The Children That Remember Being Dead.

It’s estimated that between 20 and 27 per cent of people in both the US and Europe believe in reincarnation, and some cultures even have methods for tracking down people who they believe have been reincarnated. Members of the Tlingits tribe in Alaska have been known to predict whether or not they’d be reincarnated, and in some cases, they even choose the couple they would like to have as their parents in their next life. In India, it’s believed that birthmarks are souvenirs from a previous life, and in some Asian countries, people mark the bodies of their loved ones so they can be recognised by their birthmark in their next life.

We know all of this because scientists at the University of Virginia have been studying the phenomenon of reincarnation since the 1960s, and have recorded and investigated over 2500 cases of reincarnation from all over the world. But what have they been able to find, and is it enough to prove once and for all that there really is life after death?

The Argument For

Now, we’ve all heard the stories or read about them on either Facebook, Reddit or some other page on the Internet.

One day, Little Jimmy started talking about how he used to drive big trucks, lived in a big house and had a big dog. His mom – because it’s almost always the mom – started asking him questions about these big trucks he used to drive, and he told her that his name used to be Bob. Mom goes onto the internet to look for more information, and boom, she finds out that, yeah, a few years ago, there was a truck driver named Bob who lived in a blue house and had a big dog named Butch. And wouldn’t you know it, when she asked her son if the dog’s name had been Butch, he said yes, and now his mom is convinced that Little Jimmy used to be a truck driver named Bob in his previous life.

Reincarnation is an integral part of many Eastern religions and customs, and has been for thousands of years. Ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Pythagoras had not only accepted it as being possible, but had even taught classes on the subject, and theorised that it might also explain the phenomenon of déjà vu.

Julius Caesar noted that the Druids of Western Europe believed in reincarnation, and evidence suggests that similar beliefs were also held by the Germanic peoples of Northern Europe. To this day, many native peoples from Northern Europe, as well as many First Nations people in the Americas, believe in some form of reincarnation, proving that humans have always believed in the immortality of souls. The only religions that don’t seem to believe in it are followers of Christianity and Islam.

As time went on and Christianity became more popular, the West largely abandoned the belief in reincarnation, while many Eastern and Asian cultures continued to hold it. In Hinduism, it is believed that your actions in this life and others determine where you end up in the next life, and that –

The soul carries with it the mental impressions it received during its earthly life. These characteristics are collectively called the Karma [or deed or act] of the soul.

Practitioners of Hinduism believe that after your physical body passes away, your soul – or astral body – continues to live on in the Devaloka or ‘Second World’, where it waits to be reborn into another. The idea is that every time you reincarnate, your soul evolves (also known as saṃsāra), and eventually, it’ll reach a state of ‘perfection or mature evolution’ (also known as Moksha or Nirvana), when it is considered to be ‘one with its creator’. Once a soul had reached the point of ‘oneness’ –

…it no longer needs to take a physical incarnation. Instead, it continues its evolution on inner places of consciousness. The soul is said to be freed from the bondage of birth and death.

In Buddhism, though, it’s believed that when your physical body passes away, your ‘consciousness’ leaves your body, and can then enter the body of another, gifting them with your knowledge and ‘wisdom’. This is known as ‘consciousness transference’. Buddhists believe that there are two ways in which a person is ‘reborn’ – under the sway of karma or destructive emotions like greed and desire, or ‘rebirth through the power of compassion and prayer’.

The first is described as ‘trying to go on a journey without a roadmap’. As such, people who reincarnate based on their karma or emotions are doomed to spend eternity being reborn over and over, and won’t ever achieve peace and freedom from suffering.

People who’ve mastered the ability to be reborn through compassion can choose the life they want to live next. An example is the Dalai Lama, who is said to have originated from the Buddha of Compassion. As a result, when he passes away, he is said to be able to choose his successor – usually a child that has already been born – and the senior monks then use several methods to track the chosen boy down before submitting him to a test to prove that he is indeed the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama.

This includes having some innate knowledge that the previous Dalai Lama had, as well as being able to identify personal objects that had once belonged to the other reincarnations of the Dalai Lama. Fun fact, the current Dalai Lama is considered to be the 14th reincarnation of a 15th century Buddhist monk called Gedun Drub, and in 2025, he confirmed that he’s planning on reincarnating again – this time as a boy outside of China’s influential sphere.

Anyway.

