Jane Miller found herself in a dark red room, surrounded by faint, muffled sound that made her feel like her head was stuck underwater.
She floated there for what felt like forever before everything went black.
Miller suddenly felt herself being dragged from the room, met with bright lights and incessant beeping.
This wasn’t a dream or a near-death experience. It was the day she was born.
Jane, whose real identity is anonymous, is one of just a handful of people claiming they have vivid memories from inside the womb.
Many experts argue that no-one can recall their birth due to a phenomenon called ‘infantile amnesia,’ where the brain’s memory center is not developed enough to store memories.
It is generally accepted this maturation doesn’t happen until age three, but some scientists say it is theoretically possible much earlier, if the moment was particularly significant in someone’s life or traumatic.
For example, some research has shown children as young as one can remember the birth of their younger sibling.
Experts say these stories beg the question of how far back memories can go.
Zoe Arnold (pictured here), a women’s health coach in Tennessee, claims that she remembers the day she was born
Carlo Weaver (pictured here), UK-based CEO of apprenticeship search engine Apprentago, said on an episode of Gooms Podcast last month that he remembers it was ‘quite scary’ being born
In Jane’s case, her earliest memory is from the day before she was born.
In a Reddit forum dedicated to the phenomena, she said she felt like she was in the ‘dark red room’ for what felt like ‘forever’ before everything went black.
‘It was nothingness,’ she wrote.
The red room and the muffled sounds eventually returned before she said ‘it felt like I was being dragged out of the room.’
She wrote: ‘What I remember next is almost like a snapshot of my childhood, except I could see myself as if I was floating above my own head.
‘Most notably, I remember seeing myself run around my grandmother’s carpet before I even knew who my grandmother was.’
She believes she was about two years old at this point.
Leanne, a 32-year-old from Washington state, recalled a similar memory.
In a recent TikTok video, she described the womb as ‘similar to when you look at a light with your eyes closed, where you can kind of see some dark red through it.’
She said: ‘My memory of it was being incredibly cramped up, like in the fetal position cramped up with your legs pressed against your chest super tight. And it felt like there was not enough space, and it was incredibly uncomfortable.
‘I remember pushing as hard as I could and kicking to try to just expand the area that I was in to get more space. I remember it looked similar to when you look at a light with your eyes closed where you can kind of see some dark red through it.
‘I remember having this sense that I would eventually get out of this space. I just had this knowledge that I would be out eventually, and I couldn’t wait for that.’
Like Jane, Leanne recalled ‘that every sound sounded like it was underwater, like I was travelling under water.’
Since she had so much trouble moving around, she suspects the memory was from shortly before birth.
She said: ‘I’ve been told that it’s scientifically impossible to form memories inside the womb, but I mean I had this experience, so I have to disagree with them. I’m not a scientist, however I literally know that this happened.
‘The older I got and the more I learned about birth and child development, the more it made sense and fits what it would probably be like inside the womb.’
While about 100 people worldwide can remember infancy and nearly everything that has ever happened to them, experts have told DailyMail.com that remembering being born is ‘very rare.’
Dr Sanam Hafeez, a neuropsychologist in New York City and director of Comprehend the Mind, told DailyMail.com: ‘Babies and infants have a hard time creating long-term memories, because their brain areas – including the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex – are still in development and therefore not fully developed for memory storage, recall and retrieval.
‘These regions are there when you are born, but they develop quickly in the first few years of life.’
This leaves most of us incapable of remembering anything before age three, on average.
Dr Dung Trinh, an internal medicine physician in California and chief officer of the Health Brain Clinic, previously told DailyMail.com: ‘When we’re born, the size of our brain is probably a quarter of the size of an adult brain.’
As the brain develops, it creates new brain cells at a rapid pace, which disrupts earlier memories and overwrites them.
Most memories are then formed and stored in the brain’s hippocampus, which takes several years to develop.
However, Dr Hafeez said that the part of the brain responsible for emotional memory, the amygdala, develops sooner, and stress can activate it and ‘increase the likelihood of recollecting some parts of the experience.’
This means that an emotionally significant event like a traumatic birth may affect the way a child behaves later in life, despite them not being able to remember the event itself.
Leanne, a 32-year-old from Washington state, said in a recent TikTok video that she remembers her mother’s womb being ‘incredibly cramped’ and ‘uncomfortable’
During an interview with Stephen Colbert last year, Nicholas Cage (pictured here with Colbert), claimed he saw ‘faces in the dark’ while still in the womb
One person replied to Jane’s Reddit thread describing the womb as ‘like being crouched next to a big movie screen. It was vaguely red and black everywhere.’
Another compared their birth to ‘a portal to life while looking through a Kaleidoscope.’
