Gah, this is an awful and credulously reported story: Child’s Nightmares and Memories Prove Reincarnation. There is no proof there. The story is simple: ordinary child plays video games, draws lots of pictures of airplanes in dogfights and dropping bombs, and has a few night terrors, so the parents leap to the conclusion that he’s a reincarnated WWII pilot. When they contact a carrier crewman from the era, he conveniently provides more details to fill in the story, and soon enough, they’ve got a full blown delusion.

My favorite part? The kid is always signing his drawings as “James”, and they identify a pilot who died in a crash over Japan…whose name was James! Astonishing confirmation! He was signing his crude cartoons of airplanes with the name of a long-dead pilot!

By the way, the name the kid was born with is “James”.