Past lives

Claims of memories of past lives

Over a period of 40 years, psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, from the University of Virginia, recorded case studies of young children who claimed to remember past lives, and published twelve books. In his cases, he reported the child's statements and testimony from family members and others, often along with what he considered to be correlates to a deceased person who in some ways seemed to match the child's memory. Stevenson also investigated cases where he thought that birthmarks and birth defects seemed to match wounds and scars on the deceased. Sometimes included in his documentation were medical records like autopsy photographs. As any claim of past life memory is subject to charges of false memories and the ease with which such claims can be hoaxed, Stevenson expected the controversy and skepticism of his beliefs that followed. He said that he looked for disconfirming evidence and alternative explanations for reports, but, as the Washington Post reported, he typically concluded that no normal explanation sufficed.