For some, it’s in the realm of fantasy. For others, it’s a comforting religious or cultural belief. But for researchers at the University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies, it’s science.
The subject is reincarnation, or the idea that deceased people can be reborn into new bodies. For more than 60 years, researchers at UVA have identified children who, from the time they were toddlers, said they had been someone else. The children proceeded to provide so much detail — almost always familiarity with places, concepts and people they never knew — that researchers were able to pinpoint the deceased person the child said he or she was reincarnated from.
Now, a new study from the center shows that people who died a violent or unexpected death are reincarnated more quickly than others.
Host Robin Young talks to researcher Saeedeh Sadeghi from UVA’s Division of Perceptual Studies about the center and the new study.
Editor’s note: If you have a child sharing past-life experiences, you can reach Sadeghi by email at dopslm@uvahealth.org.
Interview highlights
You’ve said you’re not making a statement about metaphysics.
“Yes, exactly. I didn’t come to this research with any sort of belief in reincarnation or anything. I was just curious. My co-authors and I do our best to be agnostic and faithful to data and what we observe without jumping into making theories about metaphysics.”
One child picked out an extra in a photograph from a 1930s Hollywood brochure and told his parents, “That’s me.” He provided 55 obscure but verifiable facts about a Hollywood agent, including his street name and favorite food. Can you give us more examples of what you’re hearing and verifying?
“These are very young children, as you mentioned earlier. Typically, as soon as they can talk, they may start spontaneously talking about what seems like a past-life memory, like a name: ‘I had this name. I lived in this place.’ A lot of them mention that they miss their old parents, and a lot of them also talk about how they died. A toddler talking about a traumatic death is surprising to a lot of parents.”
There was a 3-year-old who said he flew a World War II plane off an aircraft carrier called the Natoma Bay.
“James Leininger is a famous case. James Leininger was this Louisiana toddler who began dreaming about being a World War II pilot.”
What about what researchers call cultural contamination? Could people who believe in reincarnation be looking for it?
“That’s a valid initial reaction, but we’re seeing it in American cases also.”
Among people who don’t come from cultures with a strong belief in reincarnation?
“People without much traditional culture that believes in reincarnation. In all cases, when investigators and researchers get involved, they have two goals. One is to see if there is a unique previous person that matches the child’s statements, and second, to see if there is any way that the child could have known about this through ordinary processes.
“Could the child have overheard adults, or did the parents have any motivation to encourage the child to say these things? In many of the cases, we see that there’s almost no way the child could have known about this.”
Couldn’t parents feed a 2- or 3-year-old this information, show them pictures or coach them?
“Well, it’s something to consider, but in many cases, it’s just not an explanation. For example, it’s not just verbal statements. The child has nightmares or phobias that seem to be related to the memory of the death that they remember.
“More than half of the children who remember drowning in a past life have a phobia of water, and for a lot of them, the phobia is there even before the child could talk. So it’s very hard to imagine that the child could be such a good actor. And a lot of the parents are, in fact, not happy when they hear. Some people freak out. It’s not like everyone likes their child to be like this. It’s more than just memories. It’s behavior also.”
Parents report hearing statements like, “That happened before I was in Mommy’s tummy,” “You’re not my mommy and daddy,” or “I died in a car accident.” These are things you’ve heard?
“Yeah. There are parents, especially children saying, ‘I miss my old parents.’ We see in some cases the child insists, ‘I want to go and see my old family.’ It’s something that a lot of the time concerns parents.”
It could be painful for children who miss another family. Do these memories start to fade around age 7?
“They do. Children usually stop talking about them around that age. Although we don’t know if it’s fading or if some of them just don’t want to bring it up anymore. In general, I think it’s probably related to the development of identity. At a very young age, identity isn’t still very well-established, and by age 6 or 7, identity becomes much more established.”
Let’s go back to James Leininger, the Louisiana toddler who had violent night terrors about a flaming plane crash. By age 3, he said he was a World War II pilot and named a fellow pilot, Jack Larsen. Researchers matched his claims to a real pilot, James Houston Jr., who was shot down over the Pacific in 1945. Do you contact the deceased person’s descendants?
“In this case, I think the parents found them through a military reunion. Ideally, we ask the parents not to do it directly, so researchers get involved and independently verify all the statements.”
What an emotional bomb for a family to discover a child who knows all these facts about their deceased loved one. How do you approach them?
“When we want to approach these families, it’s always hard because we don’t know how they react, what their beliefs are and how they feel about it.”
How do they react?
“It depends a lot on the family. There are some cases who do believe that this is their deceased loved one, and there are cases who don’t want to talk or they don’t want to think about it. So it’s not an easy thing to deal with.”
What would you say to people who find this difficult to believe? You told Popular Mechanics that there’s a pattern and we should keep looking rather than look away.
“My initial reaction when I first heard about the idea of reincarnation was that this is a religious belief. I don’t need to believe in anything.
“I think I’m just curious, and I invite everyone to be just curious and observe the evidence. Reincarnation is, I think, a filler word for an unknown process. We don’t know how it happens. We don’t need to jump into making a theory of an afterlife. I don’t think we have data to make that theory, but we can just keep looking and observing.
“This is core to our human identity, our consciousness. Who are we?”
Do you worry about some of these children?
“Yes, I do. I think a lot of these children have what seems like [post-traumatic stress disorder] symptoms from a trauma that they remember from a past life. So I think it’s important to understand these children and facilitate these memories in the environments that they are in.
“A lot of parents contact us with concerns about what to do, and I think more research is needed. How do we interact with these children, and what’s the best way to help them? So what we are looking at right now is how these children are different from other children. How is their brain different? How are their cognitive functions different?
“So it might be that more children have some sort of behavioral or emotional residue from a past life, but these are the children who are capable of talking about it. These children, on average, seem to have advanced verbal skills.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Karyn Miller-Medzon produced and edited Todd Mundt. Allison Hagan produced it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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