As time went on, modern philosophers and psychologists started doing their own research into the phenomenon of reincarnation and published their own studies on the subject. They consulted mediums and other spiritualists and used hypnosis to extract the memories of past lives from their subjects, and as you can imagine, they weren’t exactly able to prove any of their claims.

But in 1958, the American Society for Psychical Research hosted a contest for the best essay on ‘paranormal phenomena’. The winning essay was “The Evidence for Survival from Claimed Memories of Former Incarnations” by a well-known and respected physician-turned-psychiatrist and Professor of Psychiatry at the Louisiana State University School of Medicine named Dr Ian Stevenson.

In his essay, Dr Stevenson explains that as part of his research, he’d read hundreds of accounts of people who claimed to have been reincarnated. He also pointed out that no empirical evidence existed to prove the person’s claims, and many of these people only believed that they’d been reincarnated because a ‘sensitive’ or a psychic had told them so.

But then he came across 44 cases that not only sounded plausible, but shared a lot of common factors. They were all accounts of children who’d started to share details about a past life from the moment they were able to form a full sentence. They’d all been younger than 10 years old, with the majority being between the ages of 4 and 5, and they’d all shared details of the life of someone who’d passed away before they were born.

Dr Stevenson explained that these children lived all over the world – in India, Indonesia, Italy, the United States, England, Belgium, France, Greece, Cuba, Japan, and Canada. As such, they didn’t share any cultural or religious markers, and yet, their stories all shared several similarities.

They remembered names, places, and dates. In some cases, they knew what their name had been in their previous life, whether or not they’d been married or had kids, or even how they’d died. Unlike some of the other stories he’d read, they didn’t claim to be the reincarnations of kings, generals, famous artists, or the Dalai Lama, but ordinary people from small villages or towns who’d often died violent deaths.

Some of them demanded to be taken to the places where they’d claimed to have lived in a past life, and were then able to not only point out their old house, but also any changes that had occurred since they’d lived there. They were able to identify old family members from photos, or in some cases, convince complete strangers that they had, in fact, once been related to them.

The fact that these cases were often accompanied by photos and signed testimonies by both the present and past families fascinated Dr Stevenson, who’d later explain that –

These forty-four cases, when you put them together, it just seemed inescapable to me that there must be something there.

I do not think the data provide anything like proof of reincarnation, [but] a large number of cases in which the recall of true memories is a plausible hypothesis should make that hypothesis worthy of attention.

Shortly after his article was published in 1961, people from all over the world started contacting Dr Stevenson and shared their own stories about reincarnation. Dr Stevenson ended up travelling to India and Sri Lanka to investigate 5 cases of possible reincarnation, but soon after his arrival, he was bombarded by families who all claimed to have children who’d been reincarnated.

Dr Stevenson approached his research just like any professional researcher would – he took statements from the children and the parents. He took statements from members of the previous life’s family. He looked at photos, read autopsy reports, and dismissed the cases where he wasn’t able to find at least 15 points of correlation between what the child had claimed and what he was able to verify independently.

He spent a month in India and was able to identify 25 cases of possible reincarnation. He spent a week in Sri Lanka, and identified 5, and in 1966 he published a book about his research titled ‘Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation’. Following the publication of his book – I’m assuming – he was immediately laughed out of the room by his more serious colleagues, since everyone who recounts his origin story makes a point of saying that he hadn’t been some whackjob who smoked too much weed, but an accomplished and respected Professor of Medicine, and that no matter what his critics thought, his work was supported by empirical evidence, dammit!

HOWEVER, a man named Chester Carlson (aka the man who’d invented the xerographic printer or the copy machine as we know it today, and who was also a major stakeholder in the Xerox Corporation) had also read Dr Stevenson’s original article, and he’d been intrigued. Carlson had contacted Dr Stevenson back in 1961 to offer to fund Dr Stevenson’s research, and in 1967, Dr Stevenson took him up on his offer. From that point on, he focused on studying the phenomenon of reincarnation full-time, and thanks to the $1 million that Carlson left Dr Stevenson in his will, the University of Virginia eventually established the Division of Perceptual Studies and made Dr Stevenson a Professor of Perceptual Studies.

Over the course of the next three decades, Dr Stevenson compiled approximately 2500 cases of suspected reincarnation and developed several theories about how reincarnation affects not only the person’s memories, personality, and their likes and dislikes, but even their appearance. Dr Stevenson almost exclusively focused on cases from Asia since they actively believe in reincarnation, and were more likely to share their stories with him, but also pointed out that the majority of cases that he’d studied were from the US.

