From http://www.geocities.com/richard_holmes/reincarnation/experiences.htm

I am a 59 year old female, who was born & have always lived in the western United States. While playing in the fields as a young child, I would see rows of tents & men on horses in my peripheral vision. I would also hear strange bird calls, and smell wood smoke. It happened many times, and seemed somewhat connected to a particular weather condition & time of day. At age 10, I opened my US History book & almost fell off my chair. There were my men & tents - The American Civil War. From that point on, I KNEW I'd been a confedrate soldier. I was a 'girlie' girl, liking everything pretty & clean. A male soldier was the last thing I would have fantasized being. Over the years, I had several regressions and remembered much more. I often 'knew' facts I'd have no way of knowing. Also more telling, were deeply emotional reactions to events having nothing to do with my current life or the area I lived in. Eventually, 14 years ago, I visited some of the places I remembered. I saw & heard many familiar things on this journey, including those unusual bird calls in the woods of Northern Virginia. This was very emotional and quite surreal, but also strangly liberating. I have never had a doubt about the validity of reincarnation. Even as a child, growing up in a religion that DID NOT believe in it, nothing could ever have changed my mind. I KNEW what I saw, felt, & remembered.

I was nearing the end of Army Basic Training in 1986. We had already come through the worst of it and were more relaxed than in the previous weeks. I mention this because I don't believe my experience was some kind of stress-hallucination. One day we were in a cold air-conditioned well-lit classroom, seated in uncomfortable classroom desk-chairs watching a corny training tape on first aid. The tape played and the last of the three bandaging techniques demonstrated was on treating an open abdominal wound. Very corny; three soldiers in clean uniforms. Two soldiers stood over the third, who was on his back with fake plastic guts laid on top of his (clothed) belly. Very fake. Seeing this, I immediately blacked out. I had a vague/dark/smoky image of looking up through a forested area, as though lying on my back (this was the only image I recall). Someone was huddled close over me, not at all like the image presented on the tape. I felt a sense of great fear and danger as though we needed to stay low (overhead small-arms or machinegun fire perhaps?) The person over me yelled something to someone else like "We have to get this guy out of here RIGHT NOW."

It was at this point that I felt the most wonderfully warm, comfortable wave wash over my body twice, followed by pins-&-needles. The thought then occurred to me, "You just died." Initially I was furious then felt the most sickening feeling of loss and remorse because I had just left a wife and child and kept wondering to myself “who will take care of them now?” In 1986 I was 17 and single with no children.

I then detected a presence that had already been there but had just become known to me, like someone speaking up when you hadn’t realized they were in the room. This person or whatever, said something like, “You’re upset, but being upset isn't going to change this. (then verbatim:) It’s time to move on to what is next.” And we went.

Then there I was sitting in the classroom again and the tape was still running. Immediately I was scared because several weeks before a drill-sergeant had caught me nodding off in a class (and I paid dearly). I looked around but the drills were still standing along the walls watching for offenders. I asked the guy next to me if I had nodded off and he said he hadn’t noticed anything.

I had what I believe to have been a flashback about 40 years ago. After my first marriage broke down I was left to bring up seven children on my own as my former wife did not seem to care about them. I was ironing their school shirts (now I hate ironing shirts altho I'm not bad at it.) when a most peculiar feeling come over me and I appeared to see a very posh shirt with a frilly front. I had the feeling that it was 1855. The sort of shirt front that would have really required goffering. I absolutely hated ironing that shirt it was my husbands best. All this shot through my mind in an instant, then I was just an overworked Dad ironing the boys shirts again. I must have looked peculiar for my youngest came into the kitchen just then and asked me if I was alright. He said I looked as white as a sheet.

My experience was as a witness to a past life memory. My boyfriend had an accident which resulted in a trip to the emergency room and stitches. The doctor gave him a mild pain pill and sent him home. As he was starting to drift off to sleep, a fly buzzed around his head. I knew that he had a hatred of flies but had never thought to ask why. Now I asked him "Why do you hate flies so much?" He opened his eyes and in a voice I had never heard said, "Because when I was out in the field shot and couldn"t move the flies were all over my face and in my mouth." I nearly fell over. THis wasn't his voice or even the way he spoke. I said "Who are you?" He told me his name was Billy and that he had been shot in a battle. He was very angry at having to fight in this battle because he did not want to leave his little sister, Sara. (Who I believe is his daughter now) Billy was shy and awkward and obviously not well educated. He had a soft southern drawl. Not anything like my boyfriend's voice. When he awoke, my boyfriend had no memory of this happening and got annoyed when I tried to talk about it. I believe that he was in an altered state and I just happened to ask the right question at the right time. I just wish I had had a tape recorder!

I was walking in my local mall several months ago. It has a sunroof in one huge area and all of a sudden amidst the crowd of people I saw this man who I'm sure I used to know in the 50's. He pretty much stopped me in my tracks because I knew he was on his way to bet on the horses (the location of the mall used to be a race track back then) and although he wasn't wearing a hat there in the mall among all the other shoppers I could see him as clear as day as if he were wearing the style of clothes of 1955. I was so amazed by this and couldn't stop looking at him. I even turned around to stare at him as he walked away. And what made it stranger still is that I'm black and he's white and I'm not sure what the racial relations of the neighbourhood were back then. Maybe I was a white woman at the time.