There are certain stories that legitimately just seem too strange to be true, and today's story is definitely one of those.
But when you get to the end of the story, you'll see that a major American educational institution fact-checked this story really aggressively, and it held up.
It really happened. So go into today's very wild story with an open mind.
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At the end of December in 1984, in a little village in northern India, a young woman named Sumitra had her first child with her husband.
And right away, Sumitra fell in love with her little baby boy.
She had always wanted a baby, and now that she had one, she carried him with her everywhere, strapped to her chest.
And any time she had a free hand, from cooking or housework, she would use it to pat his head or tickle his feet.
Life was not easy for anyone in Sumitra's village, which was located just south of the Himalayan mountains along the Ganges River.
Sumitra's village was very poor. People lived in mud huts with thatched roofs.
They had no electricity, and basically no one had any formal education.
As for Sumitra, her life was especially challenging even relative to her peers because when she was very young, her mother died and then her father had to go away all the time for work and so she was left alone a lot and basically was raised by a cousin.
And now, even though she was married, her husband also had to travel quite a bit for work.
And so Sumitra, she lived with her husband's parents in their hut, but the reality was is she wasn't nearly as close with them as she was with her own family, and her own family was nowhere nearby.
And so Sumitra's life was really quite lonely, even as an adult.
And so when Sumitra had her baby, it was like for the first time in her life, she didn't feel alone and she was excited about her life.
She was happy that something was finally going the way she wanted it to.
But then one day in early 1985, everything changed.
That day, Sumitra with her son attached to her chest was walking into town to get water from the well.
And as she was walking along the dirt path, she suddenly came to a stop, very rigid, and she dropped her bucket on the ground.
A couple of other villagers who were nearby heard the bucket fall.
They turned and looked at Sumitra, who was standing there totally rigid.
And so one of these villagers who was very concerned walked over to Sumitra and asked her what was going on.
But Sumitra, she didn't say anything. She just stood there frozen.
And this concerned villager looked down at Sumitra's hands and her fingers were bending back so hard it almost looked like they might break going in the other direction.
And then this villager, before asking any more questions, looked up at Sumitra's face and her eyes had rolled back into the back of her skull and she had begun grinding her teeth so hard that it was making this loud cracking sound with every movement of her jaw side to side.
And so this villager was totally terrified and backed up for a second.
And right as they did, Sumitra's baby, who was still strapped to Sumitra's chest, began hysterically crying.
And so the combination of Sumitra's baby crying and these other couple of villagers who were staring at Sumitra, who's standing there in this very grotesque pose, attracted the eyes of other nearby villagers.
And soon there was a crowd of people just standing there looking at Sumitra, not sure what to do.
And then just as suddenly as Sumitra had fallen into this trance, it stopped.
And Sumitra, she kind of shook her head.
She fluttered her eyes and she looked around and then suddenly became aware that her son is hysterically crying.
And also there's this crowd of people all around her.
She has no idea why. And so feeling really embarrassed, but again, not knowing what's going on, Sumitra quickly picked up her water bucket.
She held her son and hustled out of the crowd of people and made her way into town where she would get water.
When Sumitra came back from the well and was back near her hut, she didn't tell anyone about what had happened on the way to the well.
Frankly, she couldn't really remember what happened.
And so Sumitra told herself that whatever happened on the trail to the well that trance she fell into, it had to be a one-time thing, likely brought on by stress and sleeplessness from having a new baby.
But a few weeks later, it happened again, and this time the trance lasted quite a bit longer.
Sumitra's father-in-law had walked into their kitchen and found Sumitra standing there totally rigid with her hands kind of bending backwards and her eyes rolled back in her skull.
And he would tell her later on that he had shaken her and tried to wake her up, but he couldn't for almost 10 minutes.
And then when she had snapped out of it, she had no memory and had no idea what happened.
By May of 1985, so roughly five months after her first trance, Sumitra was falling into these bizarre spells nearly every day, and they were lasting hours at a time.
And even more bizarre, lately during Sumitra's trances, she would begin to speak and the things she said were totally strange.
Typically she would bark out cries for help.
She would say her head was being crushed and someone needed to help her.
