Looking for Carroll Beckwith: The True Stories of a Detective's Search for His Past

If you're skeptical about past life regressions, this would be a good book for you. The author started out as more of a skeptic than me, and possibly more so as you as well. He dealt with te information he received in a reading, like any detective in his place would. He went and looked at the data. Admittedly, he was doing so to disprove that what he had seen was a past life. After a point, when he hadn't found anything to disprove what he had seen, and numerous points that in fact confirmed what he had seen, he finally came to believe it had been a past life.

As a counseling psychologist who has been surprised by the number of unexplainable experiences that can occur during a therapy session, I found Captain Snow's book to be astounding. His analysis of a past life, and the time and effort taken to review both the reliability and validity of his research methods will help many skeptics to reform biases against the existence of reincarnation.I wish the author would have shared more about his relationships with both his wife and Carroll's wife - though we are told that his wife is a skeptic, I find it hard to believe that she could reject her husband's evidence after years of research.A thoroughly good book and a nice introduction to the area of reincarnation and the field of past life regression therapy.

I was amazed at the length Captian Snow went to prove he, himself, had lived a past life as portrait painter Carroll Beckwith. Being a dective gave the author added diligence and preseverance in researching every detail of his regression to discover who this painter was. Unlike the book Search for Grace: A True Story of Reincarnation by Bruce Goldberg which I found lacking in research Captain Snow leaves no detail untouched. Author Goldberg's book was interesting but in cannot compare to this indepth look at reincarnation.Because of the author's painstaking research I found this book fascinating and hard to put down. The author also includes many pictures of Carroll Beckwith's paintings which added to the powerful image of this man having actually lived and died years before Captain Snow was born.I was not, in any way, concerned with the fact that the author did not get the wife's name correct. Having read many other accounts of reincarnation this happens often. Names do not seem as important once a soul has left this realm of existence.I highly recommend this book for those interested in past life regression or for those who may want more proof of its existence.

Because of the nature of the proof offered, and because of the credibility of the author, there are only two rational possibilities--either the author is making it up, or he has proven both reincarnation and the validity of hypnotic regression as a viable tool for affirming the existence of past lives. That he got the previous personality's wife's name incorrect, tends to support the researcher's credibility and thus, to my mind, strengthens the case. It is not unusual, in cases of verifying past-life regression, to get details like names wrong (see "Mission to Millboro" by Marge Rieder, for example)--nor for the basic facts to be accurate. So Capt. Snow's results are consistent with other verified cases in this regard. This book is a wake-up call for people who want to lightly dismiss both reincarnation and hypnotic regression as being entirely fanciful.