My 5-Year-Old Child Claims to Have DIED on the Titanic

PART 1

Jamie was a great baby. He’s just been the greatest kid ever; I can’t say enough good things about him. He was always very happy and joyful, you know, enjoyed everything that he did, had a great attention span for learning things, and he was really easy—he was an easy kid.

Everybody in my family loves to swim. You know, we all love the water, so we had a swimming pool. Jamie would never go down past the stairs of the pool, and even if I would pick him up and take him out into the water, he would completely panic, practically choke you, begging you to take him back into the shallow part of the pool. He was terrified of the deep end of the pool.

When Jamie was about three or four—he was young because he was trying to learn to ride a small bike—I was outside with him trying to encourage him to ride the bike, and he started talking about seeing our mom riding a bike down the same street. And he said, “Mom rode her blue bike. I saw her ride her blue bike.”

And I said, “Where did you see her? Like in a picture? Like a photograph?”

And he said, “No, I looked down and saw her through the window.”

I did have a little blue three-wheeler that I used to ride, and that would have been for me around the age of five, and he knew about it. I had never mentioned it to him before; I don’t even think I have a picture of it. And he said that he used to watch me. And I said, “How did you watch me?”

And then he was kind of indignant about it. He goes, “Well, you know, there’s windows in heaven, Mama.”

When Jamie was around four or five years old, he started having night terrors. He would be asleep—he’d go to bed, and you’d hear him, you know, thrashing around a little bit, and then all of a sudden he’d come running. He didn’t look at you, he didn’t look at his surroundings, but he always seemed panicked, like he was looking for a way to get out.

Jamie was around four years old, and we had gone out one night and left him with a babysitter. When we came home, we found out that Jamie had watched the last half of the Titanic movie, which is not something we were happy about. The next day, he started drawing and painting picture after picture of the Titanic. Within the first two weeks, he probably had painted fifty pictures. In one pencil drawing, he had over a hundred windows drawn. He had all the levels of the ship—like if you cut the ship in half and you can see all the different rooms and everything. He knew the ship; he knew it by heart. You can’t learn that by watching the movie. The movie actually was more about the love story, and Jamie was completely distraught over the fact that the people in the boiler room died first, like it was his fault that they were trapped.

I figured he’d seen the movie, which was a popular movie at the time, and maybe that’s why he was into it. But the form of obsession that he had with it, I knew wasn’t normal, so I was a little creeped out. He started talking about the accident itself and how it shouldn’t have happened, that there were mistakes, there were corners cut, and the men in the boiler rooms should not have been trapped, and he would cry about it. He had so much knowledge about the ship and such an interest in it that we thought there has to be some other deeper connection. When he was five years old, he was telling me some of the mistakes that they made in building the ship: using iron instead of steel was wrong. He was five; he was telling me these things.

I’d always grown up with the belief of reincarnation, so it was a very common thing for me to think that, you know, yes, there might be more than just this one life. So after Jamie was having memories of the Titanic for almost two years, as we studied the Titanic and the history of it, we had finally come to the conclusion about who he was. We didn’t match him up with anybody right away, but as we studied the Titanic and the history of it, Jamie could have been one of the designers—his name was Thomas Andrews.

We felt like Jamie had a connection with the ship’s architect, Thomas Andrews, and he was very interested in the whole shipbuilding side of it. Thomas Andrews designed several ships for the White Star Line, and it was his habit of going on all the maiden voyages of the ships that he helped design and build. And on the Titanic, the night that they were sinking, he chose not to get on a lifeboat and went down with the ship.

Andrews was the chief designer. He was the one that was fighting with J.P. Morgan, who financed the Titanic. He fought with him over the fact that they didn’t have enough lifeboats, the fact that they were trying to get the ship done by a certain date so they weren’t constructing it as carefully as they could have been. Thomas Andrews wanted to use steel and they used iron, and then of course, once the iron—which wasn’t as strong as steel—got into the sub-zero temperatures of the water, it became brittle. So that was another reason why the ship literally broke apart. When you read about Thomas Andrews, it fit with what Jamie said.

