Missing-in-Action: A Case Unresolved (Vietnam War)

[landsend]

Hello all,

I figured since I've been around here a while, I'd finally get round to starting a thread of my own and detailing my experiences with an ongoing reincarnation case. It is a long story, and will be detailed in separate posts.

I’m tentatively coming forward about this is because I have received specific validation by still living family members, and believe this case may be of interest to others.

(A bit of background info: In this life, I was born in the 90's in England. Currently 27 yrs old, married w/ three kids.)

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My recall details the life of a man who fought in the Vietnam War.

This awareness has been with me since the age of 12/13, when I began to open to what I can only describe as a well of pain. Childhood cues have been around since I can remember in severe phobias, and odd traits.

One of the triggers to remembering was playing video games. I had been searching around my dad's computer desk (probably a day I was bunking off school), and I found a computer game called Operation Flashpoint. The picture on the front of the game completely mesmerized me. It was of a camouflage face painted soldier looking down the scope of a rifle.

I fired up the game in my room, and played. The game was a realistic military shooter set during 1985 on a fictional Soviet island, with Cold War era weapons/vehicles and a US-vs-Russia combat situation. This was not a typical point-click-shoot game, it was an open ended game that required strategic thinking. At the time it was probably the most realistic game you could play that would get close to a combat situation. (In fact it was so realistic that the military developed their own simulators from the same engine to train soldiers.) Every time I played, an overwhelming feeling of familiarity came over me. It was a yearning pain for something that had once been, but no longer was.

I particularly enjoyed flying around in the ingame helicopters and shooting away. Since I was little I had always been fascinated with joysticks, but I never plucked up the courage to ask my parents to buy me one. It was weird enough I was playing this game, never mind asking for a joystick. I asked myself why I felt so drawn to this game, I felt that something was definitely 'wrong' with me. Most girls that age in that time didn’t sit at home and play war games for fun, for one. That's when it entered my head. I was a soldier in a previous lifetime. I fought in the Vietnam War.

Why Vietnam? I wasn't sure why. The only exposure I'd had to Vietnam had been a brief encounter with another video game called Conflict:Vietnam. I never finished that game. The concept of it made me uncomfortable. Everything about Vietnam made me uncomfortable, and I made sure I avoided knowing about it if I could help it.

The other part of that question (the ‘what is wrong with me’ question) was the pain I was opening to at that point of my life. It was a very difficult time. At the lowest point, suicide was not out of question. The sheer pain that engulfed me at that time of my life ultimately led to me developing agoraphobia. It got to the point where I could no longer leave the house to go to school. Severely depressed, I was around 13 and some psychologists came to my house to assess me. I recall them saying that if I did not start leaving the house, or take medication, they would institutionalise me. I refused to do either.

Being stubborn as heck, I decided I’d take on the challenge to fix myself. I started meditating. Just sitting with the pain whenever it came. As well as meditating, I experimented with binaural beats and creative writing. All this I’m sure contributed to opening my mind and clearing the fog. I wasn’t happy, but I found some peace. I had no friends. My relationship with my family was strained considering I’d given up my schooling. I was very alone, and spent most of my days in solitude. During this time I received a lot of insights about life.

Part of those insights was the knowledge that when we die, we are born again, and we are here to learn through our experiences. I listened to a self-hypnotic regression MP3 I acquired, and had some interesting experiences, but nothing, curiously, about the Vietnam War. Trying to force it left me with less than satisfactory results. Despite this I had a vague image of how he had looked. I was sure he had the same hair colour as me, but had blue eyes, because since I can remember I used to look in the mirror and see my eyes were the wrong colour.

Gradually I started to expand my world from my room, to the back garden, to the bottom of the street, to a walk round the block, and eventually signed up at a local college. The college had a program that took on students who didn’t have formal qualifications, and from there moved onto a course that did require qualifications.

College meant I had to take the bus everyday into town. It was a real challenge for someone who had spent the better part of two years isolated. Every sight and sound was magnified. Anxiety crippled me. The sensation almost translated as physical pain. I never got over that anxiety, but learnt how to tone it down.

It was not long after joining college that I had my first real clue, during one of the most vivid, realistic dreams I’ve had to this date.

2007 - The Shooting Dream

I’m a man, I’m driving my car on a bright sunny day, pull up somewhere on a road that looks like it belongs in a typical North American town or city center, I get out my car. I’m vaguely conscious of how I look, I’m an average Caucasian dude, wearing a chequered shirt and jeans, and have light hair/ eyes. The cars around are not modern cars, they look from the 70-80's era. Everything looks familiar, and I know where I am going.

I enter a building, a formal looking one. I’m standing in the lobby of the building, when, seemingly out of the blue, two men come up from behind me from the glass doors/entrance to building. They are wearing what appears to be black flak jackets and are armed.
One of the men opens fire and shoots me through the abdomen at close range. It’s sudden, and the reason isn’t apparent. I'm on the ground, and I can't move. ​

​

I woke from that dream and immediately felt where the bullet penetrated me. Sure enough that's where I hold a birthmark.


(Attachment details:
Left: Photo shows birthmark on lower right portion of abdomen.
Right: Enhanced saturation.)

I lay in bed a long while after that dream trying to figure it out. I strongly felt that I had witnessed how I had died in a previous life. But there was little consolation in that knowledge. It was confusing. How, what, when? The cogs in my mind whirled and I started to make assumptions. I wanted very much to figure out who I had been, and, having seen that I’d died in a shooting I figured, too, that the info had to be out there somewhere.

If I had fought in the Vietnam War, then this incident had to have occurred after the war. So, I was looking for shooting incidents involving Vietnam War Vets. Anywhere from 1966 was fair game, but by the age of the cars I was looking at least for the mid 70’s. The setting of the shooting was formal, so I figured it could have been a bank. Perhaps this had been a bank robbery of some kind, and I had somehow ended up tangled in the middle. Or, perhaps I had been the one who committed the crime. For some reason that didn’t sit well with me. I had not expected to be shot in the moment. But that doesn’t necessarily make me a guilty bystander.

I did a couple of Google searches for Vietnam era Vets involved in bank shoot outs, but nothing satisfactory came up.

Another theory I thought of is this possibly could have been a life in between the Vietnam War life and my current. If it was I would have had to have been over the legal age to drive. Again, this theory has its holes, but it is a possibility that I have to consider.

As the years went on, every so often I’d get an intense feeling to search around for ‘myself’. Again, nothing ever came of it. I did not have enough clues to go by. I tried to access the information via meditation/self-hypnosis, but I could not force the barriers. So I put it out of my mind, and did my best to forget about it.

It would be five years before I’d get my next clue.

 

[fireflydancing]

Wow, Landsend, this reads like a novel. I can’t wait to read the rest of your story.

 

[Cat1985]

agree...so interesting. I too have trouble figuring out years and all that...cant figure out which life came before or after...it is all muddled. I think because i remember too many lives but nothing in great detail. I have heard people often get birthmarks where they were killed..but not always the case. I would assume that was your last life. Maybe that is the connection....

 

[GreyReynard]

This is a very interesting story. I am looking forward to your next post!

 

[landsend]

Glad you enjoy reading it. Here's me thinking I'd bore people to death. The story is so entwined with my life that I feel I have to detail the aspects to do it justice.

Part two is continued below.

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I finished college with good grades, had several university places lined up. Screwing up my earlier education made me rebellious and somewhat anti-establishment. I felt I didn’t need qualifications to define who I was. The biggest pull I had for going to Uni was just to get away from my folks home. Bit of a drastic change to being house bound I know, probably all that time spent there made me desperately want to flee the nest.

Then in my second year of college, I met a boy, a Spaniard I’d met online. He was studying in London. We used to ride the train to go see each other. It was one of those fated meetings. On our second online conversation we discussed reincarnation. I told him about my feelings of having been an American soldier during the Vietnam War. We shared other stories we had of other experiences, and we actually had a few mutual memories of a different time.

Strangest of all is perhaps the following. A couple of years back whilst meditating, I had the feeling I’d meet a Spaniard, and we would get married. The feeling that we would have a child whilst we were still young (young by today’s standards) came to me also. That was perhaps the most unnerving aspect of the whole thing, considering I had always been adamant I didn’t want children. A dream I had at that time gave me the clue to go onto a penpal website.

Lo and behold, several years later I joined a penpal website, and hated it with a passion. There were many men on there of a certain age preying on young girls (which I was at that time), or strange foreigners trying to get money amongst other things. After about a week I nearly left the site. A series of events led to me staying around that website for about a year. No Spaniard talked to me, oddly enough, even though I spoke to people from all over the world. It wasn’t until the aforementioned events were terminating, that this Spanish boy with curly hair and a very sweet boyish face sent me a message. The rest is history as they say.