After Dr Stevenson retired in 2002, his successor, a child psychologist named Dr Jim Tucker, continued his research. Early on, he decided to focus on US cases since they were easier to verify, and he made a point of agreeing to appear on documentaries or on television, because –

I needed people to know about our work so they would contact us if their children started talking about past lives.

Dr Tucker has since written at least three books on the subject of reincarnation, so let’s take a look at three of the cases he’d studied, shall we, and see whether or not we can convince you that maybe – just maybe – it’s possible that these children are the reincarnations of people who’d passed away long before they were born.

”I’m a Barra Boy”

Cameron Macauley was featured in Season 6 of the Extraordinary People series. In the episode titled “The Boy Who Lived Before”, Cameron’s mother, Norma, explains that ever since the then 5-year-old Cameron could talk, he’s been telling his family about his childhood on the remote island of Barra, Scotland.

Norma and her two kids lived in Glasgow, and before she’d agreed to do the episode, she’d never even been to Barra before. She also explains that she has no idea how Cameron had even heard of Barra. As far as she knows, they’ve never watched a show about Barra on television, and Cameron’s 6-year-old brother Martin doesn’t claim to know anything about Barra at all. In fact, he tended to become irritated when Cameron would start talking about his Barra family, and would then call his younger brother out for being a liar.

But some of Cameron’s claims are quite specific. He claims that he and his Barra family used to live in a white house on the beach. There was a secret gate that they used to pass through, and just below the house were rock pools where they used to swim. He had a black and white dog, and three brothers and sisters. He also mentioned that he could see the beach from his bedroom window, and that they used to watch the planes land on the beach.

According to Cameron, he’d been in Barra one moment, and then he fell down a hole and was reborn. So, since his last memories were of his childhood in Barra, Nora assumed that he must have died when he was still a child. He also repeatedly insisted that he wasn’t lying, and regularly asked his mom if they could go to Barra and see his Barra family, and then he could prove that he was telling the truth.

According to Dr Tucker, the production team for Extraordinary People contacted him early on to find out if he’d be interested in appearing in an episode on the show, but he only agreed after he’d read about Cameron’s case.

Dr Tucker then ended up flying to Scotland to meet with Cameron and hear his story for himself. When Dr Tucker later asked him if he could remember any specific details about his old family, Cameron claimed that his father was called either Sean or Shane Robertson, that he had short, spiky hair, and that he’d died because he “stepped off the curb onto a road, didn’t look both ways, and was hit by a car.” In his book “Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives”, Dr Tucker explains that –

[Cameron’s] Barra memories were clearly real in Cameron’s mind. He talked with great emotion about a family and gave numerous details about a life there. They included ones his mother didn’t know. Even if Cameron had been exposed to information about Barra, latching onto it as the scene of a past life would have been peculiar, but he hadn’t been exposed to any as far as Norma knew.

The episode follows Norma and Cameron as they take a trip to Barra, accompanied by Dr Tucker, and when they arrive on the island, the small plane they’re travelling in uses the beach as a runway. An excited and slightly smug Cameron then tells his brother –

I told you it was true!

They spend a few days driving along the north side of Barra to see if Cameron can identify his old house, and the production company had arranged a meeting for them with a local historian who informed them that yes, a family named Robertson used to live on the island in the 1960s. They weren’t locals – they were from the mainland – but for twenty years, they used to own a white beach house where they spent their summer holidays on the northern side of the island.

When they arrive at the house, the producers of the documentary make a point of focusing on Cameron, who is visibly upset. He informs his mother that he recognises the house, but it doesn’t look the same. He’s sad at the realisation that his Barra family no longer lives there, and he tells her that he misses his Barra mom. He’s quiet and subdued as they walk through the house, and his mother, Nora, explains her shock at realising that the house is exactly as Cameron had described.

It’s a white house with rock pools just below it, and a now-rusted gate that provides access to the beach. It has a clear view of the beach where the planes come in to land, and Cameron was even able to point out which bedroom he used to sleep in.

Towards the end of the episode, we’re told that Norma had been put in contact with a genealogist who’d researched the Robertson family that used to live on Barra, and they’d found a living relative – a woman named Gillian.

Gillian meets with Norma and Cameron, and shows them pictures that were taken when she and her family used to spend their summers on Barra. She confirmed that she used to be one of four siblings – two boys and two girls – and tells Nora that even though they didn’t own a black and white dog, the two caretakers, Callum and Peggy, had a Border Collie when they were kids, and that they used to play with it.