And then suddenly her voice would drop down to a whisper and she would say, all I can see is darkness.
Sumitra's family would contact the local medicine man who would come out and examine Sumitra, but he couldn't figure out what was wrong with her.
Besides her trances, there seemed to be absolutely nothing wrong with her.
She was the picture of good health. And then on July 16th, 1985, so roughly six months into these trances, Sumitra would fall into another trance while she was cooking, and during this trance, she would speak.
Except when she spoke, she was very calm, and she just said, in three days, I'm going to die.
By this point, Sumitra was terrified of whatever was happening to her and she was totally exhausted and so was her family.
Sumitra had stopped caring for her son who was now about eight months old because she was afraid that at any moment she could fall into a trance and accidentally hurt him.
And so her mother-in-law had basically become the boy's mother And also Sumitra's husband, who was the primary breadwinner for the family, was forced to stop traveling for work and just stay home and help out with Sumitra and his son.
Finally, on July 19th, 1985, so this was the day that in her trance Sumitra had predicted she would die, on that day Sumitra woke up and made a very conscious effort not to do anything that could potentially harm her.
She didn't cook because she didn't want to be near flames.
She didn't walk near anything with any sort of ledge she could fall off.
She didn't even walk down stairs for the same reason.
She also kept a very safe distance from her son in order to make sure he was safe.
And by late afternoon that day, Sumitra was just fine and there was no sign that anything bad was going to happen to her, and so she and her family began to relax.
As Sumitra's mother-in-law began making dinner, Sumitra decided to go outside and get some fresh air.
And when she got out there, she saw one of her close friends across the road, and so she waved to her.
And as her friend cheerfully began walking closer to Sumitra to say hello, Sumitra suddenly froze, her eyes went back in her skull, her hands became rigid, and she fell into one of her trances.
And so this friend, like everyone else in the village, had become quite accustomed to seeing Sumitra in these trances.
And so really, the friend was not that concerned when she saw Sumitra doing this.
But then Sumitra began doing something in her trance that this friend had never seen before.
Sumitra, who normally had her hands by her side during these trances, she began raising her hands up till they reached her forehead.
And then wildly Sumitra began clawing at something right above her head.
And as she did, her breathing became very loud and labored.
And so this friend, feeling suddenly so concerned for Sumitra, rushed over.
But when she got right next to Sumitra, there was nothing she could do.
Sumitra was just clawing at the sky, breathing really heavily.
And then suddenly Sumitra stopped and she put her hands down by her side and she went back to this rigid pose.
And then out of Sumitra's mouth came this horrible low rattling moan sound.
It was just a constant sound that came out of her and it got deeper and deeper and deeper until Sumitra's voice kind of cracked.
And then suddenly Sumitra went totally still.
And when this happened, Sumitra's friend, who was right next to her, realized Sumitra, even though she was standing upright, she was not breathing at all.
It was like she was a statue. And so this friend began screaming for help.
And so Sumitra's in-laws and her husband and other villagers who heard this cry, they came running outside and they quickly circled around Sumitra.
And then a few minutes later, the medicine man arrived.
He broke through the circle, went right up to Sumitra and began checking her out.
He checked her pulse. He checked her heartbeat.
He kind of looked inside of her mouth. He looked in her eyes.
And then after a minute, he stepped back and he just said, she's dead.
Sumitra's husband fell to his knees and Sumitra's mother-in-law who was carrying Sumitra's son began crying.
All the while Sumitra's body still remained totally upright and rigid in the middle of all these people with her hands tight by her side and her eyes rolled back and her face frozen in what looked like a silent scream.
Eventually, the medicine man and Sumitra's father-in-law stepped forward and lowered Sumitra's frozen, rigid body onto the ground on her back, and they closed her eyes.
There was no hospital to take Sumitra's body to or official to call about her death.
And in this village at this time, it was very important for both religious and public health reasons to take care of the body very quickly.
And what that looked like was the villagers would work together to perform the Hindu death rituals, and then afterwards they would cremate the body, which is a process of burning the body until all you have left is the ashes.
And so as Sumitra's body lay still rigid on her back right near her home, her family and the villagers began making preparations for her funeral.
