The practice
In parts of Asia and West Africa, families mark the body of a dying or dead relative so that they can recognize the person when he or she is reborn. In Thailand the mark is often made with red ochre or lime paste, in Myanmar with soot or grease from a cooking pot, in Tibet with butter and in Japan with ink. Ian Stevenson called the resulting cases ‘experimental birthmarks’, because the mark is made deliberately, in advance, and its position can later be compared with a birthmark on a baby.12
A related West African practice, documented among the Igbo of Nigeria and peoples of Senegal and Ghana, involves cutting or mutilating the body of a child who has died, to identify it or to discourage it from returning to die again. Stevenson reported several children born with defects of the fingers, toes or ears matching such cuts.2
Cases and studies
In one Thai case, a great-aunt marked the body of a dead relative with red paste, and the girl later born into the family had a matching red mark. In Myanmar, a boy was born with a large birthmark on his foot where grease had been smeared on a dying teenager. Jim B Tucker and Jürgen Keil reported eighteen new cases from Thailand and Myanmar in 2013, and Ohkado Masayuki has described a Japanese case of a neck birthmark matching an ink circle.13
Explanations
Skeptics suggest chance, especially with common marks, or that families remember the marking in a way that fits the birthmark they see. Because the candidates are usually limited to one family, and some marks are unusual in place and shape, Tucker and Keil found chance and faulty memory hard to sustain in the stronger cases.1 ‘Maternal impression’, the idea that a mother’s thoughts affect her baby, is weakened by the fact that in many cases the mother had not seen the mark or did not know it had been made.4 How a mark could pass from one body to another remains unexplained.2