November 30, 2025 • 26 mins
Hollywood has made horror movies about transplant recipients inheriting the personalities of their donors for decades — but real transplant patients are reporting the same thing, and scientists can't explain why.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hollywood has made horror movies about transplant recipients inheriting the
personalities of their donors for decades, but real transplant patients
are reporting the same thing, and scientists can't explain why
Hollywood has been obsessed with this idea for decades. In
the nineteen twenty four silent film The Hands of Orlock,
(00:23):
a concert pianist loses his hands in a train accident
and receives a transplant from an executed murderer. He becomes
convinced the hands are compelling him to kill. The nineteen
ninety one thriller Body Parts took it further Jeff Fayhe
plays a psychologist who receives an arm from a death
row killer and starts experiencing violent visions and murderous impulses
(00:46):
that aren't his. Other recipients of the same killer's organs
are experiencing the same thing, the dead man's evil spreading
through his donated body parts. In the eye, a blind
woman receives a core already a transplant, it starts seeing
ghosts and premonitions of death abilities that belonged to her donor.
(01:08):
We file these under horror and science fiction fun premises
For a Friday Night movie, except something strange has been
happening in real operating rooms and recovery wards. Transplant recipients
are waking up different, changed in ways they can't explain
and didn't choose, craving foods they have never liked, drawn
(01:32):
to music they have never heard, carrying memories of moments
they never lived. Some of them feel like they are
sharing their body with someone else, someone who died so
they could survive. The movies might not be as fictional
as we thought. Hello, Riirdo's, I'm Pastor Daron. Welcome to
(02:01):
the Church of the Undead. Here in the Church of
the Undead, I step away from being the host of
Weird Darkness and step into the clothes of a reverend.
I still share things that are dark, strange, or macabre,
diving into the paranormal, true crime, monsters, and more, but
I try to find a biblical take on the subject matter.
I have to say it's a fun challenge if you're
(02:23):
a Weirdo family member from my Weird Darkness podcast or
a Weirdo in Christ from this one. Welcome to the
Church of the Undead. And I use the word undead
because as Romans six Verse eleven says in the same way,
count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ,
Jesus and as Ephesians tuesdates, even when we were dead
(02:44):
in our trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ.
If you were dead and now are alive, that makes
you un dead. If you want to join this weirdo congregation,
just click that subscribe or follow button and visit us
online at weird art Darkness dot com slash church. In
this episode's message, a woman receives a stranger's heart and
(03:06):
wakes up with cravings, memories, and preferences that aren't hers,
the same premise Hollywood has been calling horror fiction for
a century. But she's not the only one, and what
science is discovering about transplanted organs might explain why scripture
has been obsessed with the heart all along. Full disclosure.
(03:28):
Before I get into the message, I might use the
term past her because I've branded this feature as a
church and I got a minister's license online. But I
do not have a theology degree, nor did I ever
go to Bible College. I'm just a guy who gave
his life to Christ at the age of twenty one
and has tried to walk the walk ever since, and
has stumbled a lot along the way, Because, like everybody else,
(03:48):
I am an imperfect, heavily flawed human being. So please
don't take what I say as gospel. Dig into God's
Word yourself for confirmation, inspiration, and revelation. That being said,
Welcome to the Church of the undeado. Alison Conklin was
(04:12):
fourteen years old when she found her mother on the
kitchen floor. She had just learned CPR and a babysitting class,
the kind of thing you practice on plastic dummies and
never expect to use. Now she was pressing on her
mother's chest, counting compressions, waiting for the ambulance that wouldn't
arrive in time. Her mother was forty two. The condition
(04:34):
that killed her was called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The heart wall
thickens and stiffens until less blood gets pumped out with
each beat. It's genetic. It runs in families, and Alison
inherited it for years. Afterwards, she underwent surgeries and tests.
At twenty doctors implanted a cardioverter defibrillator in her chest,
(04:56):
a device that would shock her heart back into rhythm
if it detected it dangerous irregularity. In twenty eighteen, she
had open heart surgery. Through it all, one number haunted her.
The number forty two. She'd seen it everywhere on deli counter, tickets,
on race bibs, on clocks and receipts and license plates.
(05:17):
The age her mother died, the age she knew might
be waiting for her too. At forty two, doctors told
her she needed a heart transplant. She was on the
official waiting list for three days. Some people wait months,
some wait years, some die waiting. Alison got a match
(05:37):
almost immediately. In October twenty twenty two, she received a
new heart. That's when things got strange. Allison had been
a meat eater her whole life. Chicken, poultry, Thanksgiving dinner,
with all the fixings. These were foods she enjoyed without
a second thought. After the transplant, she couldn't stummach any
(05:59):
of it. The very idea of eating meat made her
physically ill. This wasn't a gradual lifestyle change or a
New Year's resolution. One day she ate meat normally, Then
she had surgery. Then she woke up and something fundamental
had shifted. At first, she blamed the medications transplant patients
(06:19):
take a mountain of drugs and pregnozone in particular is
known to mess with taste and smell. That explanation made sense,
except three years have passed now and the change persists.
