Bridey Murphy - The Skeptic's Dictionary

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head><title>Bridey Murphy - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_style/style.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_style/printstyle.css" media="print"/> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="s1.ico"> <script>(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.0"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script>  <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=ra-5487a05a7e027f30" async="async"></script>  </head> <body><br /> <div class="container"> <div class="header"> <div class="logo"> <img src="_images/logo_01.png" alt="The Skeptic's Dictionary" width="270" height="60" border="0" />           <br /> by <a href="http://skepdic.com/refuge/bio.html">Robert Todd Carroll</a> * est. 1994 </div> <div class="slogan"> <img src="_images/slogan_01.gif" alt="A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions" width="362" height="30" /> </div> </div> <div class="menu"> <ul> <li></li><li><a href="http://skepdic.com/">Home</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/news/">Newsletter</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/feedback.html">Feedback</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/faq.html">FAQ & Interviews</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/tour.html">Site Map</a></li> </ul> </div> <div class="middle"> <div class="left"> <h2>Topical Indexes</h2> <ul class="nav_1"> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/tialtmed.html">Alternatives to Medicine</a></li> <li> <a href="ticriticalthinking.html">Critical Thinking</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/ticrypto.html">Cryptozoology</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/tialien.html">ETs & UFOs</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/tifraud.html">Frauds, Hoaxes, Conspiracies</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/tijunk.html">Junk Science</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/tilogic.html">Logic & Perception</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/tinewage.html">New Age</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/tipara.html">Paranormal</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/tiscience.html">Science & Philosophy</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/tisuper.html">Supernatural</a></li> <li> </li> </ul> <h2>Other Writings</h2> <ul class="nav_2"> <li><a href="http://sd4kids.skepdic.com/">Mysteries and Science for Kids</a></li> <li> <a href="http://skepdic.com/news/">Newsletter</a></li> <li> <a href="http://59ways.blogspot.com/"> Unnatural Acts blog</a></li><li> <a href="http://skepdic.com/skeptimedia/skeptimediaarchive.html"> Skeptimedia</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/refuge/funkarchive.html"> Mass Media Funk</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/refuge/bunkarchive.html"> Mass Media Bunk</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/refuge/harmarchive.html"> What's the Harm?</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/refuge/wwwbunk.html"> Internet Bunk</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/refuge/2good.html"> Too good to be true</a></li> <li> <a href="http://skepdic.com/refuge/studyskills1.pdf">Student Success Guide: Study Skills</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/refuge/writingskills.pdf">Student Success Guide: Writing Skills</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/refuge/essays.html"> Skeptical Essays</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/refuge/randr.html"> Book Reviews</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/refuge/suburbanmyths.html"> Suburban Myths</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/refuge/memoriam.html"> In Memoriam</a></li><li></li> </ul> <h2>Other Resources</h2> <ul class="nav_3"> <li><a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Skeptics-Dictionary/195265446870?ref=ts"><img border="0" src="http://skepdic.com/graphics/fbsquare.jpg" alt="facebook" width="36" height="35" /> Skeptic's Dictionary Facebook Page</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/UnnaturalVirtue.html">Podcast: Unnatural Virtue archive</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/halloween.html">A Skeptic's Halloween</a></li> <li> <a href="http://renish.skepdic.com/AllNotes.html">Editor's Notes</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/refuge/getinvolved.html">Get involved</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/future.html">Future Topics?</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/permissions.html"> Permission to print</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/report/">Site Statistics</a> (600,000+ visitors a month)</li><li></li> </ul> </div> <div class="content"> <div class="it"> <h2>From Abracadabra to Zombies<span class="small"> | <a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html">View All</a></span></h2> <ul class="alphabet"> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#A">a</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#B">b</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#C">c</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#D">d</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#E">e</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#F">f</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#G">g</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#H">h</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#I">i</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#J">j</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#K">k</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#L">l</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#M">m</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#N">n</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#O">o</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#P">p</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#Q">q</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#R">r</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#S">s</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#T">t</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#U">u</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#V">v</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#W">w</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#X">x</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#Y">y</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/contents.html#Z">z</a></li> </ul> <webContent><h1>Bridey