I accepted a place at a University, but I had packed up a suitcase and left for Spain not a day after college was through. About a month in Spain, I made the decision. I did not want to go back to England. A couple of months later I was pregnant. I was nineteen. Hardly spoke a word of Spanish. At the same time there was the financial crises, which hit Spain very bad. Miraculously whilst everyone struggled to get a job, my boyfriend was offered a pretty decent one with his University lecturer. But it also meant we had to move from a very nice Spanish town to the outskirts of Madrid.

Well, there I was back at Square One. Spent most of my days isolated, pregnant, in a land I couldn’t speak the lingo. I spent my days alone. With no friends. No family. Depression quickly ensured. Where we lived there wasn’t anything to do. I had a very young face, and looked like a young teen. I was heavily pregnant. In Spain that is still very badly looked upon.

In Spain the majority of people give birth in hospitals with their legs in stirrups and spinal blocks numbing the pain.
My feeling was that I wanted to bring my kid into the world without being stupefied by drugs. I wanted to feel what it was to give birth. That’s exactly what I did. It was about five excruciating hours of labour at our flat where I clawed the walls (literally) screaming internally and externally at the unfairness of having being born in a woman’s body. My son was pretty much the wrong way round and the pain was a knife twisting all in my back. The only relief I had was two paracetamol. But, I wouldn’t give that experience away for anything. For me it was a right of passage, a maturing process. As weird as it sounds, I wanted to feel that pain, needed it to break down some internal barriers. I also wanted to feel what it was to give life from my own body.

Then there was motherhood. Motherhood did not come naturally to me despite trying my honest best. It’s like wearing ill fitting shoes. If the shoe doesn’t fit… what can you do but stumble around?

Fast forward a few more years, things were still pretty much miserable. I suffered from increasing depression. I loved Spain but hated my predicament, being alone with a kid. Felt very sorry for myself to say the least.

It was 2012 when I realised that I couldn’t deal with myself. Once again I was in a great deal of pain, pain I’d left behind. I needed a breakthrough, or I was going to run back to England, and I didn’t want that. Me being stubborn and proud considered that the worst option. So we acquired some inspiration through a friend, my boyfriends old college philosophy teacher. It was late one night after my kid was tucked up in bed, when the walls came tumbling down.


2012 – A Vision of Green and Fire

I am flying above dense, mountainous jungle. It’s so green, so vivid, it feels like I can practically touch it. It’s so real, that I am there, I am going back.

This is not a vision, this is real. The jungle stretches for miles.

Covering the jungle below is what appears to be smoke, or fog. It looks like the jungle below is on fire. I can see vivid orange underneath the jungle canopy, plumes of black clouds billowing, and white clouds lifting to the heavens. The white fog surrounds me.

Then the panic hits.

Please don’t make me go back. Don’t make me go back! (I'm distantly aware of these words escaping my lips). I’m going to get stuck there, I’m going to go back. I really believe I'm going to get sent back there, stuck there. I try with all my might to force the jungle away.

My vision suddenly goes black. Overwhelming fear engulfs me from all angles. I’m spinning. I’m falling into an abyss. I’m going to die.

I spend hours bargaining for my soul with the devil, trying to find a moth hole of light amongst the enclosing darkness.


The vision experience lasted a good couple of hours. It was terrifying. It was more torturous than giving birth to my son. The following day, I shut myself away. We were meant to have lunch with my boyfriends dad and his wife. She had made a paella, and I couldn’t stomach it. The food was too yellow. The lights too bright. I excused myself and later climbed into bed.

In the weeks that followed I couldn’t leave the house without feeling I was going to collapse. Dizziness and panic followed me. Despite my anxiety, I had never, prior to that experience, been prone to panic attacks.

I actively forced all thoughts of that vision away. I knew it was related to the previous life in Vietnam, but I did not want to know more. Just trying to cope with my current life was enough.

I went on to have a couple of panic attacks in my mid-20’s, none as bad as the vision, but nevertheless, pretty intense. Two occurred in a car. One notably occurred during bad turbulence in an airliner whilst we descended into a storm for about 40 mins. My son who was about three at the time thought it was good fun. I, meanwhile, gripped my chair and my teeth as I battled with the feeling that any moment I was going to die.

After getting married, we decided as a family to move back to England following a job offer over there. Fun times ensured as the offer was withdrawn the day before we got married, which was preceded by a pretty bad car crash where we ran into a stray dog at night (and a stray car ran into the back of us), and then packing three years worth of stuff in three days in three suitcases to move back to my parents house in England.

No job, no house, we were pretty much back at the beginning. Was extremely anxious, lost loads of weight, and started suffering with asthma. During this time I tried, once again, a regression attempt. I had my husband try to regress me. Once again, that failed. Things that I saw were blurry, indistinct and felt ‘made’ up so I dismissed it all. But I do recall seeing what I now know is a 105 mm Howitzer, me and a bunch of men were pushing it up a hill. It was dusty and hard work. Apart from that, nothing else could be gathered from that attempt.

Occasionally I searched around the internet looking for info on that shooting I’d seen in my dream. Nada.

All in all, it would nearly be another five years from the last vision until I’d finally start to receive the answers that I so wanted, yet so feared.

 

[landsend]

Part Three

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Again I was going through a period of intense stress. In the space of two years we had gotten married, moved country, moved house three times, had another kiddo. We bought a house that needed total renovation. It was a 1950’s house, desperately stuck in time. I was pregnant when we bought it, and we worked round the clock with my parents to get it somewhat up to present day standards before the baby was born. Every single room was a mess. Wallpaper peeling off the walls, threadbare carpet, you name it.

Then my girl was born, again at home. The birth was virtually pain free. This time, I experimented with hypnosis techniques as a pain relief method, and it worked tremendously well. My son had been a pretty easy baby to deal with. This kid was not. She was a very ‘aware’ baby. The day she was born, she opened her eyes and gave me that look of ‘Oh no, not here again!’ She cried 24/7 and slept for about one of those hours. She didn’t nap. She was constantly fussy, and would wake up screaming kicking her legs in the air, face red as if she was in a great deal of pain. She projectile vomited, and constantly sicked up. The first 10 months of her life are a blur of plaster dust and baby sick and sleepless nights. Eventually she was diagnosed with a milk protein allergy.

The repressed stress just came out all at once, in violent bursts, especially on a bad day when I’d lose out on a couple of nights sleep. I lost it a couple of times, attacked the spare room which was full of junk. Had a rampage and threw out all the stuff in the pantry. These violent bursts were directed at myself, or at the house, but never the less, frightening. I’m very slow to anger, usually. I just felt very angry, at myself, at the world. At my situation.

I recall sitting and asking myself what on Earth was going on. I started questioning every single aspect of my life. My marriage. My life. Internally, I was in a desperate state, I saw the path my life was going down. Saw that I was going to grow into a dull grey bitter (woman!) and that thought sent petrified feelings through me. I couldn’t accept who I was ‘now’. Something had to give.

This was around October 2016. I said to myself: it’s now or never, kiddo. What you gonna do about it?

A couple of times prior to that date I’d browsed around on the Vietnam Wall of Faces memorial website. Just out of curiosity, that’s what I told myself. But I’d look through the faces, and a stray thought would say: What if my face is amongst these? Then I’d quickly dismiss that thought, close the website. Case closed.

I started looking through that website again, looking at all those men’s faces, and could not stop myself. It made no logical sense. My previous self died after the war according to the shooting dream I had. So why did I insist on searching? What on Earth was I trying to achieve? Still, I persisted. I really was like something possessed. It was every spare minute I had, searching, and searching.

Searching through all those men’s faces was a soul wrenching experience. I’d come away from my fruitless efforts feeling very drained and sad. Still, I persisted. I was adamant that I was going to find ‘myself’, and this site kept drawing me in. As I searched, I realised that not all the men were listed as KIA (killed-in-action). Some were listed as dead, BNR (body-not-recovered). Others were listed as MIA (missing-in-action).

Realising this was a revelation. Something clicked inside me. Yes, my previous self was up here on this memorial somewhere. But I wouldn’t find him amongst the dead. I’d find him amongst the missing.

 

[landsend]

Part Four

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If you go onto the Vietnam Wall of Faces memorial website and click the MIA button in the search function, you hit 1571 results. On top of that there are guys who were missing but not officially listed as so. It wasn’t long until I realised that I was never going to locate who I was looking for just by searching through the faces. I had a vague idea of how he looked, and the impression he had been in the Army, but I needed more leads.

While my son was at school and my daughter napped, I managed to find some time to meditate.

I decided to open up a text file, and just type up whatever came to me during these meditations. I was only ever in a light trance, and it took a lot of effort to push through and tell myself to not dismiss what I was seeing in my minds eye. What occurred were snapshots, seemingly very random. Very much like the hypnagogic imagery one sees whilst dropping off to sleep. The more I saw, the more I could not understand that all that I was seeing occurred to one person. That further increased my doubts.

I saw many random snapshots of different training scenarios. They all seemed to occur at different places, different settings, different objectives. I was trying to find a way to classify what he may have been doing to have gone missing in Vietnam, but these scenarios were making it hard. One moment I got the impression of watching explosions out in a training field, the next moment I’m seeing guys parachute to a point with yellow smoke out in a field, then I’m in front of a machine with lights and switches and wearing headphones – it looked like a very rudimentary computer, and I knew how to work it. That gave me a conflicted message – was he working behind scenes?

