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Speaker 1: You're listening to Unexplained, Season eight, episode twenty one, East

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Speaker 1: of Eden, Part two. From the moment he arrives Carl

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Speaker 1: Eden's mother, Val senses there is something a little different

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Speaker 1: about him. There are the physical differences, first and foremost.

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Speaker 1: Both Karl's brother and sister have dark hair and brown eyes.

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Speaker 1: Karl's eyes are blue and his hair strawberry blonde. Their

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Speaker 1: skin was also a little darker and hand easily, whereas

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Speaker 1: KRL's is fair and pale. But there's something else too,

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Speaker 1: the sense that Carl never quite seems able to relax.

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Speaker 1: One night, shortly after Karl's second birthday, Val wakes to

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Speaker 1: the sound of screaming coming from the other end of

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Speaker 1: the house. Racing to Karl's room, she finds the young

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Speaker 1: boy sitting up crying in his bed as he struggles

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Speaker 1: to explain himself with his limited words to the confused

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Speaker 1: and concerned Val. He seems to be saying something about

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Speaker 1: falling from the sky and that his leg is missing.

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Speaker 1: When she finally manages to calm him down, he attempts

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Speaker 1: to explain his dream in more detail. He was flying

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Speaker 1: through the sky, he says, in some sort of plane.

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Speaker 1: It was on fire, and he couldn't get out. Then

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Speaker 1: it fell to the ground, leaving Karl feeling that not

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Speaker 1: only had he died, but that he was also missing

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Speaker 1: his leg. VAL's heart breaks at the sight of her son,

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Speaker 1: sobbing uncle controllably with terror in his eyes. She hugs

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Speaker 1: him tightly and rubs his leg to show him he

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Speaker 1: hasn't lost it at all. It was just a dream,

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Speaker 1: she says, a horrible dream. Despite her reassurances, Val and Jim,

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Speaker 1: Karl's father, can't help but be disturbed by the strangeness

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Speaker 1: of their son's nightmare, wondering how it is that a

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Speaker 1: toddler can recount such vivid and chilling details. But Karl's

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Speaker 1: peculiar visions are soon forgotten and disappear into the background

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Speaker 1: noise of the busy family home. That is until Val

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Speaker 1: comes across Karl one morning a few months later. Playing

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Speaker 1: on his own with a toy aeroplane, Karl notices his

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Speaker 1: mother and looks up to greet her. I died before,

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Speaker 1: he says, my plane crashed straight through a window. Val

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Speaker 1: stares in confusion at the boy, Unsure what to say.

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Speaker 1: She tells him to forget about the dream. But it

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Speaker 1: wasn't a dream, he says, turning back to play with

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Speaker 1: his toy plane. It really happened. As the months go by,

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Speaker 1: Val and Jim are surprised to find that not only

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Speaker 1: does Carl refuse to forget the strange vision, he seemingly

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Speaker 1: begins to remember more. One of our engines ran out,

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Speaker 1: he would say, and after we crashed, I opened a

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Speaker 1: hatch to try and escape, but one of my legs

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Speaker 1: was gone and I bled to death. Jim and Val

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Speaker 1: have no intention of indulging their young son's peculiar fantasy,

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Speaker 1: but then he tells them something else. According to the

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Speaker 1: young Carl, he is convinced that he has been alive before.

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Speaker 1: He was a German pilot during the war, he says,

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Speaker 1: who crashed while on a bombing mission over England. One evening,

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Speaker 1: Foul notices Karl's birthmark, the one just below the groin

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Speaker 1: on his right leg. Remembering what he said about losing

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Speaker 1: his leg in the dream, she asks him again which

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Speaker 1: one it was? My right one? He replies. Throughout his

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Speaker 1: early childhood, Foul often found Karl beavering away on joining

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Speaker 1: the dots or scriveling across the patterns of a coloring book,

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Speaker 1: and soon he was drawing his own shapes and patterns.

