The Boy Who Lived Before
Extract from Five TV website
Ever since he could talk, Cameron has been telling stories of his life on Barra, a remote island in the Outer Hebrides, some 220 miles from his current home in Glasgow. He describes in detail his childhood on the island: the white house he lived in, the black-and-white dog he walked on the beach. He talks about his mother, seven siblings and his father, Shane Robertson, who died when he was run over by a car.
Nothing strange about all that. Except the fact that Cameron is only five years old now; his memories seem to be of a former life. Cameron’s stories have become increasingly more detailed since he first started telling them, and the shock of him insisting “I’m a Barra boy, I’m a Barra boy” has worn off a little. But his emotional attachment to his ‘Barra mum’ concerns his mother, and there’s clearly something going on in the poor kid’s head when he says, “My real barra dad doesn’t look left and right.” Intrigued by her enigmatic son, Cameron’s mother Norma has decided to investigate his claims.
Everyone who comes across Cameron is sceptical, but his stories are just so consistent. In her search to find a rational explanation for Cameron’s tales of his Barra childhood, Norma first visits psychologist Dr Chris French, editor of The Skeptic magazine. French suggests that Cameron might simply have acquired knowledge about Barra through TV or a family friend, and thus invented the stories himself.
Norma isn’t satisfied by this. Her next port of call is educational psychologist Karen Majors, who tells her that the way that Cameron describes his Barra world is similar to the way in which some children speak about imaginary places and people, except that Cameron really seems to believe that he has seen the things he describes first-hand; he also doesn’t seem to be able to control his ‘fantasy’ as other children do. Norma decides to investigate the possibility of reincarnation, contacting leading expert Dr Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia.
Tucker has investigated countless statements of reincarnation from children across the world. One of the cases he refers to comes from the American mid-West. Gus Taylor was 18 months old when he first began claiming to be his own grandfather returned to his family, saying “I used to be big and now I’m a kid again.” At four he was given a photograph album in which he identified his grandfather as a young boy in a group school photo as well as his first car. He startled his parents with knowledge they couldn’t comprehend him having about an aunt who had been murdered. Gus talks about falling through a porthole. Cameron also frequently alludes to falling through a hole from Barra; he is very calm about death because he believes we come back.
Norma always promised Cameron they could go back to Barra and with Dr Tucker’s encouragement, she takes her son to the island to see if any of his ‘previous life’ tales of the island can be verified. She hopes it will give him some perspective. Cameron has often described watching aeroplanes land on the beach from the family house – true to his memory, the beach does double as a runway. “Mummy, I recognise every single bit,” he whispers.
They set off to try to find the house Cameron has talked about, which must be located at the north end of the island to provide the view of the beach he has described. They fail to find it. A local historian calls them to say that he has information about the Robertsons, a mainland family, and the address of the house where they used to spend the summer during the 1960s and 1970s. The usual talkative and animated Cameron is suddenly nervous, and when they visit the house he’s strangely subdued. The house and its environs have a lot in common with Cameron’s descriptions over the last three years.
Initially, the trip seems to be a success, but Norma and Dr Tucker’s research into the Robertson family comes to nothing; the trail is running cold. On returning to the mainland, Norma visits a geneaologist to find out more about the Robertson family and discovers a lady called Gilly, who as a child would have frequented the summer house at the same time that Cameron claims he did in his former life. Will their meeting confirm a connection? And, crucially, will Norma and her son learn anything about the identity of Shane Robertson, the man Cameron claims was once his father?
References:
Five TV
Review of TV show from the Sun Newspaper
By YVONNE BOLOURI
September 08, 2006
LITTLE Cameron Macaulay was a typical six-year-old, always talking about his mum and family.
He liked to draw pictures of his home too — a long single-storey, white house standing in a bay.
But it sent shivers down his mum’s spine — because Cameron said it was somewhere they had never been, 160 miles away from where they lived.
And he said the mother he was talking about was his “old mum.”
Convinced he had lived a previous life Cameron worried his former family would be missing him.
The Glasgow lad said they were on the Isle Of Barra.
Mum Norma, 42, said: “Ever since Cameron could speak he’s come up with tales of a childhood on Barra.
“He spoke about his former parents, how his dad died, and his brothers and sisters.
“Eventually we just had to take him there to see what we could find.
“It was an astonishing experience.”
Cameron’s journey to find his previous life is now the subject of a spooky TV documentary.
Norma said: “His dad and I are no longer together but neither of our families have ever been to the island.
