Illustration by Drew Shannon
A few months ago, one of my patients mentioned that when her daughter was about two years old, she would almost daily wail and protest, “You are not my mother.”
My patient would then try to calm her down, and reassure her that she was indeed her mother, and over time the girl stopped making this accusation.
I recalled this incident recently when I read a paper by Jürgen Keil, University of Tasmania, and Jim Tucker, University of Virginia, on children who claim to remember a past life.
This paper discusses the case of a Turkish child who reportedly recalled a past life in Istanbul, located 850 km away, who had died, as was later found, 50 years before the child’s birth. [1]
Notable aspects of this case come from in-person investigations by Dr. Keil, who documented the child’s statements prior to identifying the previous personality. Below is an abbreviated version of the case.
In April 1997, JK met KA, who was then 6 years old, for the first time. KA’s parents, told him that KA started to talk about another life beginning around the age of 2½. KA lived in Hatay. His parents were Alevi Muslims. Neither they nor their relatives had any information which suggested a connection between them and the previous personality described by KA. They had no friends or relatives in Istanbul, and KA and his mother had never been there. His father went there on two short business trips.
KA said his family’s name had been Karakas and he had been an Armenian Christian. He was rich and lived in a large three-story house in Istanbul. His house was on the water and there was a church located behind it. People called him Fistik and his wife and children had Greek first names. He only lived in the house for part of the year and often carried a large leather bag. He said he had been shot and killed and his wife was involved in the murder.
During a subsequent visit in October 1998, JK located a three-story house overlooking the ocean with a church behind it in the Cengelkoy area, as described by KA. Nearby he found a local historian, Toran Togar, who was born in 1924. Mr. Togar gave several details that matched KA’s story. He indicated that an Armenian Christian had lived in the house that JK had identified, that he was rich, that he was the only Armenian in that district, that his family name was Karakas, that his wife came from a Greek Orthodox family and that her family did not approve of the marriage. He said there was some talk that his wife had something to do with his death. Mr. Togar also said the Karakas clan dealt in leather goods, Mr. Karakas often carried a substantial leather bag, and he lived in the Cengelkoy house only during the summer.
The scientific investigation of past-life accounts was pioneered by Ian Stevenson, a scholar originally from Montreal. Dr. Stevenson later moved to the United States and became the director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
His research centred on cases he deemed suggestive of reincarnation – the notion that emotions, memories, and even physical traits could be carried over from one life to another.
Dr. Stevenson proposed that certain phobias, affinities, exceptional abilities, and illnesses might not be fully explainable through genetics or environmental factors alone.
He suggested that reincarnation could potentially serve as a third contributing factor. Dr. Stevenson authored six volumes on the topic of past-life memories. [2] He died in 2007.
Dr. Tucker, a psychiatry professor at the University of Virginia, carried forward the research initiated by Dr. Stevenson. Both researchers noted that cases where a child spontaneously mentions their “real parents” or exhibits an unlearned skill are especially persuasive.
Similarly, instances of responsive xenoglossy – where someone speaks or understands a language they have not learned in their current life – strongly indicate that another personality, potentially from a past life, had mastered the language. Such phenomena offer compelling evidence for the persistence of personal memories beyond death.
Claimed memories may influence a child’s development, becoming integrated into their emerging personality. This highlights the potential psychological and developmental implications of such experiences.
Reports of past-life memories are not limited to children; many adults also recount such experiences. Interestingly, a significant number of these adults live in Western countries and claim no prior belief in reincarnation.
Philosopher Frederick Lenz conducted interviews with 127 individuals, many of whom described recalling past lives through their dreams. While past-life dreams often lack sufficient details to confirm a previous incarnation, some cases do provide compelling evidence.
One such case involves Angela Grubbs, whose dreams were particularly extensive and consistent with the life of a deceased nurse named Francine Donovan, who passed away in 1923. [4]
Michael Sudduth, a philosopher of religion at San Francisco State University, describes the remarkable case of James Leininger, an American child who began experiencing vivid nightmares of a plane crash at the age of two.
James spoke of being an American pilot killed when his plane was shot down by the Japanese during the Second World War. The child provided strikingly specific details, including the name of an aircraft carrier, the first and last name of a fellow crew member and precise information about the crash site. Upon investigation, James’s parents found a significant correlation between his statements and the life and death of a Second World War pilot named James Huston. [5]
This case not only contributes to the growing body of evidence supporting reincarnation but also aids in the study of the sources of memory in dreams. It suggests that dreams may serve more than just the purpose of memory consolidation; they could involve subliminal emotional processing of unresolved past-life experiences, especially if they remain relevant or anxiety-producing in the current life. [6]
When discussing past-life memories, it is essential to differentiate between two types: spontaneous and recovered memories. Spontaneous memories occur naturally and are often regarded as the most convincing. These memories emerge without any special effort, often in children or adults who recall their past lives unexpectedly.
