The Helen Pickering Reincarnation Case - Analysing the Criticism of Rob Nanninga

If anyone is unfamiliar with the case of  Peter Ramster's (Peter Ramster is a Psychologist and Hypnotherapist  
from Australia) - reincarnation experiment where he regressed four regular Australian housewives all of whom apparently had never left Australia (Although I had read somewhere that Helen Pickering had visited America once before) then I highly recommend watching the documentary online which has eleven parts uploaded: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HayY1yyXnn0

In the early 1980's Peter Ramster regressed Cynthia Henderson, Helen Pickering, Jenny Green and Gwen McDonald. Between the subjects some were of course more convincing than other''s - Although I would have to say that Helen Pickering's case seems to stand out in comparison. So in Peter Ramster's own words he talks about the case:

''Helen was a lady who under hypnosis recalled a number of lives, but the one I decided to research was a
past life recalled in Scotland in the nineteenth century. She recalled a life as a male Doctor of Medicine,
having studied at the University of Aberdeen. She recalled working in a practice in a small town called
Blairgowrie. Helen recalled drinking in a bar in the Seaman's Mission in Aberdeen as a young man, and
recalled the sights from the dormitories that overlooked the bay from the medical school where she trained
as a doctor. Under hypnosis in Sydney she recalled the layout of the medical school, as well as the town of
Blairgowrie. She also recalled being an important person in civic affairs, being involved with the town
council of Blairgowrie. She recalled her name was Dr James Burns.''

Peter Ramster took Helen Pickering to Blairgowrie in Scotland and blindfolded her along the way on location making it vital that she had no clues as to where she was going or which area she was in. Along the way her statements were verified and she revealed information which she possibly couldn't have known in any other way. Without a doubt the documentary was quite amazing to watch and I couldn't really think of how anyone could put it down to a mere confabulation. Anyway I searched for any sceptical views on the case and I came across one by a man named 'Rob Nanninga' he looks at each case and has seemed to make quite an effort 'debunking' each one. Whereas with some of the subject's cases he has picked on vital flaws which could potentially cause them to fall down, for example he apparently discovered that Cynthia Henderson whom recalled the life as a French woman led them to an old castle which turned out to be a fake castle made for an English lord in the 1800's - Still this may be a mistake on his part and even if this is the case that doesn't mean that this disparages every case.

Rob Nanninga wrote the article in Dutch, which makes me wonder if he either watched the documentary dubbed in a language which he was familiar with and not English or if his English isn't very good. Nonetheless I am going to look at all the arguments he has constructed against the case and see why for the most part they don't hold any importance.

Addressing his first sceptical analysis claim:

Rob Nanninga claims that 'Helen Pickering does not have to remember Blairgowrie from a previous life, because it's a well known holiday resort in the South of Melbourne. It was named after the Scottish town after World War 2.'

This could easily allude one into thinking that she acquired the name after the Australian village. After all there are only seemingly three places named Blairgowrie in the world, the Scottish one of course being the original and the one in Australia and South Africa both named after the original.

Even though Helen Pickering was living in Sydney at the time of her regression one could say that she could have lived in Melbourne as a young child and gone on the occasional holiday to Blairgowrie as Australia being a huge country only those in Melbourne really know about it. But the only problem here is that Helen isn't talking about the Blairgowrie of Australia - She is talking in the form of a man and speaking in a distinctly well spoken Scottish accent she is also connecting this by mentioning where she attended university which was in another City, Aberdeen and mentioning in detail the description of the town and it's layout and where certain buildings once stood.

Chances are a young Helen could have gone to Blairgowrie in Australia as I said before, and she may have obtained the information that this was named after a Scottish town after World War 2 - But the only problem with this argument is that even if she had known this somewhere stored sub consciously in her mind the fact remains is that the descriptions she gave were precisely that of the town of Blairgowrie in Scotland and not  that of the Small Seaside Town in Melbourne, Australia.

Even if she had gone to Blairgowrie at some time in her life and happened to obtain the information that Blairgowrie was named after the Scottish town, which thus caused her to speak in a distinctive Scottish accent under hypnosis as Sceptics would say - These discrepancies would have been made very clear if she was describing the seaside town of Australia under hypnosis and for example gave the descriptions of something along the line of  ''There's a huge beach, and there's a lot of cliffs here - There's a town near by called Rye which was where I used to go drinking at a pub called 'The White Swan' and my practice within the town of Blairgowrie was near to Clayton Park on a place called Murray Street.''