Sumitra's mother-in-law and some women from the village began scrubbing down Sumitra's body as well as putting essential oils on her face, and other villagers who were not a part of that went off to find wood for a fire.
The villagers weren't talking much and a lot of the women were crying, but it wasn't just grief they were feeling, it was also fear.
They all knew about Sumitra's trances, they happened all the time for months, but what the villagers couldn't wrap their heads around was the idea that during one of these trances, Sumitra had accurately predicted her own death.
And so now the villagers couldn't help but think that dark forces were at play here, that maybe Sumitra was possessed.
And you know, now whatever had possessed her and killed her is somewhere in the village.
And so that night, as the sun started to go down, normally kids would be out playing in the village, but their parents said, no, come inside, it's not safe outside.
And so for the most part, the only people who were outside that night were the women who were still cleaning and prepping Sumitra's body for her funeral.
And at some point, one of the women who was doing this was brushing out Sumitra's hair.
And as she did that, she suddenly stopped and she backed up and screamed and pointed at Sumitra.
And then the other women all around Sumitra's body, they looked over at what this person was pointing at and they too saw it and screamed and everyone began scrambling to try to get away from Sumitra as fast as possible.
What all these terrified women were seeing was that Sumitra, her eyes were closed, but her eyes were darting left and right, so her eyelids were kind of fluttering.
And then suddenly Sumitra's chest filled with air and then she breathed out a long, loud exhale and then she opened her eyes and she sat bolt upright and began looking around.
And the other women who were terrified, they're looking at her and they were struck by how completely healthy and normal Sumitra now looked.
Even though for the past 45 minutes, she didn't have a heartbeat and was totally pale and looked completely dead.
Sumitra wiped the essential oils from her face, and then she stood up, and as she did, the medicine man, he had heard all the commotion and ran over, and he ran to Sumitra and kind of assisted her and got her to stand on her feet because she was a little bit wobbly.
And then the medicine man performed a checkup on Sumitra, checking her heartbeat, her pulse.
He looked in her mouth, he looked at her eyes, and then he asked Sumitra, you know, how are you feeling?
And Sumitra said, I'm okay. And then the medicine man, he kind of turned to face this now huge crowd of onlooking villagers.
And the medicine man had a big smile on his face.
And he said, you all have just witnessed a miracle.
Sumitra is back from the dead. Hey, it's Mr. Ballin.
I'm excited to tell you about something special.
For the first time, my show, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with Luke LaManna, to tell a story so complex it required our combined storytelling styles.
This special episode is called A Redacted Medical Mystery.
In it, unexplained symptoms after a routine surgery quickly unravel into something much darker, leading straight to classified government operations hidden for decades.
To listen and uncover the truth alongside us, head to either the Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries or Redacted show pages right now.
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Every week, we dive deep into cases that will leave you questioning everything you know about the human body.
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Hey listeners, Mr. Ballin here. What if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories happening right now are all connected to what might be the biggest crime of our generation?
You know I'm always on the hunt for the most chilling and perplexing tales out there.
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Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. For the first time, my show, Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted for a special episode.
A Redacted Medical Mystery uncovers how routine surgery leads to classified government operations.
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Sumitra's husband and her in-laws were too shocked to say anything or really even react.
But then suddenly Sumitra's husband was overcome with joy and he ran forward to hug Sumitra.
But as Sumitra turned and saw him coming towards her, she backed up suddenly and put her hands out to protect herself from her husband.
And immediately the medicine man, he kind of stepped in between the husband and Sumitra and he patted the husband on the shoulder and said, you know, she's been through something very traumatic.
You need to give her time and space. to recover.
And everybody in the village who saw this happen, they were accustomed to whenever Sumitra fell into one of her trances, when she came out of them, she oftentimes was a little bit confused.
And so they all just kind of assumed that this is what was happening, but on a bigger scale, you know, this is a really intense trance they've seen, but she's just confused.
She'll be okay soon. And so the villagers dispersed and the medicine man assisted Sumitra back into her hut and he got her in her bed where she fell asleep.
And then afterwards, the medicine man reassured Sumitra's husband and her in-laws that Sumitra, when she woke up, she'd likely be just fine, but he would come by and he would do another thorough medical exam on her just to make sure.