I saw myself actually in Vietnam, repelling from a rope from a helicopter and going through the jungles. ‘Recon’ was a word that kept floating around in my mind. There were rice paddies, Vietnamese women working in the fields, water buffalo, little dark men and elephants. I also saw myself walking through a city with Vietnamese women, bars, it was nighttime.

There were snapshots of patrols, one involving a strange machine that pumped white smoke into a hole in the ground to, quote: ‘Smoke out the rats’. I was with a senior man and a couple of guys when we found the hole. We threw a couple of grenades down the hole and used this machine to pump the smoke around. Later research led me to finding what this was, a so called 'Mity Mite' smoke blower which was first recorded of having been used in Vietnam in October 1965 to smoke out/locate Viet Cong tunnels.


Photo shows the Mity Mite blower in use.

According to these visions, I had not only been behind scenes. I had seen action during the war.

 

[landsend]

Whilst continuing with these meditations, I attempted another regression. This time proved a whole lot more fruitful, so perhaps the meditation efforts were doing something to open my subconscious. I made a record of this attempt so I have the date (4 December 2016).

4 December 2016 – First Impressions

It’s dark. Can’t see anything. I’m in some sort of dwelling made of wood. It’s a hut made of bamboo.

I see someone in front. It’s not me, it’s someone else. He’s opposite me, crouching in the dark and he has his hands tied back at the wrists. He’s wearing green trousers, no shirt, no boots. ‘They’ have taken his boots.

Hard to focus. It’s very quiet, very dark. I’m feeling so hopeless. This is a bad, bad place and I want to get as far away as possible from it.

I move onto another point. Try to see why I ended up in the hut. It’s really hard to access the information. There’s an impression of being in the cockpit of an helicopter. I see a guy with his head slumped to one side. He looks dead. Maybe we crashed. I don’t want to presume things. I can’t see any of it clearly. The whole scenario makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want to see it.

Again I refocus, trying to focus on another point, going further back.

I’m in a Fort of some kind. The Fort word stands out. What’s going on? That’s strange, I seem to be walking in front of a line of soldiers. At this point I’m struggling to comprehend what that means. There’s impressions of uniforms, the uniforms of the soldiers, their hats which have a peak. I see a stocky man with a beret. Am I training to be a soldier? Or am I training others? I see random flashes of imagery, just like in my meditations. I’m out in a training field, watching field exercises. A utility helicopter lands out in a field.

I go further back. There are vague impressions. A photograph of a child wearing a mustard coloured cardigan. A house, perhaps a childhood house, a lounge with a brick fireplace. I imagine a bedroom, conjure it in my mind. I try to see myself in an imaginary mirror. I’m a teenager now, wearing jeans and a bomber type jacket, cream with red sleeves. The back of the jacket has red letters that are indiscernible to me. I have short sandy-brown hair, and blue eyes. I’m not too big a person, lean.

More flashes come to me. Again, imagery of training appears. I’m jumping down off something, down off a ledge. Climbing now up a ledge with a rope.

I’m tired of seeing all this random imagery. At the back of my mind, I wonder why I’m seeing all this. The feeling I’m making it up claws at me.

I see myself in an open top car with a girl, another guy and his girl. We are wearing our uniforms. We are driving on a winding road around tall green island mountains. There is a good feeling amongst us. I know immediately that this is Hawaii, and we are here on leave. I say to myself I'd very much like to go back there.

More information comes to me. Apparently I had done two tours in Vietnam. There's impressions of leaving America to go to Vietnam for the first time via a plane. People are saying goodbye. I see men wearing berets. There are some people I recognise, I had a brother, and I see a woman. I can't work out if she was a sister, or someone else.

Then I'm back there in that awful place again, in that hut. My hands are tied behind my back. We have been captured, that is why we are like that. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I cannot see a whole lot, that bothers me. It’s so dark that I wonder if I have been blindfolded. I really can not see, there’s just one point of light through a tiny gap.

The only thing I can see is a vessel in the middle of the hut.

I don’t understand what’s happening. It is bizarre, weird flashes, awful flashes. A man with a rope around his neck, made to walk like a dog whilst a man holds a knife to his head. Awful images torture, of defecation, of being defecated on and humiliation.

What is going on? I think I’m losing my mind, deprived of sunlight and people. I think maybe I’m dying. It’s completely silent, can’t hear or see anything. Every day is like this, crouching with my hands tied behind my back. The other guy is still with me. He’s the only other guy here. There may have been others at some point, but they’re not here now.

I go forward in time.

They take me outside. Only me. The light is blinding, excruciating. My vision is blurry but I’m focusing, and see I’m looking down the barrel of a gun, a rifle. He presses it against my cheeks, both cheeks, turning my face side to side, then under my chin. I’m forced to look up, open my eyes fully. I’m looking into the liquid dark eyes of a Viet Cong. My hands are tied back. I don’t know why. I’m too weak to even move. I keep flashing in and out of consciousness.

Suddenly I’m propelled from my body. I can see me lying on the ground. My body is naked. Thin. I feel awful. Not for myself, but for the other guy I left behind in the hut. What will become of him? They will probably kill him. We had become closer than brothers in our shared captivity.

And me? Am I dead? I don’t know if I am. I just slipped out of my body. That’s how it felt. I can see them dragging me through the jungle, taking me somewhere. I follow them for sometime. Am I really dead? Christ, I didn’t want to go this way. No one knows where I am, or what became of me. It’s such a bad, bad place. But I don’t hate my captors, strange enough, I just felt a deep sadness within me.

I notice in this state I can fly. Really fly! Like a bird! I fly above the jungle, see it for miles and miles. The feeling of flying after all those days of being cooped up is indescribable. Just pure pure bliss. My first thoughts are on my family.

And just like that, just thinking of them, I am transported to a scene. The scene is of a woman, sitting on a sofa in a lounge. She is with a man. She is crying into the man’s arms. And there is a creature, a god awful creature holding onto the woman who is crying. She cannot feel the creature holding onto her. The creature is skeletal, with a sunken face, deep eyes. God, I realise, the creature is me. Or rather, what I have become. I love this woman, and she cannot feel me. I want to tell her I am all right. I do not want her to carry this burden any more.

Then I am in another room, it looks very similar to my childhood home. This other room is full of people I know. All of these people know who I am, see me, recognise me. It is like a family reunion. The feeling is of seeing people I had not seen in a long, long time with no barriers between us. Love resonates between us. An older man greets me. I feel very close to him. He has white hair, wears white, and is surrounded by a white light. He shows me around. Little kids run around us. People stand and chat to each other. Everyone is in a feel good party mood. I say hello to people, people I seem to know very well. I’d happily stay in this room forever.

The real question is, was that the end? Was that how I died? What about my dream of having being shot?

Again, it made no sense. It was very hard for me not to dismiss the whole thing.

 

[Graham76man]

What's happening on the last post of yours is mixed up, but it's telling you all about your past life as this soldier who is captured and shot. As soon as you were your soul migrated out of your body. The flying feeling and you went to your mother's home. Yes the horrible figure comforting her was you. You were trying to help her, but of course you couldn't. So you were transported to the Sprite World where the other souls you knew greeted you in a setting that would be familiar to you.

The Devil telling you to go back down was a Sprite Guide, you clearly projected that appearance on them, because that's how you viewed the guide! Clearly you didn't want to go back to earth!

 

[GreyReynard]

Thanks for sharing that. Great story. I think you solved the mystery of that life with your last vision.

I think the first death must have been another life. Some people think that you can have more than one incarnation during the same time period.

 

[landsend]

Cheers for the reply(s).

Graham, care to explain there? I'm a little lost as to what you're saying.

Well, if only the story ended there. That's really just the beginning. At that point I had not identified the person. I did identify the person at the end of December 2016, which triggered a series of waking visions. The waking visions included information I was able to clarify via newspaper clippings and, eventually, family members. To this date I still have information come to me via dreams and meditations. I'm very much still in the thick of it.

I'll detail it in posts to follow.

As for the first death being another life, it's possible. But, I have seen memories spanning past that point of the 'death' during captivity. Those memories include being nursed back to health by the Vietnamese people. My feeling is that it could very well have been a near death experience.

I'm not sure on the simultaneous life theory. It is not something I've found evidence for.

 

[KenJ]

Thank you for sharing your experience Landsend!

 

[fireflydancing]

Thank you very much. I read your story with more than normal interest.
An NDE is possible with the information of your story.
Looking forward to more episodes...

 

[landsend]

Part Five (The struggle continues)

---

I put that particular regression attempt to one side and completely forgot about it. I had made a recording of it, and recently made a transcript. Typing it up now I realise how much of the information is on form. I had not identified the person prior to having that regression, so I consider it the first piece of evidence that I have.

