The first thing one must ask when a patient reveals an episode such as this in past lives therapy is it a true memory of a past life or is it merely a symbolic fantasy.

Here are a few pertinent facts, Mrs. Barnes was indeed a survivor of Hiroshima. She was found inside the blast zone without any apparent injury or radioactive contamination. Blood tests revealed that she did indeed have a form of the Curie Factor.

The factor was named after Madame Curie who had been transformed into a form of vampire as an unforeseen side effect of her radium experiments. The Curie Factor is now known as a dormant genetic anomaly which, when activated by radioactivity, gives certain individuals powers or transforms them into freaks

As for the other elements of Mrs. Barnes story, they can be seen as deriving from several sources. She has admitted to being a fan of the El Head series of novels by Grant Faust and of seeing four of the six El Head Movies. Her favorite El Head was played by Burt Lancaster in the three films he did in the sixties, A PRICE ON THE HEAD, HEAD HUNTERS OF THE WEST and THE VENGEANCE OF EL HEAD.

While diligent research carried out in the late 1980's has revealed that El Head or Poul Ichabod did exist, he did in fact perish in the Arizona desert in 1899. He was, according to all historical records, never present in the Philippines.

The US Army denies that there was ever such an organization as Company X, they vehemently deny that General and later President MacArthur could ever have been influenced by such an insidious creature as El Head.

There were American POWs in Hiroshima castle but most were killed along with the other people in the castle. Four were believed to escaped from the Castle after the blast. One was killed by a mob of Japanese and the other three perished of radiation sickness.

While it sounds like the most implausible part of the tale, the Japanese were indeed working on a death ray. However there is no record of a secret laboratory in Hiroshima Castle nor is there any record of death ray research being done in Hiroshima, this was centered in Osaka.

As for Gojiro, or as Americans know him Godzilla, while there are indeed legends about a fifty foot giant lizard known as Gojiro, it is thought to have been a surviving dinosaur species which remained alive in the Pacific era until the modern era. When the 500 foot monster appeared in 1954 the Japanese named it Gojiro because of the legendary monster, there is no evidence that they are one and the same. Most scientists generally agree that Godzilla is either a mutated Komodo Dragon or Monitor Lizard, certainly not an unknown species of dinosaur. Nor is there any record of the Japanese capturing and experimenting on a giant lizard during World War II.

Mrs. Barnes was no doubt influenced by the Godzilla film series just as she had been by the El Head series. Another manifestation of her avoidance syndrome.

There is the strange case of the Negro baby found in an Hiroshima hospital during the American Occupation. Some Japanese sources claim that the baby was found directly after the blast.

These reports can be dismissed as spurious although the case did get some play in newspapers of the tabloid sort. More than likely the child was the result of a Japanese girl and a Negro soldier during the Occupation, perhaps delivered prematurely.

Mrs. Barnes has merely concocted a fantastic explanation for the baby, claiming this was Captain Phineas Brann, a person the U.S. Army denies existed. The baby grew normally into childhood, although he was sent to the United States and disappeared into the foster home system with a new name.

Finally about the bombing, according to the testimony of the men aboard the Enola Gay and the other two planes the bombing went off without a hitch. Several physicists have told me that the feat which Mrs. Barnes has El Head doing, containing the explosion on the ground and pushing it upwards is not only impossible but ludicrous. They were however strangely intrigued by the fact that this act also purportedly reversed the time flow around the explosion.

Mrs. Barnes is a Hiroshima survivor and is afflicted with a deep and unacknowledged case of survivor guilt. She feels deep shame and despair because she lived while thousands died. Her guilt is compounded by the fact that she was kept from any physical harm at all by some quirk in her body, activated by the very radiation which killed and maimed countless others.

Mrs. Barnes needs to acknowledge her guilt and deal with it, then she will overcome these symptoms of insomnia and vivid waking dreams.