’s heraldry). Even stranger, Billy claimed he had a brother named John. Princess Diana did indeed have an infant brother named John who died a year before she was born—a fact very few people know. When shown a photo of Diana, Billy recalled hearing sirens and “stopping being a princess,” a chilling potential reference to Diana’s fatal 1997 car crash.

5. Barbro Karlen: The Life of Anne Frank

From the time she could speak, Barbro Karlen, born in Sweden in 1954, insisted her name was Anne. She suffered from disturbing nightmares of men raiding her home and taking her family away.

When she was ten, Barbro’s parents took her to Amsterdam. Upon arriving at the Anne Frank House, Barbro immediately noticed that the outside steps had been altered. Inside, she became distressed over missing photographs on the wall of Anne’s room. An employee confirmed that the pictures had indeed been there but were temporarily removed to prevent theft.

This convinced her mother, who later arranged a meeting between Barbro and Anne Frank’s living cousin, Buddy Elias. The two felt an instant, undeniable connection and remained close friends until Buddy’s death in 2015. Skeptics, however, note that Anne Frank’s diary was published in 1947, meaning young Barbro could have overheard the tragic story and internalized it.

6. Boriska Kipriyanovich: The Boy from Mars

Born in Russia in 1996, Boriska Kipriyanovich was dubbed a genius who could allegedly read, draw, and paint by the age of 18 months. Without any prompting from his parents, he developed a deep fascination with space and eventually claimed he was originally from Mars.

Boriska asserted that his Martian civilization was nearly wiped out by a nuclear war and that he was reborn on Earth to save humanity from a similar fate. He described Martian spaceships, propulsion systems, and claimed that other “Martian children” are living on Earth. He also stated that ancient Egyptians were closely linked with Martian society, claiming the Great Sphinx of Giza holds a secret mechanism behind its ear that, once opened, will change human history forever.

7. Sergey Torop: The Cult Leader

Sergey Torop was a former traffic cop and factory worker in Siberia who found himself unemployed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1989, he claimed to experience a spiritual awakening, proclaiming himself the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

Changing his name to “Vissarion,” he amassed thousands of followers and founded the Church of the Last Testament, establishing an isolated commune in Siberia. Initially peaceful, the commune took a dark turn as Vissarion banned meat, sugar, tea, and formal education for children. Worst of all, he forbade modern medicine. In 2020, following the deaths of two infants from pneumonia who were denied medical care, Russian authorities raided the commune and arrested Vissarion on charges of psychological manipulation, extortion, and causing physical harm.

8. The Pollock Twins: A Tragic Return

On a Sunday morning in May 1957, in Hexham, England, an erratic driver crashed into a wall, tragically killing 11-year-old Joanna Pollock, her 6-year-old sister Jacqueline, and their friend.

A year later, the grieving parents, John and Florence Pollock, welcomed twin girls: Gillian and Jennifer. Immediately, they noticed striking anomalies. Jennifer had two birthmarks—one on her waist and one on her forehead—that perfectly matched scars Jacqueline had when she died.

As the twins grew, they began asking for specific toys that had belonged to their deceased sisters, despite having never seen them. They recognized local landmarks they had never visited and possessed a terrifying phobia of cars. In one chilling incident, Gillian was found cradling Jennifer’s head, saying, “A car hit her there.”

The twins’ past-life memories faded by the age of seven, though Gillian had a vivid flashback at age 23 of a sandbox at a home the family had left long before she was born. While skeptics argue the twins’ father—a firm believer in reincarnation—may have subconsciously fed them information, the physical birthmarks remain a haunting mystery.