Considering that, I was very much in a predicament. I was adamant I needed to find ‘myself’ but was having a hard time putting all the clues together. I did not believe half of what I was seeing. Disbelief was the major problem I had. Both of what I was seeing, and who I had been. However, my disbelief did not really matter. The truth would be there whether I was willing to believe it or not.

The end of November 2016 (15 November according to my receipt) I bought ‘Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam’, and the documentary of the same name. This was my first real attempt at researching anything to do with Vietnam. Prior to that, I had avoided the subject, and not read any literature. I had seen a few Hollywood depictions of the conflict over the years prior to this date. All in all, I knew very little of the conflict, very little facts. As a kid I remember reflecting on the conflict and thinking how no one knew who the enemy was, how the enemy was ambiguous. How the country was divided north/south. That was pretty much it.

I continued with my meditations throughout the period of Oct-Dec 2016. I also started bookmarking interesting cases in my search through the various Vietnam Wall Memorial websites, and also on the VHPA (Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association) website which had a comprehensive database of helicopter crash information, and the POW (prisoner-of-war) Network website.

Subconsciously, I started to garner that my previous self had been in an helicopter crash, but had prior combat experience in other tour(s). He was Army, had light hair, and eyes. That was my info. I never wrote this criteria down, just sort of went with it, keeping an open mind.

Then, in one meditation session, I saw the clincher. There was a sensation of an helmet on my head, speaking into a radio. Lots of dials and controls in front of me, looking out through the window of a cockpit to the jungle below. Could feel the vibration of the helicopter beneath me, hear the sheer noise of the rotary blades and the engine and feel the cyclic in my palm. Again I heard the word ‘Recon’. This was a reconnaissance mission I was seeing, but not from the ground. This was from above. I wasn’t being flown. I was flying! An helicopter! Holy smokes. I couldn’t believe it.

The disbelief, the constant searching, plunged me into a depression. What on Earth was I trying to achieve? That was pretty much the question running circles in my mind. I tried to put it to one side, but it kept coming back. I really was starting to get a little desperate. In a fit of disbelief, I took the text file where I had been recording the brief snippets of information I received via meditation, and clicked delete. (I would deeply regret this action. Later I compiled what I remembered. Surprisingly wasn’t difficult to recall everything.)

One desperate day I climbed into my closet, closed the door. There in the darkness, I broke down. Sobs racked out of my chest, sorrow from deep within me came out. As the sorrow came out, I saw it: myself being taken through the jungle, my arms tied back behind me. In that moment, I accepted it. I had been flying in a chopper, crashed and taken prisoner.

So I now had the following extra info: the guy I was looking for had previous combat experience, and then flew choppers, and was taken POW. This narrowed my search significantly. It was very rare to find chopper pilots with previous tours in Vietnam. A lot of the guys in the incidents were young pilots, straight from America to Vietnam.

Then, one day searching, I found a guy.

Many things about this guy stood out. First, his looks. He had blondy/ginger hair, and blue eyes. He kinda looked like how I imagined myself. He had one tour with combat experience prior to flying choppers. There was his first given name. It stood out to me. For some reason the fact he had been Catholic also stood out to me. He had been a Captain in the 101st Airborne. There were many resonances.

I looked into him, looked into his case on all the available websites. People left remembrances and said he had been a fan of hotrods. Again, that stood out to me. This was becoming a very strong lead. Searching, I found a documentary reflecting on the incident where his chopper came down. I watched it in anticipation. Watching it they were showing the excavation of the crash site. It turns out the chopper had exploded when a VC rocket had hit the chopper. All of the crew onboard had died. They excavated the site and found some remains and artefacts. The remains were repatriated fairly recently. They showed the coffins being interred.

It wasn’t the guy I was looking for. It couldn’t have been. My previous self survived into captivity. I also noted that this guy had been fairly young, had been married but then divorced. It couldn’t be the guy I was looking for, I reflected, because I felt the guy I was looking for had been married and had children.

Another depression following that realisation ensured.

Around this time in early December 2016, I started creative writing. I ‘made up’ a story about a soldier during the Vietnam War, just to prime and open my subconscious. I knew what I was writing, the finer details, were made up. Yet, there was a sense that what I was writing had some truth.

Here was the broad picture of what I wrote:

- The guy had the first given name which would turn out to be the first given name of the guy who I was looking for.
- The guy did two tours of Vietnam. First tour was spent in Nam w/ some combat experience, he was then injured and sent behind scenes. Behind scenes was a base of some kind. He also spent time in Saigon. Second tour was flying choppers.
- He had a brother who was serving in the Marines.
- He had a significant other whose first name was a shortened name ending in ‘y’. Following his first tour in Vietnam, their relationship became very strained. He had a red and white ‘Chevy’ which he was very fond of.
- People were adverse to him flying choppers.
- Not long after starting his second tour, he was shot down in his chopper. He survived, and was taken prisoner.

All of this information turned out to be pretty accurate.

It was the end of December now, maybe a week or so before Christmas. I can’t recall the first time I saw his case. Maybe a couple of times I’d briefly seen his face, but not studied it. Maybe it was on one of these POW/MIA websites. It turns out his case was a prominent one, because there was very strong evidence he was taken captive, and left behind following the 1973 Paris Peace talks. I avoided him like the plague. The same as I was dismissing the visions I had been seeing, I was dismissing him. And, I wanted to be absolutely sure. Sure of what?

One day, I decided I’d finally look into this one, you know, just in case. I clicked on his page, and stared long and hard at his face. The feeling that followed was a strange one. One that a native from a primitive land might feel when given a mirror, who, prior to then, had only seen themselves in the blurry darkness of a pool of water. It was a certain familiarity, fascination, disgust, hate, love. And a feeling in my gut that said: it’s you, isn’t it?

Oh God. It’s you.

 

[landsend]

Part Six (The crash)
---

(For ease here we’ll refer to him as ‘J’.)

I looked down his page to read about J’s case. It was a long read compared to other cases I’d looked at.

What stood out?

J’s first given name was the same as the one other case that stood out, and the same name I had used in my writing. Also, his second given name could be shortened to a nickname. That nickname was very similar to one I kept hearing during meditation (replace the first letter J with a T and it was the same).

He was also a Captain in the 101st Airborne division at the time of his chopper crash. He had been married, and Catholic. He had kids.

J had two tours in Vietnam. He wasn’t a green soldier. His first tour was with the Green Berets. He was listed as having earned a medal for an incident that occurred in his first tour.

The example of his being able to survive into captivity was his previous experience as an artillery officer/ARVN advisor.

J had crashed on his final tour in Vietnam. Two men had been in the chopper. According to records, they had been flying a reconnaissance mission and were on a rocket run when they were hit by enemy fire. The weather at the time was marginal, thick fog which required the pilots to fly low. J was flying front seat (gunner position), so would have had a good view of the ground. The co-pilot was badly injured, and knocked unconscious. The co-pilot does not recall the incident of the crash, just that he lost control of the cyclic, and the next minute, he woke up on the jungle floor lying on his chicken plate (chest protector). He was badly injured, and could not move. 24 hrs later, J’s co-pilot was found and extracted.

But there was no sign of J.

J’s seatbelt was found unlatched, his side of the cockpit was relatively free of damage. There was no blood. They found his helmet outside of the chopper. Again, no trace of blood was found inside the helmet. From this it was assumed he got away with minor injuries.

It was presumed he had gotten away fairly quickly, and that the enemy was upon their position pretty much not long after the crash. Abandoned VC outposts were found nearby.

Search and rescue teams looked for him for weeks in the surrounding area.

They found no trace of J.

But most interesting of all? There were live sighting reports of him having been held in captivity. Reports that detailed him down to his first name, rank and physical similarities.

Despite this, he was not amongst those who came home in 1973 during Operation Homecoming.

There was strong evidence that he had been left behind.

I did not accept what I had read. I did not even look deeper at the correlations. Even if a feeling in my gut knew it was him, it had to be. There were just too many similarities. Stringent denial was my initial reaction. I wanted nothing to do with this – with any of this. Even just looking at the whole POW/MIA issue filled me with terror, right in the pit of my stomach. It was a hard pill to swallow, and I sure as hell didn’t want to swallow it.

I tried to get on with my life and put it to one side. It was gearing up for Christmas, and that time of year with two kids is always busy, But a funny thing had happened. Since looking at J’s case, I’d stopped searching around. The desire to look at other cases completely disappeared.

 

[landsend]

(Continued)

Finding J was the key – the missing key to those memories I’d held in my subconscious for so long. He crash landed and broke through the barriers of my mind.

It was the 21 December 2016. My husband was present with me at the time, and he recorded what happened (to which I have a transcript). The kids were in bed, it was the early hours of the morn. I was in a sleepy in-between dream state when I felt myself ‘fall’. The sensation was as if I was falling into a trance. This was nothing like my previous attempts at a regression, or even my meditations. It was spontaneous. It was close. It was incredibly personal, and real.

