Upon arriving at the family’s home, the team was shown into the kitchen. A child, three years old, the youngest of four home-schooled siblings, peeked out from behind his mother’s legs and looked up, blushing. She put on a baggy Minnie Mouse shirt and walked among her grandparents to the banquet, watching everyone take their seats around the dinner table.
“Let’s start over,” Dr. Tucker said after the baby’s 28-year-old mother, Misty, signed the paperwork. “It all started with a puzzle piece?”
A few months ago, mother and child were looking at a wooden puzzle of the United States, in which each state was represented by a cartoon of a person or thing. Misty’s daughter excitedly pointed to a grainy piece representing Illinois, with an abstract illustration of Abraham Lincoln.
“It’s Pom,” said her daughter. “He doesn’t have a hat.”
It was indeed a drawing of Abraham Lincoln without a hat, but more importantly, there was no name under the picture to indicate who he was. After weeks of endless talk about the “Pom” being hurt and bleeding after being taken to a very small bed – which the family began to think might have something to do with Lincoln’s murder – they He began to reflect that his daughter was there for him. historical moment. This was despite the fact that the family had no prior belief in reincarnation, nor any particular interest in Lincoln.
On the drive to Amherst, Dr. Tucker admitted his reluctance to take on this particular case—or any case involving a famous person. “If you say your child was Babe Ruth, for example, there’s going to be a lot of information online,” he said. “When we get those cases, usually the parents are involved. Still, it’s a little weird coming out of a three-year-old’s mouth. Now, if she had said her daughter was Lincoln, I might not have made the trip.
Lately, Dr. Tucker has been giving picture tests to children. “Where we think we know the person they’re talking about, we’ll show them a picture from that life, and then show them another picture—a dummy picture—from somewhere else, that To see if they can pick the right picture,” he said. “You have to have some pictures for it to make sense. I had one where the kid remembered dying in Vietnam. I showed him eight pairs of pictures and he didn’t make a choice on one pair. But the rest were six out of six, so, you know, it makes you think, but this girl is so young that I don’t think we can.