Ian Stevenson is the former head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of
Virginia, and now is Director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of
Virginia. He has devoted the last 40 years to the scientific documentation of past life
memories of children from all over the world and has over 3000 cases in his files. Many
people, including skeptics and scholars, agree that these cases offer the best evidence
yet for reincarnation.
Dr. Stevenson's research into the possibility of reincarnation
began in 1960 when he heard of a case in Sri Lanka where a child claimed to remember a
past life. He thoroughly questioned the child and the child's parents, as well as the
people whom the child claimed were his parents from his past life. This led to Dr.
Stevenson's conviction that reincarnation was possibly a reality. The more cases he pursued, the greater became his drive to
scientifically open up and conquer an unknown territory among the world's mysteries, which
until now had been excluded from scientific observation. Nonetheless, he believed he could
approach and possibly furnish proof of its reality with scientific means.
In 1960, Dr. Stevenson published two articles in the
Journal of the
American Society for Psychical Research about children who remembered past lives. In 1974,
he published his book, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, and became well known
wherever this book appeared by those people who already had a long-standing interest in
this subject. They were pleased to finally be presented with such fundamental research
into reincarnation from a scientific source. In 1997, Dr. Stevenson published his work
entitled Reincarnation and Biology. In the first volume, he mainly describes birthmarks - those distinguishing
marks on the skin which the newborn baby brings into the world and cannot be explained by
inheritance alone. In his second volume, Dr. Stevenson focuses mainly on deformities and
other anomalies that children are born with and which cannot be traced back to
inheritance, prenatal or perinatal (created during birth) occurrences. This monumental
piece of work contains hundreds of pictures documenting the evidence.
During his original research into various cases involving
children's memories of past lives, Dr. Stevenson did note with interest the fact that
these children frequently bore lasting birthmarks which supposedly related to their murder
or the death they suffered in a previous life. Stevenson's research into birthmarks and
congenital defects has such particular importance for the demonstration of reincarnation,
since it furnishes objective and graphic proof of reincarnation, superior to the - often
fragmentary - memories and reports of the children and adults questioned, which even if
verified afterwards cannot be assigned the same value in scientific terms.
In many cases presented by Dr. Stevenson there are also medical
documents available as further proof, which are usually compiled after the death of the
person. Dr. Stevenson adds that in the cases he researched and "solved" in which birthmarks
and deformities were present, he didn't suppose there was any other apposite explanation
than that of reincarnation. Only 30% - 60% of these deformities can be put down to birth
defects which related to genetic factors, virus infections or chemical causes
(like
those found in children damaged by the drug Thalidomide or alcohol). Apart from these
demonstrable causes, the medical profession has no other explanation for the other 40% to
70% of cases than that of mere chance. Stevenson has now succeeded in giving us an
explanation of why a person is born with these deformities and why they appear precisely
in that part of their body and not in another.
Most of the cases where birthmarks and congenital deformities are
present for which no medical explanations exist have one to five characteristics in
common.
(1) In the most unusual scenario, it is possible
that someone who believed in reincarnation expressed a wish to be reborn to a couple or
one partner of a couple. This is usually because they are convinced that they would be
well cared for by those particular people. Such preliminary requests are often expressed
by the Tlingit Indians of Alaska and by the
Tibetans.
(2) More frequent than this are the occurrences of
prophetic dreams. Someone who has died appears to a pregnant or not as yet pregnant woman
and tells her that he or she will be reborn to her. Sometimes relatives or friends have
dreams like this and will then relate the dream to the mother to be. Dr. Stevenson found
these prophetic dreams to be particularly prolific in Burma and among the Indians in
Alaska.
(3) In these cultures the body of a newborn child
is checked for recognizable marks to establish whether the deceased person they had once
known has been reborn to them. This searching for marks of identification is very common
among cultures that believe in reincarnation, and especially among the Tlingit Indians and
the Igbos of Nigeria. Various tribes of West Africa make marks on the body of the recently
deceased in order to be able to identify the person when he or she is reborn.
(4) The most frequently occurring event or common
denominator relating to rebirth is probably that of a child remembering a past life.
Children usually begin to talk about their memories between the ages of two and four. Such
infantile memories gradually dwindle when the child is between four and seven years old.
There are of course always some exceptions, such as a child continuing to remember its
previous life but not speaking about it for various reasons.