She's still a vegetarian, not by choice, by something deeper
than choice. The food preferences weren't the strangest part. Within
(06:43):
the first year after her transplant, Alison experienced memories that
weren't hers, moments of deja vous for experiences she knew
she had never had. Songs she had absolutely never heard
before felt like old favorites, not just songs she liked,
but songs that felt like they had soundtracked important moments
(07:04):
in her life, moments that had never happened to her.
She's never met her donor. Recipients don't get that information.
She doesn't know whether they ate meat or not, but
she suspects the connection. She's written to her donor's family
multiple times through the hospital's filtered correspondence system. She's never
(07:25):
heard back. Clare Sylvia was the first person in New
England to receive a heart lung transplant. That was nineteen
eighty eight at Yale New Haven Hospital. She was forty
five years old, a professional dancer who had been diagnosed
with primary pulmonary hypertension, a rare condition involving high blood
pressure in the lungs that leads to heart enlargement and
(07:47):
eventually death. Without the transplant, her doctors told her she
wouldn't survive. Her donor was an eighteen year old male
who was breenedad following a motorcycle accident. His family consented
to donate as organs. On her third day after surgery,
a reporter asked Sylvia what she wanted to do more
than anything else. She surprised even herself by blurting out
(08:11):
that she was dying for a beer. She later wrote
that she was mortified by the words that came out
of her mouth. Sylvia was a health conscious dancer who
had spent years carefully managing her diet. She didn't drink beer.
She'd never wanted to drink beer. The craving made no sense.
That was just the beginning. She developed sudden cravings for greasy,
(08:34):
fast food. Her romantic preferences shifted in ways she couldn't explain,
and she started having recurring dreams about a young man
named tim Ell. The dreams were vivid and specific. She
felt like she knew this person, even though she had
never met anyone by that name. The feeling was strong
enough that she started investigating. Using details from her nurse
(08:58):
and newspaper obituaries, eventually tracked down her donor's family. Her
donor was Tim Ell, the young man from her dreams.
Tim had loved chicken nuggets, green peppers, and beer. A
container of chicken nuggets was found under his jacket when
he died in the motorcycle accident. The specific foods she
(09:18):
had been craving were literally with him when he died.
After the transplant, Sylvia wrote that she felt as if
a second soul were sharing her body. Not metaphorically, she
genuinely felt like someone else's consciousness was present alongside her own.
She documented her experiences in the nineteen ninety seven memoir
(09:40):
A Change of Heart. Doctor Paul Piersall, a neuropsychologist, collected
over one hundred and fifty cases of hard transplant recipients
developing unexpected traits that matched their donors. Some of them
are hard to explain away. The forty seven year old
foundry worker received the heart of a seventeen year old
student and developed a fascination for classical music, something he
(10:02):
had never listened to before. His wife reported that he
would sit for hours listening to and whistling classic compositions
that he couldn't name. He'd never been able to identify
a single piece, yet he whistled complex melodies perfectly. The
donor's mother revealed her son was walking to violin class
when he was fatally shot. He died on the street
(10:24):
hugging his violin case. A fifty six year old college
professor received a heart from a police officer who had
been shot in the face while trying to arrest a
drug dealer. The professor started experiencing flashes of light in
his face after the transplant. He had no knowledge of
how his donor died. Nobody told him. He just started
(10:44):
seeing bright flashes directly in his face, followed by intense
burning sensations, a muzzle flash, searing pain, exactly what his
donor would have experienced in the final moment of his life.
A five year old boy who received to the heart
of a three year old told his parents he'd given
the boy a name. He called him Timmy. The boy
(11:06):
said Timmy was younger than him and got hurt when
he fell down. Neither the child nor his parents knew
the name or age of the donor. The hospital doesn't
release that information. Yet this five year old somehow knew
he had received a heart from a younger child, knew
the child's name, and knew he had been hurt in
a fall. William Sheridan, a retired catering manager with poor
(11:31):
drawing skills, suddenly developed artistic talents after his heart transplant.
He felt compelled to pick up a pencil and found
himself creating detailed sketches that surprised him as much as
they surprised his family. The man who donated his heart
had been a keen artist. A twenty twenty four study
published in Transplantology examined forty seven participants, twenty three heart recipients,
(11:56):
and twenty four recipients of other organs, and found that
eighty nine percent of all transplant recipients reported personality changes
after surgery. That is not a small subset experiencing something unusual.
That's nearly everyone in the study. A twenty twenty four
review and Curious, a peer reviewed medical journal, noted that
(12:17):
studies indicate heart transplant recipients may exhibit preferences, emotions, and
memories resembling those of their donors, suggesting a form of
memory storage within the transplanted organ. The researchers went further
than just documenting the phenomenon. The heart's complex neural network,
which they call a heart brain, supports bidirectional communication with
(12:39):
the brain and other organs. In nineteen ninety four, doctor
Andrew Armour discovered something that stunned the medical community. The
human heart contains approximately forty thousand neurons brain cells that
form their own functional nervous system. These neurons can learn,
they can remember, make decisions independently of the brain in
(13:02):
your skull. Your heart isn't just a pump, it thinks.