The ‘I’ that I am accustomed to fell into the background. The person who came forward was him, J. My voice and accent changed. There different vocabulary (swear words, mostly), and different syntax. That night I recalled the painful moment that the helicopter crashed directly from his perspective.

He described the moment he had been flying, there was a repeated use of numbers as if he was chatting into the radio (they sounded like co-ordinates, the one he kept repeating turned out to be related to the coordinates of the area of where he had crashed).
There was a very heightened moment where he crashed. He described a ‘busted’ leg, but whose busted leg that was, wasn’t clear.

Then he described dragging someone out of the chopper. His captors were upon him not long after crashing. They took him, tied back his hands, and blindfolded him. His words for his captors were not pretty words. Derogatory racial words, and a particular swear word I’ve never used in my waking life, but to which he favoured. Once again, as in the regression of December 4, he ended up back in that hut, dying of dysentery. What he said, and reading it back is pretty heart breaking. He was crying, whimpering, hyperventilating. It was so dark.

Again I was taken to the point where he was dragged outside by a woman in a bonnet (he used a more fruity word than ‘Woman’ related to a female dog). Looking into her cold, impassive face, I could hear her speaking in Vietnamese with her rifle pressed against his/my cheek. She said something that sounded like: 'Di sho ba a -- o' 'Di sho baa' She then said something else that J tried to relay, but he said he didn’t speak the (racially explicative word for Vietnamese) language very well.

That was the first experience. The following day, more came to me. Visions that were horrific. Visions of war, visions of before he went missing. Ones that probably relate to his first tour in Vietnam.

Then, more visions. Visions of home life, following coming back from Vietnam from his first tour. Strained relations with his wife, drinking heavily to hide the pain. Awful feelings.

I saw in detail his house:

J pulled up his car along the curb. He approached what appeared to be his house. It was a single story house. It had a long frontage with a slight slope. The frontage extended around the back of the house, to the ‘yard’. There was a side entrance to the kitchen. The street the house was situated on appeared to be quiet, suburban with properties of a similar description.

The next day, I had another vision. This one was prior to his tours in Vietnam. It was a vivid recount of the wedding day of J. I saw something very shocking during the vision which would be critical in verifying the visions for myself. It was the final vision I had during the December period.

What happened over Christmas could be described as a waking trance. Perhaps this is what Native Americans describe as a ‘spirit walk’. It was a state nearing ecstasy, nearing mania, one that people pay good money and consume drugs to reach. One that psychiatrists would probably prescribe you drugs to diminish. It was like my mind was connected to a river, and this river had information that I could call upon. Usually, I am a cautious person. In this state, I felt connected to everyone, and everything. My usual reservations with people disappeared. I felt what I can only describe as compassion for my fellow human. I felt the suffering of people around me, as acutely as if it were my own. As someone who has always been fairly self centered in my own worries, this was something of a revelation. I found I was running on very little sleep, and food. could tolerate only very plain, white foods.

I thought as the visions died down to a halt that I was completely off my rocker. Had I lost touch with reality? It was hard, incredibly hard not just to dismiss everything I saw as a temporary psychotic episode. Thankfully, my husband was with me, and was able to keep an eye on me. He kept me rooted to ‘terra firma’. He convinced me that I wasn’t crazy, and that I should keep everything (the writings/records) of what I was perceiving. During the months that followed I had repeated moments of self doubts, questioning my sanity and my reasoning for even looking into all this.

Still, it wasn’t till April 2017 that I found my first piece of evidence that it wasn’t all just fabrications of the mind.

I found the wedding announcement of J. What it would reveal shocked me to the core.

 

[fireflydancing]

You know how to use cliff hangers ....

 

[landsend]

You know how to use cliff hangers ....

Alas, after years of fiction writing, it's a hard habit to beat.

Have to say writing all this here is very therapeutic. It is, however, proving a distraction to editing my (unrelated) novel.

Curiously, I've only recently been able to get back into the swing of things regarding writing creatively. I suffered crippling writers block the entire time I was researching into all this. My subconscious could not handle both creative writing, and looking into that life.

 

[landsend]

Part Seven (Marches and Wedding Days)

---

I was in a lot of pain during that time in December. I could feel the well of pain opening, and myself plunging deeply into it. My sister, who very much wanted a baby, had a miscarriage. I felt her pain like it was my pain. It seemed very unfair that I, being the younger sibling, had two healthy children while she had none.

In January ‘17, I almost passed out taking my son to school. Nausea soon followed. Turns out I was pregnant. Having had a hard time with my daughter, I was adamant I wanted no more kids. A lot of soul searching was ensured. Both me and my husband made the conclusion that this baby had come to us for a reason. So, I went ahead with the pregnancy. Naturally, the news hit my sister pretty hard.

Following the experiences of the previous month, my mind felt in a very fragile place. I felt like I’d been hit by a freight train. The pieces of ‘me’ were everywhere. It was too much to take. I had to dig down and find the strength just to carry on with the mundane, daily tasks of my life.

I tried very hard to dismiss what had happened to me thus far. I wanted to forget about it all. The dilemma of being pregnant and having a twelve month old served as a distraction, at least.

Nothing came to me regarding J.

Then on March 19th (2017), I had the following dream:

I’m under some trees near a river. I am part of a group of Americans and Orientals. We (the Americans) are not wearing American uniforms. I appear to be wearing the garb of my captors-guerilla type, not specifically uniformed. I look at an American. He appears unkempt. The Americans look emaciated.
There is a lot of tension in the air.
Later, the prisoners are marching in a line, a single file. I am outside of the line. I have a rifle in my hands. I am not the only American outside of the line. There is at least one other, along with Oriental ‘guards’.

The path we are marching is wide. It appears well travelled, muddy, with orange-red earth. It is very open, surrounded by green vegetation in the distance. There is a river nearby (beyond a bank lower than the path). There is a sense of urgency. We need to move quickly due in part to being so exposed.

An American within the line (a prisoner) starts making trouble. He is very thin, emaciated, and unkempt, his hair is greying, he has a full unkempt beard, a furrowed brow, grey-tinged skin and a sunken face. He starts shouting profanities, aimed mostly at myself and the other American(s) out of the line. In weakness, he falls, holding up the line of other prisoners.

The Oriental guards quickly decide to punish him. Their method of punishment involves asphyxiation and water. They punish him until he stops moving. I’m pretty sure in their harsh punishment, they kill him. Nobody does anything, or could do anything about it. The march continues.

I awoke from that dream and lay in bed a while. The dream left me with bad feelings. What on Earth does this mean now? I had the knowledge that this was on the border of Laos/Vietnam. I grabbed my journal off my bedside table, and jotted all the info down.

This dream seemed to be implying that J was working with his captors, in some form or fashion. And if that is the case, what of that memory, the memory of him dying of dysentery? He certainly didn’t seem compliant then. I found myself once again dismissing this dream.

 

[landsend]

(Continued)

After that dream, I decided to try researching into J’s life. I had bought a book (receipt says 31 December 2016) which details further aspects of J’s MIA/POW case. In a few of the sightings it is suggested that he collaborated with the enemy ‘under the threat of death’ to teach the use of captured artillery, but nothing as far as the turncoat vision I’d had.

In that book there is a picture of J, sitting with his wife and their baby son. The photo shows evidence that he had a gold ruby ring. The gold ruby ring was mentioned in one of the live sighting reports.

Occasionally, I’d stare at that picture to see if any more feelings came to the surface. It was pretty hard to stare at. Mostly the feeling I had was one of guilt.

In April, had the brainwave to search online newspaper archives to see if I could find any newspaper postings about J’s life. Wouldn’t it be great if I could find a posting for the wedding, an announcement of some kind? I distantly wondered that.

Researching became something of an obsession. I needed to prove to myself either that my mind had gone off the rails completely, or there was some truth to this.

For now, I persisted with the newspaper archives. I searched J’s full name. First couple of times I did this, nothing came up. Left the website. Came back another day with a strong feeling. I tried a variation of his name.

Lo and behold, there it was. There she was, a photo of his wife pre-marriage. It was the announcement of their engagement. I found this little clipping, according to the screenshot I made, on the 29 April 2017.

Before I detail what it says, we need to look at my vision dated 23 December 2016.

This particular memory came to me during a moment where I was feeling a deep sadness and anger. I asked myself why I felt so angry, so sad. The result was this vision. I grabbed a pen and paper and started writing as I saw it unfold.

23 December 2016 – The Wedding:

Church feels hot, and stuffy.

We’re standing below the altar, the priest is above us, signing a blessing.

I’m souped up in my finest (and sweating), holding my wife-to-be’s hands. She’s beautiful in her dress, resplendent, but can tell she’s just about as shocked as me. Can see her long lace sleeves, her white flowers, her veil in her hair. The cut of her dress.

The cinch of her dress is pronounced. I’m transfixed on her waist. I can’t take my eyes off her waist.

That’s when it comes to me. She’s pregnant. Jesus.

Oh God. (This shocks me so much, present me loses grasp on the vision.) It can’t be true.