And the next morning when Sumitra woke up, she did seem a lot better.
When she left her bedroom, she seemed far less confused than she had been the night before.
But as soon as Sumitra saw her husband and her in-laws, she got so scared she just bolted from her hut and started running away.
And so the medicine man who had just come by to do his throat checkup, he saw her take off and so he began chasing her, as well as Sumitra's husband and father-in-law.
They took off after Sumitra. And finally, when Sumitra's husband caught up to Sumitra, he grabbed her by the arm to stop her and Sumitra ripped her arm away from him.
And she said, how dare you touch another man's wife?
And as the husband kind of ushered Sumitra back towards their house, she continued to say, you're not my family.
This is not my home. And then finally, Sumitra's husband and the medicine man had to literally drag Sumitra to get her to go back inside the hut.
And as they dragged her inside, she kept screaming that her name was Shiva Duetti and her in-laws had killed her.
Over the next couple of days, the medicine man and Sumitra's family tried everything they could to try to snap her out of what seemed like a really long trance, but nothing they did worked.
It seemed like Sumitra had just kind of lost her mind.
Sumitra began refusing to touch her beloved son and instead would demand that someone bring her Rinku and Tinku, but when no one knew who or what she was talking about, Sumitra would just get furious.
Sumitra had never gone to school and so did not know how to write.
But now, suddenly, in this new trance that she was in, Sumitra would go inside of her bedroom and write these long, totally unhinged-sounding letters to total strangers asking them to come please take her home.
And when she wasn't doing that, she was typically outside in the courtyard looking at a scar on her foot, wondering how she got it.
Sumitra also began wrapping her sari, which is a type of dress fabric, in a new and strange way around her head.
She also refused to eat off of any dishes that her family had previously used, and her voice began to sound different.
It was higher pitched and much faster, and the way she spoke was always so rude.
And so eventually Sumitra's husband and her in-laws and everybody in the village just kind of resigned themselves to the fact that when Sumitra had not had a heartbeat for 45 minutes when she died during that time, she likely suffered serious brain damage or at a minimum, when she kind of came back from the dead, she suffered some kind of psychological break.
And so that was why she was acting the way she was.
And soon people just stopped trying to break Sumitra out of this trance she was in, and instead they all focused on just trying to keep her from running away or hurting herself.
And then one day on October 20th, 1985, so three months after Sumitra had died for 45 minutes, Sumitra's family heard a knock on their front door.
When Sumitra's husband went to the door and opened it up, he saw there was this older gentleman standing there wearing a suit and nice shoes, standing several feet back from the door, as if he was kind of shy but felt compelled to knock on the door.
Now, right off the bat, this man looked totally out of place to Sumitra's husband.
Nobody in this village wore suits or nice shoes.
In fact, most people, including Sumitra and her family, didn't even wear shoes.
But even stranger than what this man was wearing was what he was clutching against his chest.
He had this huge leather-bound book with gold trim around the edges that he was holding onto very tightly as if it was very important.
And so finally, this strange man who was visibly nervous and rocking back and forth began to speak.
But his voice was so low, Sumitra's husband had to lean forward just to hear him.
The man said his name was Ram Tripathi, and he wanted to know if there was a young woman living in this home who had recently begun acting differently.
Sumitra's husband had no idea who Ram Tripathi was.
He didn't know this guy. He certainly didn't know where he came from.
But what was going through his head was, how is this stranger who's dressed in a funny way, who's got this weird book, how is he aware of the issues my wife is having?
And so after a long pause, Sumitra's husband just kind of looks Ram Tripathi up and down a couple of times and then says, wait right here, I'll be right back.
And then Sumitra's husband turned around, he walked through the hut into Sumitra's bedroom and kind of matter-of-factly, he said to Sumitra, who was sitting there writing another letter, that there's a strange man outside named Ram Tripathi and he's asking about you.
Sumitra's husband expected Sumitra to just turn and look at him with a blank stare like she had been doing the last few days, but this time she turned and looked up at him with a huge smile on her face, and then she leapt up and ran to the front door and leapt into the arms of Ramtrapathi.
