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    ICRR Blog

    ICRR awarded €50,000 grant for PRCDb

    Readers of our newsletter Back Again might recall that ICRR has been working tentatively on creating the Published Reincarnation Case Database (PRCDb), a comprehensive database made up of all datapoints of the roughly 500 reincarnation cases that have been published. We decided to use artificial intelligence to convert the texts into datapoints, both for speed and for prevention of human error and experimenter bias.

    The database’s purpose is to allow quick and easy statistical calculations that will tell us more about reincarnation and how it works. Some very good theoretical advancements have already resulted from statistical work in reincarnation research, but it’s been hampered by the fact that the only existing database is private and thus not available to most researchers. PRCDb will be open to all, and as such will lift the quantitatively analytical capacity of reincarnation research to another level.

    In the summer of 2024 we ramped up our efforts so as to apply for a major grant to fund the project, obtaining some very promising results from AI testing. We submitted the application on August 31.

    On Dec. 5 we learned that the grant was approved, so we are now proud and excited to be required to say about PRCDb from now on: This work was supported by the BIAL Foundation (371/24). The BIAL Foundation is the largest existing institutional grantor for parapsychological work, operating since 1994. They awarded us €50,000, and both work and payment are planned to start on Feb. 3. We have scheduled system launch—the day when the database becomes available to all researchers for use—for Nov. 30, 2026.

    The PRCDb team is comprised of all four members of the ICRR Board of Directors: KM Wehrstein (project manager), Alexei Medvedev (AI specialist), Benjamin Bagley (web developer/designer) and Bob Giacalone (statistics and research methods specialist), plus ICRR Science Council member Ohkado Masayuki (principal investigator), and members Jacob Williamson (human coder), Aviv Yeshayav (IT assistant) and Mark Egan (SPSS specialist). The eight of us hail from seven nations and four continents.

    So what does this mean for the future of reincarnation research and ICRR?

    Most obviously, it will generate a burgeoning of statistical studies on reincarnation, and in fact the start of this is built into the project, as once the system is built it will need to be study-tested. That will start with us, and over the three-year period of the grant we have scheduled for one online conference, five conference presentations, seven conference papers and four journal articles. Test study topics range from how many reincarnates recall freely choosing aspects of their past lives to how likely the alternative explanations for reincarnation (e.g., fraud, fantasy, psychic powers, etc.) really are to how prevalent are lasting effects of past lives… and many more.

    Following our own study testing, we’ll continue with beta-testers from outside the team, several of whom we have lined up, with interesting ideas like Sharon Rawlette’s testing of the full body of published reincarnation cases for date synchronicities. And then of course we’ll open the doors to everyone.

    As well, by establishing and refining the technology for parapsychological AI database creation, ICRR will be able to help other fields within life-after-death research or even parapsychology generally to build their own databases of cases, possibly helping enable the whole field reach a new level of scientific capability.

    But there are also great possibilities for public outreach. ICRR can send out a press release about every study whose author gives us permission to. (Do people want to know, say, how many people with past-life memories recall choosing who their next parents would be? Of course they do!) KM Wehrstein wants to publish a popular book entitled Reincarnation: The Stats to show what statistical studies say about reincarnation. The potential for increasing both quantity and quality of reincarnation info in the public discourse is exciting!

    And we’re sure there are more benefits we aren’t anticipating yet.

    Congratulations to everyone on the PRCDb team, thanks to our supporters, friends and members, and our deepest gratitude to BIAL.

    -KMW

    Welcome to ICRR Website Version 2!


    Up to now our website has been in truth a splashpage with join-up capacity; here you will find a fully functional site with lots more information, which is being actively expanded on an ongoing basis (something which will continue forever). 

    Please explore and enjoy our features, such as:

    Meet the ICRR Team: Who we are individually

    Evidence:

    • Key Cases – what does a scientifically-investigate reincarnation case look like? Here are three (five?) examples
    • Patterns & Statistics – a taste of what has been learned about reincarnation through statistical studies of existing cases so far
    • Universal Beliefs – why is reincarnation belief found in so many religions and cultures worldwide, from the most primitive to the most advanced?
    • What is “reincarnation research”? – description by a pro

    Guides:

    • For Parents – have a young child who is possibly talking about a past life?  Don’t be chilled or panicked, it’s actually common. Our expert-based tips
    • For Experiencers – feel you have one or more past lives, or having experiences you think are reincarnation-related?  How to find out
    • For Aspiring Researchers – getting into the field

    Members:

    • Fully functioning members section, including friends / comments / community forum

    …and also check out what new ones are coming! 