Murphy </h1> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">In 1952, Virginia Tighe of Pueblo, Colorado, was hypnotized by local businessman Morey Bernstein. Allegedly, Virginia spoke in an Irish brogue and claimed she was Bridey Murphy, a 19th-century woman from Cork, Ireland. Bernstein says he encouraged <a href="pastlife.html">past life regression</a> and his subject cooperated. He hypnotized Tighe many times. While under <a href="hypnosis.html">hypnosis</a>, she sang Irish songs and told Irish stories, always as Bridey Murphy. She gave a birth date as1798, described her childhood in a Protestant family in the city of Cork, her marriage to Sean Brian Joseph McCarthy, and her burial in Belfast in 1864. Bernstein's book, <i> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0385260032/roberttoddcarrolA/">The Search for Bridey Murphy</a> </i> (1956), became a best-seller. (Tighe is called Ruth Simmons in the book.) Recordings of the hypnotic sessions were made and translated into more than a dozen languages. The recordings sold well. The <a href="reincarn.html">reincarnation</a> boom in American publishing had begun. </font> </p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">Newspapers sent reporters to Ireland to investigate. Was there a red-headed Bridey Murphy who lived in Ireland in the nineteenth century? No records were found that matched Tighe's claims for Bridey's birth, upbringing, marriage, or death. (One supporter of the story, Bill Barker, did find a record of a <i>clerk</i> named John M'Carthy working in Belfast between 1858-1862.) One newspaper, however, the <i>Chicago American,</i> found Bridie Murphey Corkell in Wisconsin in the 20th century.  She lived in the house across the street from where Virginia Tighe grew up. What Virginia reported while hypnotized were not memories of a previous life but memories from her early childhood. Whatever else the hypnotic state is, it is a state where one's fantasies are energetically displayed. Many people were impressed with the details of Tighe's hypnotic memories, but the details were not evidence of past life regression, reincarnation, or <a href="channeling.html">channeling</a>. They were evidence of a vivid imagination, a confused memory, fraud, or a combination of the three. </font> </p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">It is indicative of the typical lowering of the standards of critical thinking regarding the paranormal or the supernatural that defenders of fantastic <a href="confab.html">confabulations</a> and preposterous stories find easily accessible information to be incontrovertible proof of their veracity. For example, Tighe talks about kissing the Blarney stone and knew that the act requires the assistance of someone who holds you as you lean backwards and face up to kiss the stone. This is common knowledge and photos of this are available in hundreds of sources, yet this fact has been cited as strong evidence that Tighe really kissed the stone in a previous incarnation.<a href="http://www.randi.org/jr/08-31-01.html">*</a> Yet, these same proponents of the strange and occult are not concerned that the kind of reincarnation they are considering contradicts everything we know about human consciousness and the brain, especially about how <a href="memory.html">memory</a> works. </font> </p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">Memories exist in neural connections in the brain. Brain traumas and diseases like <a href="http://www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_what_is_alzheimers.asp"> Alzheimer's</a> reveal that when these neural connections are destroyed, memories are destroyed. When the brain decays and dies memories will be destroyed. There is no logical reason for maintaining that there is a parallel entity (spirit or mind) that exists independently of the brain and which maintains memories that will be accessible to us <i>only</i> after we die or after this imagined parallel entity enters another body. </font> </p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">As Martin Gardner says, "Almost any hypnotic subject capable of going into a deep trance will babble about a previous incarnation if the hypnotist asks him to. He will babble just as freely about his future incarnations....In every case of this sort where there has been adequate checking on the subject's past, it has been found that the subject was weaving together long forgotten bits of information acquired during his early years" (Gardner 1957).</font></p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">When you hear hoof beats think first of horses, not centaurs.</font></p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3"><b>See also</b> <a href="bloxham.html">Bloxham tapes</a>, <a HREF="channeling.html">channeling</a>, <a HREF="hypnosis.html">hypnosis</a>, <a href="pastlife.html">past life regression</a>, <a HREF="reincarn.html">reincarnation</a>, and <a href="stevenson.html">Ian Stevenson</a>. </font> </p> <hr width="25%" align="left" noshade> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3"><b>further reading</b> </font> </p> <p style="text-align: left"><b><font face="Arial" size="3">books and articles</font></b></p> <p style="text-align: left"><font size="3">Ducasse, C. J. 1960. "How the Case of The Search for Bridey Murphy Stands Today.” <i>The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research</i> 54 (January 1960): 3-22.