Meanwhile, a 2023 Pew Research survey found a quarter of Americans believe it is “definitely or probably true” that people who have died can be reincarnated.
When it comes to past life claims, the DOPS team works on cases that almost always have come directly from parents.
Common features in children who claim to have led a previous life include a verbal precocity and mannerisms at odds with the rest of the family. Unexplained phobias or aversions have also been thought to have been transferred over from a past existence. In some cases, the remembrances are extremely clear: the names, professions and quirks of a different set of relatives; the particularities of the streets they used to live on; and sometimes even recollections of obscure historical events — details the child couldn’t possibly have known about.
The research team at DOPS includes, clockwise from top left, Jim Tucker (who recently retired), David Acunzo, Marina Weiler, Elliot Gish, Marieta Pehlivanova and Philip Cozzolino.Credit: Matt Eich/The New York Times
Stevenson travelled the world extensively, recording more than 2500 cases of children recalling past lives. In this pre-internet time, discovering so many similar accounts and trends served to strengthen his thesis. The findings from these excursions are stored by country in filing cabinets and are in the slow process of being digitised.
From this database, researchers have yielded findings they believe are interesting. The strongest cases, according to the DOPS researchers, have been found in children younger than 10, and a majority of remembrances tend to occur between the ages of two and six, after which they appear to fade. The median time between death and rebirth is about 16 months, a period the researchers see as a form of intermission. Very often, the child has memories that match up to the life of a deceased relative.
Each year, DOPS receives more than 100 emails from parents regarding something their child has said, “but as far as the case having enough to investigate, enough to potentially verify that it matches with a past life, those are very few”, Tucker said.
Last northern summer, Tucker drove to the rural town of Amherst, Virginia, to investigate a case of possible past life remembrance.
A simple lock sits in a drawer at DOPS. The combination was set by founder Dr Ian Stevenson, who hoped he would be able to communicate it to someone after his death.Credit: Matt Eich/The New York Times
A few months earlier, Misty, 28, and one of her children, age three, had been looking at a wooden puzzle of the United States in which each state was represented by a cartoon of a person or an object. Misty’s daughter pointed excitedly at the jagged piece representing Illinois, which had an abstract illustration of Abraham Lincoln.
“That’s Pom,” her daughter said. “He doesn’t have his hat on.”
A foam mannequin head sporting an electroencephalogram cap is one of the few signs of what the department studies. Credit: Matt Eich/The New York Times
This was indeed a drawing of Abraham Lincoln without his hat, but more important, there was no name under the image indicating who he was. After weeks of endless talk about “Pom” bleeding out after being hurt and being carried to a too-small bed – which the family had started to think could be related to Lincoln’s assassination – they began to consider their daughter had been present for the historical moment. This was despite the family having no prior belief in reincarnation, nor any particular interest in Lincoln.
On the drive to Amherst, Tucker confessed his hesitation in taking on this particular case – or any case connected to a famous individual. “If you say your child was Babe Ruth, for example, there would be lots of information online,” he said. “When we get those cases, usually it’s that the parents are into it. Still, it’s all a little strange to be coming out of a three-year-old’s mouth. Now, if she had said her daughter was Lincoln, I probably wouldn’t have made the trip.”
Lately, Tucker has been giving the children picture tests. “Where we think we know the person they’re talking about, we’ll show them a picture from that life, and then show them another picture — a dummy picture — from somewhere else, to see if they can pick out the right one,” he said.
“I had one where the kid remembered dying in Vietnam. I showed him eight pairs of pictures, and a couple of them he didn’t make any choice on, but the others he was six out of six. So, you know, that makes you think. But this girl is so young that I don’t think we can do that.”
On this occasion, the little girl decided not to engage and pretended to be asleep. Then she actually fell asleep.
After the first meeting, the only course of action is to do nothing and wait, to see if the memories develop into something more concrete. Since the onus for past lives research is on spontaneous recollections, the team is largely unconvinced by the concept of hypnotic regression.
Jim Tucker has been investigating claims of past lives for more than two decades and recently retired after having been the director of DOPS for almost a decade.Credit: Matt Eich/The New York Times
“People will be hypnotised and told to go back to their past lives and all that, which we’re quite sceptical about,” Tucker said. “You can also make up a lot of stuff, even if you’re talking about memories from this life.”
For a child, recalling a past life can be trying. “They might be missing people or have a sense of unfinished business,” he said. “Frankly, it’s probably better for the child that they don’t have these memories, because so many of the memories are difficult. The majority of kids who remember how they died perished in some kind of violent, unnatural death.”
Loading
The researchers ultimately hope the idea of the mind surviving bodily death will be better understood in the years to come – and taken more seriously. They believe a greater acceptance of life being a continuous cycle could have a positive effect on the way we live.
“It could certainly impact how people view their lives,” Tucker said. “I think it’s a more hopeful view than the idea that this is just a random universe that is meaningless. Of course, people find this in their religion, but if people could see that there is this aspect of themselves that continues, it could help with grief and death anxiety and, you know, hopefully help people treat each other a little better. There would be a stronger sense that we’re all kind of in this together – that, again, this is not just a pointless existence.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