Researchers have proposed several mechanisms for how this might work.
Epigenetic memory involves chemical modifications to DNA that don't change
the genetic code itself, but do change which genes get expressed.
These modifications can be influenced by experiences and persist when
(13:25):
cells divide. In theory, epigenetic patterns and donor cells could
carry information about the donor's experiences and preferences. Other theories
involve RNA memory, protein memory, and direct encoding in the
heart's neural tissue. None of these mechanisms have been definitively proven,
but they are not wild speculation either. They are grounded
(13:48):
in legitimate scientific principles, even if the specific application to
personality transfer remains unproven. Not everyone except the cellular memory theory.
Doctor jah On Wallwork, former director of Transplant Service for
the UK's National Health Service, stated flatly that it's impossible
for a physical organ to change your personality, your memories,
(14:10):
or how you feel. His position represents mainstream medical thinking.
Memory lives in the brain, personality is a product of
neural networks in the cerebral cortex, and organs are just
biological machinery. The skeptics point to psychological explanations. Transplant recipients
undergo massive trauma, both physical and psychological. They face their
(14:34):
own mortality, survive major surgery, deal with months of recovery,
take powerful medications that affect mood and perception, and carry
the knowledge that someone had to die for them to live.
Changes in personality and preferences could be reactions to that trauma,
rather than evidence of cellular memory. A nineteen ninety two
(14:54):
German study surveyed forty seven patients who received organ transplants
and found that the major majority experienced no change to
their personalities. Fifteen percent said they experienced changes but attributed
it to the trauma of the procedure. Only six percent
three patients said their personalities had changed and attributed it
(15:15):
to their new hearts. So which is it. Are transplant
recipients experiencing genuine transfer of memories and preferences from their donors,
or are they experiencing psychological responses to an existential trauma
and finding patterns in coincidences. Science doesn't have a definitive
answer yet, but here's what's interesting. For centuries, scientists dismissed
(15:40):
the Bible's obsession with the heart as primitive metaphor the
ancients didn't understand neuroscience. We were told they thought the
heart controlled emotions and decision making, when really it's just
a muscle that pumps blood. Turns out, the ancients might
have known something we forgot. Scientists are wrestling with how
(16:01):
any of this is possible cellular memory, epigenetic encoding the
heart brain. They're proposing theories because what they're observing shouldn't
happen according to everything they believed and thought they knew
as fact about human consciousness. Obviously there is something deeper here,
(16:21):
something the story keeps pointing toward, if we're willing to
see it. Allison watched her mother die at forty two
from a heart condition, then inherited that same condition herself,
spent decades knowing the same death might be waiting for
her at the same age. A broken heart passed down
through bloodlines. The Bible calls this generational curse patterns of
(16:46):
destruction inherited from our fathers and mothers. Addiction, abuse, rage, despair.
We don't just inherit eye color and bone structure. We
inherit brokenness, hearts that don't work right, and without intervention,
we die the same way they did. Exodus twenty, verse
five talks about the iniquity of the fathers being visited
(17:08):
upon the children to the third and fourth generation. We
see it play out in families all around us, the
same sins, the same struggles, the same destruction, passed down
like a genetic disease. Scripture is full of these patterns.
Abraham lied about his wife Sarah, telling Pharaoh that she
was his sister to protect himself. Genesis twelve, verse thirteen.
(17:31):
His son Isaac told the exact same lie about his
wife Rebecca to the exact same kingdom. Genesis twenty six,
verse seven. Abraham's deception passed to the next generation like
a genetic defect. David's send with Bathsheba and the murder
of her husband Uriah unleashed a cascade of destruction through
(17:51):
his family line. The prophet Nathan told David the sword
would never depart from his house Tewond Samuel twelve, verse ten.
Amnon raped his half sister Timar. Another son, Absalom, murdered Amnon,
and later led a rebellion against David himself. Solomon, for
all his wisdom, repeated his father's weakness for women, multiplying
(18:14):
wives and concubines until they turned his heart away from God.
First Kings eleven, verses three and four. The pattern didn't
skip a generation. It intensified Ahab and Jezebel's idolatry and
violence infected their entire dynasty. Their daughter Athelia married into
the royal line of Judah and brought Baala worship with her.
(18:36):
When her son died, she seized the throne and murdered
her own grandchildren to eliminate rivals. Second King's eleven, Verse one,
the poison of one generation became the massacre of the next.
These are not just ancient stories, they are case studies
in how brokenness replicates itself. The alcoholic father raises sons
(18:57):
who drink the abused child because the abusive parent. The
anxious mother passes her fears to daughters, who passed them
to granddaughters. We watch it happen in our own families
and wonder if we're destined to repeat the same destruction.