Most of the children talk about their previous identity with great
intensity and feeling. Often they cannot decide for themselves which world is real and
which one is not. They often experience a kind of double existence where at times one life
is more prominent, and at times the other life takes over. This is why they usually speak
of their past life in the present tense saying things like, "I have a husband and two
children who live in Jaipur." Almost all of them are able to tell us about the events
leading up to their death.
Such children tend to consider their previous parents to be their
real parents rather than their present ones, and usually express a wish to return to them.
When the previous family has been found and details about the person in that past life
have come to light, then the origin of the fifth common denominator – the conspicuous
or unusual behavior of the child - is becoming obvious.
(5) For instance, if the child is born in India to
a very low-class family and was a member of a higher caste in its previous life, it may
feel uncomfortable in its new family. The child may ask to be served or waited on hand and
foot and may refuse to wear cheap clothes. Stevenson gives us several examples of these
unusual behavior patterns.
In 35% of cases he investigated, children who died an unnatural
death developed phobias. For example, if they had drowned in a past life then they
frequently developed a phobia about going out of their depth in water. If they had been
shot, they were often afraid of guns and sometimes loud bangs in general. If they died in
a road accident they would sometimes develop a phobia of traveling in cars, buses or
lorries.
Another frequently observed unusual form of behavior,
which Dr. Stevenson
called philias, concerns children who express the wish to eat different kinds of food or to
wear clothes that were different from those of their culture. If a child had developed an alcohol,
tobacco or drug addiction as an adult in a previous incarnation he may express a need for
these substances and develop cravings at an early age.
Many of these children with past-life memories show abilities or
talents that they had in their previous lives. Often children who were members of the
opposite sex in their previous life show difficulty in adjusting to the new sex. These
problems relating to the 'sex change' can lead to homosexuality later on in their lives.
Former girls who were reborn as boys may wish to dress as girls or prefer to play with
girls rather than boys.
Until now all these human oddities have been a mystery to
conventional psychiatrists - after all, the parents could not be blamed for their
children's behavior in these cases. At long last research into reincarnation is shedding
some light on the subject. In the past, doctors blamed such peculiarities on a lack or a
surplus of certain hormones, but now they will have to do some rethinking.
The following paper by Dr. Stevenson was
presented at the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the
Society for
Scientific Exploration held at Princeton University. June 11-13,
1992. The title of the paper is "Birthmarks and Birth Defects
Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons" and provides
perhaps the most compelling scientific evidence suggestive of
reincarnation. Dr. Stevenson's paper presents evidence that
physical characteristics, such as birthmarks and deformities,
may be carried over from a past life to a present life.
Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased
Persons
ABSTRACT
Ian Stevenson,
Department of Psychiatric Medicine,
University of Virginia, School of Medicine,
Charlottesville, Virginia 22908
Almost nothing is known about why pigmented birthmarks (moles or
nevi) occur in particular locations of the skin. The causes of
most birth defects are also unknown. About 35% of children who
claim to remember previous lives have birthmarks and/or birth
defects that they (or adult informants) attribute to wounds on a
person whose life the child remembers. The cases of 210 such
children have been investigated. The birthmarks were usually
areas of hairless, puckered skin; some were areas of little or
no pigmentation (hypopigmented macules); others were areas of
increased pigmentation (hyperpigmented nevi). The birth defects
were nearly always of rare types. In cases in which a deceased
person was identified the details of whose life unmistakably
matched the child's statements, a close correspondence was
nearly always found between the birthmarks and/or birth defects
on the child and the wounds on the deceased person. In 43 of 49
cases in which a medical document (usually a postmortem report)
was obtained, it confirmed the correspondence between wounds and
birthmarks (or birth defects). There is little evidence that
parents and other informants imposed a false identity on the
child in order to explain the child's birthmark or birth defect.
