Speaker 1: You're listening to Unexplained, Season eight, episode twenty one, East
Speaker 1: of Eden, Part two. From the moment he arrives Carl
Speaker 1: Eden's mother, Val senses there is something a little different
Speaker 1: about him. There are the physical differences, first and foremost.
Speaker 1: Both Karl's brother and sister have dark hair and brown eyes.
Speaker 1: Karl's eyes are blue and his hair strawberry blonde. Their
Speaker 1: skin was also a little darker and hand easily, whereas
Speaker 1: KRL's is fair and pale. But there's something else too,
Speaker 1: the sense that Carl never quite seems able to relax.
Speaker 1: One night, shortly after Karl's second birthday, Val wakes to
Speaker 1: the sound of screaming coming from the other end of
Speaker 1: the house. Racing to Karl's room, she finds the young
Speaker 1: boy sitting up crying in his bed as he struggles
Speaker 1: to explain himself with his limited words to the confused
Speaker 1: and concerned Val. He seems to be saying something about
Speaker 1: falling from the sky and that his leg is missing.
Speaker 1: When she finally manages to calm him down, he attempts
Speaker 1: to explain his dream in more detail. He was flying
Speaker 1: through the sky, he says, in some sort of plane.
Speaker 1: It was on fire, and he couldn't get out. Then
Speaker 1: it fell to the ground, leaving Karl feeling that not
Speaker 1: only had he died, but that he was also missing
Speaker 1: his leg. VAL's heart breaks at the sight of her son,
Speaker 1: sobbing uncle controllably with terror in his eyes. She hugs
Speaker 1: him tightly and rubs his leg to show him he
Speaker 1: hasn't lost it at all. It was just a dream,
Speaker 1: she says, a horrible dream. Despite her reassurances, Val and Jim,
Speaker 1: Karl's father, can't help but be disturbed by the strangeness
Speaker 1: of their son's nightmare, wondering how it is that a
Speaker 1: toddler can recount such vivid and chilling details. But Karl's
Speaker 1: peculiar visions are soon forgotten and disappear into the background
Speaker 1: noise of the busy family home. That is until Val
Speaker 1: comes across Karl one morning a few months later. Playing
Speaker 1: on his own with a toy aeroplane, Karl notices his
Speaker 1: mother and looks up to greet her. I died before,
Speaker 1: he says, my plane crashed straight through a window. Val
Speaker 1: stares in confusion at the boy, Unsure what to say.
Speaker 1: She tells him to forget about the dream. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't a dream, he says, turning back to play with
Speaker 1: his toy plane. It really happened. As the months go by,
Speaker 1: Val and Jim are surprised to find that not only
Speaker 1: does Carl refuse to forget the strange vision, he seemingly
Speaker 1: begins to remember more. One of our engines ran out,
Speaker 1: he would say, and after we crashed, I opened a
Speaker 1: hatch to try and escape, but one of my legs
Speaker 1: was gone and I bled to death. Jim and Val
Speaker 1: have no intention of indulging their young son's peculiar fantasy,
Speaker 1: but then he tells them something else. According to the
Speaker 1: young Carl, he is convinced that he has been alive before.
Speaker 1: He was a German pilot during the war, he says,
Speaker 1: who crashed while on a bombing mission over England. One evening,
Speaker 1: Foul notices Karl's birthmark, the one just below the groin
Speaker 1: on his right leg. Remembering what he said about losing
Speaker 1: his leg in the dream, she asks him again which
Speaker 1: one it was? My right one? He replies. Throughout his
Speaker 1: early childhood, Foul often found Karl beavering away on joining
Speaker 1: the dots or scriveling across the patterns of a coloring book,
Speaker 1: and soon he was drawing his own shapes and patterns.
Speaker 1: One morning, Foul notices he's been working on one particular
Speaker 1: picture for some time. She asks if she can take
Speaker 1: a look. Karl leans back with a smile. As Val
Speaker 1: pulls the picture closer. She is amazed by how it looks,
Speaker 1: not like the usual infantile pictures you might expect from
Speaker 1: a five year old, but she can't quite make out
Speaker 1: what the images are exactly. They're my Air Force badges,
Speaker 1: says Karl. Looking at it again, Val sees it. There's
Speaker 1: a badge with a bird, which he identifies as an eagle,
Speaker 1: its wings drawn laterally on the side. Before Karl can
Speaker 1: explain the next symbol, Val realizes with a jolt what
Speaker 1: it is. It's a swastika. Perhaps even more extraordinary is
Speaker 1: the picture that Jim finds in Carl's bedroom just after
Speaker 1: his sixth birthday. It too looks odd from a distance,
Speaker 1: and it's only when Jim turns the picture round that
Speaker 1: he realizes what it is. The cockpit of a plane,
Speaker 1: complete with all the gauges and instruments, even the levers.