But Alison hit the age of forty two and didn't die.
She received a new heart. The pattern broke not through
(19:20):
her own effort, but through a donor who died so
she could live. The transplant didn't just keep her alive,
It changed her preferences that she had held her entire
life disappeared overnight. Foods she had always enjoyed now made
her sick. She experienced memories that weren't hers. The donor's
(19:41):
heart brought the donor's desires. This is exactly what scripture promises.
I will give you a new heart and put a
new spirit in you. I will remove your heart of
stone and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel thirty six,
verse twenty six. Not a repaired heart, not your old
hearts trying harder, a transplant, a new heart. And when
(20:05):
Christ takes up residents inside us, his preferences start becoming
our preferences. Things we used to crave lose their grip,
Things we never cared about suddenly matter. Paul said it directly,
it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives.
In me Galatians two, verse twenty that's the spiritual version
of what Alison and Sylvia experienced physically, a donor's heart
(20:30):
bringing the donor's desires a new nature that changes what
we hunger for at a level deeper than willpower or discipline.
Clear Sylvia woke up craving beer and chicken nuggets, foods
her donor loved. When we receive Christ, we start craving righteousness, mercy, justice,
(20:50):
love for people we used to ignore, compassion for enemies
we used to hate. Not because we're trying harder to
be good people, because someone else's heart is beating inside
us now. But transplant recipients face a brutal reality. Their
immune system treats the new heart as an invader, foreign tissue,
(21:11):
a threat to be destroyed. Without immunosuppressant drugs taken every
single day, their own body would kill the heart that's
keeping them alive. There's a spiritual parallel to this as well. Unfortunately,
the flesh wars against the spirit. Our old nature doesn't
welcome the new heart. It attacks it. Paul's anguish in
(21:32):
Romans chapter seven is rejection syndrome, saying I do not
do the good I want to do, but the evil
I do not want to do this I keep on
doing Romans seven, verse nineteen. The new heart wants one thing,
the old flesh wants something else, and they are in
constant conflict. Allison has to take medication every day for
(21:54):
the rest of her life to keep her body from
destroying her new heart. We have to feed the spirit
daily through prayer, through scripture, through fellowship, through worship, to
keep our old nature from overwhelming the new life inside us.
Sanctification is learning to stop rejecting what God placed inside us,
letting the new heart win, letting the donor's preferences override
(22:17):
our own. This is why some of us feel like
we're at war with ourselves, because well we are. The
old self recognizes the new heart as foreign and fights
to destroy it. That battle doesn't mean the transplant failed.
It means the transplant is real and the old nature
knows it's being replaced. Every transplant recipient carries a weight.
(22:40):
Someone died so they could survive. The stranger's sacrifice gave
them a future. They walk around with another person's heart
beating in their chest. Allison wrote to her donor's family
multiple times, never heard back. Some families just can't handle
the contact, Some aren't ready, some never will be. But
(23:00):
we know exactly who our donor was. His name, his words,
his life, his death. Jesus didn't die anonymously. He died publicly,
deliberately to pay the price for our sins and conquer
death by rising from the grave back to new life.
And because of that sacrifice, we can receive his heart
and live a new life ourselves. Greater love has no
(23:24):
one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.
John fifteen, verse thirteen. The question is whether we'll respond
or walk around with his heart inside us and never
acknowledge the sacrifice that made it possible. Allison writes letters
to a family she's never met, hoping for a response.
(23:44):
Our donor isn't waiting for letters. He's already responded. He
has already reached out. The correspondence channel is open. He's
just waiting to hear back from us. The Bible mentions
the heart over eight hundred times, not as metaphor as
the seat of human identity, the core of who we are.
(24:05):
Modern science assumed this was primitive misunderstanding ancient people who
didn't know the brain handles thinking and decision making. Turns
out the ancients understood something we're only now rediscovering. The
heart has forty thousand neurons. It can learn and remember,
It makes independent decisions. It carries something of who we are,
(24:29):
and God offers to replace ours. If we've been trying
to change ourselves through willpower, trying harder to quit the addiction,
trying harder to control the anger, trying harder to break
the pattern that destroyed everyone else in our family, maybe
we've been approaching this wrong. Maybe we don't need self improvement,
(24:49):
Maybe we need a transplant. Allison didn't become a vegetarian
through discipline. She received a new heart and her desires
changed at a level deeper than choice. That's what Christ offers,
not behavior modification. Not trying harder to be a good person.
A new heart with new desires, his desires living inside us,
(25:14):
changing what we want. At the cellular level, the donor
died so we could live, and then he rose again
to give us new life. The sacrifice has been made.
The heart is available. Your new life is waiting. The
only question is whether you'll accept it. If you like
(25:42):
what you heard, share this episode with others whom you
think might also like it. Maybe the person you share
it with or want to join this weirdo congregation too,
But listen to previous messages. Visit Weirddarkness dot com slash church.
That's weird Darkness dot com slash church. I'm Darren Martler.