Some paranormal process seems required to account for at least
some of the details of these cases, including the birthmarks and
birth defects.
|
|
|
Figure 1. Hypopigmented macule on
chest of an Indian youth who, as a child, said he remembered the life of a man, Maha Ram,
who was killed with a shotgun fired at close range.
|
|
|
|
Figure 2. The circles show the
principal shotgun wounds on Maha Ram, for comparison with Figure 1. [This drawing is from
the autopsy report of the deceased.]
|
INTRODUCTION
Although counts of moles (hyperpigmented nevi) have shown that
the average adult has between 15 and IX of them (Pack and Davis,
1956), little is known about their cause -- except for those
associated with the genetic disease neurofibromatosis -- and
even less is known about why birthmarks occur in one location of
the body instead of in another. In a few instances a genetic
factor has been plausibly suggested for the location of nevi (Cockayne,
1933; Denaro, 1944; Maruri, 1961); but the cause of the location
of most birthmarks remains unknown. The causes of many, perhaps
most, birth defects remain similarly unknown. In large series of
birth defects in which investigators have searched for the known
causes, such as chemical teratogens (like thalidomide), viral
infections, and genetic factors, between 430/0 (Nelson and
Holmes, 1989) and 65 -- 70% (Wilson, 1973) of cases have finally
been assigned to the category of "unknown causes."
Among 895 cases of children who claimed to remember a previous
life (or were thought by adults to have had a previous life),
birthmarks and/or birth defects attributed to the previous life
were reported in 309 (35%) of the subjects. The birthmark or
birth defect of the child was said to correspond to a wound
(usually fatal) or other mark on the deceased person whose life
the child said it remembered. This paper reports an inquiry into
the validity of such claims. With my associates I have now
carried the investigation of 210 such cases to a stage where I
can report their details in a forthcoming book (Stevenson,
forthcoming). This article summarizes our findings.
Children who claim to remember previous lives have been found in
every part of the world where they have been looked for
(Stevenson, 1983; 1987), but they are found most easily in the
countries of South Asia. Typically, such a child begins to speak
about a previous life almost as soon as it can speak, usually
between the ages of two and three; and typically it stops doing
so between the ages of five and seven (Cook, Pasricha,
Samararatne, Win Maung, and Stevenson, 1983). Although some of
the children make only vague statements, others give details of
names and events that permit identifying a person whose life and
death corresponds to the child's statements. In some instances
the person identified is already known to the child's family,
but in many cases this is not so. In addition to making
verifiable statements about a deceased person, many of the
children show behavior (such as a phobia) that is unusual in
their family but found to correspond to behavior shown by the
deceased person concerned or conjecturable for him (Stevenson,
1987; 1990).
Although
some of the birthmarks occurring on these children are
"ordinary" hyperpigmented nevi (moles) of which every adult has
some (Pack and Davis, 1956), most are not. Instead, they are
more likely to be puckered and scarlike, sometimes depressed a
little below the surrounding skin, areas of hairlessness, areas
of markedly diminished pigmentation (hypopigmented macules), or
port-wine stains (nevipammri). When a relevant birthmark is a
hyperpigmented nevus, it is nearly always larger in area than
the "ordinary" hyperpigmented nevus. Similarly, the birth
defects in these cases are of unusual types and rarely
correspond to any of the "recognizable patterns of human
malformation" (Smith, 1982).
METHODS
My investigations of these cases included interviews, often
repeated, with the subject and with several or many other
informants for both families. With rare exceptions, only
firsthand informants were interviewed. All pertinent written
records that existed, particularly death certificates and
postmortem reports, were sought and examined. In the cases in
which the informants said that the two families had no previous
acquaintance, I made every effort to exclude all possibility
that some information might nevertheless have passed normally to
the child, perhaps through a half-forgotten mutual acquaintance
of the two families. I have published elsewhere full details
about methods (Stevenson, 1975; 1987).
I did not accept any indicated mark as a birthmark unless a
firsthand witness assured me that it had been noticed
immediately after the child's birth or, at most, within a few
weeks. I enquired about the occurrence of similar birth marks in
other members of the family; in nearly every instance this was
denied, but in seven cases a genetic factor could not be
excluded.
Birth defects of the kind in question here would be noticed
immediately after the child's birth. Inquiries in these cases
excluded (again with rare exceptions) the known causes of birth
defects, such as close biological relationship of the parents
(consanguinity), viral infections in the subject's mother during
her pregnancy, and chemical causes of birth defects like
alcohol.
RESULTS
Correspondences between Wounds and
Birthmarks
A correspondence between birthmark
and wound was judged satisfactory if the birthmark and wound
were both within an area of 10 square centimeters at the same
anatomical location; in fact, many of the birthmarks and wounds
were much closer to the same location than this. A medical
document, usually a postmortem report, was obtained in 49 cases.