Speaker 1: Jim asks Karl if he drew the picture, to which
Speaker 1: he replies yes, before pointing out the red foot pedal
Speaker 1: he detailed at the bottom. He says it was used
Speaker 1: to drop the bombs. As the boy continues to explain
Speaker 1: in a strangely casual tone, the picture is of a
Speaker 1: Mesherschmidt bomber one O one, just like the one he
Speaker 1: flew in the war. Despite Karl's increasingly detailed apparent recollections
Speaker 1: of a past life, Jim is unconvinced. Clearly Karl is
Speaker 1: just playing some kind of game. After all, he knew
Speaker 1: the mesher Schmidt was a fighter plane, not a bomber.
Speaker 1: So together with Val, he decides to put Karl to
Speaker 1: the test. What uniform did you wear? They ask, to
Speaker 1: which Karl replies without hesitation, gray trousers tucked into leather
Speaker 1: boots and a black jacket. A few days later, Jim
Speaker 1: travels to the local library with Karl's picture tucked under
Speaker 1: his arm. After being directed to the history section, he
Speaker 1: proceeds to pull out whatever books he can find on
Speaker 1: the German air forces of the Second World War. Moments later,
Speaker 1: Jim is sitting with the books laid out in front
Speaker 1: of him in complete shock. It is all there, everything
Speaker 1: from the picture of the cockpit, the badges, the description
Speaker 1: of the uniform. Everything is exactly as Karl had described,
Speaker 1: even the plane there had been a Meshishchmidt bomber. After all,
Speaker 1: it carried the number one one zero. But perhaps he'd
Speaker 1: just misheard Karl when he said one oh one. A
Speaker 1: few days after Jim's trip to the library, the family
Speaker 1: are watching a war film when a character playing a
Speaker 1: German sergeant appears on the screen. The uniforms all wrong,
Speaker 1: says Carl, out of the blue. He's got the badge
Speaker 1: on the wrong side. Jim returns to the library the
Speaker 1: following day, and sure enough, his son was right. As
Speaker 1: Carl gets older, he seems only to become more convinced
Speaker 1: of his other life. Of course, there are elements of
Speaker 1: his personality that are distinct and his own. He also
Speaker 1: enjoys many of the same things that any of the
Speaker 1: other local kids his age are into, like spacehoppers, Middlesbrough
Speaker 1: Football Club, and cartoons. But then there are the other
Speaker 1: quirks that catch Fowl a little off guard. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: are small things, like how particular Carl is about the
Speaker 1: clothes he wears for a child his age, how the
Speaker 1: collars always have to be pressed. Other times it's something
Speaker 1: else entirely like. When Carl is around seven years old
Speaker 1: and his friend Michael is over for dinner, Karl launches
Speaker 1: into his story about how he died once before during
Speaker 1: the Second World War. Val grows increasingly uncomfortable as Karl
Speaker 1: describes how he bled to death and how he had
Speaker 1: this strange feeling that he would die again before the
Speaker 1: age of twenty five. He ends his story with a
Speaker 1: description of what it was like to see Adolph Hitler
Speaker 1: in person. Then he gets down from the table and
Speaker 1: starts goose stepping around the kitchen. Michael bursts into laughter
Speaker 1: until Val quietly reminds them to finish up their food.
Speaker 1: With Karl remain and convinced of his supposedly extraordinary past life,
Speaker 1: it begins to impact on his time at school. One
Speaker 1: parent's evening, a teacher asks Valerie and Jim if everything
Speaker 1: is all right at home? Why? Asks val The teacher
Speaker 1: explains that Karl is becoming increasingly distracted in class. He
Speaker 1: has strange eyes, she says, curiously. When I try to
Speaker 1: talk to him about anything, it's as if he's staring
Speaker 1: straight through me. There is also Karl's peculiar habit of
Speaker 1: arriving at answers without fully understanding where the response has
Speaker 1: come from. When asked to explain his reasoning, he would
Speaker 1: say that there was no need to bother if he'd
Speaker 1: already given the correct answer. Val and Jim can only
Speaker 1: smile and nod along politely as they take it all in.
