"Past Life Detective" from Snap Judgment
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Spooksters, we've got a special because every once in a while, our sister show, Snap Judgment, comes across a story that veers into spook territory. Today is one of those stories we think you're going to dig in. Liz Mack spoke to Bob Snow. ♪♪

Let me tell you something. When I was commander of homicide, one of my biggest admonishments to all my detectives was do not get emotionally involved in your cases. If you get emotionally involved, you can't see things you need to see. But believe me, I was really emotionally involved in this case. Tell me about how this all started. We're at that party. I don't remember what holiday it was. I was talking to a psychologist, Kathy Graben. I'd read a book about past life aggression therapy, and I was talking to her about it.

Past life regression therapy is when a psychologist or psychiatrist hypnotizes you and supposedly takes you back to a life you lived before your present one. I basically thought it was just foolishness. I didn't realize that Kathy used past life regression, so I think I was being kind of obnoxious, putting it down so bad. And she gave me the name of a friend of hers, Dr. Mary Ellen Griffith, who did past life regression, and told me, try it yourself and see if you really still think it's silly. I said, I'd do it.

Well, actually, the next day I woke up and I was a little more clear-headed and sober, and I thought, "This is stupid. I'm not doing this." But it seemed like from that day on, I ran to Kathy constantly. And when I'd see her, she'd always ask me, "Have you made the appointment yet?" I got tired of making excuses every time I saw Kathy, so finally I decided, "Well, I'll do it." But I also decided I was going to take my own tape recorder along, record the session, so I could bring it back to Kathy and show her how silly it was.

Being a police officer, you want evidence, you want proof before you make any claims. And so I basically made the appointment to go see Dr. Griffith to have a past life regression. Dr. Griffith's office was kind of a dark, dingy building. I sat down on the couch, which was the most uncomfortable couch I think I'd ever sat on. Dr. Griffith, very nice lady, had a kind of a funny, kind of a musical, sing-songy type voice. So let's now close your eyes again. And she told me, close your eyes, and we started talking. She said, okay, we're ready to go.

She said, can you imagine a balloon? Now I was sitting there and there's a window to my right and I could see a big purple circle. Of course, I knew it was just a light to the window at the right to where I see a purple balloon. She said, OK, imagine yourself getting in the balloon and taking it up and going. I'm trying to imagine this for. She said, land the balloon. Tell me what you see. Well, I can see nothing. I think myself, this is her daydream, not mine. And nothing happened. And she kept saying, OK, land the balloon. Tell me where you're at, what you see.

We went through this at least a dozen times. And she finds that there's 12 steps. We're going down to the valley, and there's 12 steps. And she goes, 12, 12, 11. And each number is getting longer and slower and drawn out. But when she reached one, something really bizarre happened, something really stunning. All of a sudden, I was in a valley. I don't think I, I mean, I just imagined I was in a valley or daydreamed I was in a valley. I was in a valley.

It was vividly clear. I could see the leaves on the trees. I could see the veins in the leaves. And I could feel a breeze in my face. So Dr. Griffith asked me, he says, "Look down and describe yourself to me." I looked down and I could see a pair of dirty, hairy legs and I could see I was wearing dirty, matted fur. On my left hand, I was carrying a piece of a tree lamp. I thought, "Well, obviously I'm a caveman." Between each episode, there used to be a light up high above you. She said, "Go into the light."

Looked like the late 1800s because there were horse-drawn carriages and gas lights. And I could see it's an artist's studio. And the room was just filled with dozens of paintings. At that moment, I was painting a portrait. It was the portrait of a hunchback woman. The hunch on her back was very, very prominent in the painting. And I was just putting the very last touches on it. And I told Dr. Griffith that I wanted to take one last look at one of my paintings. She says, tell me what you regret about this life.

I told her I regretted it. We didn't have children because my wife couldn't have children. But then right after I said it, the tape recorder I'd brought along clicked off and opened my eyes and that was it. The obsession was over. Is there anything particular that's going through your mind right then? You really have to think, what does this all mean? Because I liked my life the way it was. My life was very grounded, very solid. I didn't want this other stuff. If I proved it...

then it means everything I believed my whole life, my whole belief in how the universe works, is wrong. I'd have to completely stop, take back everything I ever believed in, throw it in the trash can, and bring in new beliefs. So, okay, what happens after this? Do you see Kathy? I called Kathy on the phone and told her. I said, well, that I had seen some very interesting things. She was very gracious. I think she realized I didn't push her or anything. She said, thank you very much. But I think she could read between the lines.