And Ram Tripathi, he was kind of taken aback, still holding his book, not really reacting to what Sumitra was doing.
And at some point, Sumitra leans in and whispers something into Ram Tripathi's ear.
And Ram Tripathi, he reacted to it very negatively.
He kind of looked up at her and looked over at Sumitra's husband like something was wrong.
But Sumitra's husband couldn't tell what Sumitra had said.
And so the whole situation made no sense to Sumitra's husband.
And apparently, it also made no sense to Ram Tripathi.
And so pretty quickly, Ram Tripathi kind of pushed Sumitra off of him and took a few steps back and looked at Sumitra and said, what's your name?
And Sumitra is now looking at Ram Tripathi with a look of anger and betrayal on her face.
And she says, my name is Shiva Dueti. Ram Tripathi, after hearing this, did not respond and instead just kind of gestured over to a low wall just outside of their house for he and Sumitra to go sit down on.
And so he walked over and Sumitra followed him, they sat down, and Sumitra's husband, he walked over, but he stayed a couple of feet back standing up.
And once Ramtrapathi was sitting down, he lowered his big leather-bound book and he opened it up, and inside were all these photographs.
And right away, Ramtrapathi pointed at one of the pictures, which contained a bunch of people in it, and he turned to Sumitra and he said, "'Can you identify who's in this photo?'
And Sumitra, she looked at the photo and immediately began rattling off names that were all correct.
These are people that Sumitra's husband, he's looked over and he's got no idea who the people are in that photo.
And so after Sumitra correctly identifies that photo, Ram Tripathi turns the page, he picks out another photo and he says, can you identify who's in this photo?
And again, Sumitra one by one would name correctly all the people in the photo.
And then finally, Ram Tripathi took a sigh and he flipped the page one more time and he pointed to one particular picture which contained one person.
And he looked at Sumitra and he said, do you know who this is?
And Sumitra, she would look over at the photo and instead of immediately saying the name, she paused and she kind of began to breathe heavy and she seemed kind of angry.
And then she looked at Ram Tripathi and she said, I know who that is.
That's my sister-in-law and she killed me by hitting me over the head with a brick.
And at this, Ramtrapathi dropped his book on the ground, and he turned and embraced Sumitra as hard and as intensely as she had when she had run out and leapt into his arms.
And he and Sumitra, they hugged and cried for a long time.
And then finally, when they separated, Ramtrapathi turned to Sumitra's husband, who's still just standing there totally bewildered, and he tells him, let's go inside and I'll explain everything.
Once Ram Tripathi was inside with Sumitra and her family, he told them an unbelievable story about a woman named Sheba Duwedi.
Shiva Duetti was of course the name that Sumitra for months had been saying was her own.
But over those few months, her family had just assumed that that name meant nothing and that what she was saying was nonsense because of her brain injury.
But Ram Tripathi would tell them that Shiva Duetti was the name of a young woman who lived in a city none of them had ever heard before, located about 60 miles away from their village.
He would tell them that Shiva was a very wealthy woman who was college educated and she had two young sons.
And it would turn out that Shiva's youngest child was born almost on the same day that Sumitra's child was born in December of 1984.
But unlike Sumitra, who after the birth of her child, felt like her life got so much better, she loved her family, she was excited about the future, for Shiva, it was the opposite.
When her first child arrived, it was like her life got worse and worse and worse.
Shiva's in-laws had grown to hate her. They didn't like that she was so well-educated, and they hated the family she came from.
And so by early 1985, when by this point Sumitra was regularly falling into those trances with her eyes rolling back and her teeth gnashing, the tension and fighting in Shiva's home 60 miles away was reaching an almost unbearable level.
Shiva began writing these long letters that she would send to her family far away, where she would detail waking up almost every night with nightmares screaming.
And in May of 1985, which is when Sumitra began speaking during her trances, Shiva got into the biggest fight she had ever gotten into with her in-laws about attending a family wedding.
And on the night of May 18th, 1985, Shiva's neighbors in her city saw Shiva's in-laws literally carrying Shiva's body, which appeared to be unconscious, as they walked along the railroad tracks.
