Baby Sam
“When I was your age, I changed your diaper,” said the dark-haired boy to his father.
Ron looked down at his smiling son, who had not yet turned two. He thought it was a very strange thing to say, but he figured he had misheard him.
But as baby Sam made similar remarks over the next few months, Ron and his wife, Cathy, gradually pieced together an odd story: Sam believed that he was his deceased grandfather, Ron’s late father, who had returned to his family. More intrigued than alarmed, Ron and Cathy asked Sam, “How did you come back?”
“I just went whoosh and came out the portal,” he responded.
Although Sam was a precocious child—he’d been speaking in full sentences from the age of 18 months—his parents were stunned to hear him use a word like portal, and they encouraged him to say more. They asked Sam if he’d had any siblings, and he replied that he’d had a sister who “turned into a fish.”
“Who turned her into a fish?”
“Some bad guys. She died.”
Eerily enough, Sam’s grandfather had a sister who had been murdered 60 years earlier; her body was found floating in San Francisco Bay. Ron and Cathy then gently asked Sam, “Do you know how you died?”
Sam jerked back and slapped the top of his head as if in pain. One year before Sam was born, his grandfather had died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
"He wouldn't stop talking about Barra, where they went, what they did and how he watched the planes landing on the beach from his bedroom window.
"He even said his dad was called Shane Robertson, who had died because ‘he didn't look both ways.'
"I assume he means knocked over by a car but he never says that.
"One day his nursery teacher told me a film company were looking for people who believed they had lived before.
"She suggested I contact them about Cameron. My family were horrified. There was a lot of opposition to it. I'm a single parent so it was me and Cameron's brother Martin, who is only a year older than him, who were being badly affected by this.
"Cameron wouldn't stop begging me to take him to Barra. It was constant.
"I contacted the film company and they followed Cameron's journey to Barra.
"We had child psychologist Dr Jim Tucker, from Virginia, with us.
"He specialises in reincarnation and has researched other children like Cameron.
"When Cameron was told we were going to Barra he was jumping all over the place with excitement." The family flew from Glasgow last February and landed on Cockleshell Bay an hour later.
Norma said: "He asked me if his face was shiny, because he was so happy.
"When we got to the island and DID land on a beach, just as Cameron had described, he turned to Martin and me and said, ‘Now do you believe me?'
He got off the plane, threw his arms in the air and yelled ‘I'm back.'
"He talked about his Barra mum, telling me she had brown hair down to her waist before she'd had it cut.
"He said I'd like her and she'd like me. He was anxious for us to meet.
"He also talked about a ‘big book' he used to read, and God and Jesus.
"We're not a religious family but his Barra family were."
The Macaulays booked into a hotel and began their search for clues to Cameron's past. Norma said: "We contacted the Heritage Centre and asked if they'd heard of a Robertson family who lived in a white house overlooking a bay.
"They hadn't. Cameron was very disappointed. We drove around the island but he didn't see the house.
"Then we realised that if he saw planes land on the beach from his bedroom window, we were driving the wrong way."
Next the family received a call from their hotel to confirm that a family called Robertson once had a white house on the bay.
Norma explains: "We didn't tell Cameron anything. We just drove towards where we were told the house was and waited to see what would happen.
"He recognised it immediately and was overjoyed.
"But as we walked to the door all the colour drained from Cameron's face and he became very quiet.
"I think he thought it would be exactly the same as he remembered it, that his Barra mum would be waiting for him inside. He looked sad. There was no one there. The previous owner had died but a keyholder let us in.
"There were lots of nooks and crannies and Cameron knew every bit of the house — including the THREEtoilets and the beach view from his bedroom window. In the garden, he took us to the ‘secret entrance' he'd been talking about for years."
Researchers also managed to track down one of the Robertson family who had owned the house.
Norma said: "We visited them at their new address in Stirling, but couldn't find anything about a Shane Robertson.
"Cameron was eager to see old family photographs in case he found his dad or himself in any.
"He'd always talked about a big black car and a black and white dog.
"The car and the dog were in the photos."
Since the family returned to their home in Clydebank, Glasgow, Cameron has been much calmer.
Norma said: "Going to Barra was the best thing we could have done.
"It's put Cameron's mind at ease. He no longer talks about Barra with such longing.
"Now he knows we no longer think he was making things up.
"We didn't get all the answers we were looking for — and, apparently, past life memories fade as the person gets older.
"Cameron has never spoken about dying to me. But he told his pal not to worry about dying, because you just come back again.
"When I asked him how he ended up with me, he tells me he ‘fell through and went into my tummy.'
"And when I ask him what his name was before, he says, ‘It's Cameron. It's still me.'
"I don't think we'll ever get all the answers."