Everyone is looking on us. I can feel the judgement of those who know, and those who pretend not to know. Everything’s going by too fast. We are young, I realise. She is young.

Just about everything goes swimmy. The vision goes black. I think, have I passed out on my wedding day? See an uncle, a shot of dutch courage. Smelling salts. Did I pass out?

I see my bestman. The bestman is a man I have very fond feelings for. It’s my brother. There he is, with his dark handsome looks. He’s better looking than me, even on my wedding day. He’s wearing what appears to be a naval uniform. I know for sure then that he was in the serving in the Navy.

Then the ceremony is over. The relief is tangible. See myself walking back down the isle, bride beside me. Folks congratulating, shaking my hand, patting my back, saying ‘Way to go J! Way to go!’. Those offering the fervent handshakes are folks seated on the right side, so I assume these were relatives of the groom. One I think is an uncle, balding on top and grey round the edges, another guy near the church doors is smoking a cigar, think he was someone I knew in the service. The brides side are a lot more subdued in their congratulatory offers. Perhaps a nod here and there, and strained smiles, kisses for the bride.

Outside, can see the church, it’s a tall imposing building. They throw rice at us. Grains of rice stick in my mouth.

We get away in the wedding car. I’m driving. It’s my car. A red and white ‘Chevy’ type car. They have decorated the car with cans on strings, tied to the bumper.

I didn’t know what to make about of that vision. I was very much doubting everything, so I doubted even that. Especially the her being pregnant part. It was a lot easier to doubt that than face the uncomfortable feelings that followed.

Now, back to April the following year.

The posting was in the town newspaper where both J and his wife-to-be were living at that time.

It’s dated May 28, 1961. (That date is important.)



This brief snippet revealed many things that turned out useful. The name of J’s wife, the name of the town her family lived in (which proved useful later on for research purposes).

It revealed that J’s wife-to-be was a junior at university at the time of the wedding engagement. It also revealed that J himself was working on as a specialist at a missile base at the town where they both were living. Again, that was useful.

Finally, it revealed the date of the wedding. 24 June, 1961.
And finally, who the best man was to be. It was J’s brother.
Just like I had seen in my vision.

Also interesting to note that the part of America they lived in would get pretty hot during June.

The cogs in my mind now were really whirling. This newspaper clipping really had me excited. May 28 – June 24. A very short notice wedding, I noticed. Could it be?

On another brainwave, I decided to check to see if I could find about J’s eldest son. J’s eldest’s son’s name was mentioned on a couple of MIA/POW websites, and in the book I had. I found his date of birth on a website. If the website was accurate, it stated that his date of birth was January of the following year (1962). It stated that he was born outside the United States.

You can do the math and see that, according to that date, she was, indeed, pregnant at the time of the wedding.

It hit me like yet another freight train. This was getting pretty serious. It was totally surreal. I couldn’t believe what was being shown. My mind couldn’t accept it. I tried to find holes, any holes. My mind even tried to convince me that I’d somehow read it. But I hadn’t. No one had known this. It was controversial back in those times. Hush-hush.

Then, in June 2017, whilst searching the small town newspaper archives of J’s wife, I found the posting for the wedding day. In this newspaper was a photograph of J’s wife, along with a description of the wedding.



The dress was I had seen, with long lace sleeves, and cut with a cinched waist.

According to the newspaper clipping, the bride had white flowers, carnations.



Also whilst searching in the same small town newspaper I found the birth announcement for the son (the eldest son, who was supposedly born in January). According to this birth announcement, posted in the brides hometown, the boy was born in April overseas, whilst J was posted at a European missile site.

That was a bit of a kicker. Seems that J’s wife’s family were devout Catholics, her uncle was the priest who officiated their wedding. They were pretty much hiding the truth from everyone, and being abroad (the baby being born overseas) was a pretty good way to do that.

So the feelings of the wedding day were pretty much on track, too.

Further research led me to find that J’s mom passed on unexpectedly at a young age, the same year J’s first son was born. There was an obituary posted in a newspaper for her. The obituary stated she had two sons, one of them serving in the Army (J), the other one serving in the Navy, Pacific Fleet.

 

[fireflydancing]

Don’t stopppppp telling

 

[landsend]

Am writing the next post... may be up today or tomorrow depending.

Thanks for reading.

 

[landsend]

Part Eight (Redemption)

---

Following the discovery of the accuracy of the wedding memory, I became even more restless. I had hoped to disprove the whole experience, but instead I pretty much received confirmation. I hadn’t bargained for that.

It bought more questions: What about the other memories? How accurate were they? Especially the darker memories? Where on Earth do I go from here?

And, there was the fact I was pregnant. I worried about what what was going on in my head, being pregnant and experiencing this. My whole view point, and way of viewing life was being turned upside down. The whole experience, so far, had changed me. It had opened my eyes. One thing was to ‘believe’ in reincarnation, or that life exists after death. Another thing is to experience the truth for yourself.

My fear of death completely vanished. I now had conclusive proof of the continuation of the soul.

It was a very surreal thing to be opening, effectively, to a deep and buried masculine within myself, whilst being at the height of pregnancy. I had to learn to laugh at myself, or go crazy. I could see the parallels of myself and my past life. My previous self had their first child abroad young, and so did I. We both would have three children. Except the shoe was on the other foot. I was now the primary caregiver. I could now see first hand how it feels to be the one left at home. A role I had always resented with such a passion, one which had caused power struggles and resentments. But here I was. Living this life.

I felt a deep, dark grief in my daily life. A depressive feeling. A restlessness. The urges were there to contact my previous family. I found the eldest son had a webpage detailing aspects of his dad’s MIA/POW case. On that website was an email address. He was just an email away.
But I couldn’t. I mean, what could I say? And – truthfully, there was a feeling of shame. Shame of who I am now. Shame of having left them behind. And everything in between. I just felt I couldn’t bring up the topic of reincarnation to him, even if I did write to him. And then there was the ethical question, was it even right to just intrude in their life again? I’d just have to abide in this pain. So I struggled on.

 

[landsend]

(Continued)

Finding the wedding posting seemed to open me up again to more memories. I decided to meditate again. A few trickled through. Or sometimes they would just come whilst dropping off to sleep/waking up. All of these snippets were seemingly random, little puzzle pieces.

Here’s some of them.


April 29 2017 –

Childhood Memories

I’m a young boy.
I’m sitting on my daddies shoulders. My daddy is tall. I can see far, we’re downtown in the city and there’s crowds and crowds of people around. Everyone’s happy. There’s a marching band out in the street. And soldiers! Real soldiers! They’re marching by.
My brother is holding onto my mothers hand. He’s scared by all the commotion. This is the first moment I recall wanting to be soldier. I had it set in my heart from then on.

Again, I’m a young boy. We’re catching a train. This train is a pretty amazing. It’s not a steam train, it’s a diesel. It’s bright red and white, round and angular. My brother and me are dressed smart in brown coats and knickers. I’m real excited. My parents have a couple of suitcases. We enter the train, it’s very clean, new and modern inside.

In my research I found that J and his family moved from his hometown at some point and the family settled in another state. I still don’t know the year of this, but I wrote 1947. Researching, I discovered The Texas Special, which matches the line, aesthetics and timeframe.



More childhood memories that I had on May 23 pointed toward J’s strained relationship with his father, his distance, how he had imprinted his viewpoints on women to him. J was very, very young in these memories. Between the ages of 1 to 2 years old.

More memories of captivity came to me.

May 15 2017 -

I’m tied up by the rafters, hanging by the hands. I’ve lost the sensation in my hands/arms. I’m drifting in/out of consciousness, can see that my body is streaked with blood. They’ve left me here so long, beaten me with sharp bamboo sticks to the point I lost consciousness. That’s why I can ‘see’ my body.

This is punishment for not complying. Perhaps I’d tried to escape.


I’m being led to a nearby village/hooch. There’s an impression that my hands are tied back and I’m being escorted by armed men. It’s dark. Think I’m blindfolded.

Inside this hooch, I’m showing a small group of Orientals my hands and fingers. Am I showing them how to calculate distances/range using hands and fingers as a reference?

Then there was the following, which seemed to continue on from the memory of ‘dying’ from dysentery:

May 24 -

‘They’ think I’m dead. There is always the same image of the androgynous Vietnamese in the conical hat, using the muzzle of her rifle to examine me. I open my eyes, and look up at them, then lose consciousness.
Next, I’m in a large hut with people around—they appear Oriental. ‘They’ feed me some sort of milky broth out of bowls. The beds are made on the floor, the beds are mats, really not beds at all. This seems to be a makeshift/jungle hospital.

I’m so weak that it takes a long time to recover. I see flashes of me learning to stand again, learning to walk. There’s no ‘meat on my bones’. My muscles have apostrophised so much that I just cannot walk. I slowly regain strength and learn to use my body again.

I’m a changed person. My experience of dying and coming back has changed my perspective. Then there was my vision and my promise to God*. I have not forgotten that. It has become my purpose in life.