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Speaker 1: One morning, Foul notices he's been working on one particular

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Speaker 1: picture for some time. She asks if she can take

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Speaker 1: a look. Karl leans back with a smile. As Val

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Speaker 1: pulls the picture closer. She is amazed by how it looks,

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Speaker 1: not like the usual infantile pictures you might expect from

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Speaker 1: a five year old, but she can't quite make out

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Speaker 1: what the images are exactly. They're my Air Force badges,

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Speaker 1: says Karl. Looking at it again, Val sees it. There's

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Speaker 1: a badge with a bird, which he identifies as an eagle,

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Speaker 1: its wings drawn laterally on the side. Before Karl can

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Speaker 1: explain the next symbol, Val realizes with a jolt what

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Speaker 1: it is. It's a swastika. Perhaps even more extraordinary is

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Speaker 1: the picture that Jim finds in Carl's bedroom just after

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Speaker 1: his sixth birthday. It too looks odd from a distance,

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Speaker 1: and it's only when Jim turns the picture round that

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Speaker 1: he realizes what it is. The cockpit of a plane,

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Speaker 1: complete with all the gauges and instruments, even the levers.

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Speaker 1: Jim asks Karl if he drew the picture, to which

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Speaker 1: he replies yes, before pointing out the red foot pedal

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Speaker 1: he detailed at the bottom. He says it was used

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Speaker 1: to drop the bombs. As the boy continues to explain

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Speaker 1: in a strangely casual tone, the picture is of a

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Speaker 1: Mesherschmidt bomber one O one, just like the one he

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Speaker 1: flew in the war. Despite Karl's increasingly detailed apparent recollections

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Speaker 1: of a past life, Jim is unconvinced. Clearly Karl is

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Speaker 1: just playing some kind of game. After all, he knew

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Speaker 1: the mesher Schmidt was a fighter plane, not a bomber.

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Speaker 1: So together with Val, he decides to put Karl to

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Speaker 1: the test. What uniform did you wear? They ask, to

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Speaker 1: which Karl replies without hesitation, gray trousers tucked into leather

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Speaker 1: boots and a black jacket. A few days later, Jim

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Speaker 1: travels to the local library with Karl's picture tucked under

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Speaker 1: his arm. After being directed to the history section, he

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Speaker 1: proceeds to pull out whatever books he can find on

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Speaker 1: the German air forces of the Second World War. Moments later,

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Speaker 1: Jim is sitting with the books laid out in front

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Speaker 1: of him in complete shock. It is all there, everything

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Speaker 1: from the picture of the cockpit, the badges, the description

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Speaker 1: of the uniform. Everything is exactly as Karl had described,

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Speaker 1: even the plane there had been a Meshishchmidt bomber. After all,

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Speaker 1: it carried the number one one zero. But perhaps he'd

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Speaker 1: just misheard Karl when he said one oh one. A

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Speaker 1: few days after Jim's trip to the library, the family

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Speaker 1: are watching a war film when a character playing a

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Speaker 1: German sergeant appears on the screen. The uniforms all wrong,

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Speaker 1: says Carl, out of the blue. He's got the badge

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Speaker 1: on the wrong side. Jim returns to the library the

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Speaker 1: following day, and sure enough, his son was right. As

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Speaker 1: Carl gets older, he seems only to become more convinced

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Speaker 1: of his other life. Of course, there are elements of

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Speaker 1: his personality that are distinct and his own. He also

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Speaker 1: enjoys many of the same things that any of the

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Speaker 1: other local kids his age are into, like spacehoppers, Middlesbrough

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Speaker 1: Football Club, and cartoons. But then there are the other

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Speaker 1: quirks that catch Fowl a little off guard. Sometimes they

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Speaker 1: are small things, like how particular Carl is about the

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Speaker 1: clothes he wears for a child his age, how the

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Speaker 1: collars always have to be pressed. Other times it's something

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Speaker 1: else entirely like. When Carl is around seven years old

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Speaker 1: and his friend Michael is over for dinner, Karl launches

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Speaker 1: into his story about how he died once before during

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Speaker 1: the Second World War. Val grows increasingly uncomfortable as Karl

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Speaker 1: describes how he bled to death and how he had

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Speaker 1: this strange feeling that he would die again before the

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Speaker 1: age of twenty five. He ends his story with a

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Speaker 1: description of what it was like to see Adolph Hitler

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Speaker 1: in person. Then he gets down from the table and

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Speaker 1: starts goose stepping around the kitchen. Michael bursts into laughter

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Speaker 1: until Val quietly reminds them to finish up their food.