</font></p> <p style="text-align: left"><font size="3"> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1425301223/roberttoddcarrolA/"> Ducasse, C. J. 2006. <i>A Critical Examination of the Belief in a Life after Death</i>. Kessinger Publishing. Originally published in 1961.</a> Chapter 25, of this book is titled "The Case of 'The Search for Bridey Murphy'."</font></p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0486203948/roberttoddcarrolA/">Gardner, Martin. <i>Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science</i> (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1957), ch. 26.</a> </font> </p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">Ready, W. B. "Bridey Murphy: An Irishman's View," <em>Fantasy & Science Fiction </em>11, no.2, August, 1956, pp. 81-88.</font><p style="text-align: left"> <b><font face="Arial" size="3">websites</font></b></p> <p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3"><a href="http://www.csicop.org/sb/9803/reincarnation.html">A Case of Reincarnation -- Reexamined</a> Joe Nickell (the case of Jenny Cockell)</font><p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3"><a href="http://www.randi.org/jr/08-31-01.html">James Randi, commentary</a></font><p style="text-align: left"><font face="Arial" size="3">"<a href="http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_287.html">Is it possible to recall past lives through hypnosis?" - Cecil Adams</a></font><p style="text-align: left"> <font face="Arial" size="3"> <a href="http://www.brideymurphy.com/index.html"> BrideyMurphy.com</a> (Her candle burned out long ago but the legend never did.)</font><p></webContent>Last updated </p> 13-Mar-2015</div> </div> <div class="right"> <div class="right_it"> <div class="search"> <form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/custom" target="_top"> <input type="hidden" name="domains" value="skepdic.com" /> <input type="text" name="q" maxlength="255" value="" size="20" /> <input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" /> <br /> <div class="search_2"> <input type="radio" name="sitesearch" value="" /> Web     <input type="radio" name="sitesearch" value="skepdic.com" checked="checked" /> Skepdic.com <br /> <img src="_images/logo_google.gif" alt="Google" width="48" height="19" /> </div> <input type="hidden" name="client" value="pub-3542920166946725" /> <input type="hidden" name="forid" value="1" /> <input type="hidden" name="ie" value="ISO-8859-1" /> <input type="hidden" name="oe" value="ISO-8859-1" /> <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="GALT:#008000;GL:1;DIV:#336699;VLC:663399;AH:center;BGC:FFFFFF;LBGC:336699;ALC:0000FF;LC:0000FF;T:000000;GFNT:0000FF;GIMP:0000FF;FORID:1;" /> <input type="hidden" name="hl" value="en" /> </form> </div> <div class="center"> <p align="right"><a href="http://skepdic.com/authorpage.html"><strong>Books by R. T. Carroll </strong></a></p> <p align="right"><a href="http://skepdic.com/authorpage.html"><img src="http://skepdic.com/graphics/CTDcover140.jpg" alt="cover The Critical Thinker's Dictionary" width="140" height="212" /></a></p> <div align="right"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0471272426/roberttoddcarrolA/"> <img src="_images/book_01.jpg" alt="The Skeptic's Dictionary" border="0" width="140" height="171" /></a> </div> </div> <h2 align="center" class="right_it">OTHER LANGUAGES</h2> <ul class="nav_4"> <li><a href="http://nederlands.skepdic.com/">Dutch</a><br /> <a href="http://sdkinderen.skepdic.com/">Dutch voor kinderen</a></li> <li><a href="http://dictionnaire.sceptiques.qc.ca/">French</a> </li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.com/German/morgenwelt.html">German</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepdic.gr/">Greek</a></li> <li><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20110521092753/http://www.szabadgondolkodo.hu/szkeptikus/szotar/">Hungarian</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.vantru.is/efahyggjuordabokin/">Icelandic</a></li> <li><a href="http://italiano.skepdic.com/">Italian</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.genpaku.org/skepticj/">Japanese</a></li> <li><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20100410234258/http://www.rathinker.co.kr/skeptic/">Korean</a></li> <li><a href="http://brazil.skepdic.com/">Portuguese</a> <br /> <a href="http://skepdic.ru/">Russian</a></li> <li><a href="http://slovnik.skepdic.com/">Slovak</a></li> <li><a href="http://skepticus.org/dicc/">Spanish</a><br /> <a href="http://www.vof.se/skepdic/"> Swedish</a><br /> <a href="http://turkish.skepdic.com/">Turkish</a></li> </ul> <p>Print versions available in <a href="http://www.lannoo.be/content/lannoo/wbnl/listview/1/index.jsp?titelcode=24816&fondsid=8" >Dutch</a>, <a href="http://skepdic.com/russian.html" >Russian</a>, <a href="http://www.rakkousha.co.jp/info/index.html#2" > Japanese</a>, and <a href="http://www.aladdin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?isbn=8995876441" >Korean</a>.</p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="footer"> <a href="braintyping.html"> <img src="graphics/larrow.gif" alt="larrow.gif (1051 bytes)" border="0" align="bottom" width="14" height="26"> brain typing</a> | <a href="brights.html">bright</a> <img src="graphics/rarrow.gif" alt="rarrow.gif (1048 bytes)" border="0" align="middle" width="13" height="26"></a></font></div> </div> <div class="bottom"> © Copyright 1994-2016 <a href="http://skepdic.com/refuge/bio.html">Robert T. Carroll</a> * This page was designed by <a href="http://www.cristianpopa.com/portfolio-2/">Cristian Popa</a>.</div> </body> </html>

CINXE.COM

Bridey Murphy - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com