I was becoming obsessed about this. And let me tell you, as a police officer, I know when people have really deep obsessions, it seldom turns out well. It was probably a month or so afterwards before I finally decided, look, Bob, you got to do something about this. So my idea was I would go to Napa's Public Library. I would start thumbing through their art books. By the way, this was in 1992. When you did research, you had to go down to the library and pull books off the shelf.

I figured it wouldn't take me long. Case closed. Go back to your life the way it was. Come on. How many portraits of hunchback women could there be? It took me several months to go have not only a lunch hour, but weekends. And how many books did you go through? Hundreds, hundreds. Probably, oh, four or five hundred books at least. I went through every book the public library had. I went through all the books each bookstore had. I went through probably a half dozen bookstores right in Annapolis.

I went to a number of art galleries and talked to art dealers to see if I could find the paintings. And so I wasn't ready to give up yet. So finally, as a last in resort, I finally went back to Dr. Griffith for a second session. I thought maybe if I could go back and have her access the artist's life, I could find more information. And she took me back to several past lives who were very vivid, but they were all so far back in history, you know, you couldn't decide whether anything was real or not real. ♪

But interestingly enough, every time she tried to take me to the artist's life, nothing would happen. And when it was over, I asked her why. She said, you already know everything you need to know. All the evidence I had, I had followed it to its end, and it hadn't led anywhere. Basically, it was a cold case. So I hadn't told anyone. I thought it would be an unsolved mystery. I simply take her to the grave with me. At Amica Insurance, we know it's not just about where you're going, but who you go with.

That's why we work even harder to protect what matters most. And as a mutual insurance company, we're built for our customers and prioritize your needs. Amika. Empathy is our best policy. Visit amika.com and get a quote today. Looking to buy your dream home or rent that perfect apartment with

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♪♪

Like, really big. Last year, Redfin saved home sellers $118 million. So whether you're buying, renting, or selling, Redfin's ready to help you win. Download the Redfin app and start searching today.

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It was getting towards my wife and I's anniversary, so we decided to go to New Orleans. Our last day in New Orleans, I suggested we go window shopping in the French Quarter. I noticed as we're walking down Royal Street, the galleries are getting smaller and the paintings much more obscure. So finally we get down to a gallery at the very end of Royal Street, and there's a portrait on an easel in the corner. And I walked by and gave it a glance, and then I stopped like I'd run into a glass wall.

And I spun around, and it was a portrait of the hunchbacked woman. I could still see every brush stroke, and it was identical. My heart was beating. I could feel electricity running out in my arms and my stomach. Probably for four or five minutes, I just stood there staring at the portrait. One of the workers in the art gallery obviously saw me staring at a painting and thought, hot dog, here's a sale. So he come over to me and said, I bet you're thinking, I said, look over your fireplace, aren't you? So I asked him, I says, I don't recognize the artist. I says, who is the artist? So he said, hang on a second.

So he walked over to his desk and come back and he had a little bio, probably maybe five or six sentences. And it said, J. Carol Beckwith, born 1852, died in 1917. So I started reading the biography and I found five different things that I had seen in the regression.

So I asked the dealer, I said, I told him, I said, I've seen this painting somewhere before. I said, has it been in an exhibition somewhere? He said, no. He said, this has been in a private collection for years. Let me be honest with you. He said, Beckwith wasn't that good or that famous. He said, I can let this go pretty cheap. So do you buy the painting? No, no. They wanted like $5,000 for it. My wife would have killed me. That moment, Melanie came downstairs and we left. But I felt good.

Now I had a name, date of birth, date of death. I could go back. I could reopen this. This case was no longer on the shelf. The next day, we were back in Annapolis. So I went down to the public library, and I started researching on J. Carroll Beckwith. He simply was not that famous or that good. That kind of bugged me. I thought, wait a minute. How could I know these things about him if he's that unknown?

I happened onto a book, and at the very bottom of the page goes a footnote that said this information came from the diaries of James Carroll Beckwith that are kept on file at the National Academy of Design in New York City. I wrote a letter to him, basically asking if they were available to look at. While I was waiting for the diary to come, I went through and listened to the tape of my regression.

And I made a list of various things I had said, dates, places, causes of death, what have you, that could be proved disproved. And I found I had 28 things. Now, what I was looking for at this point wasn't more proof about Beckwith. What I was looking for, I wanted to find one or two disproving things. For example, I had said we couldn't have children because my wife couldn't have children. Now, if he had kids, this is not true memories. This is not real.

Why is it so important that you disproved that what happened in your regression is real? Why don't you just want to prove it? If I prove reincarnation is real, again, you have to throw away all your thoughts about how the universe works. And I'm certainly not going to do that unless I got some solid, solid evidence. So I thought maybe I'll have my wife. I'll talk to her and see what she thinks about the whole idea. Maybe she can see something I didn't see. My wife thought I was nuts.