The correspondence between wound and birthmark was judged
satisfactory or better by the mentioned criterion in 43 (88%) of
these cases and not satisfactory in 6 cases. Several different
explanations seem to be required to account for the discrepant
cases, and I discuss these elsewhere (Stevenson. forthcoming).
Figure 1 shows a birthmark (an urea of hypopigmentation) on an
Indian child who said he remembered the life of a man who had
been killed with a shotgun fired at close range. Figure 2 shows
the location of the wounds recorded by the pathologist. (The
circles were drawn by an Indian physician who studied the
postmortem report with me.)
The high proportion (88%) of concordance between wounds and
birthmarks in the cases for which we obtained postmortem reports
(or other confirming documents) increases confidence in the
accuracy of informants' memories concerning the wounds on the
deceased person in those more numerous cases for which we could
obtain no medical document. Not all errors of informants
memories would have resulted in attributing a correspondence
between birth marks and wounds that did nor exist; in four cases
(possibly five) reliance on an informant's memory would have
resulted in missing a correspondence to which a medical document
attested.
|
|
|
Figure 3.
Large verrucous epidermal nevus on head of a Thai man who as a
child said he remembered the life of his paternal uncle, who was
killed with a blow on the head from a heavy knife.
|
 |
|
Figure 4. Congenital malformation of nail on right
great toe of the Thai subject shown in Figure 3. This
malformation corresponded to a chronic ulcer of the right great
toe from which the subject's uncle had suffered.
|
 |
|
Figure 5.
Small, round puckered birthmark on a Thai boy that corresponded
to the bullet wound of entry in a man whose life he said he
remembered and who had been shot with a rifle from behind. |
 |
|
Figure 6.
Larger, irregularly shaped birthmark on the frontal area of the
head of the Thai boy shown in Figure 5. This birthmark
corresponded to the bullet wound of exit on the Thai man whose
life the boy said he remembered. |
Cases with
Two or More Birthmarks
The argument of chance as accounting for the correspondence
between birthmarks and wounds becomes much reduced when the
child has two or more birthmarks each corresponding to a wound
on the deceased person whose life he claims to remember. Figure
3 shows a major abnormality of the skin (verrucous epidermal
nevus) on the back of the head of a Thai man who, as a child,
recalled the life of his uncle, who had been struck on the head
with a heavy knife and killed almost instantly. The subject also
had a deformed toenail of the right great toe (Figure 4). This
corresponded to a chronic infection of the same toe from which
the subject's uncle had suffered for some years before he died.
The series includes 18 cases in which two birthmarks on a
subject corresponded to gunshot wounds of entry and exit. In 14
of these one birthmark was larger than the other, and in 9 of
these 14 the evidence clearly showed that the smaller birthmark
(usually round) corresponded to the wound of entry and the
larger one (usually irregular in shape) corresponded to the
wound of exit. These observations accord with the fact that
bullet wounds of exit are nearly always larger than wounds of
entry (Fatteh, 1976; Gordon and Shapiro, 1982). Figure 5 shows a
small round birthmark on the back of the head of a Thai boy, and
Figure 6 shows a larger, irregularly shaped birthmark at the
front of his head. The boy said that he remembered the life of a
man who was shot in the head from behind. (The mode of death was
verified, but no medical document was obtainable.) In addition
to the 9 cases I have investigated myself, Mills reported
another case having the feature of a small round birthmark
(corresponding to the wound of entry) and a larger birthmark
corresponding to the wound of exit (both verified by a
postmortem report) (Mills, 1989).
I have calculated the odds against chance of two birthmarks
correctly corresponding to two wounds. The surface area of the
skin of the average adult male is 1.6 meters (Spalteholz, 1943).
If we were to imagine this area square and spread on a fiat
surface, its dimensions would be approximately 127 centimeters
by 127 centimeters. Into this area would fit approximately 160
squares of the size 10 centimeters square that I mentioned
above. The probability that a single birthmark on a person would
correspond in location to a wound within the area of any of the
160 smaller squares is only 1/160. However, the probability of
correspondences between two birthmarks and two wounds would be
(1/160)2 i.e. 1 in 25,600. (This calculation assumes that
birthmarks are uniformly distributed over all regions of the
skin. This is incorrect [Pack, Lenson, and Gerber, 1952], but I
believe the variation can be ignored for the present purpose.)