Many of Cameron’s claims and Gillian’s recollections matched, but as far as Gillian knew, there wasn’t a Shane in her family, and no one had passed away after being hit by a car. Her father also didn’t pass away when he was young, and none of her siblings did either.

Dr Tucker noted that even though there were a lot of details in Cameron’s story that matched independent sources, they weren’t able to confirm whether or not Cameron had indeed been a member of the Robertson family in his past life. But Nora explains that – in a sense – she was relieved when some of Cameron’s story didn’t match what Gillian remembered.

At first, I thought I’m going to be disappointed if [Cameron’s story] doesn’t make sense. And then part of the way, I thought it would be too freaky if it [matched] 100%.

Nora then explains that after they returned home from Barra, Cameron seemed to calm down, and no longer spoke about Barra as often. According to Dr Tucker, this is completely normal for children who claim to remember a past life – once they visit the place where they claim they’d once lived, it’s as if something in them settles, and they’re able to move on with their current lives.

He seemed to have seen enough to validate in his own mind that the memories he had experienced were real. At the same time, he saw that the world had moved on. There was no family in Barra anxiously waiting for his return.

According to Dr Tucker, he’s still not convinced that Cameron had been reincarnated, but in his book, he does express regret that he wasn’t able to speak to Cameron before the television producers got to him. He claims that a lot of the information he’d been given came from the producers instead of Cameron himself, and because of their tight schedule, they weren’t able to properly conduct research on the island of Barra. In a perfect world, he’d have been able to properly go through the island’s records to find out if anyone had once died after being hit with a car, or if another Shane or Sean or Seamus Robertson had ever lived on the island.

The Little Pilot

Another famous case is the story of James Leineger. According to Dr Tucker, he first heard about James’ story when he was four years old, and he’d hounded the Leineger family for years until they finally allowed him to interview their son.

According to James’ parents, Bruce and Andrea, James became obsessed with planes in February 2000 when he was twenty-two months old. They were living in Texas at the time, and Bruce took James to the Cavanaugh Flight Museum. James was particularly interested in the WWII exhibit, and kept on nagging his parents to take him back so that he could see the planes.

Bruce eventually gave in, and they spent another three hours at the museum. He bought James a video about the Blue Angels, the Navy’s Flight Exhibition Team, and James reportedly spent hours watching that video. He also started playing with his new toy airplanes, and when they inevitably crashed into the ground, he’d say –

Airplane crash. On fire!

According to Andrea, it wasn’t long before James started having repeated nightmares about a plane crash. He’d scream things like, “Airplane crash, on fire! Little man can’t get out!” and the way he screamed and thrashed left his parents and other family members traumatised. His aunt told Dr Tucker that –

They were like watching someone in terror fighting for his life. They included blood-curdling shrieks from James as he kicked his legs up toward the ceiling, screaming about an airplane crash and a big fire and proclaiming, ‘Little man can’t get out!’

While they were putting James to bed one night, the 2-year-old James told them about his nightmare. He said that he’d been in a Corsair fighter plane and it was shot down. The plane crashed and then burst into flames, and he died trying to get out of it. When Bruce asked him who’d shot him down, James gave an irritated sigh as if his parents should already know this, and said –

The Japanese!

James would later add that he’d been stationed on a boat in the middle of the ocean, and that he’d fly off the boat and into the air. He’d eventually identify the boat as being the Natoma. According to Bruce, James had been angry when Bruce told him that ‘Natoma’ sounded Japanese, and he insisted that no, the Natoma was American.

Bruce would later tell Dr Tucker that over the years, he’d done a ton of research in an attempt to make sense of James’ story, and in August 2000, he’d found out that during WWII, the US Navy had a Casablanca-Class aircraft carrier called the USS Natoma Bay. It was active between 1943 and was decommissioned in 1946, and was involved in several battles in the Pacific Ocean during WWII – the most notable of which is the Battle off Samar and the Battle of Okinawa.

When his parents asked James if there was anyone in the plane with him, he’d say “Jack” or “Larsen” and explained that Jack was a pilot. By the time James was three, he’d also add that his plane had been hit ‘right in the propeller’, and then crashed into the water. He’d drowned while trying to escape the cockpit.