“At first we just put his stories down to a vivid imagination.” Then life took a more sinister turn as Cameron started to become distressed at being away from his Barra family.
Norma said: “It was awful and went on for years.
“When he started nursery his teacher asked to see me and told me all the things Cameron was saying about Barra. He missed his mummy and his brothers and sisters there.
“He missed playing in rockpools on the beach beside his house.
“And he complained that in our house there was only one toilet, whereas in Barra, they had three.
“He used to cry for his mummy. He said she’d be missing him and he wanted to let his family in Barra know he was all right.
“It was very distressing. He was inconsolable.”
Memorable view ... Isle of Barra which Cameron said was his former home
“He wouldn’t stop talking about Barra, where they went, what they did and how he watched the planes landing on the beach from his bedroom window.
“He even said his dad was called Shane Robertson, who had died because ‘he didn’t look both ways.’
“I assume he means knocked over by a car but he never says that.
“One day his nursery teacher told me a film company were looking for people who believed they had lived before.
“She suggested I contact them about Cameron. My family were horrified. There was a lot of opposition to it. I’m a single parent so it was me and Cameron’s brother Martin, who is only a year older than him, who were being badly affected by this.
“Cameron wouldn’t stop begging me to take him to Barra. It was constant.
“I contacted the film company and they followed Cameron’s journey to Barra.
“We had child psychologist Dr Jim Tucker, from Virginia, with us.
“He specialises in reincarnation and has researched other children like Cameron.
“When Cameron was told we were going to Barra he was jumping all over the place with excitement.” The family flew from Glasgow last February and landed on Cockleshell Bay an hour later.
Norma said: “He asked me if his face was shiny, because he was so happy.
Cameron and Norma ... he says 'if you die you come back again'
“When we got to the island and DID land on a beach, just as Cameron had described, he turned to Martin and me and said, ‘Now do you believe me?’
He got off the plane, threw his arms in the air and yelled ‘I’m back.’
“He talked about his Barra mum, telling me she had brown hair down to her waist before she’d had it cut.
“He said I’d like her and she’d like me. He was anxious for us to meet.
“He also talked about a ‘big book’ he used to read, and God and Jesus.
“We’re not a religious family but his Barra family were.”
The Macaulays booked into a hotel and began their search for clues to Cameron’s past. Norma said: “We contacted the Heritage Centre and asked if they’d heard of a Robertson family who lived in a white house overlooking a bay.
“They hadn’t. Cameron was very disappointed. We drove around the island but he didn’t see the house.
“Then we realised that if he saw planes land on the beach from his bedroom window, we were driving the wrong way.”
Next the family received a call from their hotel to confirm that a family called Robertson once had a white house on the bay.
Norma explains: “We didn’t tell Cameron anything. We just drove towards where we were told the house was and waited to see what would happen.
“He recognised it immediately and was overjoyed.
“But as we walked to the door all the colour drained from Cameron’s face and he became very quiet.
“I think he thought it would be exactly the same as he remembered it, that his Barra mum would be waiting for him inside. He looked sad. There was no one there. The previous owner had died but a keyholder let us in.
“There were lots of nooks and crannies and Cameron knew every bit of the house — including the THREE toilets and the beach view from his bedroom window. In the garden, he took us to the ‘secret entrance’ he’d been talking about for years.”
Researchers also managed to track down one of the Robertson family who had owned the house.
Norma said: “We visited them at their new address in Stirling, but couldn’t find anything about a Shane Robertson.
“Cameron was eager to see old family photographs in case he found his dad or himself in any.
“He’d always talked about a big black car and a black and white dog.
“The car and the dog were in the photos.”
Since the family returned to their home in Clydebank, Glasgow, Cameron has been much calmer.
Norma said: “Going to Barra was the best thing we could have done.
“It’s put Cameron’s mind at ease. He no longer talks about Barra with such longing.
“Now he knows we no longer think he was making things up.
“We didn’t get all the answers we were looking for — and, apparently, past life memories fade as the person gets older.
“Cameron has never spoken about dying to me. But he told his pal not to worry about dying, because you just come back again.
“When I asked him how he ended up with me, he tells me he ‘fell through and went into my tummy.’
“And when I ask him what his name was before, he says, ‘It’s Cameron. It’s still me.’
“I don’t think we’ll ever get all the answers.”
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http://www.jackiejoneshunt.co.uk/article11.html
References:
The Sun Women
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