Thanks for joining me and until next time. Jesus loves you,
(26:02):
and so do I. God bless you.
Hollywood has made horror movies about transplant recipients inheriting the
personalities of their donors for decades, but real transplant patients
are reporting the same thing, and scientists can't explain why
Hollywood has been obsessed with this idea for decades. In
the nineteen twenty four silent film The Hands of Orlock,
(00:23):
a concert pianist loses his hands in a train accident
and receives a transplant from an executed murderer. He becomes
convinced the hands are compelling him to kill. The nineteen
ninety one thriller Body Parts took it further Jeff Fayhe
plays a psychologist who receives an arm from a death
row killer and starts experiencing violent visions and murderous impulses
(00:46):
that aren't his. Other recipients of the same killer's organs
are experiencing the same thing, the dead man's evil spreading
through his donated body parts. In the eye, a blind
woman receives a core already a transplant, it starts seeing
ghosts and premonitions of death abilities that belonged to her donor.
(01:08):
We file these under horror and science fiction fun premises
For a Friday Night movie, except something strange has been
happening in real operating rooms and recovery wards. Transplant recipients
are waking up different, changed in ways they can't explain
and didn't choose, craving foods they have never liked, drawn
(01:32):
to music they have never heard, carrying memories of moments
they never lived. Some of them feel like they are
sharing their body with someone else, someone who died so
they could survive. The movies might not be as fictional
as we thought. Hello, Riirdo's, I'm Pastor Daron. Welcome to
(02:01):
the Church of the Undead. Here in the Church of
the Undead, I step away from being the host of
Weird Darkness and step into the clothes of a reverend.
I still share things that are dark, strange, or macabre,
diving into the paranormal, true crime, monsters, and more, but
I try to find a biblical take on the subject matter.
I have to say it's a fun challenge if you're
(02:23):
a Weirdo family member from my Weird Darkness podcast or
a Weirdo in Christ from this one. Welcome to the
Church of the Undead. And I use the word undead
because as Romans six Verse eleven says in the same way,
count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ,
Jesus and as Ephesians tuesdates, even when we were dead
(02:44):
in our trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ.
If you were dead and now are alive, that makes
you un dead. If you want to join this weirdo congregation,
just click that subscribe or follow button and visit us
online at weird art Darkness dot com slash church. In
this episode's message, a woman receives a stranger's heart and
(03:06):
wakes up with cravings, memories, and preferences that aren't hers,
the same premise Hollywood has been calling horror fiction for
a century. But she's not the only one, and what
science is discovering about transplanted organs might explain why scripture
has been obsessed with the heart all along. Full disclosure.
(03:28):
Before I get into the message, I might use the
term past her because I've branded this feature as a
church and I got a minister's license online. But I
do not have a theology degree, nor did I ever
go to Bible College. I'm just a guy who gave
his life to Christ at the age of twenty one
and has tried to walk the walk ever since, and
has stumbled a lot along the way, Because, like everybody else,
(03:48):
I am an imperfect, heavily flawed human being. So please
don't take what I say as gospel. Dig into God's
Word yourself for confirmation, inspiration, and revelation. That being said,
Welcome to the Church of the undeado. Alison Conklin was
(04:12):
fourteen years old when she found her mother on the
kitchen floor. She had just learned CPR and a babysitting class,
the kind of thing you practice on plastic dummies and
never expect to use. Now she was pressing on her
mother's chest, counting compressions, waiting for the ambulance that wouldn't
arrive in time. Her mother was forty two. The condition
(04:34):
that killed her was called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The heart wall
thickens and stiffens until less blood gets pumped out with
each beat. It's genetic. It runs in families, and Alison
inherited it for years. Afterwards, she underwent surgeries and tests.
At twenty doctors implanted a cardioverter defibrillator in her chest,
(04:56):
a device that would shock her heart back into rhythm
if it detected it dangerous irregularity. In twenty eighteen, she
had open heart surgery. Through it all, one number haunted her.
The number forty two. She'd seen it everywhere on deli counter, tickets,
on race bibs, on clocks and receipts and license plates.
(05:17):
The age her mother died, the age she knew might
be waiting for her too. At forty two, doctors told
her she needed a heart transplant. She was on the
official waiting list for three days. Some people wait months,
some wait years, some die waiting. Alison got a match
(05:37):
almost immediately. In October twenty twenty two, she received a
new heart. That's when things got strange. Allison had been
a meat eater her whole life. Chicken, poultry, Thanksgiving dinner,
with all the fixings. These were foods she enjoyed without
a second thought. After the transplant, she couldn't stummach any
(05:59):
of it. The very idea of eating meat made her
physically ill. This wasn't a gradual lifestyle change or a
New Year's resolution. One day she ate meat normally, Then
she had surgery. Then she woke up and something fundamental
had shifted. At first, she blamed the medications transplant patients
(06:19):
take a mountain of drugs and pregnozone in particular is
known to mess with taste and smell. That explanation made sense,
except three years have passed now and the change persists.