Examples of Other
Correspondences of Detail between Wounds and Birthmarks
A Thai woman had three
separate linear hypopigmented scarlike birthmarks near the
midline of her back; as a child she had remembered the life of a
woman who was killed when struck three times in the back with an
ax. (Informants verified this mode of death, but no medical
record was obtainable.) A woman of Burma was born with two
perfectly round birthmarks in her left chest; they slightly
overlapped, and one was about half the size of the other. As a
child she said that she remembered the life of a woman who was
accidentally shot and killed with a shotgun. A responsible
informant said the shotgun cartridge had contained shot of two
different sizes. (No medical record was obtainable in this
case.)
Another Burmese child said that she remembered the life of her
deceased aunt, who had died during surgery for congenital heart
disease. This child had a long, vertical linear hypopigmented
birthmark close to the midline of her lower chest and upper
abdomen; this birthmark corresponded to the surgical incision
for the repair of the aunt's heart. (I obtained a medical record
in this case.) In contrast, a child of Turkey had a horizontal
linear birthmark across the right upper quadrant of his abdomen.
It resembled the scar of a surgeon's transverse abdominal
incision. The child said that he remembered the life of his
paternal grandfather, who had become jaundiced and was operated
on before he died. He may have had a cancer of the head of the
pancreas, but I could not learn a precise medical diagnosis.
Two Burmese subjects remembered as children the lives of persons
who had died after being bitten by venomous snakes, and the
birthmarks of each corresponded to therapeutic incisions made at
the sites of the snakebites on the persons whose lives they
remembered. Another Burmese subject also said as a child that
she remembered the life of a child who had been bitten on the
foot by a snake and died. In this case, however, the child's
uncle had applied a burning cheroot to the site of the bite -- a
folk remedy for snakebite in parts of Burma; and the subject's
birthmark was round and located at the site on the foot where
the bitten child's uncle had applied the cheroot.
Three Examples of Birth Defects
Figure 8, below, shows the right side of the head of a Turkish
boy with a diminished and malformed ear (unilateral microtia).
He also had underdevelopment of the right side of his face (hemifacial
microsomia). He said that he remembered the life of a man who
had been shot (with a shotgun) at point-blank range. The wounded
man was taken to a hospital where he died 6 days later -- of
injuries to the brain caused by shot that had penetrated the
right side of the skull. (I obtained a copy of the hospital
record.)
|
|
|
Figure 8. Severely malformed ear (microtia) in a
Turkish boy who said that he remembered the life of a man who
was fatally wounded on the right side of the head by a shotgun
discharged at close range.
|
 |
|
Figure 9. Almost absent fingers (brachydactyly) on one
hand in a boy of India who said he remembered the life of a boy
of another village who had put his hand into the blades of a
fodderchopping machine and had its fingers amputated.
|
 |
|
Figure 10.
Small, round puckered birthmark on a Thai boy that corresponded
to the bullet wound of entry in a man whose life he said he
remembered and who had been shot with a rifle from behind. |
Figure 9
shows fingers almost absent congenitally on one hand (unilateral
brachydactyly) in a child of India who said he remembered the
life of another child who had put his right hand into the blades
of a fodder-chopping machine and lost his fingers. Most cases of
brachydactyly involve only a shortening of the middle phalanges.
In the present case there were no phalangeal bones, and the
fingers were represented by mere stubs. Unilateral brachydactyly
is exceedingly rare, and I have not found a published report of
a case, although a colleague (plastic surgeon) has shown me a
photograph of one case that came under his care.
Figure 10 shows congenital absence of the lower right leg
(unilateral hemimelia) in a Burmese girl. She said that she
remembered the life of a girl who was run over by a train.
Eyewitnesses said that the train severed the girl's right leg
first, before running over the trunk. Lower hemimelia is an
extremely rare condition, and Frantz and O'Rahilly (1961) found
it in only 12 (4.0%) of 300 cases of all congenital skeletal
deficiencies that they examined.
DISCUSSION
Because most (but not all) of these cases develop among persons
who believe in reincarnation, we should expect that the
informants for the cases would interpret them as examples
according with their belief; and they usually do. It is
necessary, however, for scientists to think of alternative
explanations.