Whilst I recover, I start interacting with my captors. Something that wasn’t there before, is there now. Although I’m apart from the captors, we eat together in the same space. I listen to them, and speak to them. Their treatment of me improves.

*This is something came to me on several occasions in the moment recalling the NDE. I recall, that, in the moment that J was dying, he was pleading desperately for his life. He asked for redemption from Mother Mary, and Jesus. He asked for atonement for his sins. During the delirium that followed, there was a bright light. This bright light could be effectively described as God. God left J with the impression that he would be allowed back, if he gave his life up to Him from there on. All the fear drained from J after that experience. A trust in God developed. He no longer feared for his fate. I still feel, to this day, I’m am fulfilling this promise to God. Not God in the traditional sense, but God in the universal spirit sense, following a path of light. Being a warrior of light, truth and justice.

As bizarre as this sounds, this directly relates to a phobia and childhood habit of mine. The phobia has been persistent since I can remember, and still persists. The phobia was so strong as a kid, I could not even think about it without it triggering me. The phobia, effectively, is a) a fear of being sick b) a fear of soiling myself. Both of these two fears mingled together. They were so strong that as I kid I recall I would not go anywhere for any period of time if I could not be reassured there were toilets. I asked my mom recently if anything could have triggered this fear, and she said she couldn’t recall a specific incident. I’ve tried to meditate on this, and didn’t find any related memory from this life. I was so afraid of defecating when I was very young that I would hold myself for periods of time.

Furthermore, this fear was triggered again whilst I was around eight years old on a school trip. We were visiting a cathedral. In the cathedral, the guide showed us, a bunch of barely ten year olds, the old engravings on the walls of men and women being tortured in hell for their sins.
That night I started reading the bible every single night before bed. I had it in my head that I was going to, for sure, go to hell. Every part of me felt dirty. My family is not religious and as kids we never went to church apart for weddings, etc. I thought that if I read the bible every night, God would forgive me, I would not get sick, and I would not die. It was one of those silly things I had in my head – one that followed me with this phobia. If I thought about the phobia, I could make it come true, so I didn’t think about it. I’d then make pacts with myself. Like, get to the end of this time period, and then when that passed, I’d make another time marker for not getting sick. These pacts with myself pretty much stayed with me up into adulthood.

Finally, another habit formed that lasted pretty much till I was around 16. Every time I went to the toilet to defecate (specifically to defecate), I’d say a prayer.
Going to the toilet to defecate still very much terrified me. I thought that I would have uncontrollable diarrhoea, in the back of my head. This prayer was always centered on Mother Mary and Jesus. I used to pray for their mercy/redemption. It was simple, in my head if I prayed – I would not get sick.. Then I finished the prayer signing myself with a cross. Again, this is something I had seen in movies occasionally, but to which my family did not do.
I used to wonder why ‘we’ did not focus much on Mary and Jesus. Now, my family is not Catholic. (J was Catholic.) I knew so little of Catholicism that I had no clue about their focus on the Virgin Mary and Jesus till I moved to a Catholic country (Spain).

Behind that prayer was an unholy fear, and desperation.

I had completely forgotten (or pushed out) the embarrassing aspects of my phobia. I did not put two and two together until I started recalling it in 2016/2017. I had not told anyone about it until I started to recall these memories.

 

[landsend]

Thanks again for reading.

Have to say this is proving useful in helping me piece together all the info I have scattered everywhere. I need to look at a recordings/journals whilst I type this up. Currently I'm trying to piece together what happened to J post capture, and I have a few recordings I need to transcribe. Writing here is motivating me to do all this!

I'm seeing very curious and odd things leading up to the shooting which I'm having a very hard time believing, but if true, could be a way of verifying J coming back to the States... IF is the question. The constant doubting continues to this date I'm afraid.

 

[landsend]

Here I am again. This one is a long one I'm afraid, so bear with me as I get it all typed up.
---

Part Nine (A Long Way to Tennessee)

I still was battling with feelings of whether to contact the family or not, which was exacerbated by finding a documentary where the eldest son of J speaks about his dad’s MIA/POW case. Apart from seeing him alive and well (and older – it was made in the early 2000’s), there were more photographs of J that I had never seen before. It was very odd. Watching the documentary was like watching ‘my’ life flash before my eyes. It unlocked yet more grief. I could see how painful it was for J’s son to talk about his dad, about having to put a grave stone for his dad’s memory but have no body to inter, have no word of his dad’s fate.

Watching him triggered me to recall, once again, the crash of the helicopter, the capture – and something else. Something that disturbed me and troubled me that I woke up and dismissed it immediately. It seemed too ‘out there’, too surreal. It was like something you’d read in a cheap spy novel. I told my subconscious it would have to do a lot better than that. I didn’t believe any of it.

I just wanted, and still want, the truth. The truth of what happened to J, and what happened to those left behind in that corner of SE Asia following the Vietnam War. That is paramount to me, and why I treat every memory that filters through my brain as suspicious. I have to find proof.

So doubt very much followed.

In between during meditations, or just dropping off to sleep/waking up, things would come to me. They were mostly scenes of being a POW. Many of these disturbed me so much, I’d wake up crying, or calling out. Sometimes I could not see anything during these visions, but there was a sensation of utmost fear.

There appeared to be something wrong with J’s left foot. This I believe he injured during the crash.

May 31 (2017) – Prisoner-of-War

I was standing somewhere, possibly a hut. I’m so weak, I have to hold onto something for support. Can barely stand. My whole body has little to no weight, and my clothes hang off me.

I’m looking at my foot in despair.

There is something wrong with my feet/leg, my left leg in particular. The calf muscle of the leg(s) have atrophied, particularly the left leg. Both the lower portion of the legs/feet are violent red in colour, with a scabbed appearance. The left foot is swollen compared to the rest of the limb, to the point I can only see my big toe and the last toe. The other toes are either hidden beneath the swell of the foot, or missing/removed.

---

Now I’m down by a small stream, or body of water. It’s daytime. I’m cleaning soiled clothing. I have the clothing set against a rock. Using another stone in my hand, I bash the clothing in the stream in an attempt to clean the soiled article. It’s a very crude method for cleaning clothes. Probably these clothes are very dirty and soiled from when I was unable to make it to the ‘latrine’, whatever, or wherever that was.


Jun 3 (2017) -

I’m whimpering and crying, hyperventilating. I can’t see anything. It’s pitch black.

Maybe I’m blindfolded. My hands tied back. ‘They’ are doing something to my left foot. I’m shouting out to them in a foreign language (probably Vietnamese)—I can’t recall the words. I’m pleading about my foot.

There’s the feeling that ‘they’ have a needle, perhaps containing an antibiotic, or perhaps they intend to drain the foot. It’s not clear what they intend to do.

 

[landsend]

(Continued)

In June 2017, I received more confirmation. These came to me after experiencing another crippling bout of doubt.

These memories seemed to pertain to J’s first tour in Vietnam.

The first came whilst I was relaxing in bed:

Jun 17 - ‘Min’

It’s a bright, sunny day. We are in a rice paddy, with peasants working in the fields. The paddy is a clearing surrounded by forest, not far from a river.
We are here patrolling.

One woman in particular catches my eye, a beautiful young Vietnamese wearing a conical shaped hat and a white blouse. She has in her hands a basket. She notices me watching her, and she looks away, bashful. I feel that my rifle is slung over my shoulder, and loose between my hands.

Then, suddenly, someone shouts something like ‘Min! Min loi!’. Immediately, I hit the ground, and all hell breaks lose. An explosion. I cling to the ground and my rifle as dust and dirt flies through the air. I’m deafened by the sudden explosion.

The voice who warned me and my men sounded female. I wonder if it is the woman who I made eye contact with just moments before.


I wrote that down, including the Vietnamese (to the best of my ability to write it). I thought like most of my other memories I would be unable to verify it.

However, I decided to persist and look to see if I could find what it meant.

After trying different variations of spellings, looking through translators and Vietnamese dictionaries, I came across the following:
Mìn – in Vietnamese means (land) mine.
Lôi – is associated with mines, ‘địa lôi’ means landmine.

It was not the first (and not the last) time that I’d hear Vietnamese (and other foreign languages) being spoken during these visions. But it was the first time I was able to directly verify what was being said.

It was a small confirmation for me, enough for me to feel I wasn’t going completely off my rocker.

The second confirmation is a little more strange.

First, a little background info. On the webpage that J’s eldest son had created about his dad, there is a small section which included information about his dad’s first tour. A paragraph outlined where he had been in Vietnam according to the books. In the first half of his tour, he had been in III Corps, situated at an A-camp near the Cambodian border, the XO (Executive officer) of a 12 man team. Then he went onto HQ’s in Nha Trang, and finally to Saigon.

I felt there was something missing from that information (this relates to another memory I have, which I’ll get to later).

