S3E3: Past Lives: Inside UVA's 60-Year Investigation| The Reincarnation Records

Can a child really remember a life that came before their own? And what happens when those memories contain details that can be independently verified? For more than 60 years, researchers at the University of Virginia have investigated thousands of children who claim to remember previous lives, developing methods to test their extraordinary accounts. In this episode, we explore the science behind those investigations, the surprising patterns emerging from decades of research, and a remarkable case from Sri Lanka involving a young girl who recalls a distant village, another family, and even a hidden container of money. If a child's memories match the life of someone who actually existed, what does that tell us? Is it coincidence, something science has yet to explain, or evidence of reincarnation? _______ Join The Telepathy Tapes Backstage Pass https://thetelepathytapes.supercast.com/ to get ad-free episodes, never-before-heard interviews, behind-the-scenes documentary footage, and access to our private Discord community. This is your invitation to come closer. To help shape what’s next. To be more than a listener… to be a co-creator of this paradigm shift. So if you’ve felt moved, if you’ve felt seen, if you’ve felt the call, subscribe today and join us: thetelepathytapes.com. https://thetelepathytapes.com/ _______ Dive into the work of those interviewed in this episode: Dr. Ian Stevenson Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. First published 1966 as Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 26. Second revised and enlarged edition 1974, University Press of Virginia. https://link.amazon/B0c13Vlit Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol. I: Ten Cases in India. 1975, University Press of Virginia. https://link.amazon/B0fEcQz51 Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol. II: Ten Cases in Sri Lanka. University Press of Virginia. https://link.amazon/B09vw8anF Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol. III: Twelve Cases in Lebanon and Turkey. 1980, University Press of Virginia. https://link.amazon/B0d9kqIpW Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol. IV: Twelve Cases in Thailand and Burma. 1983, University Press of Virginia. https://link.amazon/B04Xa7jlr Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation. 1987, University Press of Virginia. Revised edition, McFarland. https://link.amazon/B0heP61Cy Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. 1997, Praeger. https://link.amazon/B0ikZzaOP Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. 1997, Praeger. https://link.amazon/B0eFiOBJT European Cases of the Reincarnation Type. 2003, McFarland. https://link.amazon/B0drOLjiJ Xenoglossy: A Review and Report of a Case. 1974, University Press of Virginia. https://link.amazon/B053q2ubj Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy. 1984, University Press of Virginia. https://link.amazon/B075u4N61 Telepathic Impressions: A Review and Report of Thirty-Five New Cases. 1970, University Press of Virginia. https://link.amazon/B0hzj1Ijb Dr. James Matlock Signs of Reincarnation: Exploring Beliefs, Cases, and Theory. 2019, Rowman & Littlefield. https://link.amazon/B0fwVTegH I Saw a Light and Came Here: Children's Experiences of Reincarnation. 2016, White Crow Books. https://link.amazon/B0iQgsbiU Dr. Jim Tucker Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives. 2005, St. Martin's Press. https://link.amazon/B08XQsoN6 Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives. 2013, St. Martin's Press. https://link.amazon/B0651rvFP Before: Children's Memories of Previous Lives. St. Martin's Essentials. https://link.amazon/B0arAPXer _______ Thank you to our sponsors! Alloy http://myalloy.com/ - Try the original estrogen-powered M4 skincare from Alloy. Visit myalloy.com http://myalloy.com/ and use code TAPES for $20 off your first order! Dose http://dosedaily.co/TAPES - Ready to give your liver the support it deserves? Head to dosedaily.co/TAPES http://dosedaily.co/TAPES or enter TAPES to get 35% off your first subscription. Ka'Chava https://kachava.com/ - Go to kachava.com https://kachava.com/ and use code TAPES for 15% off your first order. Luminara https://www.luminara.care/ - If you’re curious about energy healing and ready to experience it for yourself, Luminara is offering 20% off your first session for listeners of The Telepathy Tapes. Just go to luminara.care https://www.luminara.care/ and use code TAPES20. Monarch http://Monarch.com - Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code TAPES at Monarch.com http://Monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. Shopify http://shopify.com/tapes - Start your business today with the industry’s best business partner, Shopify. Sign up for your free trial at Shopify.com/tapes http://shopify.com/tapes. TruDiagnostics http://TruDiagnostic.com - Go to TruDiagnostic.com http://TruDiagnostic.com and use code tapes for 20% off your entire order. Quince https://www.quince.com/tapes - Find the fall pieces you’ll reach for most at Quince. Go to Quince.com/tapes https://www.quince.com/tapes for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Zenni https://zenni.com/podcast - That scratched up pair has done its job. Upgrade today with Zenni. Got to Zenni.com/podcast https://zenni.com/podcast and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off your first order + free shipping on all orders over $65! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Thank you for calling 1-800-GOT-JUNK. We make room for possibilities.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  We've loaded the moving van and we're leaving a ton of stuff at our old address. Can you make it disappear?

• 0:09Speaker 00

  All you have to do is point.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Can you come right now?

• 0:12Speaker 00

  We're on our way.

• 0:13Speaker 02

  We make space for hope.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  We make space for dreams.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  We make space for what matters.

• 0:18Speaker 00

  We are 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

• 0:20Speaker 02

  Let us make room for your possibilities.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  We can make your house happier.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  And your future brighter.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  Call 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  Or visit 1-800-GOT-JUNK.COM.

• 0:30Speaker 03

  When your workday is constantly disrupted, your workflow isn't flowing. It's come to a grinding halt. You don't need an assistant. You need superpowers. Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly, is built for how you actually work. No new tabs, no switching apps, no losing your place. Go handles busy work like finding documents or summarizing email threads, so you can focus on the work only you can do. Try Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly. Find out more at superhuman.com.

• 1:00Ky Dickens?

  Hey, everyone. This is Kai Dickens, and you're listening to The Reincarnation Records from TTT Media.

• 1:14Ky Dickens?

  Welcome to episode three. This is the episode that, for me, determines how seriously we can take everything that comes next. Like many of you, I'm sure, I came into this season skeptical. The part of my brain that loves science and logic still flinches at a lot of what we're talking about. And I think part of the problem is that I've always put questions about the afterlife in the category of faith. You could believe or not believe there's something after death. But how could you possibly research it, test it? And then I found a place that has spent almost 60 years trying to do exactly that. A place attempting to put science to something that I'd always assumed could only be taken on blind faith. And what I found there completely deconstructed my reality. We've been circling the block. It's not in the campus?

