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Jim B Tucker
American child psychiatrist who took over Ian Stevenson's reincarnation research at the University of Virginia, best known for his work on Western cases such as James Leininger.
Katsugoro
A Japanese boy who in 1822 said he had been Tozo, a child of a nearby village who died of smallpox in 1810, and who led his grandmother to Tozo's home; his case was written down in 1823 by an official, a retired lord and a scholar, making it one of the earliest documented cases.
Kemal Atasoy
A Turkish boy from Hatay whose statements, written down by Jürgen Keil before any checking, described a wealthy Armenian named Karakas in a waterside house in Istanbul, 850 kilometres away; a local historian later confirmed that such a man had lived in the house and died about fifty years before the boy was born.
KM Wehrstein
Reincarnation researcher, writer and founder of the International Centre for Reincarnation Research, known for investigations of adult past-life memory cases and for many Psi Encyclopedia articles on reincarnation.
Kumkum Verma
An Indian girl from a Bihar village who spoke of a life as Sundari, a woman of a blacksmith family in Urdu Bazar, Darbhanga; her aunt wrote down many of her statements before any were checked.
Ma Tin Aung Myo
A Burmese child who, from about the age of four, said she had been a Japanese army cook shot by an Allied aircraft in her own village during the Second World War; she was terrified of aircraft, longed for Japan and kept a firmly male identity into adulthood, but the soldier was never identified.
Mallika Aroumougam
A girl in Pondicherry who, just before her fourth birthday, claimed cushions embroidered by her neighbour's dead sister as her own work and went on to identify with that sister; a case with few verifiable details in which the two families shared a house.
Marta Lorenz
A Brazilian girl born in 1918 to Ida Lorenz, whose friend Sinhá had promised on her deathbed to be reborn as her daughter; from the age of two and a half Marta spoke of Sinhá's life, and a few of her statements concerned things her own family did not know.
Nazih Al-Danaf
A Lebanese Druze boy who from about eighteen months spoke of carrying pistols and grenades and being shot; at six his directions led to the family of Fuad Khaddage, shot dead in Beirut in 1982, whose widow and brother tested him and accepted him as Fuad reborn.
Pollock twins
Identical twins born in Hexham in 1958, seventeen months after their two older sisters were killed by a driver; the younger twin had birthmarks matching a scar and a mole of one sister, and the pair made a few statements and recognitions that their parents linked to the sisters' lives.
Pretiba Gunawardana
A Sri Lankan boy who gave 42 detailed statements about a life in Kandy ending in a car fire; no matching person or street was ever found, making it a well-documented unsolved case.
Psychological studies of children with past-life memories
Studies comparing children who claim past lives with their peers have not found them more suggestible, isolated or attention-seeking, though some show signs of anxiety and daydreaming.
Purnima Ekanayake
A Sri Lankan girl, born with pale birthmarks on the left of her chest, who spoke of being an incense maker killed by a big vehicle; her statements matched Jinadasa Perera of Angoda, near Kelaniya, whose post-mortem report recorded crushing injuries across the same area.
Rakesh Gaur
An Indian boy from Kankroli, Rajasthan, who from the age of five said he had been a carpenter from Tonk who was electrocuted; the man was identified as Bithal Das, who died in 1955, but the two investigators, Satwant Pasricha and the anthropologist David Barker, disagreed over whether the identification was genuine or socially constructed.
Ramoo and Rajoo Sharma
Indian twin boys who, from about the age of three, said they had been twin brothers from a village 16 kilometres away who were lured to a house and strangled in 1964; they were born with streaks of darker skin across their abdomens, which Stevenson came to link with the poles used to pin the men down.
Ratana Wongsombat
A Bangkok girl who at fourteen months showed an adult's knowledge of Buddhist worship at Wat Mahathat and said she had been Kim Lan, a wealthy laywoman who had meditated there and died after an operation in Sri Racha in 1962.
Ravi Shankar Gupta
An Indian boy from Kanauj who from the age of two said he was Munna, a six-year-old murdered six months before his birth; he named the two men arrested for the killing and had a long mark across his neck that he linked to the fatal wound.
Records made before verification
Cases in which a child's statements were written down before anyone checked them against a previous person, which rules out memories being reshaped after the fact.
Reincarnation – Past Lives Revisited
A long-form podcast hosted by Marilyn Elliott since 2020, in which each episode reviews a reported reincarnation case and weighs the evidence, often with the researchers or the people involved.
Ryan Hammons
An Oklahoma boy whose memories of Hollywood were traced, through a still from a 1932 film, to Marty Martyn, a minor actor turned talent agent who died in 1964.
Rylann O’Bannion
An Oklahoma girl who from the age of three said she had died in the rain after a loud noise; at five she spoke of a plane crash, and her mother found Jennifer Schultz, an eleven-year-old killed in her carport when a Pan Am jet crashed into Kenner, Louisiana, in 1982.
Shanti Devi
A Delhi girl who in the 1930s remembered being Lugdi, a young wife in Mathura who died after childbirth; she recognized her former husband, and a committee formed on Gandhi's advice took her to Mathura, making hers perhaps the most famous case in India.
Signs of Reincarnation
James G Matlock's 2019 survey of reincarnation research for students and general readers, covering beliefs around the world, the evidence from children and adults, and his own 'processual soul' theory of how reincarnation might work.
Sujith Lakmal Jayaratne
A Sri Lankan boy whose statements about being 'Gorakana Sammy' were written down by a monk before any checking and matched Sammy Fernando, an arrack distiller killed by a lorry in 1969; as a toddler Sujith asked for arrack and acted out a drunkard's habits.