Speaker 1: Over the next few years, Carl continues to detail a
Speaker 1: vivid picture of a life lived somewhere else, in a
Speaker 1: time and place unrecognizable from the concrete streets and industry
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventies Middlesbrough. Karl comes to the understanding that
Speaker 1: his name used to be Robert. He speaks of a
Speaker 1: quaint village tucked away amid forested hills, and explains how
Speaker 1: his father, Fritz, used to always make him laugh, and
Speaker 1: how he taught him about all the flowers and trees
Speaker 1: of the local woodlands. This Robert couldn't remember his mother's name,
Speaker 1: only that she'd been quite large, with dark hair, and
Speaker 1: that she wore glasses. But I'm your mother, Vow would say,
Speaker 1: whenever Carl got too carried away, her voice gently breaking.
Speaker 1: I know, Carl would reply, but she's my mother too.
Speaker 1: According to Karl, in his past life, as Robert. He
Speaker 1: would often have to do household chores. He had to
Speaker 1: chop up wood and bring it home in a wheelbarrow
Speaker 1: or else face the wrath of his mother, who bossed
Speaker 1: him about with her glasses perched delicately on the end
Speaker 1: of her nose. When she wasn't ordering him to chop wood,
Speaker 1: she would be standing by the stove making a soup
Speaker 1: dark red in color like nothing Val had ever made.
Speaker 1: He had had brothers too, who also fought in the war,
Speaker 1: including a younger brother who was apparently killed shortly after
Speaker 1: Robert had supposedly been killed. It is strange when Karl
Speaker 1: thinks about it, the way the pictures come to him
Speaker 1: in moments like he's watching clips from a TV show,
Speaker 1: moments like Robert's apparent enlistenment in the Luftwaffe. One minute,
Speaker 1: he is a seven year old boy playing with toys
Speaker 1: in his bedroom. The next he is apparently transported into
Speaker 1: the mind of a nineteen year old who lives on
Speaker 1: a kind of camp with lots of small huts lined
Speaker 1: up in rows. The next moment, he's inside one of
Speaker 1: the huts. It's lined with bunk beds. Then he's outside again,
Speaker 1: watching grown ups collecting water from a pump. Another time,
Speaker 1: he'll find himself putting bandages on others, as if playing
Speaker 1: at first aid, or standing in a large hall surrounded
Speaker 1: on all sides by row upon row of young men
Speaker 1: in uniform. In this hall is a large framed picture
Speaker 1: of a man he recognizes as Adolf Hitler. Together, he
Speaker 1: and the other young men are stamping their feet and
Speaker 1: raising their arms outstretched above their heads in that way,
Speaker 1: with the palm held down and pointing forward at a
Speaker 1: sharp angle. Valerie feels uneasy as Karl repeats the gesture
Speaker 1: for his mother to hear that name spoken aloud by
Speaker 1: her young son, when it had never been mentioned in
Speaker 1: the home before, sends shivers down her spine. One morning,
Speaker 1: a noddly subdued Karl tells his mother about a new
Speaker 1: dream from the night before. It was nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: and he was Robbert again, who he now says was
Speaker 1: twenty three years old, and he was sitting in what
Speaker 1: seemed like the cockpit of a plane. He couldn't say
Speaker 1: if he was flying it or not, but it was
Speaker 1: shaking all over the place. The aircraft came down over
Speaker 1: some buildings, then everything went black. When he woke again
Speaker 1: in the plane. It was still falling, with the buildings
Speaker 1: on the ground rushing up towards him, and in that moment,
Speaker 1: Robert knew he was going to die. When the plane
Speaker 1: finally crashed, it must have gone through a window, he thought,
Speaker 1: because there was glass everywhere. He saw again that his
Speaker 1: leg had been cut off, and he felt sad, but
Speaker 1: it was a different sadness than anything he'd felt before.
Speaker 1: It wasn't for himself, but someone else, someone Robert had
Speaker 1: left behind in that moment, a young woman he'd wanted
Speaker 1: to marry back home in his village. Valerie listens in
Speaker 1: horror as Carl finishes the account by describing his final
Speaker 1: moments bleeding to death alone in the plane. The following year,
Speaker 1: at the age of nine, Carl Eden is interviewed by
Speaker 1: Women's Own magazine after a local journalist caught wind of
Speaker 1: his extraordinary claims and published a small piece in the
Speaker 1: local paper later that year. The story even makes it
Speaker 1: as far as Germany when it is picked up by
Speaker 1: Berlin's Morgan Post. Inevitably, with the exposure comes ridicule at school.