The most obvious explanation of these cases attributes the
birthmark or birth defect on the child to chance, and the
reports of the child's statements and unusual behavior then
become a parental fiction intended to account for the birthmark
(or birth defect) in terms of the culturally accepted belief in
reincarnation. There are, however, important objections to this
explanation. First, the parents (and other adults concerned in a
case) have no need to invent and narrate details of a previous
life in order to explain their child's lesion. Believing in
reincarnation, as most of them do, they are nearly always
content to attribute the lesion to some event of a previous life
without searching for a particular life with matching details.
Second, the lives of the deceased persons figuring in the cases
were of uneven quality both as to social status and commendable
conduct. A few of them provided models of heroism or some other
enviable quality; but many of them lived in poverty or were
otherwise unexemplary. Few parents would impose an
identification with such persons on their children. Third,
although in most cases the two families concerned were
acquainted (or even related), I am confident that in at least 13
cases (among 210 carefully examined with regard to this matter)
the two families concerned had never even heard about each other
before the case developed. The subject's family in these cases
can have had no information with which to build up an imaginary
previous life which, it later turned out, closely matched a real
one. In another 12 cases the child's parents had heard about the
death of the person concerned, but had no knowledge of the
wounds on that person. Limitations of space for this article
oblige me to ask readers to accept my appraisal of these 25
cases for this matter; but in my forthcoming work I give a list
of the cases from which readers can find the detailed reports of
the cases and from reading them judge this important question
for themselves. Fourth, I think I have shown that chance is an
improbable interpretation for the correspondences in location
between two or more birthmarks on the subject of a case and
wounds on a deceased person.
Persons who reject the explanation of chance combined with a
secondarily confected history may consider other interpretations
that include paranormal processes, but fall short of proposing a
life after death. One of these supposes that the birthmark or
birth defect occurs by chance and the subject then by telepathy
learns about a deceased person who had a similar lesion and
develops an identification with that person. The children
subjects of these cases, however, never show paranormal powers
of the magnitude required to explain the apparent memories in
contexts outside of their seeming memories.
Another explanation, which would leave less to chance in the
production of the child's lesion, attributes it to a maternal
impression on the part of the child's mother. According to this
idea, a pregnant woman, having a knowledge of the deceased
person's wounds, might influence a gestating embryo and fetus so
that its form corresponded to the wounds on the deceased person.
The idea of maternal impressions, popular in preceding centuries
and up to the first decades of this one, has fallen into
disrepute. Until my own recent article (Stevenson, 1992) there
had been no review of series of cases since 1890 (Dabney, 1890);
and cases are rarely published now (Williams and Pembroke,
1988). Nevertheless, some of the published cases -- old and new
-- show a remarkable correspondence between an unusual stimulus
in the mind of a pregnant woman and an unusual birthmark or
birth defect in her later-born child. Also, in an analysis of
113 published cases I found that the stimulus occurred to the
mother in the first trimester in 80 cases (Stevenson, 1992). The
first trimester is well known to be the one of greatest
sensitivity of the embryo/fetus to recognized teratogens, such
as thalidomide (Nowack, 1965) and rubella (Hill, Doll, Galloway,
and Hughes, 1958). Applied to the present cases, however, the
theory of maternal impression has obstacles as great as the
normal explanation appears to have. First, in the 25 cases
mentioned above, the subject's mother, although she may have
heard of the death of the concerned deceased person, had no
knowledge of that person's wounds. Second, this interpretation
supposes that the mother not only modified the body of her
unborn child with her thoughts, but after the child's birth
influenced it to make statements and show behavior that it
otherwise would not have done. No motive for such conduct can be
discerned in most of the mothers (or fathers) of these subjects.
It is not my purpose to impose any interpretation of these cases
on the readers of this article. Nor would I expect any reader to
reach even a preliminary conclusion from the short summaries of
cases that the brevity of this report entails. Instead, I hope
that I have stimulated readers to examine the detailed reports
of many cases that I am now in the process of publishing
(Stevenson, forthcoming). "Originality and truth are found only
in the details" (Stendhal, 1926).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Drs. Antonia Mills and Emily W. Cook for
critical comments on drafts of this paper. Thanks are also due
to the Bernstein Brothers Parapsychology and Health Foundation
for the support of my research.
Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to:
Ian Stevenson, M.D., Division of Perceptual Studies, Box 152,
Health Sciences Center, University of Virginia, Charlottesville,
VA 22908
REFERENCES
Cockayne, E, A. (1933). Inherited abnormalities of the skin.
