The inner life
Bridey Murphy
Direct answer
Bridey Murphy is the name of the nineteenth-century Irishwoman whose life Virginia Tighe, a housewife in Colorado, described under hypnosis in sessions that began in 1952.
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At a glance
- Also called
- virginia tighe
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Past-Life Regression, Cryptomnesia, Past Life, Reincarnation
Bridey Murphy is the name of the nineteenth-century Irishwoman whose life Virginia Tighe, a housewife in Colorado, described under hypnosis in sessions that began in 1952.
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Who was Bridey Murphy?
Morey Bernstein was a businessman in Pueblo, Colorado, and an amateur hypnotist. In November 1952 he took an acquaintance, Virginia Tighe, back through her childhood under hypnosis and then asked her to go further. She began to speak with an Irish accent as Bridget, or Bridey, Murphy, born in Cork in 1798, who married a barrister, moved to Belfast and died after a fall in 1864. Over six recorded sessions she supplied names, songs, shops and turns of phrase.
Bernstein's book made her a sensation. It also became the standard example of how such a case can be explained without rebirth. No record of Bridey or her husband was found in Ireland, and reporters argued that the material could be traced to people and stories from Tighe's own early years in Chicago.
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What sets Bridey Murphy apart
The case turned on things that could be looked up, and that was new. Tighe named a Belfast grocer, a rope works, a type of coin and dances of the period, and reporters and librarians on two continents set about checking. Some items matched Irish life of the time, others were anachronisms, and the church and civil records that should have shown a barrister's wife were silent. Critics added that in any such session the hypnotist's questions help to shape the tale that is told.
- Subject: Virginia Tighe (1923 to 1995), called Ruth Simmons in the book
- Hypnotist: Morey Bernstein, a businessman of Pueblo, Colorado
- Sessions: six, recorded on tape, from November 1952 into 1953
- Claimed life: Bridget Murphy, Cork and Belfast, 1798 to 1864
- Book: by Morey Bernstein, published by Doubleday in January 1956
- Rebuttal: Chicago American series naming a neighbour, Bridie Murphy Corkell
Often mistaken for something else: The cases Ian Stevenson gathered are spontaneous statements by small children about recent lives nearby; Bridey Murphy came from an adult under hypnosis and lay a century and an ocean away.
The story behind Bridey Murphy
The Search for Bridey Murphy was published in January 1956, with Tighe disguised as Ruth Simmons. It sold in great numbers, was filmed the same year and set off a fashion for hypnosis parties. A reporter for the Denver Post went to Ireland to check the details, with mixed results. The Chicago American then reported that a woman named Bridie Murphy Corkell had lived across the street from Tighe when she was a child. Tighe avoided publicity afterwards and died in 1995.
Why Bridey Murphy matters
Bridey Murphy launched popular past-life regression in the West and, almost at once, supplied the classic argument against trusting it.
How to read Bridey Murphy
Psychologists cite it when explaining cryptomnesia, and historians of the subject date the modern regression movement from it.
Bridey Murphy in practice: an example
A person impressed by the detail of a regression session is often pointed to this case, where detail just as rich turned out to prove nothing.
Where readings of Bridey Murphy go wrong
Both the book and the newspaper rebuttal overstated their cases. What is certain is only that no Bridey Murphy was ever traced.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- bridey murphy case, the search for bridey murphy, virginia tighe, bridey murphy hypnosis, bridey murphy debunked
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
Who was Bridey Murphy?
She was the personality that emerged when Virginia Tighe was hypnotised by Morey Bernstein in Colorado in 1952 and 1953: an Irishwoman said to have lived from 1798 to 1864. No historical trace of her has been found.
Was the Bridey Murphy case debunked?
Researchers found no Irish records of her, and a Chicago newspaper tied the name and some details to Tighe's childhood neighbours. Defenders disputed parts of that account. Most psychologists regard the case as forgotten memories woven into a story.
Why is the Bridey Murphy case important?
It made past-life regression a popular idea in the 1950s, and it remains the best known illustration of how vivid hypnotic memories can be built from ordinary forgotten sources.