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Speaker 1: With Karl remain and convinced of his supposedly extraordinary past life,

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Speaker 1: it begins to impact on his time at school. One

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Speaker 1: parent's evening, a teacher asks Valerie and Jim if everything

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Speaker 1: is all right at home? Why? Asks val The teacher

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Speaker 1: explains that Karl is becoming increasingly distracted in class. He

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Speaker 1: has strange eyes, she says, curiously. When I try to

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Speaker 1: talk to him about anything, it's as if he's staring

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Speaker 1: straight through me. There is also Karl's peculiar habit of

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Speaker 1: arriving at answers without fully understanding where the response has

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Speaker 1: come from. When asked to explain his reasoning, he would

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Speaker 1: say that there was no need to bother if he'd

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Speaker 1: already given the correct answer. Val and Jim can only

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Speaker 1: smile and nod along politely as they take it all in.

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Speaker 1: Over the next few years, Carl continues to detail a

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Speaker 1: vivid picture of a life lived somewhere else, in a

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Speaker 1: time and place unrecognizable from the concrete streets and industry

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Speaker 1: of nineteen seventies Middlesbrough. Karl comes to the understanding that

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Speaker 1: his name used to be Robert. He speaks of a

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Speaker 1: quaint village tucked away amid forested hills, and explains how

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Speaker 1: his father, Fritz, used to always make him laugh, and

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Speaker 1: how he taught him about all the flowers and trees

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Speaker 1: of the local woodlands. This Robert couldn't remember his mother's name,

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Speaker 1: only that she'd been quite large, with dark hair, and

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Speaker 1: that she wore glasses. But I'm your mother, Vow would say,

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Speaker 1: whenever Carl got too carried away, her voice gently breaking.

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Speaker 1: I know, Carl would reply, but she's my mother too.

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Speaker 1: According to Karl, in his past life, as Robert. He

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Speaker 1: would often have to do household chores. He had to

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Speaker 1: chop up wood and bring it home in a wheelbarrow

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Speaker 1: or else face the wrath of his mother, who bossed

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Speaker 1: him about with her glasses perched delicately on the end

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Speaker 1: of her nose. When she wasn't ordering him to chop wood,

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Speaker 1: she would be standing by the stove making a soup

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Speaker 1: dark red in color like nothing Val had ever made.

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Speaker 1: He had had brothers too, who also fought in the war,

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Speaker 1: including a younger brother who was apparently killed shortly after

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Speaker 1: Robert had supposedly been killed. It is strange when Karl

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Speaker 1: thinks about it, the way the pictures come to him

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Speaker 1: in moments like he's watching clips from a TV show,

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Speaker 1: moments like Robert's apparent enlistenment in the Luftwaffe. One minute,

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Speaker 1: he is a seven year old boy playing with toys

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Speaker 1: in his bedroom. The next he is apparently transported into

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Speaker 1: the mind of a nineteen year old who lives on

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Speaker 1: a kind of camp with lots of small huts lined

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Speaker 1: up in rows. The next moment, he's inside one of

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Speaker 1: the huts. It's lined with bunk beds. Then he's outside again,

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Speaker 1: watching grown ups collecting water from a pump. Another time,

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Speaker 1: he'll find himself putting bandages on others, as if playing

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Speaker 1: at first aid, or standing in a large hall surrounded

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Speaker 1: on all sides by row upon row of young men

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Speaker 1: in uniform. In this hall is a large framed picture

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Speaker 1: of a man he recognizes as Adolf Hitler. Together, he

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Speaker 1: and the other young men are stamping their feet and