London: Oxford University Press.
Cook, E. W., Pasricha, S, Samararatne, G, Win Maung, &
Stevenson, I. (1983). Review and analysis of "unsolved" cases of
the reincarnation type: II. Comparison of features of solved and
unsolved cases, Journal of the American Society for Psychical
Research, 77, 1 15-135.
Dabney, W. C. (1890). Maternal impressions. In J. M. Keating
(Ed.), Cyclopaedia of the diseases of children, Vol. 1 , (pp.
191-216). Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.
Denaro, S. J. ( 1944). The inheritance of nevi. Journal of
Heredity, 35, 2 1 5- 1 8.
Fatteh, A. (1976). Medicolegal investigation ofgunshor wounds.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.
Frantz, C. H., & O'Rahilly, R.(1961). Congenital skeletal limb
deficiencies. Journal ofBone and Joins Surgerq: 43-A, 1202-24.
Gordon, I., & Shapiro, H. A. (1982). Forensic medicine: A guide
to principles. (2nd ed.) London: Churchill Livingstone.
Hill, A, B,, Doll, R,, Galloway, T. M., & Hughes, J.P.W. (1958).
Virus diseases in pregnancy and congenital defects. British
Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine, 12, 1-7.
Maruri, C. A. (1961). La herencia en dermarologia. (2nd ed.)
Santander: Aldus, S.A. Artes Graficas.
Mills, A. (1989). A replication study: Three cases of children
in northern India who are said to remember a previous life.
Journal of Scientific Exploration, 3, 133-184.
Nelson, K., & Holmes, L. B. (1989). Malformations due to
presumed spontaneous mutations in newborn infants. New England
Journal ofMedicine, 320, 19-23.
Nowack, E, (1965). Die sensible Phase bei der Thalidomid-
Embryopathie. Humangenetik, I, 516-36.
Pack, G. T., & Davis, J. (1956). Moles. New York Stare Journal
ofMedicine, 56, 3498-3506.
Pack, G. T., Lenson, N. & Gerber, D. M. (1952). Regional
distribution of moles and melanomas. AMA Archives ofSurgery. 65,
862-70.
Smith, D. W. (1982). Recognizable patterns of human
malformation. (3rd ed.) Philadelphia: W. BSaunders.
Spalteholz. W (1943). Hand atlas of human anatomy. Translated
by L. E Barker. 7th English ed. Philadelphia: J,B. Lippincott.
Stendhal (1926). Lucien Leuwen. Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honor6
Champion, 4, 169.
Stevenson, I. (1975). Cases of the reincarnation type. I. Ten
cases in India. CharlottesviIle: University Press of Virginia.
Stevenson, I. (1983).
American children who claim to remember previous lives. Journal
ofNervous and Mental Disease, 17 1, 742-748.
Stevenson, I. (1987).
Children who remember previous lives. Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia.
Stevenson, I. ( 1990).
Phobias in children who claim to remember previous lives.
Journal of Scientific Exploration, 4, 243-254.
Stevenson, I. (1992). A new
look at maternal impressions: An analysis of 50 published cases
and reports of two recent examples. Journal of Scientific
Exploration, 6, 353-373.
Stevenson, I. (Forthcoming).
Birthmarks and birth defects: A contribution to their etiology.
Williams, H. C., & Pembroke,
A. C. (1988). Naevus of Jamaica. Lancer, 11, 915.
Wilson, J. G. (1973).
Environment and birth defects. New York: Academic Press.
"As the moon dies and comes to life again, so we also, having to die, will rise again." -
San Juan Capistrano Indians
http://near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation01.html
Amber Wells was a student at the University of
Connecticut and wrote a research paper based on her study of the near-death experience for
her senior honors thesis under the direction of Dr.
Ken
Ring. Her paper was published
in the Journal of Near-Death Studies in the fall of 1993. In her study, 70
percent of the group of near-death experiencers demonstrated belief in reincarnation. In
contrast, a Gallup Poll found that only 23 percent of the general population endorse this
belief. Previous research has indicated that, following a near-death experience,
the group tended to exhibit a significant shift in their beliefs on a wide range of
subjects including a general tendency toward an increased openness to the idea of
reincarnation. Ms. Wells' study was designed to examine the factors underlying this belief
shift. The following are some excerpts from her study reprinted by
permission. 