Bruce claims that when James was 2½ years old, they were paging through a book called The Battle for Iwo Jima that Bruce had bought for his father, when James pointed at one of the pictures in the book. It was an aerial shot of the Japanese island Iwo Jima, where the battle had taken place, and James confidently told his father that –

That’s where my plane was shot down.

According to Bruce, by the time James was 3-years-old, he was able to pinpoint the island on a world atlas, and he kept on adding details to his story as he got older, which included his insistence that he was “the third James”, that he had a sister named Ruth and a sister named Anne, and that his father was an alcoholic. He also knew facts about Corsair airplanes, Japanese fighter planes – or Tory’s – and the USS Natoma that his parents weren’t aware of, like the fact that Corsairs got flat tyres after a hard landing, and that the USS Natoma only had one vinyl record onboard the ship during the war.

Bruce couldn’t shake the feeling that James was telling the truth, and he searched WWII archives for a pilot named Jack Larsen who’d died during WWII. He even attended reunions for the crew of the USS Natoma Bay in September 2002, and that’s where he learned that there’d indeed been a pilot named Jack Larsen, but that he was still alive. What’s more, only one pilot had died during the Iwo Jima operation – 21-year-old James Huston Jr.

However, the crew of the Natoma hadn’t seen the crash that had killed Huston, but the crew of the USS Sargent Bay had, and three of its crew members eventually got in touch with Bruce. They told him that Huston’s plane had been approaching the harbour entrance when it took – “a direct hit on the nose”, burst into flames, and crashed into the water. However, Huston had been flying a Grumman FM-2 Wildcat – not a Corsair.

Andrea eventually managed to locate Huston’s remaining family members and learned that he’d indeed been the second James, which would make their son James the third. Huston’s father had been an alcoholic, and he’d had two sisters – Ruth and Anne. Even though he’d died while flying an FM-2, he’d been a part of a squadron in the US Navy that had been tasked with testing the Corsair. It had been his favourite plane, and Anne Huston was able to send Andrea several photos of Huston standing next to or in front of a Corsair.

By this point, Bruce and Andrea – and Dr Tucker – were convinced that James Leininger was indeed the reincarnation of James Huston Jr. According to Dr Tucker –

This is quite a remarkable case. Though I might have been able to corroborate parts of it more if I could have studied it sooner, it still stands up very, very well. In fact, I have trouble coming up with an ordinary explanation for it. You may say it was all a coincidence, but if so, it was one heck of a coincidence.

A Life in Hollywood

According to Cyndi Hammons from Oklahoma, her son Ryan first started talking about his previous life when he was four, and early on, she started writing his various claims down in a notebook.

It all began with night terrors, during which Ryan said it felt like his heart was exploding. Then he started talking about another life he’d had – one where he made movies, rode in fancy cars, and lived in a big house with a pool. He told his mom that he used to have a wife and a daughter, but that he also remembers buying colouring books for three boys who weren’t his own. He’d had a big green car, and his wife drove a black one.

He told his mom that he used to be big, but now he was small, and that he found it extremely frustrating to be small again. He also reportedly told his mom that he was homesick, and that –

I just can’t live in these conditions. My last home was much better!

He told her that he used to smoke, and that he didn’t like cats, because he’d once tried to help an injured cat and it had cut his arms to ribbons. His daughter wanted a cat, though, so he’d bought her a dog instead, and she was upset about it. He reportedly once told his mom that he wanted some Tru Ade, but when Cyndi told him that she didn’t know what that was, he sighed and told her to get him a Dr Pepper instead, and that –

You can’t get [Tru Ade] anymore. Now I just drink Dr Pepper.

Ryan claimed that he’d once travelled all over the world, and that he and his wife once went to see the Eiffel Tower. Or, to quote him –

I have been to China, Paris, New York. When are you going to listen to me? I have seen the world!

He also claimed that he used to dance on Broadway, that he “hated auditions”, that he lived in New York for a time working for an agency that changed people’s names, that he had nightmares about a man he called “Senator Five” (who Dr Tucker later identified as being New York Senator Irving Ives) and that he’d visited his grave. He also told his mom that he used to love dancing, and –

Mommy, I can’t wait until I get big again and I get to go on those big boats, wear fancy clothes, and dance with all the pretty ladies. That’s how you see the world, Mommy, from a big boat.

Ryan would stage movies with his toys, and after Cyndi watched him yell out “Action!” several times while he directed these make-belief movies, she bought a book about Old Hollywood to see if he might be able to identify any landmarks. According to Cyndi, when they came across a picture of the Hollywood sign, Ryan immediately pointed to it and told her that he used to live there –

That’s my home! That’s where I belong.

