James Leininger

Overview

James Leininger was born on 10 April 1998 in San Mateo, California, and grew up in Texas and Louisiana.¹ At 22 months he was transfixed by the Second World War aircraft at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum near Dallas. Within months he was slamming toy planes into the coffee table, saying ‘airplane crash on fire’, and having violent nightmares several times a week, kicking his legs in the air and screaming that the little man could not get out.¹⁶

In August 2000, aged just over two, he acted out the dream while awake and told his parents, Bruce and Andrea, that the little man was himself and that the Japanese had shot his plane down. Over the next weeks he said he had flown a Corsair off a boat called ‘Natoma’, that his name was James, and that another pilot, Jack Larsen, was there. In November he pointed to a photograph of Iwo Jima and said his plane had been shot down there.⁴⁶

Identification

Bruce, a Christian who had dismissed the idea of past lives, began searching. Dated printouts show that on 27 August 2000 he found the wartime escort carrier USS Natoma Bay, and on 16 October searched a list of American war dead for Jack Larsen. A Natoma Bay veteran he reached in December remembered a pilot of that name. In 2002 the family were filmed for Strange Mysteries, an ABC pilot that never aired, and the tape records several of James’s statements, mostly as his parents reported them, from before anyone was identified.¹⁶

At a Natoma Bay reunion in September 2002 Bruce learned that Jack Larsen was alive and that only one of its pilots had died in the Iwo Jima operation: James McCready Huston Jr, aged 21. On 3 March 1945, during a strike on shipping at Chichi Jima, north of Iwo Jima, Huston’s plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashed into the water; the action report’s chart shows Larsen flying beside him. In 2003 four airmen from another carrier told Bruce they had seen Huston’s plane hit in the engine and burst into flames.¹⁴⁶

Investigation

Jim B Tucker of the University of Virginia, also interviewed for the program, saw the Strange Mysteries tape and in 2004 asked to study the case, but the Leiningers held off meeting him until their book, Soul Survivor, came out in 2009.²⁶ In 2010 he interviewed the parents, James and Andrea’s sister, and went through Bruce’s records. His 2016 report focused on what was documented before Huston was identified, all of it correct or partly correct for Huston. Much else rests on the parents’ memory, as Andrea’s notes had been lost or thrown away, and Huston’s sister Anne, by then 91, could confirm little for him. Tucker also saw it as a weakness that James’s own father had identified Huston.¹

Statements and behaviour

James signed his drawings of air battles ‘James 3’, saying he was the third James; Huston was a junior.¹ In the drawings he called Japanese fighters ‘Zekes’ and bombers ‘Bettys’, and at about two he had told his mother that the ‘bomb’ under a toy plane was a drop tank. Not everything fitted: Huston was flying an FM-2 Wildcat, not a Corsair, when he died, though he had earlier test-flown Corsairs and was photographed with them.⁴⁶

He named his G.I. Joe dolls Billie, Leon and Walter, and in late 2003 said they were the men who met him in heaven. Three of Huston’s squadron-mates who died before him were Billie Peeler, Leon Conner and Walter Devlin, with hair colours matching the dolls’; the first two dolls were named before Huston was identified, the third after.⁴⁶

Later statements rest on the parents’ testimony. James said Huston had sisters called Annie and ‘Roof’ and an alcoholic father, which Anne confirmed to Andrea. He named a veteran, Bob Greenwalt, by his voice, knew that Natoma Bay had a five-inch gun on the fantail, and corrected a television narrator who called a Japanese fighter a Zero. He also said he had chosen his parents after seeing them dine on the beach at ‘the big pink hotel’ in Hawaii, where they had stayed before he was born.⁴⁶

Tucker's assessment

Tucker judged fraud implausible: the parents had little to gain, others had heard James talk of the war, and in 2002 they passed up the chance to present a named pilot on television. Fantasy, he thought, could not explain the repeated nightmares and crash play, which looked like post-traumatic play, nor chance the combination of Natoma, Jack Larsen and the manner of the crash. The museum’s Corsair had crashed in 1999, months before James’s visit, and the only link Tucker found between the families was that Huston’s sister lived about 30 miles from James’s birthplace. He concluded that reincarnation deserved serious consideration.¹⁶

Debate

Early skeptics assumed that James had seen a Corsair at the museum and been led by Carol Bowman, whose book on children’s past-life memories Andrea had read.⁵ Tucker found that no Corsair was on display at the time,⁶ and Matlock showed that Bowman met James only once, briefly, and had simply advised by email letting him talk about the memories by day. Matlock also dated James’s first screaming nightmare to August 1999, six months before the museum visit.⁴

In 2021 the philosopher Michael Sudduth published a long critique questioning what James had said and when, since he did not trust the parents as witnesses; he argued that the story had changed over time to fit new findings and that James could have picked up his knowledge from the museum gift shop and a Blue Angels video he watched constantly.³ In the exchange that followed, Tucker held that the central question was whether James’s account matched Huston’s death, while Sudduth stressed that no list of James’s statements had been made before Huston was identified and that the 2002 tape recorded only what the parents said James had said.⁷⁸⁹

Matlock agreed that no list existed but argued that Bruce’s dated searches show when James named Natoma and Jack Larsen. His first paper built a timeline from dated emails, printouts and an unpublished family chronology.⁴ His second counted 38 statements: 32 correct, one partly correct, two wrong (the Corsair, and Iwo Jima as the crash site) and three unverified, 12 of them documented before identification. None, he found, could be traced to the gift shop or the video, which he thought more likely stirred memories than supplied them, and he drew the lesson that case reports need dated timelines.⁷

Later life

After Bowman’s advice the nightmares grew rarer, and by 2005 they no longer returned on the anniversary of Huston’s death. In 2006, on a trip to Japan for television, the family attended a memorial on Chichi Jima, where James said he recognized the direction the planes had come in from, and scattered flowers near where Huston went down. A drawing he made on the way home, signed simply ‘James’, was his last.⁴ He reported no memories to Tucker in 2010, and at 17 became an Eagle Scout.¹