Speaker 1: Within days of the articles appearing, Karl's classmates begin calling
Speaker 1: him Hitler and a Nazi and throw their arms up
Speaker 1: in Nazi salutes whenever he walks by. Most days, Karl
Speaker 1: returns home in tears from all the teasing. As the
Speaker 1: attention becomes increasingly unbearable, the young Karl decides on the
Speaker 1: only course of action he has available to him. He
Speaker 1: stops talking about it. Unfortunately for Karl, the interest in
Speaker 1: its case is only beginning to grow. It's some time
Speaker 1: toward the end of nineteen eighty three when the woman's
Speaker 1: own article finds its way to the desk of Professor
Speaker 1: Ian Stevenson in Virginia, USA. At the time, the American
Speaker 1: Canadian Stephenson was Carlson Professor of Psychiatry at the University
Speaker 1: of Virginia School of Medicine. A fascinating but controversial figure.
Speaker 1: For the past twenty five years, he's dedicated himself to
Speaker 1: investigating the validity of so called reincarnation cases. He'd even
Speaker 1: established a specific department, the University's Division of Perceptual Studies,
Speaker 1: to better conduct his research. Despite much criticism from his peers,
Speaker 1: Stephenson's dogged research ultimately earned him some begrudging respect in
Speaker 1: the psychiatric community. Stevenson's interest in reincarnation sprang initially from
Speaker 1: a fascination with how certain characteristic traits or unusual illnesses
Speaker 1: often seemed to him incompatible with environmental or hereditary influences.
Speaker 1: It suggested to him that perhaps there was a third
Speaker 1: type of influence on character. Stephenson postulated that this might
Speaker 1: be the result of a type of memory transfer between individuals.
Speaker 1: One feature that occurred in many of Stephenson's case studies,
Speaker 1: of which there were hundreds, was the appearance of birthmarks
Speaker 1: or birth defects in places that held a deep significance
Speaker 1: to the alleged past life. For example, in Reincarnation and Biology,
Speaker 1: a Contribution to the Eteology of Birthmarks and birth Defects
Speaker 1: from nineteen ninety seven, Stephenson recounts the story of a
Speaker 1: young boy who became convinced that he'd shot himself in
Speaker 1: a past life. The boy's recollections eventually led him to
Speaker 1: a woman whose brother had indeed shot himself in the throat.
Speaker 1: When Stephenson examined the boy, he found a birthmark on
Speaker 1: his throat where the man's bullet was alleged to have entered.
Speaker 1: Stevenson then suggested they checked for a mark where an
Speaker 1: exit wound might be sure enough, when they pulled back
Speaker 1: the hair on top of his head, they found a
Speaker 1: birthmark there too. Stevenson is immediately fascinated by Carl, and
Speaker 1: in particular the birthmark on his right leg. Although Stevenson
Speaker 1: is unable to make the trip himself early in the
Speaker 1: new year, he sends UK associate doctor Nicholas McLain rice
Speaker 1: to interview Carl and his family. After analyzing the various
Speaker 1: anecdotes and stories compiled by doctor Nicholas Stephenson concludes that
Speaker 1: reincarnation was at least a plausible explanation for Carl's story.
Speaker 1: By the age of thirteen, any lingering traits of so
Speaker 1: called Robert, the mysterious Luftwaffe pilot whose memories Karl had
Speaker 1: seemingly found in his head, have all but vanished. Time
Speaker 1: goes by. At sixteen, Carl finishes school and takes up
Speaker 1: a job with British Rail preparing freight trains for the
Speaker 1: various industrial estates that line the banks of the River Tees.
Speaker 1: Five years later, Carl agrees to one final interview, this
Speaker 1: time with doctor Ian Stephenson. Determined to analyze Karl's story
Speaker 1: for himself, the psychologist travels personally to Middlesbrough to meet
Speaker 1: with him. The meeting proves disappointing for Stevenson when Karl
Speaker 1: is unable to off for any greater insights into his
Speaker 1: apparent past life. However, on another level, Stephenson is pleased
Speaker 1: to find the young man happy and in love, having
Speaker 1: just moved in with his girlfriend twelve months later, and
Speaker 1: the couple welcome their first child into the world. When
Speaker 1: Carl's proposal of marriage is accepted the following year, and
Speaker 1: now with a second baby on the way, his life
Speaker 1: seems finally to have truly become his own, and the
Speaker 1: specter of the mysterious German Pilot has finally been laid
Speaker 1: to rest. In the summer of nineteen ninety five, a
Speaker 1: heat wave sweeps across the United Kingdom that stretches throughout
Speaker 1: July and into August. On the evening of Wednesday, August second,
Speaker 1: a heavy stillness hangs in the air when officers on
Speaker 1: duty at Middlesbrough's South Bank Police station hear a car
Speaker 1: screeching to a halt outside. They watch with some alarm
Speaker 1: as the hul king frame of a young man well
Speaker 1: over six feet tall burst through the front door. And
Speaker 1: into the waiting area, his clothes covered in blood. He
Speaker 1: got angry and came at me, says the man in
Speaker 1: a state of shock. He identifies himself as Gary vinter As.
