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Oftentimes, people who have past life memories will recall being the victim of a traumatic death. This kid, however, remembered being the perpetrator.
It’s not a pretty story, so just be aware of that in advance. We’re going to talk about a 2-year-old who claimed to have been a murderer, based on his past life memories and his birth defects.
The Past Life Memories Surface Early
In January 1947, a little boy in Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) was born with noticeable physical differences. His name was H.A. Wijeratne, and he was diagnosed with a rare condition called Poland syndrome.
One of his arms was significantly shorter than the other one. The hand on that arm had underdeveloped fingers, some of which were webbed together. Additionally, one of his ribs was shorter on one side, and he was missing a pectoral muscle, which gave his chest a concave appearance.
What’s fascinating is that when he was just a toddler, this kid was telling people that the reason he was born with a damaged arm and hand was because he’d used that hand to kill his fiancée in a past life. And he believed that the concave part of his chest represented the place he’d stabbed the woman.
The Past Life Memories Uncover Family Secrets
The story gets crazier because Wijeratne also claimed that his father was actually his older brother from that same past life. That’s when some major family secrets came out. This kid had all kinds of dirt, all stemming from his past life memories. He shared so many details that finally his father had to admit to his wife (the kid’s mother) that he had lied to her when he told her his younger brother, Ratran Hami, had passed away from natural causes. It turns out his younger brother — who was now supposedly his son — had actually killed his fiancée and been executed for the crime.
Verifying the Past Life Memories
In Dr. Ian Stevenson’s book, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, you can see a list of the 27+ things the kid claimed to have remembered, as well as how they were verified. This, of course, gets tricky because you could point out that the boy’s father knew all of this information, so maybe he told it to the kid for some reason. (You’d have to ask why, since the father was guarding the secret from his own wife.)
If it was just wishful thinking on the part of Wijeratne’s father, why didn’t he project the belief onto one of his other, older sons? Why wait until Wijeratne was born, nearly twenty years after the death of his younger brother?
Some may argue that Wijeratne just picked up the information along the way. The thing is, there were a few details, including events that happened on the day of execution, that even his father did not know. And, I’ll reiterate, this was not something that the father had any motivation to talk about. He’d intentionally suppressed it for years – never telling his wife or his other, older child.
Whenever Wijeratne went around talking about his past life memories, his father would get angry and tell him to stop. At one point, just like the father of Ravi Shankar, he sent him to live somewhere else for a while. It’s not that he didn’t believe him. He was worried that the family of the murdered woman would hear about it and seek revenge.
As an example of one of the things on Stevenson’s list, one day a young Wijeratne saw an extended relative. He pointed out the belt he was wearing, claiming that it belonged to him in his past life. This turned out to be true, which is eerie when you really think about it. Because it’s so random, it’s hard to see it as a rehearsed event.
The Past Life Murder
So what is that story anyway? Why did the man, Ratran Hami, kill his fiancée, Podi Menike? It’s my understanding that in his culture at that time, there were two steps to marriage. The first part was when the marriage was arranged, and there was a ceremony representing that. The next step was when the woman moved in with her husband. In this case, the first step had occurred, but when it was time for the second part, things went awry. When Ratran Hami went to the fiancée’s house to collect her, she refused to come with him. He believed another man was involved, specifically a new guy who had been staying with her family, which made the rejection more humiliating for him. Either way, whether she was under the influence of this other man or not, she refused him. So he left. And by that, I mean he walked about 5 miles home, sharpened his Malay knife, and then returned to her house. Was he hoping the weapon would merely persuade her, or did he intend to kill her from the beginning?
Guilty
When the trial happened, Ratran Hami stated that his fiancée’s death had been an accident. He claimed that her family members had started a fight with him, and she got hurt in the process. The court records show that he pleaded Not Guilty. Interestingly enough, Wijeratne, the kid with the past life memories, did not try to deny his guilt. He straight up said he killed her and that that was why he was born with the defects. He even went as far as to take people to the orange tree he claims he stood under, as Ratran Hami, while sharpening his blade. The reason this is so significant is that anyone who says that Wijeratne was relaying information his father told him or who believes that he was tapping into someone else’s memories, or using telepathy to access the court records… well, it doesn’t make sense that he would take this stance.
How His Past Life Memories Affected Him in Adulthood
As Wijeratne grew into adulthood, he had two separate psychotic breaks where he had to be institutionalized or monitored by a doctor. [This, of course, is where someone will say, ‘Aha! See, the kid was crazy this whole time!’ My argument to that is, first of all, don’t call people crazy. Rude. Furthermore, his mental health struggles do not take away from the fact that he was able to know things about a dead man he’d never met when he was just two years old.]
Anyway, the reason I mention it is because both psychotic episodes were brought on by the same thing. Each time, he found himself obsessing over a woman, and then he snapped when she rejected him… Sounds a lot like the situation he experienced in his past life memories, does it not?
So, it seems our friend still had a lot to learn, which he himself eventually admitted. In the early interviews he had with Dr. Ian Stevenson and others, Wijeratne had been a bit bitter about the situation in his past life memories. He’d said he believed he’d made the right decision as Ratran Hami. He’d even added that if a woman treated him that way again, it would be understandable to respond the same way. As he got older, his viewpoint changed. He recognized his reaction was severe, and that a simple parting of ways was the better solution in such situations.
Eventually, Wijeratne settled into a happy marriage in 1980. He felt that his temperament in this lifetime was calmer than it was in his previous life. Perhaps most interesting of all, he claimed that his past life memories of his last year of life were more vivid than any of his childhood memories in this lifetime.