Authenticated Memories of Past Lives
In the middle of the 20th century, knowledge about reincarnation entered an entirely new phase with the pioneering research of Dr. Ian Stevenson, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Virginia, on people, especially children, who claimed to remember their previous lives. While there have many such claims in past centuries, this was probably the first time that investigations into the claims were accorded with such scientific rigor as was possible with this kind of a subject.
Stevenson himself investigated more than 2,500 cases although he received a far larger number of reports from various parts of the world. His findings have been reported in many books (see Bibliography in this site) that he authored. His work have received the support of many other researchers, such as Erlendur Haraldsson, Antonia Mills, Howard Keil, Jim Tucker, Satwant Pasricha, Godwin Samararatne, and others.
The following are some of the published investigated cases of the researchers that are summarized in this website. Cases will be added in the future.
James Leininger (United States)
Cases will be found in the following books and journal articles:
Books:
- Satwant Pasricha, Claims of Reincarnation: An Empirical Study of Cases in India, New Delhi: Harman Publishing House, 1990. ISBN 81-85151-27-X.
- Semkiw, Walter. Born Again: Reincarnation Cases Involving Evidence of Past Lives with Xenoglossy Cases Researched by Ian Stevenson, M.D. Pluto Project, 2011.
- Stevenson, Ian. 20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.University of Virginia Press, 1980.
- Stevenson, Ian. Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol. I: Ten Cases in India. University Press of Virgina, 1975.
- Stevenson, Ian. Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol. II: Ten Cases in Sri Lanka. University Press of Virgina, 1978.
- Stevenson, Ian. Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol. III: Twelve Cases in Lebanon and Turkey. University Press of Virgina, 1980.
- Stevenson, Ian. Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol. IV: Ten Cases in Thailand and Burma. University Press of Virgina, 1983.
- Stevenson, Ian. Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation. McFarland, 2000.
- Stevenson, Ian. The Evidence for Survival from Claimed Memories of Former Incarnations. Booklet reprinted from the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 54:51-71, 95-117.
- Stevenson, Ian. Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect.Praeger, 1997.
- Stevenson, Ian. Xenoglossy: A review and report of a case.Univesity Press of Virginia, 1970
- Tucker Jim B. Life Before Life: A Scientic Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005, 256pp. ISBN 0-312-32137-6
- Tucker, Jim, M.D. Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013, 256 pp., ISBN 9781250005847
Journals:
- Cook, Emily Williams, Satwant Pasricha, Godwin Samararatne, U Win Maung, Ian Stevenson: Review and analysis of “unsolved” cases of the reincarnation type. I. Introduction and illustrative case reports. In: Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. 77 (1983), S. 45-62. ISSN 0003-1070
- Cook, Emily Williams, Satwant Pasricha, Godwin Samararatne, U Win Maung, Ian Stevenson: Review and analysis of “unsolved” cases of the reincarnation type. II. Comparison of features of solved and unsolved cases. In:Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. 77 (1983), S. 115-135. ISSN 0003-1070
- David Barker and Satwant Pasricha. Reincarnation Cases in Fatehabad: A Systematic Survey of North India Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3-4, 1979, p. 231.
- Haraldsson, E (1991). Children Claiming Past-Life Memories: Four Cases in Sri Lanka. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 5, N0. 2, pp. 233-261.
- Haraldsson, E. (1997). A Psychological Comparison Between Ordinary Children and Those Who Claim Previous Life Memories. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 323-335.
- Keil, Jurgen (1991). New Cases in Burma, Thailand and Turkey: A Limited Field Study Replication of Some Aspects of Ian Stevenson’s Research. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 27-59.
- Keil, Jurgen (1996). Cases of the Reincarnation Type: An Evaluation of Some Indirect Evidence with Examples of “Silent” Cases. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 467-485.
- Keil, Jurgen and Ian Stevenson (1999). Do Cases of the Reincarnation Type Show Similar Features Over Many Years? A Study of Turkish Cases a Generation Apart. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 189-198.
- Keil HHJ & Tucker JB. “Children who claim to remember previous lives: Cases with written records made before the previous personality was identified.” Journal of Scientific Exploration, 19(1):91-101, 2005.
- Keil HHJ, Tucker JB. “An unusual birthmark case thought to be linked to a person who had previously died.”Psychological Reports 87:1067-1074, 2000.
- Mills, Antonia (1989). A Replication Study: Three Cases of Children in Northern India Who are SAid to Remember a Previous Life. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 133-184.
- Mills, Antonia (1990). Moslem Cases of the Reincarnation Type in Northern India: A Test of the Hypothesis of Imposed Identification Part I: Analysis of 26 Cases. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 171-188.
- Pasricha, Satwant (1998). Cases of the Reincarnation Type in Northern India With Birthmarks and Birth Defects. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 259-293.