They took the Titanic exhibit across the country, and as soon as my daughter Teal heard that they were coming to Chicago, we bought tickets immediately and figured Jamie has to go see it. The things that he was experiencing were becoming more and more intense, and the obsession had been going on for so long that I thought maybe if he is exposed to things that were actually there, maybe something will click in him and it won’t be such an obsession anymore. Maybe if he gets closer to it, it’ll make things better.

When we went to the Titanic exhibit in Chicago, I was hoping that there would be something that would turn the corner for Jamie, but it was after the exhibit that Jamie had the dream that I call the death dream. He had been suffering from night terrors for a couple of years.

Well, one night—this was after we had seen the exhibit—I was home alone with Jamie. He was in bed asleep, and I was watching television, and all of a sudden I heard a bang on his bedroom wall. It was rhythmic: it was bang, bang, bang, bang. And I jumped up, and I ran down the hallway, and I flung the door open, and Jamie was up on all fours on his bed. He was staring at the floor, and he was almost convulsing, he was shaking so hard. I didn’t know what to do; I mean, I was terrified, and I didn’t know if I should like shake him out of it. And before I could even do anything, he screamed—and I cannot tell you the terror in his voice—he screamed, “She’s going down!”

It didn’t sound like a little boy; it sounded like a man. And I just… I started to cry. But after that night, it was a day or two he would talk about the Titanic, and then it was a week he’d talk about the Titanic, then it was two weeks… and slowly he just stopped talking about it. And I really felt that all of that brought him to the memory of actually the ship sinking, and once he experienced that, it was over. It was over.

My name is Jamie, and I’m nineteen years old. I would like to think that I was proudly Thomas Andrews just because of the personality traits, and what he did is what I would have done. He gave himself up to let others get off the ship, and it just… it was a horrible tragedy in history, and I don’t know, I’m just very at peace with knowing that I died on the Titanic. The Titanic will always be in connection with me in some way, and it’s always going to be a part of me, but it’s just about living this life now, and I no longer feel like it’s my fault.

PART 2

Jamie was a great baby. He’s just been the greatest kid ever; I can’t say enough good things about him. He was always very happy and joyful, you know, enjoyed everything that he did, had a great attention span for learning things, and he was really easy—he was an easy kid.

Everybody in my family loves to swim, you know, we all love the water, so we had a swimming pool. Jamie would never go down past the stairs of the pool. And even if I would pick him up and take him out into the water, he would completely panic, practically choke you, begging you to take him back into the shallow part of the pool. He was terrified of the deep end of the pool.

When Jamie was about three or four—he was young, because he was trying to learn to ride a small bike—I was outside with him trying to encourage him to ride the bike, and he started talking about seeing our mom riding a bike down the same street, and he said: “Mom rode her blue bike. I saw her ride her blue bike.”

And I said: “Where did you see her? Like in a picture, like photograph?”

And he said: “No, I looked down and saw her through the window.”

I did have a little blue three-wheeler that I used to ride, and that would have been for me around the age of five, and he knew about it. I had never mentioned it to him before; I don’t even think I have a picture of it. And he said that he used to watch me, and I said: “How did you watch me?”

And then he was kind of indignant about it. He goes: “Well, you know, there’s windows in heaven, Mama.”

When Jamie was around four or five years old, he started having night terrors. He would be asleep, he’d go to bed, and you’d hear him, you know, thrashing around a little bit, and then all of a sudden he’d come running. He didn’t look at you, he didn’t look at his surroundings, but he always seemed panicked, like he was looking for a way to get out.

Jamie was around four years old, and we had gone out one night and left him with a babysitter. When we came home, we found out that Jamie had watched the last half of the Titanic movie, which is not something we were happy about. And the next day, he started drawing and painting picture after picture of the Titanic. Within the first two weeks, he probably had painted 50 pictures. In one, he had over 100 windows drawn in one pencil drawing. He has all the levels of the ship—like if you cut the ship in half and you can see all the different rooms and everything. He knew the ship; he knew it by heart. You can’t learn that by watching the movie; the movie actually was more about the love story. And Jamie was completely distraught over the fact that the people in the boiler room died first, like it was his fault that they were trapped.

