Sri Lanka
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Duminda Ratnayake
A Sri Lankan boy who from the age of three said he had been a chief monk at the Asgiriya temple in Kandy, behaved like a monk and chanted Pali verses; his statements best fitted Gunnepana Saranankara, abbot from 1921 to 1929, whom he later picked out in an old photograph.
Gnanatilleka Baddewithana
A Sri Lankan girl who said she had been a boy from the hill town of Talawakele; dozens of her statements were written down before the family was traced, and they matched Tillekeratne, a 13-year-old who died in 1954, whose relatives she identified at a recorded meeting.
In Search of the Dead
A 1992 BBC Wales documentary series by Jeffrey Iverson on the evidence for life after death, whose third episode, 'Remembered Lives', follows Ian Stevenson and the researchers who replicated his work in the field.
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.
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.
Wijeratne Hami
A Sri Lankan boy born in 1947 with a malformed right arm and chest who said at about two that his arm was deformed because he had murdered his wife; his father's younger brother, Ratran Hami, had been hanged in 1928 for stabbing the young woman he had married when she refused to come home with him.