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Speaker 1: raising their arms outstretched above their heads in that way,

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Speaker 1: with the palm held down and pointing forward at a

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Speaker 1: sharp angle. Valerie feels uneasy as Karl repeats the gesture

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Speaker 1: for his mother to hear that name spoken aloud by

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Speaker 1: her young son, when it had never been mentioned in

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Speaker 1: the home before, sends shivers down her spine. One morning,

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Speaker 1: a noddly subdued Karl tells his mother about a new

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Speaker 1: dream from the night before. It was nineteen forty two,

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Speaker 1: and he was Robbert again, who he now says was

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Speaker 1: twenty three years old, and he was sitting in what

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Speaker 1: seemed like the cockpit of a plane. He couldn't say

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Speaker 1: if he was flying it or not, but it was

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Speaker 1: shaking all over the place. The aircraft came down over

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Speaker 1: some buildings, then everything went black. When he woke again

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Speaker 1: in the plane. It was still falling, with the buildings

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Speaker 1: on the ground rushing up towards him, and in that moment,

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Speaker 1: Robert knew he was going to die. When the plane

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Speaker 1: finally crashed, it must have gone through a window, he thought,

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Speaker 1: because there was glass everywhere. He saw again that his

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Speaker 1: leg had been cut off, and he felt sad, but

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Speaker 1: it was a different sadness than anything he'd felt before.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't for himself, but someone else, someone Robert had

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Speaker 1: left behind in that moment, a young woman he'd wanted

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Speaker 1: to marry back home in his village. Valerie listens in

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Speaker 1: horror as Carl finishes the account by describing his final

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Speaker 1: moments bleeding to death alone in the plane. The following year,

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Speaker 1: at the age of nine, Carl Eden is interviewed by

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Speaker 1: Women's Own magazine after a local journalist caught wind of

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Speaker 1: his extraordinary claims and published a small piece in the

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Speaker 1: local paper later that year. The story even makes it

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Speaker 1: as far as Germany when it is picked up by

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Speaker 1: Berlin's Morgan Post. Inevitably, with the exposure comes ridicule at school.

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Speaker 1: Within days of the articles appearing, Karl's classmates begin calling

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Speaker 1: him Hitler and a Nazi and throw their arms up

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Speaker 1: in Nazi salutes whenever he walks by. Most days, Karl

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Speaker 1: returns home in tears from all the teasing. As the

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Speaker 1: attention becomes increasingly unbearable, the young Karl decides on the

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Speaker 1: only course of action he has available to him. He

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Speaker 1: stops talking about it. Unfortunately for Karl, the interest in

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Speaker 1: its case is only beginning to grow. It's some time

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Speaker 1: toward the end of nineteen eighty three when the woman's

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Speaker 1: own article finds its way to the desk of Professor

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Speaker 1: Ian Stevenson in Virginia, USA. At the time, the American

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Speaker 1: Canadian Stephenson was Carlson Professor of Psychiatry at the University

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Speaker 1: of Virginia School of Medicine. A fascinating but controversial figure.

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Speaker 1: For the past twenty five years, he's dedicated himself to

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Speaker 1: investigating the validity of so called reincarnation cases. He'd even

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Speaker 1: established a specific department, the University's Division of Perceptual Studies,

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Speaker 1: to better conduct his research. Despite much criticism from his peers,

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Speaker 1: Stephenson's dogged research ultimately earned him some begrudging respect in

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Speaker 1: the psychiatric community. Stevenson's interest in reincarnation sprang initially from

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Speaker 1: a fascination with how certain characteristic traits or unusual illnesses

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Speaker 1: often seemed to him incompatible with environmental or hereditary influences.

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Speaker 1: It suggested to him that perhaps there was a third

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Speaker 1: type of influence on character. Stephenson postulated that this might

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Speaker 1: be the result of a type of memory transfer between individuals.