• 1:56Ky Dickens?

  Last winter, my producer Cooper and I got on a plane and flew to Charlottesville. We rented a car and drove a few miles off the University of Virginia campus to a building that most people will never find on purpose: the Division of Perceptual Studies. Where is it? Wait, did you just have a P.O. box? Yeah. I don't see it over there. You think it's this little building? It's gotta be.

• 2:18Ky Dickens?

  All right. You think we can park here legally? Yes. Okay. Is that him?

• 2:23Speaker 05

  Hey, Philip. Hi. Good to meet you finally. Nice meeting you.

• 2:26Ky Dickens?

  The current co-lead of the Past Life Memory Research Program at DOBS, Dr. Philip Cozzolino, has met us outside, and it is cold and windy.

• 2:33Speaker 05

  So is this the university? We're off-campus by a few miles. Okay. We have a P.O. box that we often will give because this work sometimes attracts some attention, and we try to limit the number of people who know this exact address.

• 2:46Ky Dickens?

  Inside this quaint two-story building are filing cabinets, scores of them. And they're metal and gray and boring, the kind you'd walk past in any office in America and never think about again. But what's packed inside these is the largest collection of evidence anyone has ever gathered on a question I think we've all asked ourselves at some point: what happens after we die? And does any part of us come back?

• 3:07Speaker 05

  These are all of the near-death experience files. Those filing cabinets, and there are most of the past life memory files.

• 3:15Ky Dickens?

  So on paper, the Division of Perceptual Studies belongs to the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. In real life, it sits off by itself, miles from campus, and it has since the day it opened. And to understand why it exists at all, you have to go back to 1957, when a 38-year-old intellectual enters the university history.

• 3:36Speaker 06

  Ian Stevenson could be called the grandfather of reincarnation research.

• 3:40Ky Dickens?

  That's Dr. Jim Matlock, an anthropologist who knew Stevenson and has spent decades studying his work.

• 3:45Speaker 06

  He was a mid-career medical man who was hired by the University of Virginia as chairman of its Department of Psychiatry when he was not even 40.

• 3:55Ky Dickens?

  And this is Dr. Marietta Pelavanova. She co-leads the Past Life Memory Research Program with Philip.

• 4:01Speaker 07

  Dr. Ian Stevenson was a very intellectual guy, and he had his regular mainstream psychiatry career, nothing paranormal. He was very serious, extremely meticulous. He worked very, very hard, barely taking any vacation.

• 4:19Speaker 05

  There were some years here where he basically took Christmas off, and that was pretty much it.

• 4:23Ky Dickens?

  And a year after he was hired to chair the Department of Psychiatry, an academic journal had a contest that would change not just the course of Stevenson's life, but the course of afterlife research forever. Here's Dr. Jim Matlock again.

• 4:34Speaker 06

  The Journal of the American Society for Psychotherapy had a contest for the best paper on the subject of survival of death.

• 4:42Ky Dickens?

  And Ian Stevenson decided to enter the contest and focus his paper on reincarnation.

• 4:46Speaker 06

  He started then focusing his reading on finding cases. And he found enough to whittle this down to 44 cases of children who spoke about having been somebody their parents did not know that had made a minimum of six statements that were verified. And so he wrote this paper and won the prize. That brought him and the whole study of reincarnation to the attention of everybody.

• 5:13Ky Dickens?

  Including Chester Carlson, the millionaire inventor behind the Xerox machine. Here's Dr. Philip Cozzolino again.

• 5:19Speaker 05

  Chester Carlson had a wife who had heard about some purported cases of reincarnation. And Carlson had a lot of money, and he donated $1 million to Ian Stevenson. And the 1960s, be about $9 million in today's dollars.

• 5:33Ky Dickens?

  $9 million in today's money. Stevenson was given something almost nobody gets when they take on a controversial question: the funding, the freedom, and the time to actually go find out.

• 5:45Speaker 05

  And Carlson basically said, please, go do this research. You're interested in it, and I can fund it for you.

• 5:50Ky Dickens?

  So the university takes this huge sum of money from the Xerox guy, Chester Carlson, and then quite literally pushes the research out the door.

• 5:57Speaker 05

  Ian had to make a deal with the University of Virginia that he would leave the department. He wouldn't be the chair of the psychiatry department, and he could do this work. The university made him call his new division the Division of Parapsychology. That was the university's plan, was to basically say, you're going to go out on this limb. You're going to be there by yourself, because that's you, not us.

• 6:16Ky Dickens?

  But eventually, the Division of Parapsychology became the Division of Perceptual Studies, which is the name on the door today. And everyone here just calls it DOBS. And though Dr. Ian Stevenson died in 2007, he's still everywhere in the building. His portrait's on the wall, his handwriting's in the files, and his personal library lines the shelves.

• 6:33Speaker 07

  A lot of the books on this side are his private library that was donated to DOBS after his passing. And even just browsing the books, you can see how many different interests he had.

• 6:45Ky Dickens?

  You really can feel him all over this building. I mean, it just feels like all the books and the journals and the papers.

• 6:50Speaker 07

  We talk about this all the time. Even his picture over there, that was the portrait that they did when announcing this new division.

• 6:59Ky Dickens?

  And though Philip and Marietta co-lead the division now, Philip's desk feels like it's being swallowed by this library.

• 7:05Speaker 05

  My office area is surrounded by his productivity, and it is a constant daily reminder of how little I've actually done.

• 7:14Ky Dickens?

  The first thing I wanted to understand is how he actually did the work. How did this bookish psychiatrist earn the title of being the father of reincarnation research? Here's Dr. Jim Matlock again.

• 7:23Speaker 06

  Unlike what had been done before, using regression or something like that, he actually went and talked to children and their families, children who spontaneously remembered previous lives.

• 7:35Ky Dickens?

  When he says regression, he's meaning when adults remember a previous life through hypnosis or psychotherapy. And with regression, it's really hard to rule out the possibility that the memories were influenced by a lifetime of exposure to information.

• 7:47Speaker 06

  The children's spontaneous memories turn out to be much, much more reliable, much more accurate factually than the stuff that comes up through the regression.

• 7:57Speaker 07

  What he discovered was so compelling in terms of the availability and fascinating features of these cases that he decided to dedicate the rest of his career just looking at purported claims of reincarnation or cases of the reincarnation type, as we call them.

• 8:14Ky Dickens?

