Another extraordinary case, also world-famous and incredibly full of details, is the case of the boy James Leininger, who recalled being an American pilot who died in World War II.

Born on April 10, 1998, James at age 2 began having nightmares that made him scream in his sleep. In one of these nocturnal nightmares, his mother, Andrea, woke up and heard him say, "Crash airplane". Running to the bedroom, Andrea saw her son struggling violently on the bed. The same nightmare recurred several times a week and he always shouted: "A plane on Fire! Little man can’t get out!"

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Then one day his parents tried to talk to him about such a nightmare. His mother Andrea asked "who was the little man on the plane", and James replied "me". His father, Bruce, then asked who had shot his plane, to which he replied: "The Japanese". When asked how he knew it was the Japanese who had shot his plane, James replied: "The big red sun".

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Then his parents continued to ask him more questions about the nightmare and James said he had a friend who was also a pilot named "Jack Larsen." Another fact that caught  Andrea and Bruce’s attention, his parents, was his incredible knowledge about World War II aircraft. For example, once Andrea gave James a toy plane with what appeared to have a bomb under it, and commented to his son about the supposed "bomb" beneath the plane. James looked at her and said: "This is not a bomb, Mom, it's a dwop tank."

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James was referring to an additional fuel tank that is attached to the bottom of an airplane, and ejected when the fuel is expended. His parents could not answer how it was possible for a two-year-old to know so many technical details about World War II and specifically about airplanes.

 

Andrea's mother, Bobbi, was the first person to suggest the hypothesis that James's nightmares could be from a past life. She told Bruce and Andrea about Carol Bowman, author of "Children’s Past Lives: How past life memories affect your child", who researched children who remember past lives since 1980. They then decided to get in touch with her. Carol gave valuable advice to Bruce and Andrea on how to handle James' nightmares and how important it was to listen to James, to support him and demonstrate that he was now safe.

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Over time, James began to reveal more incredible details: He revealed that the man in his nightmares was called "James", who was flying an airplane called "Corsair" and the airplane took off from a ship whose name was "Natoma". He knew that the Corsair could turn left on the takeoff and that it had a tendency to blow up the tires on the landing. And so, successively, innumerable other technical details were being narrated by James.

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It was completely impossible for a 2-year-old boy to have been able to absorb so much technical information by any means. The only explanation was that he was really remembering a previous life. But while Andrea, his mother, accepted the idea normally, his father, Bruce, was still reluctant, even with all the incredible evidence, because he was an Evangelical and did not accept Reincarnation.

 

However, he decided to dig deep into the military archives regarding the details mentioned by James. He then discovered that the old crew of the ship "Natoma Bay", which James quoted as the ship he had been during the war, was still holding reunions, and decided to attend one of those meetings. So he traveled to San Diego in September 2002 to attend the "Natoma Bay Reunion", the meeting of the ship's veterans. It was then that he learned that 18 Natoma pilots died during World War II. To his surprise, one of them was called: "James Juston Jr."

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Another discovery by Bruce: "Jack Larsen", the name cited by James as another pilot, his friend during the war, had actually existed, and was still alive, living in Arkansas! Bruce and James then met personally with the veterans of the Natoma ship, at the opening of a memorial to honor those who died in service there. This memorial was inaugurated at the Nimiz Museum in Fredricksburg, Texas.

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At the ceremony, James was reunited with his old friend, Jack Larsen, who observed a great physical resemblance between "James Leininger" and "James Huston". The reader can know all the details of this incredible story in the book written by James' parents: “Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot” - Bruce Leininger, Andrea Leininger, Ken Gross

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