The Aftermath

Recurring Nightmare

After waking up from the nightmare, I get up and run up and down the hallway in my home to escape the water that my logical mind knew wasn’t there. Naturally, I told my parents about it but they brushed it off as a nightmare and left it at that. Despite their assurances that it was normal, the nightmare repeated nightly for a month or so. This continued on roughly 30 or so nights in a row for that year and every single year that followed. It’s been more than twenty years since that first nightmare, and I am still experiencing this. The most recent episodes were October 26th - December 8th of 2020. Therapy and medications were given to relieve it and swimming lessons to “Face the fear” tactic. Nothing helped. It became normal. Ida became as normal as the boogeyman to which I considered her an equal. Rather than use her name, I simply called her by what I knew. The girl that drowned, the girl with gray eyes.

1997-2020

I didn’t do anything with Ida. I didn’t speak of her besides the traditional therapy. I gave up all interest in Titanic as per parental orders to hope that she would fade away as I got older. My parents believed deeply in the ‘ignore it method”. I painted dozens of paintings with Ida’s last sights and burned them as a cleansing ritual. Nothing gave me relief. Despite my love for pools, my love of the beach died away and was replaced by a healthy fear of deep water and dark water. Saltwater is distasteful after you choke on it, and despite my family’s yearly trips to the beach, I have not swum in the ocean since 1997.

Reincarnation Theory

My first introduction to the idea of reincarnation was to watch the film" “A Dog’s Purpose” after attending the funeral of a loved one. What’s worse than watching a dog die? Watching the dog die 20 times. Why would anyone choose to believe in something that horrible?

While painting one day, I was flipping through my Amazon Prime shows on autopilot. I had always had a fascination with the supernatural, ghosts in particular. I quickly depleted series after series before the auto control selected a show called “Ghost inside my child.” Amazon confused “My house is haunted” with “My child is reincarnated”. Growing up with a religious background, I didn’t believe in reincarnation but I was too lazy to change the channel with paint on my hands. It wasn’t long before there was a story of a boy named Jamey who had night terrors like mine. He feared the ocean, he ran up and down the hallways to avoid dream water. This kid reminded me of me and somewhere along with the episode, I stopped painting and just watched, fully engrossed in the show. Jamey’s experiences of his night terrors occurred only after watching the 1997 Titanic movie, like me. His experiences were almost to a tee exactly like me and it gave me the creeps, but left me with a sense of aw. He knew the ship in ways you couldn't find back before the internet, I did too. I don’t believe people’s ghost stories but Jamey had a story that I believed immediately. Jamey’s memory and research were matched with Thomas Andrews, the ship’s designer. His family believed he was the reincarnation of Mr. Andrews and though I didn’t believe in that belief system, it did make me wonder.

Though I think the final straw was finding my last book purchase of 2020. Paul Amirault’s “The Man Who Sent The SOS: A Memoir Of Reincarnation And The Titanic.” A memoir from another person like Jamey who “remembers” dying on the Titanic. Unlike Jamey though, Paul had undergone Past Life Regression hypnosis which uncovered his past life as Jack Phillips. Unlike Jamey who had the last details of his past life, Paul had the full picture of Jack’s entire life. Those memories were found to match details from the pre-internet age across the ocean from LA to London.

I jumped the gun and contacted him for more information. After all, the most human thing is the desire to know we are not alone. He couldn’t laugh at me due to the age ole belief of “If I’m nuts, so are you”. Maybe Thomas Andrew and Jack Phillips didn’t know Ida but someone on that boat did and the best way to find the truth is to find the people. To find someone, you must at least know their name. 2200 People on Titanic. How many Idas could there be?

Here’s a link to Paul’s website. I highly recommend reading his book. https://www.themanwhosentthesos.com/