She's still a vegetarian, not by choice, by something deeper
than choice. The food preferences weren't the strangest part. Within
(06:43):
the first year after her transplant, Alison experienced memories that
weren't hers, moments of deja vous for experiences she knew
she had never had. Songs she had absolutely never heard
before felt like old favorites, not just songs she liked,
but songs that felt like they had soundtracked important moments
(07:04):
in her life, moments that had never happened to her.
She's never met her donor. Recipients don't get that information.
She doesn't know whether they ate meat or not, but
she suspects the connection. She's written to her donor's family
multiple times through the hospital's filtered correspondence system. She's never
(07:25):
heard back. Clare Sylvia was the first person in New
England to receive a heart lung transplant. That was nineteen
eighty eight at Yale New Haven Hospital. She was forty
five years old, a professional dancer who had been diagnosed
with primary pulmonary hypertension, a rare condition involving high blood
pressure in the lungs that leads to heart enlargement and
(07:47):
eventually death. Without the transplant, her doctors told her she
wouldn't survive. Her donor was an eighteen year old male
who was breenedad following a motorcycle accident. His family consented
to donate as organs. On her third day after surgery,
a reporter asked Sylvia what she wanted to do more
than anything else. She surprised even herself by blurting out
(08:11):
that she was dying for a beer. She later wrote
that she was mortified by the words that came out
of her mouth. Sylvia was a health conscious dancer who
had spent years carefully managing her diet. She didn't drink beer.
She'd never wanted to drink beer. The craving made no sense.
That was just the beginning. She developed sudden cravings for greasy,
(08:34):
fast food. Her romantic preferences shifted in ways she couldn't explain,
and she started having recurring dreams about a young man
named tim Ell. The dreams were vivid and specific. She
felt like she knew this person, even though she had
never met anyone by that name. The feeling was strong
enough that she started investigating. Using details from her nurse
(08:58):
and newspaper obituaries, eventually tracked down her donor's family. Her
donor was Tim Ell, the young man from her dreams.
Tim had loved chicken nuggets, green peppers, and beer. A
container of chicken nuggets was found under his jacket when
he died in the motorcycle accident. The specific foods she
(09:18):
had been craving were literally with him when he died.
After the transplant, Sylvia wrote that she felt as if
a second soul were sharing her body. Not metaphorically, she
genuinely felt like someone else's consciousness was present alongside her own.
She documented her experiences in the nineteen ninety seven memoir
(09:40):
A Change of Heart. Doctor Paul Piersall, a neuropsychologist, collected
over one hundred and fifty cases of hard transplant recipients
developing unexpected traits that matched their donors. Some of them
are hard to explain away. The forty seven year old
foundry worker received the heart of a seventeen year old
student and developed a fascination for classical music, something he
(10:02):
had never listened to before. His wife reported that he
would sit for hours listening to and whistling classic compositions
that he couldn't name. He'd never been able to identify
a single piece, yet he whistled complex melodies perfectly. The
donor's mother revealed her son was walking to violin class
when he was fatally shot. He died on the street
(10:24):
hugging his violin case. A fifty six year old college
professor received a heart from a police officer who had
been shot in the face while trying to arrest a
drug dealer. The professor started experiencing flashes of light in
his face after the transplant. He had no knowledge of
how his donor died. Nobody told him. He just started
(10:44):
seeing bright flashes directly in his face, followed by intense
burning sensations, a muzzle flash, searing pain, exactly what his
donor would have experienced in the final moment of his life.
A five year old boy who received to the heart
of a three year old told his parents he'd given
the boy a name. He called him Timmy. The boy
(11:06):
said Timmy was younger than him and got hurt when
he fell down. Neither the child nor his parents knew
the name or age of the donor. The hospital doesn't
release that information. Yet this five year old somehow knew
he had received a heart from a younger child, knew
the child's name, and knew he had been hurt in
a fall. William Sheridan, a retired catering manager with poor
(11:31):
drawing skills, suddenly developed artistic talents after his heart transplant.
He felt compelled to pick up a pencil and found
himself creating detailed sketches that surprised him as much as
they surprised his family. The man who donated his heart
had been a keen artist. A twenty twenty four study
published in Transplantology examined forty seven participants, twenty three heart recipients,
(11:56):
and twenty four recipients of other organs, and found that
eighty nine percent of all transplant recipients reported personality changes
after surgery. That is not a small subset experiencing something unusual.
That's nearly everyone in the study. A twenty twenty four
review and Curious, a peer reviewed medical journal, noted that
(12:17):
studies indicate heart transplant recipients may exhibit preferences, emotions, and
memories resembling those of their donors, suggesting a form of
memory storage within the transplanted organ. The researchers went further
than just documenting the phenomenon. The heart's complex neural network,
which they call a heart brain, supports bidirectional communication with
(12:39):
the brain and other organs. In nineteen ninety four, doctor
Andrew Armour discovered something that stunned the medical community. The
human heart contains approximately forty thousand neurons brain cells that
form their own functional nervous system. These neurons can learn,
they can remember, make decisions independently of the brain in
(13:02):
your skull. Your heart isn't just a pump, it thinks.