In contrast, recovered memories are uncovered through techniques such as past-life regression, which may involve hypnosis, psychotherapy, guided meditation, trance states or psychedelics such as LSD.
Hypnosis has been widely used with adults seeking to explore their past lives. However, Dr. Stevenson viewed hypnosis as an unreliable method for accessing past-life memories.
He cautioned that if a hypnotist instructs a subject, explicitly or implicitly, to “go back to another place and time,” the subject may produce a “new personality” that seems to belong to another historical period. Dr. Stevenson argued that these evoked “previous personalities” can appear highly plausible to both the individual and observers but may not represent genuine past-life memories.[7]
Experiments by Robert Baker [8] and Nicholas Spanos and colleagues [9] have demonstrated how easily suggestions from a hypnotist can shape the features of a “previous personality” to align with those suggestions.
This raises significant concerns about the reliability of hypnotic regression as a method for uncovering past-life memories.
Furthermore, Dr. Stevenson highlighted potential hazards associated with this practice, noting cases where the “previous personality” failed to dissipate upon instruction, leaving the subject in an altered state of personality for days or longer before their normal personality was restored. [10]
Victoria Hoover, a researcher at Stephen F. Austin State University, has raised additional questions in her paper on the use of hypnosis to investigate past lives.
She asks whether this practice is safe, effective, or capable of producing credible proof or evidence. She also highlights a recurring pattern in past-life recollections: why do so many memories involve traumatic deaths, famous or exceptional individuals, or dramatic events? [11]
For my part, I wonder, if we all have lived in other bodies before, why is it that only a few of us can remember our past lives? Research on whether there are any personality types who are more likely to recall a previous lifetime compared to people who don’t has, so far, not been fruitful.
The same question emerges in cases of heart transplants where some recipients undergo a change of personality mirroring that of the donor and others don’t.
I believe it is because some people are just more tuned in to their bodies and unconscious processes than others. Simply put – they are more sensitive than the majority. [12]
A remarkable portion of the population of the world believes in some form of life after death, including 46 per cent to 60 per cent of those without any religious affiliation. [13]
The public Facebook group Verifiable Children’s Reincarnation Stories is incredibly popular. It has more than 250,000 members and hundreds of posts each month. [14]
The concept of reincarnation and past lives is intriguing, supported by detailed verified reports from credible scholars. We have observed that some of the evidence is undeniably credible and even compelling. As a result, it seems reasonable to conclude that some form of existence after death is possible.
However, the scientific community largely considers these phenomena unproven. Critics argue that many so-called past life memories can often be attributed to knowledge gleaned from parents or received from the media or culture.
I will let the guru of reincarnation science Dr. Stevenson, have the last word.
“I consider these cases suggestive of reincarnation and nothing more. All the cases have deficiencies. Neither any case individually nor all of them collectively offers anything like a proof of reincarnation.”
What do you think?
References
1. Keil, H. J., & Tucker, J. B. (2005). Cases with written records made before the previous personality was identified. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 19(1), 91-101https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
2. Stevenson, I. (2001). Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation (rev. ed.). McFarland & Company
3. Stevenson, Ian, (1984). American Children Who Claim to Remember Previous Lives. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 171, 742-748.
4. Lenz, F. (1979). Lifetimes: True accounts of reincarnation. Fawcett.
5. Sudduth, M. (2024). The Augustine-Braude Bigelow Survival Debate: A Postmortem and Prospects for Future Directions. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 38(3), 468-531
6. Matlock, James G. (2019). Signs of Reincarnation:Exploring Beliefs, Cases, and Theory. Rowman & Littlefield.
7. Stevenson, I (2000). “The phenomenon of claimed memories of previous lives: Possible interpretations and importance”. Medical Hypotheses. 54 (4): 652–9.
8. Baker, R.A. 919820. The effect of suggestion on past-lives regression. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 25(1), 71-76,
9. Spanos, N.P., Menary, E., DuBreuil, S.C., … & Dewhirst, B. (1991). Secondary identity enactments during hypnotic past-life regression: A sociocognitive perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(2), 308-320, 1991.
10. https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/resources/concerns-about-hypnotic-regression/#baker
11. Hoover, V. (2024). Are you Now, or Have You Ever Been, Cleopatra? A Study of Past Life Regression, Practitioners, and the Impact of Reincarnation Beliefs. http://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/
12. Verny, Thomas R. (2021). The Embodied Mind. Pegasus, New York, NY.
13. Moraes, L. J., Barbosa, G. S., Tucker, J. B., … &Moreira-Almeida, A. (2022). Academic studies on claimed past-life memories: A scoping review. Explore, 18(3), 371-378.
14. VCRS (Verifiable Children’s Reincarnation Stories) https://www.facebook.com/groups/vcrstories”