She said, okay, hang on a second. She says, I'll tell you what, I'll look into this case. I'll find information about Beckwith you didn't know was there. My wife was a child abuse detective and a very excellent detective at that. She started looking into the case, and she started looking intently into it. And she didn't find a single thing, not a single thing I hadn't found, nothing. She told me very plainly, look, Bob, okay, forget about it. Don't tell nobody but me. Captains don't go talking about this. I thought that was probably...

Probably solid advice. It really was. If I was to prove this or not, this would cause all kind of turmoil in my life as a police officer. Tremendous turmoil. But I couldn't let it go. I spent a year. I read every single page of Beckwith's diary. Every single page. There were over 17,000 pages of diary. And I found out that sure enough, his wife had had a very, very serious miscarriage. And after that, she couldn't have children.

He talks about his mother being in church and having a stroke caused by blood clot and dying. That he died in 1970, he didn't drink wine. I saw myself die in a large city. He died in New York City. Instead of finding this proving fact, I kept finding one fact after another that agreed with what I had seen. Before I was done, I ended up proving all 28 facts. Every single one. Every single thing I had said during the aggression was right out of Beckwith's life. There is no doubt this case is solved.

Do you believe in reincarnation now? Absolutely. I mean, how else do you explain it? How would I have Carol Beckwith's memories in my mind? Police officers always look for the simplest explanation because 99% of the time, it's the right one. The simplest explanation is that I carry Beckwith's memories in my mind. So, you know, how important is reputation when you are the police commander?

You're the backbone of the police department. And so your reputation as a police commander is very, very important. You want to have an image in the community of strength and stability and all. It could basically injure upward mobility in the police department. If you started talking about things that weren't really accepted as what a police captain should believe in. It seemed like too important a story to keep quiet. So many things happened. So much information came from so many unexpected sources.

Believe me, my wife was really dead set against me doing this. She was positive it would damage my career. And she was right, as it turned out. What happens when you come out to the public about what happened to you? I kept various publicity about it. And each time I do it, it would really upset the command staff more.

Eventually what happened is, even though the last year I was in homicide, we had an 83% clearance rate and our murder rate was the lowest I've been in 20 years. They moved me out there and put me on the citizen service desk where people come to get photographed or get fingerprinted. So they put me in a dead-end job hoping I would retire. My career basically flatlined after that. Do you wish that you had never stepped into that hypnotist's office?

Yeah, I don't know. I haven't thought that, which way I'd have been happier. But apparently that wasn't the point of my life. So the case is solved, right? So what did you do to mark the occasion? Well, I was in New York. I found out that Beckwith's scrapbooks were at the New York Historical Society. And I found out he was buried in Kensey Cove Cemetery, which is up in Valhalla, New York. And I thought how cool it would be to visit my own grave. It was in August. It was a very nice, pleasant day. It wasn't real hot.

It's a huge, huge cemetery. And I walked all the way through it. It didn't even break out of sweat. But I didn't realize. I don't know why, but I don't think you're supposed to do this. As I got closer to the grave, my heart was just beating terrible fast. I was just running on sweat. And I could feel, you know, you have electricity was tringling out of my arms, not my fingertips. I started having a tremendous panic attack. I found some workers who were turning some hedges close by. So I had them take a picture of me standing at the grave just to show everybody I wasn't scared. I was terrified. After that, I left.

I can't worry about James Carroll Beckwith. You really can't live as other people. I mean, you've already done that. You have to deal with the person you are in the present. I realized I had to simply go on with my life as Bob Snow. I went, got on a train, flew back to Annapolis and went on with my life.

Big thanks to Bob Snow for sharing this story. Now check out our website, snapjudgment.org for a link to Bob Snow's work. He's written about this experience and a whole bunch of true crime stuff that you do not want to miss. The original score for that story was by Renzo Gorio. It was produced by Liz Mack. Now then, how about you? Have you ever stepped from one reality into another?

Have you ever gotten a heads up about what's going to happen next? Have you ever seen someone walking around who under no circumstance was supposed to be on this side of the grave? If so, send me your story. Spook at SnapJudgment.org and check out our sister podcast, Snap Judgment, for more tales about things that change everything. And wherever you go, whatever you do, always remember...

Never, ever turn out the lights. At Amica Insurance, we know it's not just what's inside your home that matters. It's who you share it with. That's why we work even harder to protect it. And as a mutual insurance company, we're built for our customers. We prioritize your needs and are here for you when you need us. Amica. Empathy is our best policy.

Call 877-41-AMICA for a free coverage review.

Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on your kids' spending with real-time notifications. Kids learn to earn, save, and spend wisely. And parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place. Sign up for Greenlight today at greenlight.com slash podcast.