Researchers have proposed several mechanisms for how this might work.
Epigenetic memory involves chemical modifications to DNA that don't change
the genetic code itself, but do change which genes get expressed.
These modifications can be influenced by experiences and persist when
(13:25):
cells divide. In theory, epigenetic patterns and donor cells could
carry information about the donor's experiences and preferences. Other theories
involve RNA memory, protein memory, and direct encoding in the
heart's neural tissue. None of these mechanisms have been definitively proven,
but they are not wild speculation either. They are grounded
(13:48):
in legitimate scientific principles, even if the specific application to
personality transfer remains unproven. Not everyone except the cellular memory theory.
Doctor jah On Wallwork, former director of Transplant Service for
the UK's National Health Service, stated flatly that it's impossible
for a physical organ to change your personality, your memories,
(14:10):
or how you feel. His position represents mainstream medical thinking.
Memory lives in the brain, personality is a product of
neural networks in the cerebral cortex, and organs are just
biological machinery. The skeptics point to psychological explanations. Transplant recipients
undergo massive trauma, both physical and psychological. They face their
(14:34):
own mortality, survive major surgery, deal with months of recovery,
take powerful medications that affect mood and perception, and carry
the knowledge that someone had to die for them to live.
Changes in personality and preferences could be reactions to that trauma,
rather than evidence of cellular memory. A nineteen ninety two
(14:54):
German study surveyed forty seven patients who received organ transplants
and found that the major majority experienced no change to
their personalities. Fifteen percent said they experienced changes but attributed
it to the trauma of the procedure. Only six percent
three patients said their personalities had changed and attributed it
(15:15):
to their new hearts. So which is it. Are transplant
recipients experiencing genuine transfer of memories and preferences from their donors,
or are they experiencing psychological responses to an existential trauma
and finding patterns in coincidences. Science doesn't have a definitive
answer yet, but here's what's interesting. For centuries, scientists dismissed
(15:40):
the Bible's obsession with the heart as primitive metaphor the
ancients didn't understand neuroscience. We were told they thought the
heart controlled emotions and decision making, when really it's just
a muscle that pumps blood. Turns out, the ancients might
have known something we forgot. Scientists are wrestling with how
(16:01):
any of this is possible cellular memory, epigenetic encoding the
heart brain. They're proposing theories because what they're observing shouldn't
happen according to everything they believed and thought they knew
as fact about human consciousness. Obviously there is something deeper here,
(16:21):
something the story keeps pointing toward, if we're willing to
see it. Allison watched her mother die at forty two
from a heart condition, then inherited that same condition herself,
spent decades knowing the same death might be waiting for
her at the same age. A broken heart passed down
through bloodlines. The Bible calls this generational curse patterns of
(16:46):
destruction inherited from our fathers and mothers. Addiction, abuse, rage, despair.
We don't just inherit eye color and bone structure. We
inherit brokenness, hearts that don't work right, and without intervention,
we die the same way they did. Exodus twenty, verse
five talks about the iniquity of the fathers being visited
(17:08):
upon the children to the third and fourth generation. We
see it play out in families all around us, the
same sins, the same struggles, the same destruction, passed down
like a genetic disease. Scripture is full of these patterns.
Abraham lied about his wife Sarah, telling Pharaoh that she
was his sister to protect himself. Genesis twelve, verse thirteen.
(17:31):
His son Isaac told the exact same lie about his
wife Rebecca to the exact same kingdom. Genesis twenty six,
verse seven. Abraham's deception passed to the next generation like
a genetic defect. David's send with Bathsheba and the murder
of her husband Uriah unleashed a cascade of destruction through
(17:51):
his family line. The prophet Nathan told David the sword
would never depart from his house Tewond Samuel twelve, verse ten.
Amnon raped his half sister Timar. Another son, Absalom, murdered Amnon,
and later led a rebellion against David himself. Solomon, for
all his wisdom, repeated his father's weakness for women, multiplying
(18:14):
wives and concubines until they turned his heart away from God.
First Kings eleven, verses three and four. The pattern didn't
skip a generation. It intensified Ahab and Jezebel's idolatry and
violence infected their entire dynasty. Their daughter Athelia married into
the royal line of Judah and brought Baala worship with her.
(18:36):
When her son died, she seized the throne and murdered
her own grandchildren to eliminate rivals. Second King's eleven, Verse one,
the poison of one generation became the massacre of the next.
These are not just ancient stories, they are case studies
in how brokenness replicates itself. The alcoholic father raises sons
(18:57):
who drink the abused child because the abusive parent. The
anxious mother passes her fears to daughters, who passed them
to granddaughters. We watch it happen in our own families
and wonder if we're destined to repeat the same destruction.
But Alison hit the age of forty two and didn't die.