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Speaker 1: One feature that occurred in many of Stephenson's case studies,

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Speaker 1: of which there were hundreds, was the appearance of birthmarks

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Speaker 1: or birth defects in places that held a deep significance

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Speaker 1: to the alleged past life. For example, in Reincarnation and Biology,

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Speaker 1: a Contribution to the Eteology of Birthmarks and birth Defects

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Speaker 1: from nineteen ninety seven, Stephenson recounts the story of a

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Speaker 1: young boy who became convinced that he'd shot himself in

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Speaker 1: a past life. The boy's recollections eventually led him to

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Speaker 1: a woman whose brother had indeed shot himself in the throat.

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Speaker 1: When Stephenson examined the boy, he found a birthmark on

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Speaker 1: his throat where the man's bullet was alleged to have entered.

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Speaker 1: Stevenson then suggested they checked for a mark where an

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Speaker 1: exit wound might be sure enough, when they pulled back

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Speaker 1: the hair on top of his head, they found a

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Speaker 1: birthmark there too. Stevenson is immediately fascinated by Carl, and

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Speaker 1: in particular the birthmark on his right leg. Although Stevenson

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Speaker 1: is unable to make the trip himself early in the

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Speaker 1: new year, he sends UK associate doctor Nicholas McLain rice

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Speaker 1: to interview Carl and his family. After analyzing the various

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Speaker 1: anecdotes and stories compiled by doctor Nicholas Stephenson concludes that

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Speaker 1: reincarnation was at least a plausible explanation for Carl's story.

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Speaker 1: By the age of thirteen, any lingering traits of so

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Speaker 1: called Robert, the mysterious Luftwaffe pilot whose memories Karl had

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Speaker 1: seemingly found in his head, have all but vanished. Time

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Speaker 1: goes by. At sixteen, Carl finishes school and takes up

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Speaker 1: a job with British Rail preparing freight trains for the

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Speaker 1: various industrial estates that line the banks of the River Tees.

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Speaker 1: Five years later, Carl agrees to one final interview, this

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Speaker 1: time with doctor Ian Stephenson. Determined to analyze Karl's story

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Speaker 1: for himself, the psychologist travels personally to Middlesbrough to meet

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Speaker 1: with him. The meeting proves disappointing for Stevenson when Karl

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Speaker 1: is unable to off for any greater insights into his

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Speaker 1: apparent past life. However, on another level, Stephenson is pleased

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Speaker 1: to find the young man happy and in love, having

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Speaker 1: just moved in with his girlfriend twelve months later, and

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Speaker 1: the couple welcome their first child into the world. When

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Speaker 1: Carl's proposal of marriage is accepted the following year, and

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Speaker 1: now with a second baby on the way, his life

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Speaker 1: seems finally to have truly become his own, and the

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Speaker 1: specter of the mysterious German Pilot has finally been laid

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Speaker 1: to rest. In the summer of nineteen ninety five, a

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Speaker 1: heat wave sweeps across the United Kingdom that stretches throughout

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Speaker 1: July and into August. On the evening of Wednesday, August second,

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Speaker 1: a heavy stillness hangs in the air when officers on

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Speaker 1: duty at Middlesbrough's South Bank Police station hear a car

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Speaker 1: screeching to a halt outside. They watch with some alarm

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Speaker 1: as the hul king frame of a young man well

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Speaker 1: over six feet tall burst through the front door. And

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Speaker 1: into the waiting area, his clothes covered in blood. He

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Speaker 1: got angry and came at me, says the man in

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Speaker 1: a state of shock. He identifies himself as Gary vinter As.

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Speaker 1: The twenty five year old Gary breathlessly explains he's just

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Speaker 1: come from Teeside, where he's been working the evening ship

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Speaker 1: at a train signal box. For some reason, he and

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Speaker 1: his colleague got into an argument. He can't remember exactly

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Speaker 1: what happened, only that when it was over, his colleague

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Speaker 1: was dead. Gary is immediately taken for questioning. Later, he

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Speaker 1: draws a map for the police to help locate the body,

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Speaker 1: and a squad car is promptly dispatched to investigate. Out

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Speaker 1: on the industrial fringes of Middlesbrough, the squad car takes

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Speaker 1: a left onto Teesdock Road and heads for the scrub

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Speaker 1: lands beyond. It's a haunting landscape of carved earth, slag

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Speaker 1: heaps and silently smoking chimneys. Pinpricks of red and green

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Speaker 1: lights hang like stars on the silhouettes of distant cranes.