  Cases of the reincarnation type, C-O-R-T.

• 8:17Speaker 05

  The Court C-O-R-T acronym comes from Ian directly.

• 8:21Speaker 07

  He coined that term, and it's also very indicative of how he approached the phenomenon. He didn't say this is reincarnation, but it's something that looks like reincarnation.

• 8:31Ky Dickens?

  And that same caution shaped how Stevenson investigated court cases. He wasn't interested in how extraordinary a child's story sounded. He was looking for specifics, details, that could actually be checked against a real person who has died. And here's Dr. Pelavanova again.

• 8:46Speaker 07

  The phenomenon shows up like this. A young child starts saying things like, "You were not my real mommy. You're not my real family. I used to have another family that I want to go back to." Or they might say things like, "When I was big, I used to do X and Y." Sometimes they would talk about having children or the jobs that they purportedly had, and also how they died. And as you can imagine, if a parent doesn't dismiss that, if they take it seriously, especially if the child is a little bit distressed, they might wonder what's going on. So they come to us. We do not solicit. They write us. And they report remarkably consistent characteristics that we're seeing in thousands of these children.

• 9:30Ky Dickens?

  What are those characteristics that you see over and over again?

• 9:32Speaker 07

  They talk about their profession, people in their lives. Often, they talk about how they died, phobias that seem to be related to the purported past life. And so when we hear of these accounts, we can't do much if the child is not saying anything specific. But if they're giving names, like names of who they claim to have been, other people in their purported past life, where they lived, that allows us to start trying to verify this. And by verify, we mean, is there a unique deceased person who matches what the child is saying? People would say, "Well, kids say the craziest things. It's all just fantasy." Which, okay, that's reasonable. Kids have an active imagination.

• 10:15Speaker 07

  But it is pretty remarkable if they say things without access to specialized knowledge that then end up matching the life and often death of a real person who existed.

• 10:28Ky Dickens?

  Here's Dr. Philip Cozzolino again.

• 10:30Speaker 05

  The kids aren't confused about this. The kids will tell you, "No, when I was that person, I lived here." Even their parents will say, "We'll just be walking through the park." And they'll say, "I want to go on the slide. Oh, you know when I was in a car accident and died? Oh, look, a squirrel." Just out of the blue. And then 10 seconds later, they were on to something else.

• 10:47Ky Dickens?

  Something I was quickly learning at Dobbs was this was not a quick process. Children often started talking about these memories as early as 18 months. And the memories could continue for years, often being triggered by a new experience or a trip, or even just learning more words.

• 11:00Speaker 05

  He would meet with the family multiple times, grandparents, aunts, uncles. He would talk to his teachers, neighbors.

• 11:05Speaker 07

  Eliminating any conventional explanation of this, like, could the child have watched a movie or read a book or whatever else?

• 11:14Speaker 05

  He would attempt to identify, if at all possible, the deceased person, someone that actually lived that matches what the kid said. That's the goal.

• 11:22Ky Dickens?

  The really important thing to note is that Stevenson was investigating two lives at once. On one side, he documented everything the child and the family were reporting about the past life memories. And on the other, Stevenson and his colleagues were trying to find the deceased person the child was describing. And then he would compare the two of them.

• 11:41Speaker 07

  It's almost like a forensic-style investigation where you're trying to dig into records of deceased people who match what the child is saying, from medical records, death certificates.

• 11:52Speaker 05

  He would even get local linguists come in and say, "Okay, if they use this word versus that word, what would that tell you?"

• 11:58Ky Dickens?

  Here's anthropologist Dr. Jim Matlock again.

• 12:00Speaker 06

  A lot of these kids will show the way to the former house. They'll show the way back there.

• 12:06Ky Dickens?

  And when the memories of a small child match with a real person's life who has died, the case is called solved.

• 12:11Speaker 07

  Solved is a term that we use when we are confident that we have found that deceased person that we believe matches the statement of the child.

• 12:22Speaker 05

  Seventy percent of the cases in our database have been solved.

• 12:25Ky Dickens?

  Which sounds enormous, but Philip is quick to point out that 70% is not a success rate of all the cases out there.

• 12:31Speaker 05

  It's a conflated number because you take cases where you're more likely to identify them. And the goal always, as it is today, was to refute whatever claims were possible to refute and to verify whatever could be verified.

• 12:44Ky Dickens?

  And not every case in the UVA archive is equally strong. In some of Dr. Stevenson's earlier investigations, he didn't hear about a child until well after the memories had begun. So parts of those cases depended on families recalling what the child had originally said. Stevenson understood that was a limitation, and it's why the cases researchers consider the strongest are the ones where the child's statements were documented before anyone went looking for the deceased person that they might have been describing.

• 13:10Speaker 06

  The most important kind of case for us is ones where the parents or researcher somebody recorded the things that the child was saying and doing before verifications or even attempt. And when you have a record like that, then you don't need to worry about memories having changed, things being forgotten or whatever. And if the parents don't know who the previous person was, how can they shape what the kids are saying? You've got that record.

• 13:37Ky Dickens?

  And one of the reasons Stevenson's research is incredibly valuable today is that many of his cases were incredibly isolated. Stevenson traveled all over the world to investigate children in remote communities starting in the 1960s. And when he got there, he was often traveling by foot or by donkey or by cart and in places with little access to landline phones or outside information. And from an evidentiary standpoint, that isolation matters because there were simply fewer conventional ways for a child or a family to learn detailed information about a stranger who died miles away, sometimes countries away. Today, researchers have a problem Stevenson didn't encounter until late in his life: the internet. It's now much easier to find a deceased person that the child might be describing. And that makes it way harder to rule out the possibility that the child or the family

• 14:21Ky Dickens?

  could have found information about this deceased person on their own, which makes researchers look for something else, what they call private knowledge.

• 14:29Speaker 05

  Private knowledge, a kid expressing something that no one else could know or should know. And the private knowledge thing is really meaningful because, wow, if you can verify that there is some hidden money in that tree trunk, like the kid said, that no one knew about, how would anyone have known that? How could that kid have known it? So that's why any kind of private knowledge is really meaningful.

• 14:49Ky Dickens?

