Upon arrival at the family home, the team was led into the kitchen. A three-year-old, the youngest of four homeschooled siblings, peeked behind her mother’s legs, shyly looking up. She wore a baggy Minnie Mouse shirt and perched between her grandparents on a booth, watching everyone take their seats around the dining table.
“Let’s start at the very beginning,” Dr. Tucker said after the documents were signed by Misty, the child’s 28-year-old mother. “Did it all start with the puzzle piece?” »
A few months earlier, the mother and child were looking at a wooden puzzle of the United States, with each state represented by a caricature of a person or object. Misty’s daughter excitedly pointed to the shredded Illinois coin, which contained an abstract illustration of Abraham Lincoln.
“It’s Pom,” her daughter exclaimed. “He doesn’t have his hat on.”
It was indeed a drawing of Abraham Lincoln without his hat, but more importantly, there was no name under the image indicating who he was. After weeks of endless discussions about “Pom” bleeding after being injured and carried in a bed that was too small – something the family had begun to think might be linked to Lincoln’s assassination – they began to consider that their daughter was present during the ceremony. historical moment. This is despite the family having no prior belief in reincarnation, nor any particular interest in Lincoln.
On the way to Amherst, Dr. Tucker admitted his hesitation to tackle this particular case – or any other case related to a famous person. “If you say your child is Babe Ruth, for example, there will be a lot of information online,” he said. “When we get these cases, it’s usually that the parents are involved. Still, it’s a little strange coming out of the mouth of a three-year-old. If she had said her daughter was Lincoln, I probably wouldn’t have made the trip.
Lately, Dr. Tucker has been giving the children picture tests. “When we think we know the person they’re talking about, we show them a photo from that life, and then we show them another photo – a fake photo – taken somewhere else, to see if they can choose the right one. “, he said. “You have to have some photos for it to make sense. I had one where the kid remembered dying in Vietnam. I showed him eight pairs of photos and he made no choice on two of them, but on the others he was six out of six. So, you know, it makes you think. But this girl is so young I don’t think we can do that.