I feel like a key component of childhood is getting a really weird obsession with a very specific historic event. Mine was definitely the Titanic — I had multiple fully-illustrated books detailing every inch of the ship, as well as every minute of the day it sank.
Well, a Wisconsin college student named Jayme took his obsession with the Titanic a lot further.
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Jayme’s mother thinks he was actually on the Titanic
Or, more specifically, she believes Jayme is actually reincarnated from one of the 1,517 passengers that perished on board the doomed ocean liner on April 15th, 1912.
It all started after Jayme saw the film Titanic
Embed from Getty ImagesThe second half of the iconic James Cameron film absolutely captivated a young Jayme.
He began having “night terrors” not long after seeing the film. Understandable, as the second half of that movie is absolutely horrifying.
And then he began to draw
“Within the first two weeks, he had probably painted 50 pictures,” his mom said during an episode of LMN’s Ghost Inside My Child.
“He knew the ship by heart. You can’t learn that by watching the movie. The movie was actually more about the love story.”
Well, that sure is creepy.
Jayme thought the ship sinking was his fault.
According to his mother, he was horrified that the workers in the boiler room died first. “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. He would even cry about it.”
Sounds to me that Jayme was way too young to watch such a dark film.
His drawings were very creepy, apparently
The drawings apparently depict the ship with 100 windows. Others show smoke billowing out of the ship’s iconic smoke stacks, which famously collapsed while the ship was sinking.
Now 19, Jayme himself believes he is reincarnated as well
“I would like to think that I was probably Thomas Andrews, just because of the personality traits and what he did is what I would’ve done,” he said in his episode of The Ghost Inside My Child entitled ‘Disaster Deaths.’
He praised Thomas
Embed from Getty Images“He gave himself up to let others get off the ship. It was a horrible tragedy in history, and I’m just very at peace with it knowing I died on the Titanic,” he said.
Thomas was integral to the building of the Titanic.
Embed from Getty ImagesHe was the naval architect in charge of plans for the Titanic. As was the custom for workers at Harland and Wolff — the company that built the Titanic — he was aboard for her maiden voyage on April 15th as part of the company’s “guarantee group,” aka the quality control.
While it’s nice that Jayme loves the Titanic so much…
Embed from Getty ImagesHis and his family’s beliefs seem to be based on a lot of coincidence. It’s quite easy to get a layout of the ocean liner from the film, as James Cameron painstakingly mapped and studied the actual wreck of the ship himself.
He also happened to choose one of the few real-life people from the ship who were depicted in the film.
It sounds to me like he imprinted on the film
Embed from Getty ImagesAnd listen, I get it! I imprinted on Jurassic Park as a young kid, and to date, it’s still my absolute favorite movie of all time.
In nerdy culture spheres, we call movies like that “formative hyperfixations,” aka stuff you consume that becomes integral to your personality. Sounds to me like Jayme did that with Titanic. But what do you think?