When she showed him a picture of Rita Hayworth, he claimed that he knew her and that she liked to make ‘coke floats’. When Cyndi showed him some pictures of famous Hollywood actors, he pointed to a picture of Marilyn Monroe and said that he’d once tried to talk to “that Mary lady” at a party, but that she’d been surrounded by bodyguards, and he’d gotten punched in the eye for trying.

Then, while looking at pictures about a 1932 movie called Night After Night, Ryan excitedly pointed at a picture of actor George Raft and said –

Hey, Mama, that’s George! We did a picture together. And Mama, that guy’s me. I found me!

Cyndi would later tell Dr Tucker that the photo that Ryan had pointed to hadn’t been labelled, and she’d been unable to identify the person. This had upset Ryan, who thought that it was unfair that he could remember so much, but he wasn’t able to remember his own name. However, he did describe scenes from the movie Night After Night in detail, which both Cyndi and Dr Tucker later confirmed did appear in the movie.

After they’d come across the photo of the mystery actor, Ryan used to cry and beg Cyndi to take him home to his other family – back to his wife, his daughter, and his big house with the pool. Cyndi did what she could to identify the man, but she didn’t know where to begin searching, and eventually, she contacted Dr Tucker for help.

According to Dr Tucker –

Cyndi said she was writing because she really wanted help in identifying the man in the picture Ryan had pointed to. She said that he told her he was starting to forget about his life in Hollywood. That made him sad, but at the same time, he just wanted to be Ryan. Cyndi finished by saying that Ryan was a great little boy and she wanted him to have answers to the questions he cried about at night.

Dr Tucker agreed to meet with Ryan, and he flew down to Oklahoma to meet with him and his family. While he was there, Ryan added even more details about his previous life. Dr Tucker noted all of this down, and he eventually agreed to help Cyndi and Ryan find out who he’d been in his past life.

During this time, a television production company contacted Dr Tucker and said that they were in the process of rebooting a paranormal television show from the 90s called The UneXplained. They were already working on a list of possible episodes, and wanted to know whether Dr Tucker knew of any credible reincarnation stories because people always found them interesting. Dr Tucker got permission from Cyndi and Ryan to share their information, and it was the production team that was able to identify the mystery actor from Night After Night – Marty Martyn, who’d been an extra in the movie.

He’d been born Morris Kolinsky in Philadelphia in May 1903, but changed his name to Marty Kolinsky when he and his sister moved to New York in the 1920s. There, he performed in a Broadway musical called “Gay Paree”, before moving to Hollywood and changing his name to Marty Martyn. He’d had a small speaking role in the movie Night After Night, but his line was eventually cut from the movie. It still earned him a spot in the credits, though.

He eventually started a talent agency called ‘Marty Martyn Agency’ and became quite successful. He got married four times, and during his last marriage, he married a woman named Margaret Skouras. She already had five children, which included three sons, and Marty and Margaret ended up having a daughter called Marisa. He passed away at the age of 61 while in the hospital. He’d had leukaemia, but his cause of death was a cerebral haemorrhage.

Marty and Margaret used to live in a large home at 825 Roxbury Drive, which had a large pool, but it had been demolished at some point. During an interview with Dr Tucker, Marisa recalled that her father used to drive a big green car, and her mother drove a black Rolls-Royce, and they used to go on several cruises aboard the ocean liner Queen Mary. Her father hated cats, and he’d once bought her a Yorkshire Terrier, but she hadn’t liked the yappy little dog. However, there were some of Ryan’s claims – like whether or not Marty liked Tru Ade – that she couldn’t confirm, since her father had died when Marisa was 8.

Marisa eventually agreed to meet with a 5-year-old Ryan, and he was able to identify photos of Marty Martyn, which were included in the family albums Marisa kept, and included a photo of Marty posing next to New York Senator Irving Ives.

They included photos from when Marty was a child, as well as photos from when he was a middle-aged man – although Ryan reportedly didn’t like those photos, because he looked “so old” in them, and he preferred the ones where he looked young and “handsome”. According to Cyndi, he’d been excited to see Marisa, but when they returned to their hotel room that night, he admitted to being disappointed to learn that she’d grown up and that she wasn’t the 8-year-old girl that he’d remembered anymore.