  And that can take different forms: private family information, spontaneous recognition of people or places, controlled photo tests designed to see whether a child can identify someone significant in the deceased person's life. And we'll get to all of that shortly. For me, at this point on our rapid tour of the day, I had a handle on what could make one case stronger than another. But what I wanted to understand was what the evidence actually looked like up close. That's coming up after this break. When I was paying off my student loans, the hardest part was wondering how long they'd be part of my life. I made payments every month, year after year, and often it felt like I was getting no closer to being done. Having a finish line to work toward can make such a difference. And that's what Monarch's Debt Pay Down Simulator and Visualizer helps you see.

• 15:31Ky Dickens?

  It uses your real balances and payments to show your debt-free date and map out your payoff journey on a clear timeline. You can compare different payment scenarios and see how putting a little more toward your loans could move that date closer. There's something encouraging about seeing your progress. It makes the goal feel tangible and gives you a plan you can check in on right from your own phone or laptop. You can even ask your Monarch AI assistant any questions about your finances, like, "How much did I spend on travel last summer?" Or, "Can I afford this vacation without touching my savings?", which takes a huge load off. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code TAPES at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code TAPES. That's M-O-N-A-R-C-H.com code TAPES.

• 16:15Ky Dickens?

  So it turns out, you could barely drink alcohol and still be putting your liver through the wringer. Just think about everything it has to keep up with: every meal, excess sugar, highly processed foods, and then the metabolic waste your body naturally produces on top of all of that. Your liver keeps processing it day after day, and it doesn't exactly get a break. That's where Dose for Your Liver comes in. Dose is a clinically-backed, plant-powered formula that supports healthy liver function, healthy liver enzyme levels, and your body's natural detoxification and metabolic processes. It's a liquid supplement, taken as a daily two-ounce shot that tastes like orange juice but with zero sugar. Dose provides daily liver support, helping ease bloating and occasional sluggishness while supporting nutrient metabolism and digestion after heavy meals. And there's research behind the formula. Two double-blind, placebo-controlled studies showed a positive impact on liver enzyme

• 17:00Ky Dickens?

  levels, with clinical research also supporting its benefits for fatigue and bloating. Ready to give your liver the support it deserves? Head to dosedaily.co/tapes or enter TAPES to get 35% off your first subscription. Your body does so much for you. Let's do something for it. That's D-O-S-E-D-A-I-L-Y dot C-O slash tapes for 35% off your first month's subscription. Try it for three months and see how you feel. Welcome back to the Reincarnation Records. So Philip, can we go to the conference room and look at a case?

• 17:31Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 17:33Ky Dickens?

  We're making our way to the conference room now. And on the way, we walk past a few display cases.

• 17:36Speaker 05

  The display cases are from the Ian era of investigations around the world. There are some gruesome photos of children with missing limbs, missing digits, birthmarks and defects, and a lot of weaponry, machetes, swords, knives, spears on the wall. And these are documented cases that he's published on, on the connection between these past life memory claims of children and the biological connection to that past life that seemed to match. So how many birthmarks does this child have? How many defects? Do the birthmarks or defects correspond to the fatal wound of the past person?

• 18:11Ky Dickens?

  We're going to come back to these display cabinets later, because on display next to them are books totaling thousands of pages that Stevenson wrote on birthmarks and birth defects and how they tie into past life memories. And it's clear to me, this is not some strange footnote in his research. It's an entire body of work. And we will return to it, because it deserves more time. It deserves an entire episode.

• 18:33Speaker 05

  So here's what we have.

• 18:34Ky Dickens?

  So now we're walking into the conference room, where Marietta and Philip have pulled out various cases from their trove of filing cabinets. And Philip puts one on the table.

• 18:42Speaker 05

  This is all one case. So some of the files will be incredibly thin.

• 18:46Ky Dickens?

  But what type of papers are in there? I mean, it is like 200 papers.

• 18:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it will be everything from medical reports to interview transcripts to- It just depends how interesting the case was and how many investigators were involved.

• 18:58Ky Dickens?

  Yeah.

• 18:58Speaker 05

  This is a case of a young girl named Disna. This is from 1971.

• 19:03Ky Dickens?

  The huge file folder is filled with handwritten notes and pictures, maps, interviews. And then he pulls out something that looks like a chart or table.

• 19:11Speaker 05

  Usually these files start with these coding forms.

• 19:14Ky Dickens?

  So imagine a giant spreadsheet with columns for everything, names, dates, behaviors, phobias, birthmarks, comments, totaling over 200 variables that researchers look into for every case.

• 19:25Speaker 05

  Almost always, you're going to find this, the tabled statements and recognitions, behaviors of the child under investigation. So the person in this case, we're looking at Disna, she started talking early, about two and a half, three. The first thing she started talking about was, "I'm not from here," that she lived in this village, Widowa. "Had a son, Mahataya. Son had a woman," quote, in quotes, "place and river where she used to bathe. Drum owned by previous personality."

• 19:56Ky Dickens?

  Every possible detail is tracked in this document.

• 19:58Speaker 05

  And then what's next to that is, is like, all right, who was the informant in reference for that? And where in this file would you find that? And then if there's a verification, who did the verification and where would you find that? And then the final column is comments.

• 20:12Ky Dickens?

  Okay. And then did she say the name of the person she thought she was?

• 20:14Speaker 05

  Babona or Babanona is the name that she eventually started coming up with.

• 20:19Ky Dickens?

  Okay. So what else?

• 20:20Speaker 05

  Here's a good one. So this child was saying, "I lived alone," as this past person. And there are some verifications for that. And then the note says, "The past person did not live alone before she died, but did live alone for five years, up to six months before she died."

• 20:36Ky Dickens?

  Okay. So that statement wasn't wrong, but it wasn't like a match either. Did Stevenson note that anywhere?

• 20:41Speaker 05

  Yes. So here's, here are some handwritten notes.

• 20:45Ky Dickens?

  And it turns out Stevenson did. He noted the ambiguity as well as the flat out misses when they occurred.

• 20:50Speaker 05

  When you look at his handwritten notes, I often wonder if anyone ever asked him, maybe, maybe try your other hand? It's just so bad.

• 20:57Ky Dickens?

  Okay. So what's that? It's like a drawing of a kitchen?

• 20:59Speaker 05

  So this is interesting because this is a case where Disna had claimed that as this past person, she had buried treasure in the hearth, in a cigarette tin.

• 21:10Ky Dickens?

  And this wasn't unique to Disna. Stevenson encountered this enough times that he gave the phenomenon its own name.

• 21:16Speaker 05

  He coined this phrase, hidden treasure. There are a select number of cases in our database where the child claimed that they had hidden treasure, valuables in their past life, but no one knew about it. And some of those cases, people discovered stuff and they didn't know it was there, which is really fascinating.