When these neighbors ran up and asked if everything was okay with Shiva, Shiva's in-laws just said, oh, you know, she's sick and we're taking her to the hospital.
Now, it was nighttime, there were no lights around, and so it was really dark, and these neighbors couldn't get a good look at Shiva to see, you know, what was going on with her.
And so even though they thought this was very strange, they decided not to say anything.
The next morning, Shiva's dead body was found lying on the train tracks right near the train station.
And so someone raised the alarm and before long, Shiva's uncle and sister ran to the train station.
And when they got there and saw Shiva on the tracks, they also saw Shiva's in-laws were already there.
And when they spoke to Shiva's in-laws, they told the uncle and the sister that it looks like Shiva must have jumped in front of a train to commit suicide.
But the uncle and sister are looking down at Shiva's body, and there appeared to be really no markings, bruises, cuts of any kind on her body that you would expect from getting hit by a train.
Except Shiva did have a very big mark on her head.
Later on, the uncle and sister would say it looked like something had bashed Shiva's head in.
Shiva's in-laws would immediately cremate Shiva's body before Shiva's actual family could stop them, and the police in this area were not good at investigating crime.
So when Shiva's in-laws went to them and said, yep, she jumped in front of a train, she committed suicide, but we don't have a body because we already cremated her, the police just accepted it.
Shiva's father was convinced that Shiva had been murdered, but he didn't have a way to prove it. until Sumitra appeared to die on July 19th, 1985, and then came back to life claiming to be Shiva.
Shiva's father had heard a rumor about some girl in a village 60 miles away claiming to be his dead daughter.
Now, at first, Shiva's father did not believe this, but eventually he decided he would go to the village and test this girl to see if maybe it was true.
And so, on October 20th, 1985, Shiva's father put on his best suit and his nicest shoes, he brought his leather-bound photo book, and he headed to Sumitra's village and knocked on her hut.
Ram Tripathi was Shiva's dad. When Sumitra at first ran outside and leapt onto Ram Tripathi and hugged him and then whispered something into his ear that Sumitra's husband saw happening but couldn't hear what she said, and then Ram Tripathi, when he heard what she whispered, he kind of recoiled and acted angry for a second, what Sumitra was saying was, Papak.
In the moment, Ram Tripathi, who was not convinced Sumitra was his daughter, felt like this is a horrible, elaborate hoax and it needs to stop.
But then Sumitra correctly identified 15 people in his leather-bound photo album, including the sister-in-law who she said killed her.
And even more convincing than that was that Sumitra knew how Shiva had been killed, by getting smashed over the head with a brick.
This was a question that Ramtrapathi had never heard the answer to before.
And at that point, Ramtrapathi believed that this must be his daughter's reincarnated spirit inside of Sumitra.
And so that was when he dropped the book and gave her a big hug.
This story is considered to be one of the most credible reincarnation stories ever recorded.
Scientists from the University of Virginia in America actually went to India to study Sumitra and interview everybody involved.
And they concluded that this was not a hoax.
They said that Sumitra had most likely either been possessed by or reincarnated as Shiva Duetti.
The change in Sumitra's voice that her family noticed was the same accent that Shiva had.
It was very urban and educated. The strange new way that Sumitra wrapped her sari on her head was the same way that Shiva did.
Sumitra was rude to her family and refused to eat off the same dishes as them because she believed she was actually a very wealthy woman who was for some reason being forced to live in this poor person's hut.
And when Sumitra asked for Tinku and Rinku, those were nicknames that Shiva had given her two sons.
And all those seemingly unhinged letters that Sumitra had written and fired off to random strangers were in fact sent to various members of Shiva's family.
After Shiva's father, Ram Tripathi, brought Sumitra's story to the police, the police would actually investigate this case and they would charge some members of Shiva's family.
But ultimately, Sumitra's testimony was deemed unacceptable for court and so the case was never officially solved.
As for Shiva's in-laws, they have always denied killing her.
Sumitra lived the entire rest of her life as Sheba and Sheba's real parents accepted her as their daughter.
Sumitra also came to accept her son and raised her son with her husband in their little village until she died in 1998.
If you want to watch hundreds more stories just like the one you heard today, head to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin.
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