[She has the] same face, but she didn’t wait on me. She changed; her energy changed. I don’t want to go back [to living with her].

Following their visit to Hollywood, Ryan reportedly seemed to accept that his life in Hollywood was over, and Cyndi later told Dr Tucker that he’d even gotten rid of his old Hollywood posters, stating that he was happy to just be a regular kid.

During an interview with NBC in 2015, Dr Tucker said that Ryan’s case was one of the best examples of possible reincarnation he’d ever seen. Ryan had been so detailed in his recounting of Marty Martyn’s life that they were able to confirm 50 of his statements through independent research. And according to Dr Tucker –

What we found was that though Ryan was off on some of the details, a lot of what he said was correct for Marty Martyn. It had seemed unlikely that an extra with no lines would have danced on Broadway, had a big house with a swimming pool, and travelled the world on big boats. But Marty Martyn did.

The Argument Against

Now, I can probably go on to write about many more cases of possible reincarnation, but then this episode would probably be close to four hours long.

So, let’s get into the possible explanations for what these children experienced.

In his book, Life Before Life, Dr Tucker explains that they have a list of possible explanations that have to be ruled out before they accept that they’re dealing with a possible case of reincarnation. The obvious one is fraud – or even unconscious fraud.

Examples would be people who claim to be the reincarnations of famous people, or who claim that they realised this after they’d spoken to a medium or a psychic or were hypnotised in an attempt to access hidden memories. Although the motivation behind this is usually just to score weirdo-brownie points, some people (especially in Asian countries) have been accused of claiming to be the reincarnation of a loved one with the expectation that the deceased person’s family would somehow feel responsible for them and help them out financially.

Another is when a parent starts insisting that their child has been reincarnated, and then goes on to pester television production companies for a chance at securing their 15 minutes of fame. Of course, you can say that this is true of all three of the cases we’ve discussed today, since all three of these cases are famous because the children and their families have appeared on television shows. However, as Dr Tucker points out, Cameron and Ryan’s families didn’t get any financial benefits out of sharing their stories – apart from a free trip to Barra and Los Angeles. James Leineger’s family, on the other hand, scored a book deal out of their son’s claims, BUT Bruce also had printed and dated copies of his internet searches and detailed notes of James’ claims that go back to July 2000, which convinced Dr Tucker that it wasn’t a story they’d made up on the fly in 2004.

Unconscious fraud happens when a parent reads too much into what their child is saying, and then convinces themselves and their children that they’d been reincarnated. By this point, I’ve seen numerous posts from parents claiming that when their children were little, they’d said something along the lines of –

Mommy, do you remember when you were little, and I was big?

They usually assume that this means that the child used to be a deceased family member in a previous life, like a beloved grandparent, aunt or uncle, and then they go hunting for evidence that this might be the case.

But I have a 3-year-old daughter, and she says odd stuff like that ALL THE TIME. However, when put into context, she’s mimicking ME, and all the times I’ve shown her pictures of herself when she was a baby and asked, “See this here? There you are playing on a swing. You were still a baby back then.” Or “See this photo here? There you were still in Mommy’s tummy.” As such, I’ve grown increasingly more sceptical of those kinds of reincarnation stories.

Another explanation is Wishful Thinking, and this usually occurs when a grieving family believes that a family member who’d recently passed away has been reborn into the family. An example would be the case of Patrick, whose mother believed that he was the reincarnation of his older brother, Kevin, who’d passed away from cancer 15 years before. According to his parents, he’d had birthmarks on his body that corresponded with wounds that Kevin had sustained during chemotherapy, he had a hard lump above one ear where Kevin’s tumour had been, and he even had the same limping gait that Kevin had. This convinced them that he was Kevin reincarnated, and they became more and more convinced of it when Patrick preferred to play with Kevin’s old toys.

Other examples are the hundreds of cases that Dr Stevenson had studied throughout Asia, where as soon as a child starts talking about a past life, they’re bombarded by families and neighbours who want to determine if they’re the reincarnation of a deceased loved one, and thus they almost raise the child to believe that they are the reincarnation of a deceased loved one.

Dr Tucker and Dr Ian Stevenson’s other explanations for reincarnation stories go too deep into the paranormal sphere for my liking, but Dr Stevenson’s critics like to point out that the majority of the stories he’d put forward as proof of reincarnation weren’t actually backed by any evidence, despite his claims that he had been able to confirm them using independent sources.

