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.
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.
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.