• 21:31Ky Dickens?

  And I think it's important to put the word treasure in context because treasure is relative.

• 21:36Speaker 05

  When I went through a number of the files of these claims, it was trinkets, something shiny, money worth potentially today's dollars of 70 cents.

• 21:46Ky Dickens?

  And though that will sound like nothing to most of our listeners, 70 cents in 1960 Ceylon could represent a day's wages for a laborer. Here's anthropologist Dr. Jamatlock again.

• 21:55Speaker 06

  You know, back in the 60s, in rural areas in Asia, there weren't banks or anything. And so valuables were hidden, right? In various places. And if people died without telling anyone where those valuables are, then this is a problem we call unfinished business.

• 22:14Ky Dickens?

  So back to Disna, because she's one of the kids with a case in these metal filing cabinets who talked about burying money in a past life with such detail that investigators could draw a picture of it.

• 22:25Speaker 05

  Okay. So here's this kitchen and here's the hearth that was drawn based on Disna's description. And basically you'd expect to find the tin somewhere in here.

• 22:33Ky Dickens?

  And this little girl, Disna, had never stepped foot in this house or even the village where she claimed the house stood. And in Disna's case, her recollections of buried money were correct.

• 22:42Speaker 05

  Stevenson verified that the past personality's surviving family had found that cigarette tin under a grinding stone in the kitchen. It was basically next to or under the hearth. And money was not in the tin, but it was there buried as well.

• 22:57Ky Dickens?

  Okay. And then what's this?

• 22:59Speaker 05

  So these are things that basically they would then take to the past person's family and say, well, these are things that we've been told. Did your relative who died, did they have a son? Did they own a drum?

• 23:11Ky Dickens?

  And in this case, they did find a match.

• 23:13Speaker 05

  Bona, it turns out that is either the official name or what they called the past person.

• 23:18Ky Dickens?

  And the village Disna talked about, Widowa, was a real place as well. It was about three miles away and Disna had never been there. And I want to get to the moment where Disna is taken to her old village. But first, Marietta, who's walked back into the room, describes the different types of recognition tests that we might find in these files.

• 23:35Speaker 07

  I want to differentiate here between recognitions that just happened in the environments, like where the kid led to that village and said, "Hey, this was my mom," or "this was my murderer." That is what we would call an uncontrolled recognition. So it just happens naturally in the environment as the child is interacting in it. And then later on, especially in the American cases, we started using what we call controlled recognitions. So this is specifically, once that previous person is identified, then the investigator can create a stimuli set where one picture is a picture of something real

• 24:13Speaker 07

  from the previous person's life, say the school that they went to, and then use a few other pictures as foils. So something that looks like the actual target for recognition, but is not that. And then they would present it to the child and see if one of the pictures is familiar or not. So I just want to make this differentiation between controlled and uncontrolled. Yeah.

• 24:38Ky Dickens?

  So noted in Disna's file, there was an uncontrolled recognition that happened when she was very little and her family took her to Widowa, the village where she claims she lived and died in her past life.

• 24:48Speaker 05

  They didn't know the family at all. And there's many pages here where they walked through the town and they say very clearly, Disna walked past a number of homes that any one of them could have been the right home and went to the home that was the correct home of the past personality and didn't walk up to the front door, but walked around the side and everyone was looking. And there was an unseen from the road door and she walked right in that door.

• 25:12Ky Dickens?

  Geez, that's so wild.

• 25:13Speaker 05

  And the people who lived there, who were part of the past person's family said, "Yeah, that's the door that that past person would have walked in. They would, she would never have walked in the front door."

• 25:22Ky Dickens?

  So that was one case, one child, and we just went through like a 10th of it. But what's mind boggling is Stevenson and the researchers who followed him did this thousands of times. And all those interviews, medical records, maps, recognitions, hits, misses, behaviors, even tiny details like that cigarette tin eventually had to be organized in a way that researchers could compare one case to another. And there's literally a rulebook for how to do it. And Dr. Marietta Pellivanova pulls it out.

• 25:49Speaker 07

  We have this coding manual. It's literally this thick.

• 25:53Speaker 05

  There are 208 variables in our database.

• 25:55Speaker 07

  He developed all of these criteria and applied them to the documentation of thousands of these cases.

• 26:02Ky Dickens?

  And this is where all those filing cabinets that we saw on the way in becomes something much bigger. Because the team at DOPS is digitizing the archive, turning decades of case files into searchable data.

• 26:13Speaker 07

  It's an electronic database that currently has 2,254 cases. These are the cases that are considered solid enough and representative enough of this phenomenon to be entered in the database.

• 26:30Ky Dickens?

  So just to put this in perspective, you know, Stevenson hadn't spent his career just collecting a handful of extraordinary stories. He and those who followed after him investigated thousands of children across countries and cultures, religions and decades. And when you collect that many cases and they're all coded with the same 200 plus variables, you can start asking much more interesting questions, like, does the data show any patterns? And it turns out it does. So for starters, is the type of lives these kids remember having?

• 26:58Speaker 07

  It's overwhelmingly lives of normal people. It's not like the tropes someone remembers being Cleopatra or Napoleon.

• 27:07Ky Dickens?

  But while the lives they remember are often ordinary, the ways they end are not.

• 27:12Speaker 05

  61% of our children can tell you how they think they died in this past life. And of those, 75% described a violent, traumatic death in their past life.

• 27:23Speaker 07

  A traumatic death. And we don't know why that is, but we also hypothesized that maybe some aspect of this trauma from this purported past life can transfer to this current life and make the child act traumatized, even if they haven't had traumatic exposure.

• 27:42Ky Dickens?

  That's so interesting because, you know, some of the cases we're already looking at, you know, these boys have phobias connected to their traumatic death. Actually, that makes me wonder something. Do boys report past lives more often?

• 27:53Speaker 07

  There's more boys than girls talking about past life memories. I think the percentage is something like 60 to 40 or 65 to 35. It is fairly imbalanced.

• 28:04Ky Dickens?

  Wow.

• 28:04Speaker 07

  In the database, most children, when they talk about a past life, they talk about a life of the same sex, which is already pretty fascinating. In a small percentage of cases, I think it's about 10%, the children talk about a life of the opposite sex.

• 28:19Ky Dickens?

  So if most children are remembering a past life of the same sex, you know, why would boys be showing up more in the data than girls?