And that’s exactly why I hadn’t included any of them here – because his critics were right. I read through his book “European Cases of the Reincarnation Type”, and in it, Dr Stevenson admits that a lot of them remain unsolved because he wasn’t able to confirm the stories. The three cases I’ve included in the script were all studied by Dr Tucker, and are the three ones I couldn’t find any arguments against, because the amount of details that these children knew is just too mind-boggling, and Dr Tucker was able to follow along as the case was unfolding.

Of course, Dr Stevenson had spent his life studying possible reincarnations, and died firmly believing that reincarnation was definitely possible. It only took him a few months to convince Dr Tucker of the same, and he’s since developed several models that help him to determine the validity of a child’s claims. In an interview with The New York Times, he even claimed that during the course of his career –

I have become convinced that there is more to the world than the physical universe.

And even though I’d fully expected to remain sceptical about the possibility of reincarnation by the time I’d finished writing this script, I now have to admit that I’m not quite so sure anymore, and it might just be possible that some of us have lived hundreds of lives, but just can’t remember it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What percentage of people in the US and Europe believe in reincarnation?

Between 20 and 27 per cent of people in both the US and Europe believe in reincarnation.

How many cases of reincarnation have scientists at the University of Virginia recorded and investigated?

Scientists at the University of Virginia have recorded and investigated over 2500 cases of reincarnation from all over the world.

Who won the 1958 American Society for Psychical Research essay contest on ‘paranormal phenomena’?

Dr Ian Stevenson, a physician-turned-psychiatrist and Professor of Psychiatry at the Louisiana State University School of Medicine, won the contest with his essay ‘The Evidence for Survival from Claimed Memories of Former Incarnations’.

What were the common characteristics of the 44 reincarnation cases that Dr Stevenson found most plausible?

The 44 cases were all accounts of children who started sharing details about a past life from the moment they could form a full sentence, were younger than 10 years old (majority between 4 and 5), and shared details of someone who had passed away before they were born. They remembered names, places, and dates, and were ordinary people from small villages or towns who often died violent deaths.

Who funded Dr Stevenson’s reincarnation research and how much was left in his will?

Chester Carlson, the inventor of the xerographic printer and major stakeholder in Xerox Corporation, funded Dr Stevenson’s research and left him $1 million in his will.

What is the name of the child who claimed to have lived on the island of Barra, Scotland in a previous life?

Cameron Macauley was the child who claimed to have lived on the remote island of Barra, Scotland in a previous life.

What specific details did James Leininger provide about his claimed past life as a WWII pilot?

James Leininger claimed he flew a Corsair fighter plane that was shot down by the Japanese, crashed and burst into flames, and he died trying to get out. He said he was stationed on a boat called the Natoma, had a fellow pilot named Jack Larsen, his plane was hit ‘right in the propeller’, and he drowned trying to escape the cockpit. He also insisted he was ‘the third James’, had sisters named Ruth and Anne, and his father was an alcoholic.

Who did Ryan Hammons claim to have been in his past life, and how many of his statements were confirmed?

Ryan Hammons claimed to have been Marty Martyn, a Hollywood extra and talent agent. Dr Tucker and researchers were able to confirm 50 of Ryan’s statements through independent research.

What are some possible explanations Dr Tucker lists for children’s reincarnation claims besides actual reincarnation?

Dr Tucker lists several possible explanations: fraud (including people claiming to be reincarnations of famous people or loved ones for financial gain), unconscious fraud (parents reading too much into what children say), wishful thinking (grieving families believing deceased relatives have been reborn), and parents seeking fame through television appearances.

What happened to Cameron Macauley’s memories of Barra after he visited the island?

After visiting Barra, Cameron seemed to calm down and no longer spoke about Barra as often. According to Dr Tucker, this is normal for children who claim to remember past lives—once they visit the place where they claim to have lived, something in them settles and they’re able to move on with their current lives.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: The Children That Remember Being Dead.
• https://doi.org/10.1136/pgmj.37.429.443-d
• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2016.02.003
• https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/1pcxtsy/how_does_the_reincarnation_of_the_dalai_lama_work/
• https://www.dalailama.com/the-dalai-lama/biography-and-daily-life/reincarnation/rebirth-recognition-tradition-2011-09-24
• https://www.hinduismtoday.com/hindu-basics/karma-and-reincarnation/
• https://youtu.be/ZfmrgQO-gkc
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr2RvjepyA4
• Hero image source by Quintin Soloviev / openverse, by.