She received a new heart. The pattern broke not through
(19:20):
her own effort, but through a donor who died so
she could live. The transplant didn't just keep her alive,
It changed her preferences that she had held her entire
life disappeared overnight. Foods she had always enjoyed now made
her sick. She experienced memories that weren't hers. The donor's
(19:41):
heart brought the donor's desires. This is exactly what scripture promises.
I will give you a new heart and put a
new spirit in you. I will remove your heart of
stone and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel thirty six,
verse twenty six. Not a repaired heart, not your old
hearts trying harder, a transplant, a new heart. And when
(20:05):
Christ takes up residents inside us, his preferences start becoming
our preferences. Things we used to crave lose their grip,
Things we never cared about suddenly matter. Paul said it directly,
it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives.
In me Galatians two, verse twenty that's the spiritual version
of what Alison and Sylvia experienced physically, a donor's heart
(20:30):
bringing the donor's desires a new nature that changes what
we hunger for at a level deeper than willpower or discipline.
Clear Sylvia woke up craving beer and chicken nuggets, foods
her donor loved. When we receive Christ, we start craving righteousness, mercy, justice,
(20:50):
love for people we used to ignore, compassion for enemies
we used to hate. Not because we're trying harder to
be good people, because someone else's heart is beating inside
us now. But transplant recipients face a brutal reality. Their
immune system treats the new heart as an invader, foreign tissue,
(21:11):
a threat to be destroyed. Without immunosuppressant drugs taken every
single day, their own body would kill the heart that's
keeping them alive. There's a spiritual parallel to this as well. Unfortunately,
the flesh wars against the spirit. Our old nature doesn't
welcome the new heart. It attacks it. Paul's anguish in
(21:32):
Romans chapter seven is rejection syndrome, saying I do not
do the good I want to do, but the evil
I do not want to do this I keep on
doing Romans seven, verse nineteen. The new heart wants one thing,
the old flesh wants something else, and they are in
constant conflict. Allison has to take medication every day for
(21:54):
the rest of her life to keep her body from
destroying her new heart. We have to feed the spirit
daily through prayer, through scripture, through fellowship, through worship, to
keep our old nature from overwhelming the new life inside us.
Sanctification is learning to stop rejecting what God placed inside us,
letting the new heart win, letting the donor's preferences override
(22:17):
our own. This is why some of us feel like
we're at war with ourselves, because well we are. The
old self recognizes the new heart as foreign and fights
to destroy it. That battle doesn't mean the transplant failed.
It means the transplant is real and the old nature
knows it's being replaced. Every transplant recipient carries a weight.
(22:40):
Someone died so they could survive. The stranger's sacrifice gave
them a future. They walk around with another person's heart
beating in their chest. Allison wrote to her donor's family
multiple times, never heard back. Some families just can't handle
the contact, Some aren't ready, some never will be. But
(23:00):
we know exactly who our donor was. His name, his words,
his life, his death. Jesus didn't die anonymously. He died publicly,
deliberately to pay the price for our sins and conquer
death by rising from the grave back to new life.
And because of that sacrifice, we can receive his heart
and live a new life ourselves. Greater love has no
(23:24):
one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.
John fifteen, verse thirteen. The question is whether we'll respond
or walk around with his heart inside us and never
acknowledge the sacrifice that made it possible. Allison writes letters
to a family she's never met, hoping for a response.
(23:44):
Our donor isn't waiting for letters. He's already responded. He
has already reached out. The correspondence channel is open. He's
just waiting to hear back from us. The Bible mentions
the heart over eight hundred times, not as metaphor as
the seat of human identity, the core of who we are.
(24:05):
Modern science assumed this was primitive misunderstanding ancient people who
didn't know the brain handles thinking and decision making. Turns
out the ancients understood something we're only now rediscovering. The
heart has forty thousand neurons. It can learn and remember,
It makes independent decisions. It carries something of who we are,
(24:29):
and God offers to replace ours. If we've been trying
to change ourselves through willpower, trying harder to quit the addiction,
trying harder to control the anger, trying harder to break
the pattern that destroyed everyone else in our family, maybe
we've been approaching this wrong. Maybe we don't need self improvement,
(24:49):
Maybe we need a transplant. Allison didn't become a vegetarian
through discipline. She received a new heart and her desires
changed at a level deeper than choice. That's what Christ offers,
not behavior modification. Not trying harder to be a good person.
A new heart with new desires, his desires living inside us,
(25:14):
changing what we want. At the cellular level, the donor
died so we could live, and then he rose again
to give us new life. The sacrifice has been made.
The heart is available. Your new life is waiting. The
only question is whether you'll accept it. If you like
(25:42):
what you heard, share this episode with others whom you
think might also like it. Maybe the person you share
it with or want to join this weirdo congregation too,
But listen to previous messages. Visit Weirddarkness dot com slash church.
That's weird Darkness dot com slash church. I'm Darren Martler.
Thanks for joining me and until next time. Jesus loves you,
(26:02):
and so do I. God bless you.
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