Finally, on this page was a photograph. It was the photograph of the 12-man A-team. It stated in the paragraph above that J had received a medal for an incident where two of the men from the A-team were shot, and killed, and one was missing. According to the citation, J was able to help resolve the incident, and, under intense enemy fire, help retrieve the missing team mate.

In my research I learnt that A-teams are force multipliers. They are Special Forces qualified men who are banded together prior to being deployed (in this case, to Vietnam). Once in Vietnam, they were assigned to a camp (called an A-camp). From here they would advise and train local forces, to, effectively detract and prevent enemy forces from occupying an area. They were usually situated in strategic locations, e.g near the border between countries.

I was drawn to look at that photograph of the twelve men (including J) over and over. The men’s faces, and names were very familiar to me. It didn’t take me much time to memorise each of their faces and names. Three men always stood out to me. Two of those men were the men who were shot and killed in that aforementioned incident. The other is a man who appeared in a few visions since the very beginning of opening up to these memories.

I wrote in length in my journal about how these men made me feel. I felt an intense sadness, and guilt when I looked at the men who were shot. They were good soldiers, and above all, good men. I felt they, of all people did not deserve what happened to them, and that I (yes, me, it still felt personal) had failed them.

Research showed me they were both married, and both had children.

One of them who was shot was the Master Sargent, incredibly talented as a soldier, he had fought in WWII and Korea. He appeared in newspapers for his prowess in Korea, and according to articles I found, he was the first guy to have married a Korean and bought her back to the States. (If you look this up, another couple will appear as the ‘first’ but checking the dates it was definitely him and his wife. Not sure why this is – probably they did not care for the publicity). That was the sort of guy he was though. Despite all this, he did not boast about anything. He was the ‘quiet professional’.

The other guy was young, and had a little girl. In one comment on a memorial, another guy left a comment saying how musical he had been, how he had loved his wife and child, and about his love of country music.

Despite feeling all these very powerful feelings, I had not, up to that point, had any memory of these two men. They were, however, very much on my mind.

Then, one day (my journal states this was June 23 2017), I was dropping off to sleep. I had meant to get up and finish washing the dishes, so I was struggling not to fall asleep. Anyway, whilst trying to stay awake, I could hear a song chorus repeating over and over in my head.

It said:
‘It’s a long, long way from somewhere? To Tennessee’

 

[landsend]

Whilst I struggled to figure out where ‘Somewhere’ was (it sounded like Saigon –or somewhere similar), I could hear in the background of this chorus a woman singing in an ‘oooh oooh oooh’ fashion, a piano playing and a fiddle. The chorus was sung in a droning fashion (almost moaning). It sounded country/western in fashion.
Which is very odd, considering I had never, at that point, listened to country and western. I had not been exposed to it much apart from the obvious Johnny Cash and my mom listening sometimes to Dolly Parton when I grew up.

I got up, and remembered I had to wash the dishes. Grumpy grogginess was ensured.

As I was in the kitchen, rinsing suds off the pots and pans, it suddenly came back to me. That song! I’d heard a song in my mind.

I decided, for the hell of it, to type it in Google on my phone to see if anything came up. My expectations were not too high. A couple of lyric websites came up, ones that seemed to pertain to more modern songs. I was pretty much telling myself ‘see, told ya, it’s not real’ when I clicked on a video on YouTube. The song was called ‘Long Way To Tennessee’ and it was song by a Bobby Bare. The song had around 5k views, so, not really popular.
(

)

I clicked, stood and listened. I was really in disbelief at this point. This was definitely the song. It was eerily familiar. Like listening to a song I hadn’t heard in a long, long time.

I found the lyrics:

"Long Way To Tennessee"
I'm a long, long way from where I want to be
In the Arizona prison they've got me
And until they set me free, oh, oh, me
It's a long, long way from here to Tennessee.

Oh, my mouth is dry with dust my throat is raw
How I miss those big green trees in Arkansas
On the way to where I'll be when they set me free
But it's a long, long way from here to Tennessee.

A long, long way from me to the girl that I love so
Will she wait for me oh Lord I don't know
I know that I've done wrong but friends I've paid the price
Back in Tennessee I left sweet paradise.

But until they set me free, oh, oh, me
It's a long, long way from here to Tennessee.
It's a long, long way from here to Tennessee.
It's a long, long way from here to Tennessee...


There was the women singing in the ooh ooh fashion. There was even a fiddle and a piano, as I had heard.

I’m pretty sure I was recalling that we changed the word ‘here’ to wherever we were at that time.

I also found that the song was recorded and released in 1964 as part of an album. J’s first tour was in 1965. So, the time frame matched.

All this pretty much shocked me. It made me, once again, take all this seriously and was the encouragement I needed to keep going with it and not dismiss what I was receiving.

I could imagine J and his buddies in a bar, singing this song. Especially I thought of the young man who was shot, who had been musical and who had a love of country music. I wondered if it was he who had been singing that song.

That same day, I recalled the following. This has been a reoccurring image, which I saw in greater detail following hearing that song:

I’m sitting alone in a dark room at a desk or table. It’s dark. I’m feeling so empty, so angry. Something terrible has occurred, and I feel it’s all my fault. This, I feel, is following the incident where the two men were shot and killed.
It’s really late, probably the middle of the night and I’m drinking heavily. There’s a handgun in front of me on the table, and I’m staring at it. Contemplating. The thought crosses that I’d very much like to take my own life.

Then, I’m joined by someone. It’s a guy (he’s a big dark guy, not black but not white. Probably Hispanic – the same guy who appears in a few visions). Anyway, he pulls up a chair opposite me. I don’t stop him. (Maybe because he has bought more alcohol.) He stays with me, and we drink pretty much in silence together. He was pretty much there for me in a way that saved me from doing something stupid.

I’m pretty sure that this guy is the third guy in the photograph who always catches my eye. He is a big Hispanic guy, so matches the description. Curiously enough, this guy always reminds me of my current day husband, but I could write a whole post about all that. My husband was with me when I discovered the Bobby Bare song, and the same feeling of familiarity that I felt was shared with him.

A couple of months later, on Aug 16 (2017), I had the following dream:

I’m stuck on base (that’s the feeling I get). There’s buildings with corrugated roofs. I can see sandbags piled up ontop of each other. The sunlight is harsh, dirt and dust is flying in the air. There’s trucks that came to and from the base continually stirring up the dirt.

I’m informed that one of my men has suffered a head injury. Two Americans and a group of Vietnamese are sent out to relieve the situation. Not long after, I’m informed again that one of the men has been shot through the abdomen. I asked for a ‘SITREP’ (SITUATION REPORT). There are Vietnamese casualties. The vehicles coming send dust and dirt, flying around the base. There’s just a sense of chaos.

Now I’m in a room, with a map, planning what to do, but there is a sense of urgency, that the situation needs to be relieved, fast.

At this point (in August) I was heavily pregnant and having a lot of vivid dreams.

I almost forgot that dream till I woke up and read a text message from my husband. He said he had been listening to ‘that’ song by Bobby Bare. Suddenly, the dream came back.

Before that dream, I had been dreaming of a friend of ours, one who has the same name as the last name as the guy who was shot through the head. He always reminds me of that guy. He is my husbands best friend in this life, and was the bestman at our wedding. Anyway, in this dream, I saw him mourning at a funeral outside a church, wearing black. I was comforting him and telling him ‘this was how it was meant to be’. Curiously in this life our good friend has never married. I wondered what that dream was about, and asked my husband to inquire to see if everyone in his family was well. Everything appeared to be in order.

I felt very drawn to research the guy who was shot. Some weeks before the dream, I found the name of his wife and the fact that she was from Tennessee in a newspaper clipping which discussed that a bridge in West Virginia (where he was from) was being named in his honor. I found a family memorial which showed him playing music with his family, sitting with his guitar.

Then, a couple of weeks after having this dream, I felt drawn to research him yet again. In September I found it. I found that his wife had passed on. The obituary stated that she had passed away on August 16 (2017). The very day that I had those dreams.

 

[fireflydancing]

This must be so weird. She passed away and probably wants to see her deceased husband in the afterlife. He will not be there or perhaps his Higher Self is there to greet her. And you noticed.

 

[landsend]

Yes, I was really worried that something had occurred to my friends family when I woke up, I had the impression of an older lady passing on, so thought of my friends mother.

It does not appear that the lady ever remarried, and she had no other children. In fact there is a photo of the grave stone where he (the guy who was shot in VN) is buried, and it seems that her name was engraved on that stone years before she passed on, maybe when the stone was made. It had her birthdate and a dash --

Really think that they truly loved each other, which makes the whole thing very tragic. I'm not saying he was my friend, but there are some very odd coincidences. As well our friend has always had trouble in the love department, despite having everything going for him. Ever since meeting him I always had very strange, strong 'karmic' feelings with him, as if we had unresolved business. I could never pinpoint what exactly.

The thing is, I'm not sure if he was him, if they are meant to be together, at least in this life. She passed on in 2017, and my friend is now in his 30's. It's not impossible, but I do wonder.