Celebrities have also come forward with their own claims of incredibly early memories.
Last year, Empire actor Terrence Howard said during an interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast that he remembers ‘the whole nine’ months of being in utero and being ‘compressed’ and ‘want[ing] to panic’ during his birth.
Nicholas Cage also claimed last year he recalled seeing ‘faces in the dark’ while in his mother’s womb.
Ms Arnold, pictured here in her TikTok video, said she remembered what the doctor who delivered her looked like
In a separate Reddit thread, for example, an anonymous user said they ‘have always known with certainty’ that they remember being born due to the trauma.
The user was born prematurely via c-section, and their mother told them doctors feared they may not survive.
They wrote: ‘When I was around 5 I told her I remembered the brunette female doctor with glasses and a mask on leaning over me and saying “she’s okay.”
‘Those sorts of details are what rocked my mom.’
However, Dr Hafeez stressed that early emotional memories like these are ‘very rare’ and could likely be considered vivid dreams instead.
She added: ‘To remember early life experiences, the brain relies on functions beyond memory processing, such as language development and a sense of self.
Language plays a critical role in encoding and organizing memories, allowing experiences to be described, labeled, and stored in a meaningful way.’
A sense of self, which develops around 18 to 24 months, also ‘provides a framework for distinguishing personal experiences from the external world, making memories more relatable and easier to recall later,’ she said
Empire actor Terrence Howard said on The Joe Rogan Experience that he remembered being in the womb and ‘panicking’ in the moments leading up to his birth
Zoe Arnold, a women’s holistic empowerment coach in Tennessee, said she knew her memory of her birth was real because of how she was able to accurately recall what the doctor who delivered her looked like.
‘My mother confirmed that is what the doctor looked like,’ she said in a TikTok video.
‘The memory is extremely brief, and I couldn’t even really tell you anything interesting other than I remember just having a really foggy glaze over my eyes and just seeing people hovering over me.
‘It’s fascinating to me that when I think back to that memory, I still feel the essence of who I am at that time. When I recall the memory, I can feel the essence of how I felt being born. It was a feeling of peace and just total awareness.
‘Having this memory just makes me believe that children, babies, just young children, have more power and more awareness than we give them credit for. Babies and children are very intuitive.’
Carlo Weaver, UK-based CEO of apprenticeship search engine Apprentago, claimed on an episode of Gooms Podcast last month: ‘I actually remember being born. I remember, very briefly, what it was like, my first breath.
‘You come out, it’s quite scary. You see everyone looking at you.’
He also said he remembers coming home from the hospital as a newborn and going to the doctor as an infant.
Rebecca Sharrock, 34, is the only known person in Australia with HSAM, which allows her to recall all of her memories
Ms Sharrock, pictured as a newborn and a child, said: ‘There is a recollection I have which I’m assuming was my birth. I found myself just wrapped in a blanket and then having my ankle clipped with a tag.’ She also noted when she was younger, she said she was ‘so clever it would embarrass me a bit as a child’
In extremely rare cases, people have claimed to remember every event in their lives, starting from birth.
This is called Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, or HSAM, which was identified in 2000 and only affects an estimated 100 people around the world.
Becky Sharrock, 34, Australia’s only know case of HSAM, claims to remember the day she was born, and the ‘intense curiosity’ she felt as a newborn baby.
‘There is a recollection I have which I’m assuming was my birth. I found myself just wrapped in a blanket and then having my ankle clipped with a tag,’ she told 60 Minutes Australia.
‘Of course that can’t be 100 percent proven to skeptics,’ she said.
‘I had intense curiosity. I didn’t know the word curiosity as a baby but I wanted to know everything about everything. I was probably about 5,000 percent more curious than I am now.’
She also recalled ‘having my head tucked in my legs and being in a dark environment,’ which she assumes was the womb.
Emily Nash (pictured here), a 19-year-old from Canada, is the youngest known person with HSAM
Ms Nash (pictured here as an infant) claims she remembers learning how to walk and being chased around the house by her parents
And Emily Nash, a 19-year-old from Canada, is the youngest known person with HSAM.
She claims to vividly remember learning to walk and being chased around the house by her parents as she did.
Ms Nash told 60 Minutes Australia: ‘My brain is almost organized like a calendar. Each date specifically resembles a movie where I can replay, rewind, fast forward. And the more I go into a specific day, the more vivid and the more details I can pull up from that day.’
‘It’s almost like a reliving, like I was just there seconds ago,’ she added.
Dr Trinh noted cases like these are more feasible, as the ‘brain is obviously more developed after birth than being in the womb.’
He added: ‘I think it’s rare, but probably feasible.’