• 28:26Speaker 07

  There's possibly a cultural element that boys are being listened to more and that their claims are being taken more seriously than girls' claims. That may be a factor. But the other interesting element that a lot of these cases are traumatic deaths, men in general are more likely to die of unnatural or violent accidents.

• 28:48Ky Dickens?

  That's interesting.

• 28:49Speaker 07

  And in that database.

• 28:51Ky Dickens?

  And then she brought up a pattern, something they've measured, that isn't something I would have ever thought to even ask about. How much time passed between the last person's death and the new child's birth? And obviously they can only figure that out with quote unquote solved cases where they know the dates of both. But at DOPS, they have a name for this.

• 29:08Speaker 05

  The intermission period, the time between a child's claims of dying and when they were born.

• 29:14Speaker 07

  When the child talks about a life that ended traumatically, the intermission period is shorter.

• 29:21Speaker 05

  We just got a paper published in Psychology of Consciousness, looking at how unexpectedness of dying in the purported deceased person predicts a significantly faster intermission period. So Dr. Sadeghi, she saw something in the data.

• 29:38Ky Dickens?

  Dr. Saieda Sadeghi is one of the postdoc researchers at DOPS, and she'll be included in a future episode when we do a deep dive into the intermission period. But here's a quick bite of her explaining her findings. For the most unexpected, like immediate death, the intermission time is 12 months. The most expected. Which means the person was ill and they expected it to happen. The median intermission time is 21 months. The median intermission time is 21 months when a death is expected, and it's 12 months when it isn't. Trauma seems to speed something up.

• 30:11Speaker 07

  There seems to be some sort of urgency in these past lives to manifest quicker when it's trauma versus not.

• 30:21Ky Dickens?

  I want to pause here because when I was standing in that room, this part of our conversation really affected me and not scientifically, but spiritually. Because first off, if there really is an intermission period, where are we going? Is it the same place people go when they explain a near death experience? Is it heaven? Is it somewhere else? And it comes up in almost every culture. And the other thing about this intermission period is it kind of made reincarnation feel more just to me. Because if you're five years old and your life ends and you're robbed from all the experiences that would give you a full and round life, there's something comforting to me about the possibility you get another turn. And it makes sense you'd go back quicker. Like if you're playing a video game and someone kills off your character

• 31:05Ky Dickens?

  or five minutes into the game, you're like, hell yeah, I'm hitting restart. But if you spend hours going through all the levels and going through the entire game and conquering it, you know, you might not want to play right away. I for one would want to chill for a bit. I wouldn't want to do the whole thing again. So all this intermission period stuff made reincarnation feel a little less like some endless cycle that you're trapped in and something that we might actually have agency and even free will over. So, but for right now, let's go back to the data. Because buried among the 200 plus variables are some wild things that happen less often, but are much harder to know how to explain or what to do with. And one of them is xenoglossy.

• 31:41Speaker 05

  So xenoglossy is speaking a language that you have no natural explanation for understanding or being able to speak. You've never been exposed to this language. You never had training in it, and yet somehow you're speaking it.

• 31:54Ky Dickens?

  And this is not speaking in tongues. Xenoglossy means an actual identified language. And in their database, there are 40 cases of young kids speaking a language they've never been taught. And the kids in these cases could just be using random words or full on sentences.

• 32:09Speaker 05

  There was an interesting case where there was a boy who claimed to be Japanese in his past life. And anytime the boy fell, like at the park or at home, would say a word that they didn't understand. And it turns out, they found out that he was saying the Japanese word for ouch. And the other thing this one boy did that was really interesting. So the parents, they were American and they would say sukiyaki, the Japanese food sukiyaki. But apparently that's not how you say it in Japanese. You say skyaki. And the kid corrected their pronunciation as to how you say that, which is remarkable to me because who in the world would know that?

• 32:47Ky Dickens?

  Okay, so these words were happening that weren't in anywhere in the world.

• 32:51Speaker 05

  At all.

• 32:52Ky Dickens?

  But was he also saying that he used to live in Japan?

• 32:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, his past life memories were from Japan.

• 32:57Ky Dickens?

  And sometimes kids can even carry on a conversation in a language they've never been taught.

• 33:02Speaker 05

  These Burmese twin girls were, according to their parents, speaking to each other responsively in Japanese.

• 33:09Ky Dickens?

  So even though this is another Japanese case, it's a completely different one, right? Like the first little boy we just talked about, he was born into an American family.

• 33:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:17Ky Dickens?

  But it's not like Japanese shows up more often than any other language when it comes to xenoglossy.

• 33:21Speaker 05

  No.

• 33:21Ky Dickens?

  Okay.

• 33:22Speaker 05

  Okay, good.

• 33:22Ky Dickens?

  Yeah.

• 33:22Speaker 05

  So these Burmese twins, they both were expressing shared memories of having lived as Japanese brothers who died on the same battlefield at the same moment in World War II. Ian was able to verify later that there was actually British bombing going on at that point in that part of the world where they had claimed they died. Ian went as far as to find like the war evidence.

• 33:45Ky Dickens?

  And the lives they recalled were from where?

• 33:47Speaker 05

  Japan.

• 33:48Ky Dickens?

  And did someone verify that they were actually speaking Japanese?

• 33:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. They had people come in and say, yeah, the words they were using is Japanese. Now, again, these are young children.

• 33:56Ky Dickens?

  And they'd never been taught Japanese?

• 33:58Speaker 05

  No, there are reports and you see them in the file. And once they were speaking Burmese, the parents would say, we would always be asked, where are they originally from? Because they're speaking with like an accent, like they're not from here originally. So that's the phenomenon. Those are some of the examples of the cases that we had of the 40.

• 34:15Ky Dickens?

  And here's another detail that makes those 40 cases a little harder to shrug off. The language wasn't random.

• 34:21Speaker 05

  Every one of the 40 cases, whatever the language was, connected to where they were from in their alleged past life.

• 34:27Ky Dickens?

  And this is where the cases get harder to think of as children simply knowing unusual information. Because sometimes what seems to carry over isn't a fact at all. It's something deeply personal, like a phobia or a skill, a way of behaving, even a vice.

• 34:42Speaker 05

  Preferences for food, for music, hobbies like guitar, even negative preferences. We've had children who, when they were very young, wanted cigarettes, asked their parents for cigarettes. All of this because apparently they're saying these were things that mattered to them in this past life that they lived. There's this famous story of a boy where he really liked hats, but like fedora style hats. And we have in our database the ability to differentiate, is this just a unique little kid who's got a funny style of clothing? Or is this style of clothing specifically directly verified to have been linked to the way that past person dressed?