If this was the case then it would be blatantly obvious that Helen wouldn't be recalling a previous existence at all but clearly giving a description of a repressed childhood memory or perhaps something she learned about the seaside town of Melbourne at school but had since long forgotten in her conscious mind. The reasons  being that the description wouldn't even remotely match the Scottish town and the streets and locations and the descriptions she mentioned would be easily located on any Australian map of the Blairgowrie in Australia:

http://www.stayz.com.au/accommodation/vic/bays-peninsulas/blairgowrie?view=map

And one could easily locate the places she mentioned as being in the Blairgowrie of Melbourne. There's no Clayton Park in Scotland's Blairgowrie, there is in Blairgowrie, Melbourne. There's no town called 'Rye' in Scotland never mind near to Scotland's Blairgowrie, though there is a seaside town next to Australia's Blairgowrie called 'Rye'. And of course finally it would absolutely preposterous to claim there was a sea in Blairgowrie Scotland!

But this isn't the case. Helen Pickering's descriptions weren't remotely like that of the seaside town of Blairgowrie in Melbourne, but on the contrary were accurate descriptions of the town of Blairgowrie in Scotland - A town she had never visited and certainly had no connection with. Helen was blindfolded on the way there as it shows in the documentary and it Peter Ramster's words - ''Helen was taken to Scotland, to Blairgowrie.
Everything was filmed as it happened. She was blindfolded on the way there so she could gain no clues as
to where she was. She was taken to a point just outside the town where the blindfold was taken off. At first
she was confused. In Australia she had spoken of a grassy square in the middle of town around which the road ran on both sides.''

In the documentary it shows Helen arriving in a car in Blairgowrie, and coming out of the car blindfolded as shown above. As the narrator states that - ''When we drove into Blairgowrie, Helen had no idea where we had taken her, we hadn't discussed it, and we blindfolded her well away from the edge of the town without her seeing a sign post. We stopped at an easy land mark for anyone knowing Blairgowrie and wanted to see what Helen's reactions were. Like most places it had changed since the middle of the last century and Helen had nothing to go on but the pictures in her mind.''

She seemed a bit confused at first but this was because as the narrator put it - ''We came into town on a road unfamiliar to Helen, the places she knew best were on the other side and it wasn't until we walked away from the bridge that she was able to orient herself.''

In Australia under hypnosis she had spoken of a grassy square in the middle of town around which the road ran both sides. This was not visible from where they first stopped. Helen had then walked to the end of the road and then turned right that led onto a bridge over the stream, and this led into the town centre. As she began to walk across the bridge the grassy square came into sight. When Helen reached the town centre it was exactly how she described it. This is also shown in the documentary as Helen and James walk up closer to the town centre and her familiarity increased particularly between 2:56 and 3:20 where it also plays the description of the road by Helen Pickering under hypnosis in Sydney giving her description of the town centre:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNZuNVE2C8

In Helen's words under hypnosis she described the following:

''The street runs up to the square. There's a grassy area in the middle of the square and the road runs around both sides.''  As is shown in the documentary this is an accurate description of the town centre. After this Peter asked Helen where he thought a pub she mentioned was, she lead the way but the pub she had mentioned had been long gone. She then lead Peter Ramster to where her old surgery was but was bemused at the change and gave the description of how it had once looked according to her memory. Then the narrator states - ''According to the old records the surgery and near by buildings had either been remodelled or pulled down many years ago. There was new shop fronts, new buildings, and an entire new road.''

This states there was a surgery where Helen said there was one, or a surgery near by which got knocked down and no surviving shops from then existed. This is understandable as James Burns had last lived 110 years ago and rarely does the layout of an area stay intact after such prolonged periods of time. Rob Nanninga doesn't mention this at all - Either he deemed it as unnecessary and thought it held no importance, or perhaps he forgot.

So now I've explained how Helen Pickering clearly wasn't influenced by the coincidental Blairgowrie of Australia and how she accurately described the town of Blairgowrie in Scotland, not the Blairgowrie of Melbourne which disparages Rob's explanation of 'Helen constructed a confabulation from the town of Blairgowrie in Australia.'

Addressing his second sceptical analysis claim:

Rob Nanninga claims that 'The TV Documentary shows an old document from the municipal archives of Blairgowrie, showing that a certain James Burns was active there in the 19th Century. It does not say that he worked as a doctor, but the voice over assures us that it's fine.'

In the documentary the narrator states that they try looking for old reminders of James Burns in the old minute books and records which are now housed below ground in a county library. It turns out that James Burns is indeed mentioned although the camera in the documentary unfortunately only focuses on the main writing for a few seconds and only a graphologist would be able to make out what is says due to the blurry quality: