“Mom, when
you were a little girl and I was your daddy, you were bad a lot of
times, and I
never hit you!” With these words, William,
then a rambunctious three-year-old responding to his mother’s warning
about a spanking, proclaimed that he had been his maternal grandfather,
John.
His mother, Doreen,
was initially taken aback by this, but as William talked more, she began
to feel comforted by the idea that her father had returned. John had
been close to his family and had frequently told Doreen, “No matter
what, I’m always going to take care of you.” William talked a number of
times about being his grandfather and also discussed his death. He
demonstrated knowledge that amazed his mother, such as the nickname only
his grandfather used for a family cat and the day of the week when his
grandfather had died.
William also talked about the period between lives. “When you die, you
don’t go right to heaven,” he told his mother. “You go to different
levels—here, then here, then here,” he explained, with his hand moving
up at each level. He said that animals are reborn as well as humans and
that he saw animals in heaven that did not bite or scratch. John had
been a practicing Roman Catholic, but he had believed in reincarnation
and had said he would take care of animals in his next life. William
said he would be an animal doctor and would take care of large animals
at a zoo. He also had a birth defect that seemed to match the fatal
wound his grandfather had suffered…
Researchers at the University of Virginia have been studying cases like
William’s for more than 45 years. Dr. Ian Stevenson, who passed away in
2007, started the work when he was chairman of the Department of
Psychiatry. When he came to the university, Stevenson had published
extensively in medical and psychiatric journals, but he also harbored an
interest in parapsychology.
After he learned of five cases in India of young children claiming to
remember previous lives, Stevenson went there in 1961 to investigate. He
stayed for four weeks and discovered 25 cases. He achieved similar
results in nearby Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and realized that this
phenomenon was much more common than anyone had known.
Stevenson investigated more of these cases from various parts of the
world, and in 1966 the American Society for Psychical Research published
his first book on them, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.
The title reflects Stevenson’s even-handed approach: He did not accept
that reincarnation occurred and did not take the cases at face value;
instead, he attempted to document the cases as carefully as possible—at
times in exhaustive detail.
Stevenson stepped down as chairman of the Department of Psychiatry in
1967 to focus full time on this research and created the Division of
Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia to carry on the work of
reincarnation research. Over the past four decades, researchers
associated with the Division have investigated more than 2,500 cases of
children who say they remember previous lives.
Typical
Features
The cases
seem to occur most often in cultures with a belief in reincarnation.
India, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Lebanon, Thailand, and Burma (Myanmar) have
revealed most of them. However, cases have been found wherever anyone
has looked for them: Stevenson published a book of European cases, and
numerous ones have been found in the United States as well. They often
share several features:
1.
Past-life statements. When they are two- or
three- years-old, the children in these cases often begin to describe a
previous life and usually stop by the age of six or seven. They talk
about their memories spontaneously, without the use of hypnotic
regression. Some are able to recall the memories on demand, but others
need to be in a certain frame of mind to access them. They describe
recent lives—usually quite ordinary and in the same country—with the
median interval between the death of the previous individual and the
birth of the child at only 16 months. The one part of the remembered
life that is often out of the ordinary is the mode of death: 70 percent
recall death by unnatural means.
Like William,
some children say they were deceased family members, while others say
they were strangers in another location. When those children give enough
details—such as the name of that location—people have gone there and
indeed identified a deceased individual, the previous personality, whose
life appears to match the child’s report.
Some children
talk about their memories with detachment, but many show strong
emotions. They may cry and beg to be taken to what they say is their
previous family. Others show intense anger, particularly toward their
killers in those cases in which the previous personality was murdered.
And yet, even the children with strong emotions may show great intensity
one moment and then engage in ordinary play a few minutes later.
2.
Birthmarks and birth defects. Like William,
many of the children have birthmarks or birth defects that appear to
match wounds, usually fatal ones, suffered by the previous
personalities. Stevenson published a two-volume set of more than two
hundred such cases. For example, a girl who was born with markedly
deformed fingers remembered the life of a man whose fingers were chopped
off. A boy with only stubs for fingers on his right hand remembered the
life of a boy in another village who had lost the fingers of his right
hand in a fodder-chopping machine. A boy with a birthmark on the back of
his head (which was small and round, like an entry wound) and a
birthmark toward the front of his head (which was larger and more
irregularly shaped, like an exit wound) remembered the life of a teacher
who had been shot from behind and killed. Another girl who remembered
the life of a man who had undergone skull surgery had what Stevenson
called the most extraordinary birthmark he had ever seen—a 3-cm-wide
band of pale, scarlike
tissue that extended around her
entire head.
3.
Themes of past-life statements. When children
talk about a previous life, they tend to discuss events at the end of
the life, and almost three-quarters of them give details about the
death. They are also more likely to talk about people from the end of
that life, rather than earlier, so a child who describes dying as an
adult is more likely to talk about a spouse or children than about
parents.
In addition,
20 percent of the children in these cases describe memories of events
between lives. Some say they stayed near to where the previous
personality had lived or died, and they may describe a funeral or other
events involving the family. One girl in Thailand, Ratana Wongsombat,
complained that “her” ashes had been scattered rather than buried. In
fact, the previous personality had wanted her ashes to be buried under
the bo tree at her temple, but the tree’s root system was so extensive
that her daughter had been unable to bury the remains and scattered them
instead. Another child, Bongkuch Promsin, said he spent seven years
hovering over a bamboo tree near where the previous personality’s body
had been dumped after he was killed. One day he tried to go to his
previous mother but got lost in the market. While there, he saw the man
who became his current father. Bongkuch followed him home to join his
family. Bongkuch’s father had in fact attended a meeting on a rainy day
in the area Bongkuch reported, during the month when Bongkuch was
conceived. Like William, some children have also talked about going to
realms such as heaven and seeing other beings there.
4.
Past-life behaviors. Many of these children
act in ways that appear connected to the lives they describe. Some show
emotions toward various members of the previous family that are
appropriate for the relationships that the previous personality had with
them. The children may be deferential toward previous parents or a
spouse but bossy toward younger siblings of the previous personality,
even though those siblings are presently much older than the child.
These emotions usually dissipate as the children grow older, but there
are exceptions. In at least one case, Maung Aye Kyaw of Burma, the child
grew up and married the widow of the previous personality.
Many of the
children exhibit phobias toward the mode of death of the previous
personality, especially in cases involving a death by unnatural means.
These are particularly common in drownings, with 31 out of 53 showing a
fear of being in water. Some show likes and dislikes that are similar to
those of the previous personality. For example, when Stevenson and
Jürgen Keil studied 24 cases of Burmese children who claimed they had
been Japanese soldiers killed in Burma during World War II, they found
that some of them complained about the spicy Burmese food and asked for
raw fish instead. Some of the children also show an unfortunate interest
in addictive substances, such as alcohol and tobacco, if the previous
personality consumed them.
Children
often play in ways that seem connected to their past-life reports, and
this usually involves the occupation of the previous personality. One
boy became preoccupied with his play as a biscuit shopkeeper and
neglected his schoolwork to the point that his academic performance
never recovered. Occasionally, children will repeatedly re-enact the
death scene of the previous personality, appearing to show the same kind
of play as children with posttraumatic stress disorder. When children
report past lives as members of the opposite sex, they often show
behaviors appropriate for that sex. At times, the behaviors are extreme
enough to warrant a diagnosis of gender identity disorder. Although the
cross-gender behavior may continue into adulthood, most of these
children grow up to lead perfectly ordinary lives.
Recent
Work
In recent
years the research has expanded beyond individual cases to include
examinations of groups of cases. At the University of Virginia, each
case is rated on two hundred variables, and this information is then
entered into a database. This is a long-range, ongoing project, but
enough cases have been entered so that certain features can be analyzed.
One scale
measuring the strength of a case is based on four features: children’s
statements about the previous life; the presence of birthmarks or birth
defects; behaviors that appear related to the previous life; and the
distance between the child’s family and the family of the previous
personality. This scale was applied to 799 cases and showed, for
example, that the apparent strength of cases was not affected by the
initial attitude the parents had toward their child’s statements—meaning
that parents’ enthusiasm did not make a case appear stronger than it
actually was. It also showed that in the stronger cases, children
started talking earlier about a past life, were more emotional when
discussing their memories, and showed more facial resemblance to the
deceased individuals.
Another study
involved the reports some children made about events occurring during
the interval between the death of the previous personality and their own
birth. It showed that compared to those who did not have such memories,
the children who described these “interval memories” made more
statements about the previous life that were verified to be accurate,
recalled more names from the previous life, had higher scores on the
strength-of-case scale, and were more likely to give the name of the
previous personality and accurate details about the death.
Close
analysis of 35 such cases in Burma showed that these interval memories
could be broken down into three parts: a transitional stage, a stable
stage in a particular location, and a return stage involving a choice of
parents or conception. The descriptions by the Burmese children were
compared to reports of near-death experiences (NDEs) made by patients;
they overlapped in many ways with Asian NDEs and had features that were
similar to the transcendental feature of Western NDEs. The study
suggested that interval memories and NDEs can be considered examples of
the same overall phenomenon of reports about an afterlife.
Another area
of recent research has involved psychological testing of the children.
Erlendur Haraldsson has published studies of two groups of subjects in
Sri Lanka and one in Lebanon. The Sri Lankan children performed better
in school than their peers but showed some mild behavioral problems. The
children in Lebanon seemed to daydream more and show more
attention-seeking behavior than their peers. Testing showed that the
children in both places were not unusually suggestible. Psychologist Don
Nidiffer has evaluated 15 American children reporting past-life
memories, and in yet-to-be-published data, he finds them to be quite
intelligent and psychologically healthy. None of these studies indicated
any mental illness.
Future
Research
Studies of
this phenomenon are continuing in several areas. Haraldsson is
conducting a long-term follow-up study of adults who were studied when
they reported past-life memories as children. He has interviewed
subjects in Sri Lanka and will be doing the same in Lebanon. This will
produce a systematic assessment of how the subjects develop after
childhood, which has not yet been done.
At the
University of Virginia, work with the database will continue, allowing
for further analysis of particular aspects of the cases. In addition,
researchers are focusing more on American cases, with a goal to collect
more and stronger cases. They also plan further psychological assessment
of American cases. Thus the work goes on, continuing the effort that Ian
Stevenson began 45 years ago, to understand the unusual phenomenon of
these apparent memories of previous lives.
Jim
B. Tucker, MD, a child psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, is
the author of Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children’s
Memories of Previous Lives (St. Martin’s Press, 2005). He would like to
hear about new cases of children who report past-life memories and can
be reached at
jbt8n@virginia.edu. (Reprinted with permission of author. This
article first appeared in Shift magazine December 2007, published by The
Institute of Noetic Sciences (www.noetic.org).