• 35:19Ky Dickens?

  So it's not just that the children are remembering facts about a person. Pieces of that personality are showing up inside of them. It's not just, you know, I know things about this person. It's, this was me.

• 35:31Speaker 05

  Not every strong case has a xenoglossy. Not every strong case has birthmarks or phobias. But I'm starting to think every strong case has to have that psychological core identity connection. And then it can manifest physically, biologically in numerous ways. It could be a language. It could be a birthmark. It could be something else, a phobia. The other stuff is important, but it comes secondary to that core continuation of something.

• 35:55Ky Dickens?

  And if you think all that's strange, there's another pattern in these files that for me moves into much more unexplained space. That's coming up after this break.

• 36:05Ky Dickens?

  Around three o'clock each day, I'm ready for a little treat. And I'm definitely one of those salty and sweet people. And one of my absolute favorite flavors is salted caramel. And salt seems like such a small thing, but it brings the whole flavor to life. Suddenly something sweet becomes so much more interesting. And that's why I'm so excited to try Kachava's new salted caramel flavor. Kachava is already part of my afternoon routine. So this sounds like a delicious way to mix things up. Caramel with that little salty edge. And Kachava brings more than flavor. Just two scoops provides plant-based protein, fiber, greens, and so much more in one simple shake. There are no artificial flavors, colors, or sweeteners, and no preservatives. It's a way to satisfy that craving for something delicious while supporting whole body nutrition. And there are so many flavors to choose from.

• 36:46Ky Dickens?

  Chocolate, vanilla, chai, matcha, coconut acai, strawberry, and coffee. I love having something to look forward to in the middle of a busy day that also helps me take care of myself. So embrace your own salty side. Go to kachava.com and use code TAPES for 15% off your first order. That's Kachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com, code TAPES. You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself reaching for over and over again? Those are the pieces that earn a permanent place in your wardrobe. And that's exactly what Quince does so well. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and premium stretch denim. The designs are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. Their 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just $50,

• 37:30Ky Dickens?

  giving you the softness and quality you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag. And as the weather gets colder, Quince has everything you need to round out your wardrobe. From warm, responsibly sourced down jackets and cozy cashmere scarves and gloves, to beautiful 14 karat gold jewelry that adds the perfect finishing touch. I actually recently discovered their jewelry and I love the 14 karat gold station bead choker. I wear it with everything. It can be dressed up, it can be dressed down, it can be layered with other necklaces. I love it. And you'll see it in a lot of our video podcasts. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was the telepathy tapes.

• 38:14Ky Dickens?

  It's the best way to support our show. Welcome back to the reincarnation records. There's another pattern in these files that for me moves into much more unexplained space. Because sometimes the first nod to reincarnation doesn't come from the child at all. It comes in a dream visitation from what seems like a soul or consciousness to often a parent who's expecting a baby or a parent who's grieving the loss of someone who's died. And it's not necessarily always parents. Here's Philip.

• 38:42Speaker 05

  Our variable in the database covers both announcing dreams and departing dreams. So departing dreams are, look for me in this other place because I'm going to come back for you in this other body, right? They mostly occur after the death before the claimed rebirth. Announcing dreams are in a mother or even a father in their dreams being told, I'm coming to you.

• 39:05Ky Dickens?

  So announcing dreams commonly happen when parents who are expecting a baby are visited by the consciousness or soul of this incoming life to say, hey, I'm on my way. I chose you. And the departing dreams are when the consciousness of someone who's died come to their grieving loved ones and say, hey, I'm going to be reborn in Akron, Ohio. Find me there. This is crazy. How often does the annunciation dreams happen? Like, is that common?

• 39:30Speaker 07

  I don't know. Philip, do you have the, the database pulled up?

• 39:34Speaker 05

  We just have announcing departing numbers and we can get you both frequencies and what percentage of our database had some or more.

• 39:41Ky Dickens?

  It's okay. You can send it to me later.

• 39:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I will.

• 39:43Ky Dickens?

  We asked to see an actual case and Marietta pulled a file from Turkey.

• 39:47Speaker 07

  Okay, so this is the case of Saleman Chapar. It is a Turkish case. So briefly, Saleman was born in 1966. While his mother was pregnant with him, she had this dream where a man came to her on horseback and he said, I was killed with a blow to the head with a shovel and I want to stay with you in particular and I don't want to go to anyone else. And when he was born, his family noticed that he had this birthmark in the back of his head, this little area that was depressed. It was just there from the moment that he was born. As soon as the child starts speaking, one of the very first things he said was

• 40:32Speaker 07

  that he wanted to go to the stream and that his home was by the stream. When he started talking a bit more, he started talking about this past life where he was a miller in a neighboring village and he had gotten himself into some kind of fight with a customer and the customer had killed him. He kept talking about his other life. So at some point, the mom decided to let him take her to the stream and just let him explore whatever he was talking about. So he led the way to a neighboring village called Ekber and there he led her to a mill on the stream. And he also pointed to a house that he said, this used to be my house.

• 41:16Ky Dickens?

  Identifying the village, the house, the mill, the stream, it's all in the file. And most of those statements happened around the age of two.

• 41:21Speaker 07

  And his second visit was when he was two and a half, he met the mother of that presumed previous personality, the man who was killed.

• 41:30Ky Dickens?

  Wait, accidentally? Like, did he just run into her on the road?

• 41:34Speaker 07

  Yeah. And a lot of these, once you go to the village, like, a lot of people seem to be hanging outside or in the field. So as you're walking about the village, you can find people.

• 41:43Ky Dickens?

  Yeah. And after identifying the mill where the boy said he used to work, his former house, and the mother from his past life, they found the name of the man who matched and who was killed.

• 41:53Speaker 07

  Mehmet Bekler is the name of the deceased individual and he was killed a few years before Saleman was born. One day, he was just at the mill doing his normal work and this other guy comes by with his wheat and there's a line of customers waiting and this guy insists to have his wheat milled first because his family was hungry. And so it seemed like he was pushy and then Mehmet Bekler, the miller, told him, no, you have to wait in line. All of these people were here before you. I can't just take you first. And then this fight happened and this other guy hit him on the head with a shovel. Doctor

• 42:35Speaker 07

  Stevenson was able to consult the court proceedings and also the autopsy of Mehmet Bekler. So now, in terms of statements that the child made that were verified.