    • The Reincarnation Compendium – we are building the internet’s most complete and comprehensive collection of online reincarnation-related materials. Videos, blogsites, podcasts, forums, academic research, organizations, social media groups, etc., etc., etc. – you name it, we’ve got it, and if you name it and we haven’t got it, we will get it.
    • Directory of Reincarnation-Friendly Therapists – if you or your child has emotional difficulties that might be related to a past life, it can be hard to find a psychotherapist or councillor who is both open-minded about reincarnation and not a new-age guru type. To point you to exactly this kind of compassionate and expert help, we are building a global directory (starting with the English-language world) of such therapists.
    • Dispelling Reincarnation Myths
    • Reincarnation Demystified: The Science of What You Can Do When You Die (six-week course, currently in progress)
    • Tell us your reincarnation story: Intake Form
    • Media Kit

    We welcome suggestions for website material!  Contact us: admin@reincarnationcentre.org

    Pursuing reincarnation research professionally

    Let me start by defining “academic reincarnation research” – because we’ve seen a certain amount of confusion about what that means. Here are four examples of practices claimed to produce reliable information about reincarnation which, however reliable it is, cannot legitimately call themselves science:

    1. Comparing pictures of current and historical celebrities and declaring that they are the same people in different lives because they have similar interests. This is speculation.
    2. Gathering information from religious texts about reincarnation and declaring it to be fact. That is belief.
    3. Meditating, having an NDE, dreaming or otherwise entering an altered state of consciousness, and receiving insights that inspire you, and declaring them to be truth. This is unverified personal gnosis.
    4. Logical speculation: this can be useful but cannot be called research as research involves either seeking out or analyzing cases – dealing with real data, in other words. Insofar as it is speculative and uses pure logic rather than data to make its arguments, it is philosophy.

    Because it is currently very difficult to get a steady job doing reincarnation research – usually we are paid in research grants – reincarnation researchers generally have another income source that is reliable, often in an academic field whose body of knowledge and techniques lends itself to reincarnation research. Often it is psychology or psychiatry (Ian Stevenson, Jim Tucker, Erlendur Haraldsson), sometimes anthropology (Antonia Mills, James G. Matlock), but can be other fields such as linguistics (Ohkado Masayuki) or even journalism, which isn’t an academic field per se (KM Wehrstein). They then do their reincarnation research on the side.

    In short, reincarnation research as of this writing is grossly underfunded, considering the importance of the questions it addresses: the nature of consciousness, the mind/body relationship and, most important, what happens after death.

    This was the overriding reason for the creation of ICRR.  Our plan is to access funding from sources that have never before been tapped to create a significant financial injection into the field.

    But we are still in the building and seeking stage–we’ll let everyone know the moment we have funds to allocate!–so as of this writing, funding is still a challenge for reincarnation researchers.

    If all this hasn’t scared you off… you may be sufficiently interested in reincarnation to proceed!

    Suggested steps:

