Background
KM Wehrstein trained in journalism, holding a Bachelor of Applied Arts in the subject, and has worked as a freelance writer and novelist.1 Wehrstein traces an interest in reincarnation to personal experiences in childhood and adulthood, began studying the work of Ian Stevenson and other academic researchers in 2015, and started formally investigating cases in 2016.67
Research
Wehrstein specialises in adult cases, which are less often studied than those of young children. The best known is the case of ‘Will’, an American man who remembered more than one previous life. In a 2019 paper in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Wehrstein reported that Will’s memories, some of them posted on internet forums years earlier, matched Wilhelm Emmerich, a German SS non-commissioned officer who died in 1945; a 2021 paper in the same journal followed his search for an earlier life as a soldier, Wilhelm Schmidt, killed in the First World War.2345 Wehrstein has also investigated the case of Simon Jacobs, whose story inspired Santa Montefiore’s novel Wait for Me (2023).8
Wehrstein is one of the most prolific contributors to the Society for Psychical Research’s Psi Encyclopedia, having written more than a hundred articles on reincarnation cases, researchers and themes, and also works as an editor for it.1
ICRR and the case database
Wehrstein founded the International Centre for Reincarnation Research (ICRR), established in 2021 and incorporated in Canada in 2022 to fund and share reincarnation research, and serves as its president.7 Under the ICRR, Wehrstein manages a project funded by the BIAL Foundation to build a database of published reincarnation cases, which brings together and codes cases from the research literature so they can be compared and analyzed.1