What an experience! (Scroll down for an UPDATE!!!)
This episode of Ghost Inside My Child includes two stories of children remembering a past life. One, my daughter remembering being killed when a B25 bomber crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945. The second, a very interesting story too, about a boy who remembered being in the military and his involvement with the massacre of Native Americans in the U.S.
Watch Lifetime Movie Network, LMN, for Ghost Inside My Child – Season 2 Episode 1. It’s the premiere for the second season of this show. (You can now watch this episode on YouTube)
More on the plane crash into the Empire State Building in 1945.
If you read in the comments of this article, viewers are wondering if Anne’s children are still alive. Claire remembered walking with children – they are young, around 5-10 years old at the time. She did wonder about them too.
Is there anyone out there that can help us do research? A photo of Anna May Gerlach (born Anna May Silvey circa 1905 in Sag Harbor, NY – parents were Charles and Rose Silvey. Husband deceased – William Gerlach? We only have one child’s name – Joan Mori Gerlach age 11.
UPDATE to this original post:
LOTS of people reached out with information on Anna Silvey Gerlach’s family. We have even heard from some of the relatives connected to Anna. She was well loved and cherished. According to her relatives, this Anna Silvey Gerlach did not die in that experience, however, her name is listed in the article.
Here is a Times Herald (Olean, New York) newspaper clipping from Brooklyn, New York dated Sunday, July 29, 1945. The article outlines the tragedy of the plane crash at the Empire State Building. On July 28, 1945, a B-25 Mitchell army bomber of the United States Air Force crashed into the north side of the Empire State Building in New York City, while flying in thick fog. The crash killed fourteen people (three crewmen and eleven people in the building), and an estimated twenty-four others were injured.
This plane crash, at the time we visited New York City for the recording of this show, was not mentioned at all in any of the historical information located in the Empire State Building. One of the people working there said that they removed all of this tragic plane wreck history after 9-11. He said, New York had had enough tragedy. Understandable.
Per Charles Apple, for the The Spokesman-Review: Lt. Col. William Smith’s 12-ton B-25 plowed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building at about 200 mph. The plane’s wings were sheared off, parts of them clinging to the gaping hole in the side of the building. Eight hundred gallons of aviation fuel poured out of the punctured tanks and down hallways and stairwells. Flames shot upward as far as the 86th floor observation deck.
There was one organization on the 79th floor hard at work that Saturday: The National Catholic Welfare Council. Nine women were instantly burned to death by flaming aviation fuel. One of the volunteers who survived, Catherine O’Connor, said:
“There were five or six seconds – I was tottering on my feet, trying to keep my balance – and three quarters of the office was instantaneously consumed in this sheet of flame.
“One man was standing inside the flame. I could see him. It was a co-worker, Joe Fountain. His whole body was on fire. I kept calling to him, ‘Come on, Joe; come on, Joe.’ He walked out of it.”
Fountain would die of his injuries four days later. One other man – the publicity officer for the Catholic charity – was killed when the force of the blast threw him out of a window.
HOWEVER…
According to a different relative of a different Anna Gerlach, she said: “The Anna Gerlach that died in the Empire State Building was my great aunt. My father’s aunt. Her sister was my grandmother. She was never married and Gerlach is her maiden name. She worked in the Empire State Building. She would’ve been using a typewriter.”
She continued, “My father was a very young boy when this tragedy happened. He was actually supposed to go visit her in her office that day in the Empire State Building. He had been wanting to go to see the view from the Empire State Building. Anna spoke to my grandmother, Maxima Gerlach Mattes, that morning and told them not to go that day because the weather wasn’t good and it was very overcast so the view wasn’t great. (Hence the plane crash).
I recall my father saying she was carrying a tin full of pennies that my father had been saving and she was going to buy him a statue of the Empire State building with that money for my dad. After she died, they found the tin in the remains of the crash and the pennies were all melted. My father was extremely close to her, and his eyes still swell up with tears when he talks about it.”
This new information lines up with my daughter’s memories. Previous to the crash day in that past life, she remembered holding hands with two little kids and walking down the street with them in New York City. She remembered the beautiful front doors of the Empire State Building. She knew she was in New York City. She remembered sitting at an office at a desk with an old style typewriter in front of her and lots of paperwork around her. She remembers a large part of a plane’s nose coming through the wall of the office she was in at the time. She remembered trying to run out the door and being in a stairwell – then no memories after that (which would be the moment of death).
Now, as an adult, my daughter is no longer interested in past life memories. The point of remembering a past life, at that time in her young life, was to help her heal from the fear of riding a plane. That did happen and she has been on many airplane rides since.
How past life regression can help you heal on a soul level has been my personal passion since 2004. If you would like to learn more about past life regression, you can find more on my YouTube channel or on my website. Read one of my books on past lives… with more on the way.