    1. If you are still in the educational phase of your life, seek courses, degrees and dissertation topics in areas of interest into which reincarnation can somehow be integrated.  Example: James G. (Jim) Matlock wrote his anthropological masters thesis on the relationship between reincarnation beliefs and social customs in animistic tribal cultures worldwide.
    2. Familiarize yourself with the existing body of literature. Read all the Ian Stevenson works you can get your hands on. Read those of other researchers. Best overview is still Jim Matlock’s Signs of Reincarnation, so read that.  Take courses.  We are developing basic and intermediate courses; an advanced course that is available is Jim Matlock’s “Signs of Reincarnation” (general course info here, syllabus here). It is at the masters level, thorough, wide-ranging, demanding, geared in part to train aspiring reincarnation researchers, and reasonably-priced. And because it’s a discussion course with weekly Zooms, you’ll make new friends who share your passion.
    3. Consider what skills and other assets you might already have that you can to bring to the endeavour.  Are you a good listener?  That makes you a good interviewer.  Are you good at chasing down information?  That makes you good at verifying memories.  Are you good at stats?  That enables you to do statistical analyses.  Are you an outside-the-box thinker?  That makes you able to initiate new lines of inquiry within the topic.  Is your background in a science?  That makes you conversant with scientific method and trained to be rigorous in methodology.  Are you affiliated with a university?  There are various advantages in that.  Do you live in a reincarnationist culture?  It’ll likely be relatively easy for you to find cases.
    4. Keep in touch with ICRR!  Being a member gives you access to our more advanced resources and provides opportunities for mentoring and support in the field as well as the publicizing of your work.  We are a home for researchers!

      – KM Wehrstein

    Cover Image: Dr. Ian Stevenson in front of the Division of Perceptual Studies which he founded in 1967. © University of Virginia.

    Thoughts of olden times… is this a past life?

    Based on the correspondence we receive, there’s a good chance that you have visited our website because you have had one or more experiences that you think might be related to a past life you lived. 

    The absolute best way to find out for sure whether it really was a past life, and figure out who you were, is to use outside records or witnesses to see if facts you remember are accurate. The more facts you verify, the more specific they are and the more obscure the verification source, the better evidence of genuineness they provide. This means doing research. We will soon be providing a stepwise guide on how. Don’t think it is hopeless if the life you remember is from very long ago. you won’t figure out who you were, but there is more information about ancient times, and every era since, than most people realize–so you might get good verification that you were there.

    The second best way is to give a professional reincarnation researcher all your information and ask how likely they think your case is likely to be genuine. Good RR’rs are conversant with the existing body of investigated cases and have learned to easily spot a case showing the typical signs. Note: They might give you a negative answer, so be prepared for that (honesty is what you want!). Sometimes reincarnation is a vehicle for people to get a little up in their egos (it’s a human thing). It also can be some other form of paranormal phenomenon. However, if you can prove your RR’r wrong by going out and getting some strong verifications, they’ll be happy to have been proven wrong!

    Past-Life Trauma

    Are your past-life memories causing you distress, either due to what you suffered or due to harm you inflicted?  If so, first understand that you are far from alone. A majority (some 61%) of investigated past-life cases include recall of violent, abrupt or premature death, and among adult cases, that sort of death is also remembered by a majority, and some of them suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) just the same as if they had suffered the trauma in their current lives.

    If the problem is sufficiently severe, we recommend seeking out professional treatment from a reincarnation-friendly mental health practitioner, especially one who specializes in PTSD. The same techniques work for past-life trauma as for current-life trauma.

    ICRR is currently in the process of creating a directory of reincarnation-friendly psychologists and psychiatrists, and currently we already have good leads in England, and some in Canada and Australia.

    If you feel your past-life-related issues can be adequately addressed by self-care, we suggest you research on PTSD (highly recommended book: The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk, MD.) and familiarize yourself with self-care techniques.  When doing your self-care work, make sure you have a good network of fellow-travellers for mutual support, so you are not alone in the pain.  (They can be found on the private ICRR forum, available to ICRR members.)  If at any time you feel that either the issue or the emotions stirred up by self-care healing are overwhelming or more than you can handle, seek professional care – ESPECIALLY if you find yourself inclined to harm yourself in any way.  Do NOT be alone with that!

    How to get more memories, if you want to

    In case your memories have come entirely spontaneously so you aren’t already conversant with methods for retrieving past-life memories that work for you, here are some tips. With adult experiencers it’s generally about putting yourself into an altered state of consciousness – not your regular waking state but one closer to sleep without being sleep, as such states can provide greater access to your subconscious mind. But there are other tricks.  Our comprehensive, multi-author guide, revised and updated, will soon be available here.

    Isolation no more

    One problem that people with past-life memories and experiences have in the West, because we are mostly a non-reincarnationist culture, is being unable to talk about these experiences to family and friends for fear of awkwardness at best and dismissal or even ridicule at worst.  We also wonder how to find anyone else who has had similar experiences.

