Ian Pretyman Stevenson (1918-2007), Scientist and professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, was certainly the most important and respected researcher of Reincarnation in the world. He has probably carried out the most serious work, rigorously based on the scientific rigor, ever seen in this field.

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Over more than 38 years of research, he has investigated over 3,000 cases and published more than 200 articles and several books. The vast majority of the cases investigated were about children who, at one point in their lives, spontaneously began to say that they had been someone else in a past life, remembering with astonishing clarity about facts and situations lived, as well as names of People and cities where they had lived in their previous life.

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According to Tom Schroeder, a Washington Post journalist who accompanied Stevenson through India, Lebanon and the United States in his investigations, Stevenson studied these cases as a police detective. He followed initial reports to the source, interviewed first-hand witnesses, examined and in some cases crossed information, identifying witnesses who could corroborate or disagree with a key testimony. He confronted verbal testimonies with written records whenever possible, considered probable reasons for a lie, or self-delusion, sought normal ways through which the child might have gained knowledge about the identity of a possible past life, sought hidden connections between the child and his family with the family of the deceased.

 

His careful and meticulous work also brings together medical records containing information regarding birthmarks, birth defects, and other physical evidence involving the cases. Approximately 35% of children who claimed to remember previous lives had birthmarks or birth defects that matched perfectly with the person's injuries they claimed to have been in another lifetime.

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In 43 of the 49 cases in which children were recalled to have had violent deaths in another life, in which a medical document (usually an autopsy report) was obtained, a correspondence was confirmed between the mortal injuries received in the previous life and the marks or child's birth defects. Such a set of proofs could never be attributed to coincidence.

 

So we can see how serious Dr. Stevenson's work is, even though he has always been very cautious about it, referring to his research as "suggestive cases of reincarnation." However, the level of detail presented in each case is really so impressive that, in my opinion, they represent much more than just "suggestive cases", but rather extremely solid evidence of the existence of Reincarnation.

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We will see below some famous cases investigated by Stevenson.

 

 

 Maha Ram case

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One of the many cases investigated by Dr. Stevenson that involves birthmarks is that of a young Indian who remembered as a child that he was a man named Maha Ram. After investigating the case, it was discovered that such a man really had existed, and had been killed with a shotgun, shot at chest burn.

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It was later revealed that the young man had birthmarks on his chest, which matched perfectly with a drawing obtained from Maha Ram's autopsy documents describing the injuries that had caused his death.

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In the figure above, we see on the left the photo of the mark on the young Indian's chest and on the right the drawing taken from Maha Ram's autopsy report, which the young man claimed to remember having been in a previous reincarnation

 

 Polock sisters' case

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1957, two sisters, 11-year-old Joanna Pollock and 6-year-old Jacqueline Pollock were tragically killed, run over by a carriage with unbridled horses that ran them down in Northumberland, England. One year after the tragic accident, her mother gave birth again, and to the astonishment of all, two girls were born again, but this time, twins. Their were named Jennifer and Gillian.

 

Jennifer was born with a strange birthmark on the face that looked like a scar. Her sister Jacqueline, killed in the accident, had a scar in the same place, caused by a tricycle fall, when she was only 2 years old. Over time the family began to notice strange coincidences: The twins began to talk about the dead sisters and also to ask for toys that had belonged to them. In some cases, they asked about toys that had already been donated, of which they had no prior knowledge.

 

When the twin girls received two dolls that had belonged to Jacqueline and Joanna, both said "This is Mary and this is Susan". The family was shocked because those were the same names the dead daughters had given to the same dolls, which were now owned by Jennifer and Gillian.

 

Sometime later, the family moved to another city, but one day, when returning to visit the place, one of the twins said: "The school is here. This is where we used to go to the playground, which is in the back." The park and school were in a place where none of the twins had ever been before, but the deceased sisters had been there.

 

It was then that the parents, frightened, sought out Dr. Ian Stevenson, who ended up studying deeply the twins’ case and the supposed connection between them and their deceased sisters. Stevenson's conclusion was that Jennifer and Gillian were really the reincarnation of Joanna and Jacqueline.

 

The Case analysis was published and examined in the book: "Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation”

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 Swarnlata Mishra case

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One of the most famous cases studied by Dr. Stevenson is Swarnlata Mishra’s case, a girl born in 1948 to a wealthy family from India and who became the protagonist of one of the most famous cases about past lives. Her story is described in one of Stevenson's books, "Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation."

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 At 3 years old, Swarnlata traveled with her father when, suddenly, she pointed a road that led to the city of Katni. He then asked the driver to follow the road to what she called "my house". There, she said, they could "have a cup of tea". Katni is located more than 100 miles from the Girl’s town, Pradesh. Soon after, Swarnlata began to describe a series of details about her supposed past life in Katni. She said that her name was Biya Pathak and that she had two children. She gave details of the house and located it in Zhurkutia district. The girl's father began to write down the "recollections" of his daughter.

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Seven years later, in 1959, a researcher of paranormal phenomena, the Indian Sri H. N. Banerjee, visited Katni. He took the notes from Swarnlata's father and used them as a guide to interview the Pathak family. Everything the girl had said about Biya (killed in 1939) was confirmed by the family. Until then, neither family had heard of each other.

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That same year, the widower of Biya, one of his sons and his elder brother, traveled to the city of Chhatarpur, where Swarnlata lived. They arrived without warning and, without revealing their identities or intentions to the residents of the city, asked some of them to accompany them to the Mishra house. Stevenson reports that the girl immediately recognized the three visitors, pronouncing their names. To the "brother", she called by the nickname.

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Weeks later, her father took her to Katni to the house where she claimed to have lived and died. Swarnlata, according to Stevenson, addressed each one by the name, relatives and friends of the family. She remembered domestic episodes and treated the children of Biya (then in their 30s) with the intimacy of a mother. Swarnlata was only 11 years old.

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The two families approached and began to exchange visits, accepting the case as reincarnation. Stevenson himself witnessed such a meeting in 1961. Unlike many cases of memories reported as past lives, the girl's memories continued to accompany her in adulthood when Swarnlata was already married and graduated in Botany.