Speaker 1: The twenty five year old Gary breathlessly explains he's just
Speaker 1: come from Teeside, where he's been working the evening ship
Speaker 1: at a train signal box. For some reason, he and
Speaker 1: his colleague got into an argument. He can't remember exactly
Speaker 1: what happened, only that when it was over, his colleague
Speaker 1: was dead. Gary is immediately taken for questioning. Later, he
Speaker 1: draws a map for the police to help locate the body,
Speaker 1: and a squad car is promptly dispatched to investigate. Out
Speaker 1: on the industrial fringes of Middlesbrough, the squad car takes
Speaker 1: a left onto Teesdock Road and heads for the scrub
Speaker 1: lands beyond. It's a haunting landscape of carved earth, slag
Speaker 1: heaps and silently smoking chimneys. Pinpricks of red and green
Speaker 1: lights hang like stars on the silhouettes of distant cranes.
Speaker 1: Such locations can make you feel like you've stumbled upon
Speaker 1: the very edges of the world. Sparse tapestries populated by
Speaker 1: the strange breedings, as writer Robert McFarlane puts it, of
Speaker 1: urban archaeology and those more organic elements of the natural
Speaker 1: world that twist and grab wherever they can get a hold.
Speaker 1: They almost miss it at first. The unassuming red bricked
Speaker 1: building with the flat tarmac roof its perch just off
Speaker 1: the road behind a short piece of rail track. It
Speaker 1: branches off like a frayed nerve toward the myriad warehouses
Speaker 1: and sidings that dot the land. To its left is
Speaker 1: the small train preparer's cabin that Gary Vinter had mentioned
Speaker 1: in his statement the place where the fight had broken out.
Speaker 1: To the right, an electricity pylon towers above them, seeming
Speaker 1: to mark the spot as a strange nexus point between
Speaker 1: the old Dorman Long steel works just behind and the
Speaker 1: dock yards way off in the distance. Hawlage trucks rattle
Speaker 1: past in the dark. As the officers step out into
Speaker 1: the warm night air tinged with the light chemical whiff
Speaker 1: of heavy industry, a distant, gentle clanging can be heard,
Speaker 1: carried on the wind from somewhere off. As they cross
Speaker 1: the tracks and proceed into the small cabin on the left,
Speaker 1: the door gives a slight creak as they push it aside.
Speaker 1: Sweeping their torches across the space, they soon spot the
Speaker 1: body of a man lying in a thick pool of
Speaker 1: blood on the cabin floor. Some kind of implement still
Speaker 1: protrudes from his body. The dead man has evidently bled
Speaker 1: to death, and he is Carl Eden. Only later, with
Speaker 1: the full extent of the brutal attack come to light.
Speaker 1: Karl was stabbed thirty seven times with two knives. Gary
Speaker 1: Vinter had grabbed the second after he thrust the other
Speaker 1: with such intensity that it had broken in half. The
Speaker 1: autopsy revealed that Karl had been stabbed broadly across the
Speaker 1: entirety of his body, with most internal organs punctured. The
Speaker 1: pathologist's findings seemed to contradict Vinter's initial claim that he
Speaker 1: had acted in self defense, a fact agreed by the
Speaker 1: jury at his trial. He was convicted of murder the
Speaker 1: following year and sentenced to life in prison. Carl Eden
Speaker 1: was laid to rest in Acklam Cemetery in Middlesbrough. Two
Speaker 1: months later, his second daughter was born. Not only was
Speaker 1: Karl's death a tragedy that wrought untold sorrow on his family,
Speaker 1: it seemed also to finally put an end to any
Speaker 1: speculation about whether he really did possess the memories of
Speaker 1: a German airman who himself died young, apparently shot down
Speaker 1: over England during the Second World War. But that was
Speaker 1: by no means the end of Carl's story. For just
Speaker 1: over two years after his death, an extraordinary discovery not
Speaker 1: far from where Carl grew up will bring everything back
Speaker 1: into shocking relief. So join us next week for the
Speaker 1: third and final part of Unexplained, Season eight, episode twenty one,
Speaker 1: East of Eden. This episode was written by Richard McLain smith.
Speaker 1: Unexplained is an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard
Speaker 1: McClain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music,
Speaker 1: were also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The
Speaker 1: book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You
Speaker 1: can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
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