    Starting in about 1997, the Internet solved the latter problem. There are all manner of reincarnation-related communities both on traditional internet forums and newer social media platforms. That includes ICRR’s own forum, available to members and meant for in-depth conversations and preservation of information and narratives – and consulting with professional researchers.

    Meanwhile, ICRR is working on getting the evidence for reincarnation out into the public discourse… which should help with family and friends.

    PS, Just between people reading this page, us and the gatepost: ICRR is very much experiencer-run.  President and founder KM Wehrstein is both a researcher and an experiencer, and others among our key people are experiencers. Accordingly, ICRR gets it.

    Parenting a child with past-life memories

    Note: this text is informational only, not intended to replace professional advice.

    Has your preschool-age child talked about having died, having been big, missing their family and wishing to go “home” to a place other than yours? Does your child know facts or have skills that they can’t possibly have learned? Does she or he talk about having died or about being big? Does he or she outright insist on having had a previous life?

    If any of these things are true, your family may be one of the up-to-6% of families who have a child aged between three and ten who is talking about a past life.

    Here is what you need to know:

    Useful Facts

    • Average Age

      The average age for a child who remembers a past life to start talking about it is around three, though in some cases a child’s very first words relate to a past life.

    • Retainment

      Most often, children forget past lives between the ages of five and eight, and past-life-related behaviours tend to fade at the same time, but some retain both memories and behaviours into adulthood.

    • Intelligence

      Children who remember past lives tend to be bright and early to speak.

    • Recency Factor

      Children most often remember their most recent past life, but can sometimes remember a life further back in time, and sometimes more than one life.

    • Behavioural Signs

      Children who remember past lives often behave in ways related to their past lives, e.g., play that re-enacts their previous occupation, creating art with past-life scenes, pursuing interests more typical of adults, yearning to be with past-life families or associates, displaying knowledge or showing skills they did not learn in this life, having a phobia that would result from a specific trauma despite not having one, and, more rarely, speaking or understanding a foreign language.

    • Cultural Variance

      Children with past-life memories can be born into any family, anywhere in the world, in any culture or religion, reincarnationist or not.

    • Trauma Symptoms

      It is common for children who remember past lives to recall violent or abrupt deaths, which can be a source of distress.

    • Identity Crises

      Past-life memories can cause identity crises in children who remember them very well. Here it is important for parents to explain that the sense of identity from the past life does come from the past, a different time in the child’s existence–in other words, that they don’t have two identities simultaneously, but have had two social identities in different times–and it’s part of the wonder of who they are.

    The four typical signs for distinguishing past-life memories from normal imaginative play and fantasizing – per Carol Bowman

    • Matter-of-fact tone
    • Consistency over time
    • Knowledge beyond experience
    • Corresponding behaviour and traits

    Not all children show all four signs, but it’s rarely less than two. Bowman recommends that parents in particular look for them in their own children, because they require good knowledge of the child and observation over time.

    Matter of fact tone: Children with past-life memories can say things that to parents are shocking or at least surprising in the most calm, casual, matter-of-fact and direct way, e.g. “I died in a car crash” or “I miss my other mother.” They’re stating it as known fact because it is known to them, and they don’t see why it shouldn’t be to you. They also might sound hauntingly adult. Children fantasizing, on the other hand, tend to make it dramatic, as they are seeking attention, reactions or catharsis.

    Consistency over time: Children engaging in fantasy play constantly change the situations and scenarios to explore concepts and alleviate boredom; they might never revisit the same fantasy twice. The events of past-life memory they will repeatedly revisit and the story, white it might be added to, will not alter much.

    Knowledge beyond experience tends to be the most convincing evidence.  When a child talks knowledgeably about, say, World War II aviation or life on a farm, despite having absolutely no experience of it and not yet being literate, it’s hard to find any other explanation–though be careful of spoken information derived from the Internet if they have access to it. Knowledge beyond experience can be very helpful in checking the accuracy of the memories through research.

    Corresponding behaviour and traits: children with explicit past-life memories often show past-life related behaviours as described above, and the behaviours will fit with the memories, e.g. a child who recalls dying by drowning might be terrified of water.