- Pasricha, Satwant (1992). Are Reincarnation Type Cases Shaped by Parental Guidance? An Empirical Study Concerning the Limits of Parents’ Influence on Children. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. l6, No. 2, pp. 167-180.
- Pasricha SK, Keil J, Tucker JB, Stevenson I. “Some bodily malformations attributed to previous lives.” Journal of Scientific Exploration, 19(3):359-383, 2005.
- Sharma P & Tucker JB. “Cases of the reincarnation type with memories from the intermission between lives.” Journal of Near-Death Studies, 23(2):101-118, 2005.
- Stevenson, Ian (1989). A Case of Severe Birth Defects Possibly Due to Cursing. Journal of Scientific Exploration, ol. 3, No. 2, pp. 201-212.
- Stevenson, Ian (1990). Phobias of Children Who Claim to Remember Previous Lives. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 243-254.
- Stevenson, Ian (1992). “Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons”, paper presented at the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration, Princeton University, June 11–13. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 403-410.
- Stevenson, Ian, Godwin Samararatne: Three new cases of the reincarnation type in Sri Lanka with written records made before verification. In: Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. 176 (1988), S. 741. ISSN 0022-3018
- Stevenson, Ian, Godwin Samararatne. Three new cases of the reincarnation type in Sri Lanka with written records made before verification. In: Journal of Scientific Exploration. 2 (1988), S. 217-238. ISSN 0892-3310 (Abstract,Portuguese translation)
- Stevenson, Ian, Satwant Pasricha, Godwin Samararatne: Deception and self-deception in cases of the reincarnation type. Seven illustrative cases in Asia. In: Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. 82 (1988), S. 1-31. ISSN 0003-1070
- Stevenson, Ian, Satwant Pasricha and Nicholas McClean-Rice, A Case of the Possession Type in India With Evidence of Paranormal Knowledge. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 3(1):81-101, 1989.
- Tucker JB & Keil HHJ. “Experimental birthmarks: New cases of an Asian practice. International Journal of Parapsychology, in press.
![Shanti Devi was born in Delhi, India.[1] As a little girl in the 1930s, she began to claim to remember details of a past life. According to these accounts, when she was about four years old, she told her parents that her real home was in Mathura where her husband lived, about 145 km from her home in Delhi. She also shared three unique features about her husband – he was fair, wore glasses, and had a big wart on his left cheek. She also stated her husband's shop was located right in front of the Dwarkadhish temple in Mathura.[2] Discouraged by her parents, she ran away from home at age six, trying to reach Mathura. Back home, she stated in school that she was married and had died ten days after having given birth to a child. Interviewed by her teacher and headmaster, she used words from the Mathura dialect and divulged the name of her merchant husband, "Kedar Nath". The headmaster located a merchant by that name in Mathura who had lost his wife, Lugdi Devi, nine years earlier, ten days after having given birth to a son. Kedar Nath traveled to Delhi, pretending to be his own brother, but Shanti Devi immediately recognized him and Lugdi Devi's son. As she knew several details of Kedar Nath's life with his wife, he was soon convinced that Shanti Devi was indeed the reincarnation of Lugdi Devi.[3] The case was brought to the attention of Mahatma Gandhi who set up a commission to investigate. The commission traveled with Shanti Devi to Mathura, arriving on 15 November 1935. There she recognized several family members, including the grandfather of Lugdi Devi. She found out that Kedar Nath had neglected to keep a number of promises he had made to Lugdi Devi on her deathbed. She then traveled home with her parents. The commission's report, published in 1936, concluded that Shanti Devi was indeed the reincarnation of Lugdi Devi.[3] Two further reports were written at the time. The report by Bal Chand Nahata was published as a Hindi booklet by the name Punarjanma Ki Paryalochana. In this, he stated that "Whatever material that has come before us, does not warrant us to conclude that Shanti Devi has former life recollections or that this case proves reincarnation".[4] This argument was disputed by Indra Sen, a devotee of Sri Aurobindo, in an article later.[5] A further report, based on interviews conducted in 1936, was published in 1952.[6] Shanti Devi did not marry. She told her story again at the end of the 1950s, and once more in 1986 when she was interviewed by Ian Stevenson and K.S. Rawat. In this interview she also related her near death experiences when Lugdi Devi died.[1] K.S. Rawat continued his investigations in 1987, and the last interview took place only four days before her death on 27 December 1987.[7] A Swedish author who had visited her twice published a book about the case in 1994; the English translation appeared in 1998.[8]](http://reincarnation.theosophical.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/shantidevi3.jpg "Shanti Devi")
Based on the researches done in the past more than half a century, there is very strong evidence of the validity of the hypothesis of reincarnation. The physicist Doris Kuhlmann-Wilsdorf stated that “the statistical probability that reincarnation does in fact occur is so overwhelming . . . that cumulatively the evidence is not inferior to that for most if not all branches of science.”