THE BOY WHO LIVED TWICE

Video Releasing: Autumn 2025

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A two-year-old boy wakes up screaming, night after night, trapped in a nightmare he can’t escape. He cries out about a plane crash.  Flames engulfing the cockpit, smoke choking his lungs and the horrifying sensation of falling. And every time, the dream ends the same way: he can’t get out. He’s about to die.

But these aren’t just nightmares. The boy then begins to recall startling details about a life he’s never lived. He names aircraft, describes war zones and insists, again and again, that he was once someone else. A World War II pilot.

His name? James Huston.

This is the ‘Bizarre But True!’ story of ‘The Boy Who Lived Twice.’

It all began in 2000, when two-year-old James Leininger started showing an unusual fascination with aircraft. This wasn’t just an innocent childhood obsession, but an intense, almost unsettling knowledge of aviation. He would stare at model planes, carefully examining their details and soon began to talk about them with an uncanny familiarity.

Then came the nightmares. First they started suddenly, violent and terrifying. James would wake up screaming, thrashing around in his bed and shouting words no toddler should know. “Airplane crash! On fire! Can’t get out!” His parents, Bruce and Andrea Leininger, were unsettled and baffled. At first, they assumed he’d simply seen something frightening on the television, but as the weeks passed it became clear that something much stranger was happening to their child.

James soon began speaking about a very specific type of plane, one called a Corsair. He said it flew from a boat called the Natoma. His parents, who knew nothing about military history, brushed it off as a furtile childhood imagination. 

But the details kept coming…

The one day when he was asked who had piloted the plane, James simply replied, “Me.”

His parents were understandably disturbed, but Bruce, a pragmatic man, decided to investigate further himself. A simple online search led him to a shocking discovery: the USS Natoma Bay HAD been a real aircraft carrier in World War II. And even more astonishing, it had been stationed in the Pacific during the Battle of Iwo Jima, just as James had described.

Bruce’s curiosity turned to unease when James mentioned a name, Jack Larsen. He said Larsen had been there with him when he died. Determined to prove his son’s claims were just coincidence, Bruce began to search through old military records. He found that not only had the Natoma Bay existed, but that there had been a pilot named Jack Larsen who had, indeed, served aboard it…

By this point, James’s memories had become even more vivid. He began recalling specific details about his past life such as how his plane had been shot down, how it had been hit in the engine by a Japanese aircraft, how it had crashed into the ocean and quickly sunk. He even named a man, James Huston, Jr, a World War II fighter pilot who had died in 1945.

Bruce tracked down Huston’s family, including his sister, Anne Barron and sent her a letter explaining what James had been saying. When she responded, she confirmed that many of the details James had given them were accurate. The Corsair, the Natoma Bay, the way the plane had gone down, it all matched. And even stranger? The young James had spoken of a bust of George Washington and a model Corsair plane as if they belonged to him. Both were objects that had belonged to Lieutenant Huston.

At this point, the Leiningers weren’t the only ones taking notice. The case caught the attention of Dr. Jim Tucker, a psychologist at the University of Virginia who had spent years studying children claimed to have had past-life memories. Tucker, who had investigated over 2,500 similar cases, called James’s story one of the most compelling he’d ever seen.

“The child was so convincing in coming up with all the things that there was no way on Earth he could know,” said Anne Barron. Even hardened sceptics struggled to explain how a young boy from Louisiana could accurately recall obscure details about a long-dead pilot from Pennsylvania.

As the investigation continued, more details surfaced. James’s parents learned that Huston had died on the 3rd of March 1945, during a raid on Chichi-Jima, a small island in the Pacific. James had repeatedly spoken of being shot down near Iwo Jima and Chichi-Jima is located just a short distance away. When presented with old wartime photographs, James was able to identify people and locations with startling accuracy. He also provided a detail that even some historians had overlooked.  He claimed that Corsairs often had problems with their tyres upon landing. Later, researchers confirmed that this was in fact, a known issue among World War II pilots who had flown the aircraft.

Over time, James’s memories began to fade. By the time he was a teenager, the vivid recollections of his supposed past life had largely disappeared. But for those who’d witnessed his early years – the nightmares, the knowledge, the names, there was little doubt that something extraordinary had happened.

Of course, not everyone was convinced. Some researchers and sceptics have challenged the validity of James’s story, arguing that his memories could have been shaped by external influences. A critical analysis published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration suggested that James’s exposure to aviation museums, books and even subtle parental reinforcement could have contributed to his knowledge of World War II aircraft.

There were also questions about how the narrative evolved over time. Critics noted that James’s story had been documented after his parents had already begun investigating the details, raising the possibility that some of the information had been unintentionally influenced. Others pointed out inconsistencies between early reports and later versions of the story, suggesting that the memories may have been gradually shaped to fit the facts rather than the other way around.

But despite this scepticism, the case of James Leininger remains one of the most famous and well-documented reincarnation claims even to this day. His parents, who had initially dismissed the idea of past lives, became firm believers. They even wrote a book about their experiences, titled Soul Survivor, which was later featured in documentaries and television specials across the world.

So what really happened? Was James simply a highly imaginative and creative child who had absorbed more information than anyone had realised? Could his memories have been the result of unconscious suggestion and external exposure? Or was this really a rare case of a past life breaking through the veil of time..?

The truth remains elusive. But one thing is certain—James Leininger’s story continues to captivate believers and sceptics alike, leaving us with a haunting question: if death is truly the end, then how do we explain the boy who lived twice?

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