I figured he’d seen the movie, which was a popular movie at the time, and maybe that’s why he was into it. But the form of obsession that he had with it, I knew wasn’t normal, so I was a little creeped out. He started talking about the accident itself and how it shouldn’t have happened, that there were mistakes, there were corners cut, and the men in the boiler rooms should not have been trapped, and he would—he would cry about it. He had so much knowledge about the ship and such an interest in it that we thought there has to be some other, deeper connection. When he was five years old, he was telling me some of the mistakes that they made in building the ship—using iron instead of steel was wrong. He was five; he was telling me these things.

I’d always grew up with the belief of reincarnation, so it was a very common thing for me to think that, you know, yes, there might be more than just this one life. So after Jamie was having memories of the Titanic for almost two years, as we studied the Titanic and the history of it, we had finally come to the conclusion about who he was. We didn’t match him up with anybody right away, but as we studied the Titanic and the history of it, Jamie could have been one of the designers. His name was Thomas Andrews.

We felt like Jamie had a connection with the ship’s architect, Thomas Andrews, and he was very interested in the whole shipbuilding side of it. Thomas Andrews designed several ships for the White Star Line, and it was his habit of going on all the maiden voyages of the ships that he helped design and build. And on the Titanic, the night that they were sinking, he chose not to get on a lifeboat and went down with the ship.

Andrews was the chief designer. He was the one that was fighting with J.P. Morgan, who financed the Titanic. He fought with him over the fact that they didn’t have enough lifeboats, the fact that they were trying to get the ship done by a certain date so they weren’t constructing it as carefully as they could have been. Thomas Andrews wanted to use steel and they used iron, and then of course once the iron, which wasn’t as strong as steel, got in the sub-zero temperatures of the water, it became brittle. So that was another reason why the ship literally broke apart. When you read about Thomas Andrews, it fit with what Jamie said.

They took the Titanic exhibit across the country, and as soon as my daughter Teal heard that they were coming to Chicago, we bought tickets immediately and figured Jamie has to go see it. The things that he was experiencing were becoming more and more intense, and the obsession had been going on for so long that I thought maybe if he is exposed to things that were actually there, maybe something will click in him and it won’t be such an obsession anymore. Maybe if he gets closer to it, it’ll make things better.

When we went to the Titanic exhibit in Chicago, I was hoping that there would be something that would turn the corner for Jamie, but it was after the exhibit that Jamie had the dream that I call the death dream. He had been suffering from night terrors for a couple of years.

Well, one night—this was after we had seen the exhibit—I was home alone with Jamie. He was in bed asleep, and I was watching television, and all of a sudden I heard a bang on his bedroom wall. It was rhythmic: it was bang, bang, bang, bang. And I jumped up, and I ran down the hallway, and I flung the door open. Jamie was up on all fours on his bed. He was staring at the floor, and he was almost convulsing, he was shaking so hard. I didn’t know what to do; I mean, I was—I was terrified, and I didn’t know if I should like shake him out of it. And before I could even do anything, he screamed—and I cannot tell you the terror in his voice—he screamed: “She’s going down!”

It didn’t sound like a little boy; it sounded like a man. And I just—I started to cry.

But after that night, it was a day or two he would talk about the Titanic, and then it was a week he’d talk about the Titanic, then it was two weeks… and slowly he just stopped talking about it. And I really felt that through all of that, it brought him to the memory of actually the ship sinking, and once he experienced that, it was over. It was over.

My name is Jamie, and I’m 19 years old. I would like to think that I was proudly Thomas Andrews just because of the personality traits, and what he did is what I would have done. He gave himself up to let others get off the ship, and it just—it was a horrible tragedy in history. And I don’t know, I’m just very at peace with it, that knowing that I—I died on the Titanic.

The Titanic will always be in connection with me someway, and it’s always going to be a part of me, but it’s just about living this life now, and I no longer feel like it’s my fault.