• 42:46Ky Dickens?

  And these were statements said by the boy prior to them finding Mehmet, the man who was killed.

• 42:50Speaker 07

  I had a family. I had a wife. I had two sons and a daughter, which was exactly the number of children and their sexes that Mehmet had. He talked about having a father who took a second wife, which at the time was illegal in Turkey. He talked about having a mill and then he also said a lot of specific things about how Mehmet Bekler was killed.

• 43:13Ky Dickens?

  Geez. Was he familiar with the court documents when he said that? Or was that just kind of out of the blue?

• 43:17Speaker 07

  No. These court documents were only accessible, and they're in the file, to Ian Stevenson through his local informants. He said he was hit on the head. Now, Saleman didn't specifically talk about the shovel. The shovel only came through in that announcing dream.

• 43:35Ky Dickens?

  Wow. So the only mention of the shovel from the family was from the dream his mother had before he was born. And Stevenson was able to verify the shovel was the murder weapon when he received the court case, something the family did not have access to.

• 43:48Speaker 07

  Very interesting.

• 43:50Ky Dickens?

  Yeah. But I think we covered so much. I'm so glad we were able to get you sit down again.

• 43:54Speaker 07

  I'm grateful too, because I just felt like there was a lot of stuff.

• 43:57Ky Dickens?

  By the end of the first day, we'd gone through so much material, I could barely hold all of it in my head. And I was exhausted. Gosh, this has been a lot. And I have to be honest, like, I actually don't feel well. Like, I feel kind of sick. And like, I don't know if I'm just overwhelmed. I just feel really, I don't know.

• 44:16Speaker 07

  If we accept that this is real, is it a glitch? Most people, if they lived a past life, they don't seem to remember. Is it by design that you don't remember? This is where we get into the metaphysical stuff. Many people actually speculate that we're meant to forget. You get a clean slate, but why do some people and some kids remember? Is it serving a purpose? And maybe it is. We do talk a little bit about what we would call the unfinished business hypothesis, but we don't have the empirical data yet.

• 44:46Speaker 05

  Let's pretend for a second, this is reincarnation. I don't think it's supposed to work this way, right? Like, I don't think a three-year-old is supposed to be having nightmares about how they died in a fiery plane crash. But if it's what's happening, there could be that the emotion and the trauma of that past life is created a kind of a glitch in the process, in the system. And it's not allowed these children to start over in a fresh, new way. If reincarnation is real, I don't think we're supposed to remember.

• 45:15Speaker 07

  Even with all of the work that has been done in more than six decades, we're still, in many ways, it just still seems like we're scratching the surface.

• 45:23Ky Dickens?

  I came to UVA specifically asking whether something as slippery as reincarnation could really be investigated scientifically. And by the end, I was not asking that anymore. Because even if you don't call it reincarnation, the children in these files appear to know things they should have no way of knowing. So now the question is much harder. What is actually happening? Because access to the memories of a dead person might not necessarily mean that you were that person.

• 45:49Speaker 05

  There's this notion of the Akashic Record.

• 45:51Ky Dickens?

  The Akashic Record is basically the idea that all the details and specifics of every life to ever live are stored in like an informational field.

• 45:59Speaker 05

  Sometimes what other people call it supersi, which is just that maybe these kids just have access to some remnant, some consciousness that was here and they're just psychically telling the memory of it. Which, by the way, would be fricking remarkable if that's true. But it wouldn't have to be reincarnation.

• 46:16Ky Dickens?

  Which sounds like a conservative explanation, until you realize it still breaks everything we currently understand about memory in the brain.

• 46:23Speaker 07

  This should not be possible. If this deceased person's brain has died, their memories have died with them. So how is this kid apparently picking up on the memories of that deceased person? So that already is anomalous in the context of current neuroscientific understanding of memory and the mind and consciousness.

• 46:44Ky Dickens?

  So even though I tried entertaining that possibility, that there's supersi or this ability to psychically download information about someone else's life, there's something in these cases that becomes much harder to explain as simply accessing someone else's memories. And more than a third of the solved cases adopts. The children have a birthmark or birth defect that matches an injury or fatal wound of the past life the child is remembering.

• 47:09Speaker 05

  The biological aspect of it, the missing limbs, the birth defects that correspond to validated postmortem reports and autopsy reports of the alleged person that the child claims they were. I don't know that the Akashic Record explains that. I don't quite understand what does.

• 47:24Ky Dickens?

  And that brings me back to the glass display cabinets on the other side of the room, the ones with the photographs and the weapons. This boy was born without a right ear, but with memories of the life of a man who was shot in the head. Which leaves a question that memory alone can't answer. How could something that happened to one body appear on another?

• 47:43Speaker 01

  An autopsy report in black and white made before the child in question was born. And in many cases, we find a close correspondence between the postmortem report and the birthmarks and birth defects.

• 47:56Speaker 05

  It becomes harder to make sense of how someone's fatal wound in another country years ago shows up in a child.

• 48:03Ky Dickens?

  The birthmark cases. That's next time on the Reincarnation Records. Thank you to the small team who made this season possible. Our amazing producer, Cooper Mal. Our audio mix and sound design was by Jeremy Cole. Music was by Mike Robino. My right hand was Selena Kennedy. And I'm Ken Dickens, your executive producer, writer, editor, and host. And if you haven't listened to our last season of the podcast, The Consciousness Cassette, I highly recommend you do so as it will give even more context to this season. And if you want to go in deeper, subscribe to our Backstage Pass by visiting our website. With it, you'll unlock access to bonus content, Ask Me Anything interviews with myself and guests. You'll be able to connect with other members on our Discord. You'll be able to

• 48:46Ky Dickens?

  enjoy the podcast ad-free and hear and see exclusive content from the Telepathy Tapes Vault. Visit our website at thetelepathytapes.com for more info on how to subscribe to our Backstage Pass. This is the Reincarnation Records from TTT Media.

• 49:04Speaker 03

  When your workday is constantly disrupted, your workflow isn't flowing. It's come to a grinding halt. You don't need an assistant. You need superpowers. Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly, is built for how you actually work. No new tabs, no switching apps, no losing your place. Go handles busy work like finding documents or summarizing email threads, so you can focus on the work only you can do. Try Superhuman Go from the makers of Grammarly. Find out more at superhuman.com.