Overview
Pretiba Gunawardana lived about twenty miles south-east of Colombo.1 After a high fever when he was a little over two, he began to speak insistently about a previous life as Santha Megahathenne of 28 Pilagoda Road in Kandy, who had died after a car caught fire, burning his leg, hand and mouth. He named many relatives and described visits to temples.
Erlendur Haraldsson and Godwin Samararatne recorded 42 statements in November 1989, when he was four, before making any checks.1
The search
On the drive to Kandy, Pretiba named the city by its traditional name and the Mahaweli River as they crossed it, though neither had been mentioned. But there was no Pilagoda Road in Kandy or its district, no village of Megahathenne nearby and no family of that name in the telephone directory, and no matching person was found.1
The case shows the other side of the research: a child with many specific, confident statements that cannot be matched to anyone. Unsolved cases are common, especially outside Asia, and researchers include them in their analyses alongside solved ones.1