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Speaker 1: Such locations can make you feel like you've stumbled upon

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Speaker 1: the very edges of the world. Sparse tapestries populated by

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Speaker 1: the strange breedings, as writer Robert McFarlane puts it, of

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Speaker 1: urban archaeology and those more organic elements of the natural

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Speaker 1: world that twist and grab wherever they can get a hold.

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Speaker 1: They almost miss it at first. The unassuming red bricked

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Speaker 1: building with the flat tarmac roof its perch just off

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Speaker 1: the road behind a short piece of rail track. It

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Speaker 1: branches off like a frayed nerve toward the myriad warehouses

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Speaker 1: and sidings that dot the land. To its left is

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Speaker 1: the small train preparer's cabin that Gary Vinter had mentioned

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Speaker 1: in his statement the place where the fight had broken out.

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Speaker 1: To the right, an electricity pylon towers above them, seeming

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Speaker 1: to mark the spot as a strange nexus point between

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Speaker 1: the old Dorman Long steel works just behind and the

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Speaker 1: dock yards way off in the distance. Hawlage trucks rattle

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Speaker 1: past in the dark. As the officers step out into

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Speaker 1: the warm night air tinged with the light chemical whiff

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Speaker 1: of heavy industry, a distant, gentle clanging can be heard,

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Speaker 1: carried on the wind from somewhere off. As they cross

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Speaker 1: the tracks and proceed into the small cabin on the left,

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Speaker 1: the door gives a slight creak as they push it aside.

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Speaker 1: Sweeping their torches across the space, they soon spot the

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Speaker 1: body of a man lying in a thick pool of

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Speaker 1: blood on the cabin floor. Some kind of implement still

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Speaker 1: protrudes from his body. The dead man has evidently bled

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Speaker 1: to death, and he is Carl Eden. Only later, with

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Speaker 1: the full extent of the brutal attack come to light.

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Speaker 1: Karl was stabbed thirty seven times with two knives. Gary

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Speaker 1: Vinter had grabbed the second after he thrust the other

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Speaker 1: with such intensity that it had broken in half. The

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Speaker 1: autopsy revealed that Karl had been stabbed broadly across the

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Speaker 1: entirety of his body, with most internal organs punctured. The

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Speaker 1: pathologist's findings seemed to contradict Vinter's initial claim that he

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Speaker 1: had acted in self defense, a fact agreed by the

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Speaker 1: jury at his trial. He was convicted of murder the

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Speaker 1: following year and sentenced to life in prison. Carl Eden

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Speaker 1: was laid to rest in Acklam Cemetery in Middlesbrough. Two

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Speaker 1: months later, his second daughter was born. Not only was

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Speaker 1: Karl's death a tragedy that wrought untold sorrow on his family,

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Speaker 1: it seemed also to finally put an end to any

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Speaker 1: speculation about whether he really did possess the memories of

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Speaker 1: a German airman who himself died young, apparently shot down

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Speaker 1: over England during the Second World War. But that was

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Speaker 1: by no means the end of Carl's story. For just

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Speaker 1: over two years after his death, an extraordinary discovery not

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Speaker 1: far from where Carl grew up will bring everything back

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Speaker 1: into shocking relief. So join us next week for the

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Speaker 1: third and final part of Unexplained, Season eight, episode twenty one,

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Speaker 1: East of Eden. This episode was written by Richard McLain smith.

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Speaker 1: Unexplained is an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard

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Speaker 1: McClain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music,

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Speaker 1: were also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The

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Speaker 1: book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You

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00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:57,480
Speaker 1: can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.

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Speaker 1: Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get

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Speaker 1: your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with

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Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on

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Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own

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Speaker 1: you'd like to share. You can find out more at

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Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast dot com and reach us online through Twitter

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