Introduction
In 2007, John took part in the UK ITV series ‘Have I Been Here Before?’ hosted by Phillip Schofield. In this series celebrities have a past life regression session with Hypnotherapist Andrea Foulkes. Their past life experiences are then investigated by Jules Hudson, a historian and archaeologist, to see if these accounts can be verified.
John Scot Barrowman is a Scottish American Actor and Presenter perhaps most famous for his role as Captain Jack Harkness in the BBC TV series Doctor Who and Torchwood, as well as Malcolm Merlyn in the Arrowverse (DC Comics).
Past Life Regression
Before the session John said he was nervous and excited. And when asked whether he believes in reincarnation he said, “I’m a believer because my mother is very spiritual and I’m spiritual in that sense that I believe there is an afterlife or a prior life that you can be involved in”.
During his past life regression he vividly sees a life as a 19 year old clown in a travelling circus in central Europe, and specifically Bucharest (now the capital of Romania), in 1817. Probably from a Romany (gypsy) background with the name Oliver Nostrovic his family would travel and perform. John was happy to be a clown, although his mother, father and brother were trapeze artists.
One event he experienced was his bother falling from the trapeze and being seriously hurt. As the clown it was his job to entertain and distract the crowd from the accident. But he needed to tend to his fallen brother and he became agitated when someone tries to stop him.
In a later experience, John has left the circus and the family is destitute. Forced to beg for food he turns to a life of crime to survive and feed his family. A lifestyle he guiltily admits that he likes even though it would have upset his family to know he was a thief. In a later experience John, as an older man, is in jail having stolen a bag full of money from a wealthy woman. While he initially got away, he was captured and his gypsy style wagon burned.
Some aspects of this past life are an echo of John’s current life with him being an entertainer and trying to make people laugh. And he said, “I have a very close knit family myself. I speak to my mother and father everyday”. Although he maintained he is not a thief, he does understand the thrill of getting away with something.
Investigation
The history of Bucharest and the region is a turbulent one. The Ottoman Empire appointed Greek administrators to run the town from the 18th century. A revolution initiated by Tudor Vladimirescu (a Romanian revolutionary hero) in 1821 led to the end of the rule of the Constantinople Greeks.
The city was wrested from Ottoman control and occupied at several intervals by the Habsburg monarchy (1716, 1737 and1789) and Imperial Russia (three times between 1768 and 1806). Finally, it was placed under Russian administration between 1828 and the 1857. Later, an Austrian garrison took possession after the Russian.
Jules Hudson’s was able to validate and verify most of the details that John described, including the details of the clown, the circus and the money he stole. Specifically the bag of money he stole seems to have been five rouble notes which were a distinctive blue colour.
Reflection
Talking about the past life regression and Jules’s research, he said, “I am actually quite stunned because I thought, you know, the one thing that probably would not be right would be the money”. He goes to talk about the vivid nature of the regression and says, “They were very vivid in my head… I remember looking down and seeing the outfit on myself. It was almost like I stepped out of myself. I remember feeling happy”. Finally, when asked if he had been here before he said, “I think I have. I mean, I believe it. And this kind of proves it”.