American children who claim to remember previous lives
Ian Stevenson · 1983 · Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 171(12), 742-748
Summary
Analysis of 79 American children who reported previous-life memories, comparing features with cases collected in cultures where reincarnation belief is more common.
Why it matters here
Useful because it weakens the objection that all cases are simply products of cultures with explicit reincarnation belief.
Linked claims
Decades of cases of young children making specific, verifiable claims about a deceased stranger's life — across many cultures, with reproducible sub-patterns (≈70% violent deaths, family-rebirth clusters).
If past-life cases are taken seriously, reincarnation is the most economical narrative — but several other models also fit the data.
Related evidence hubs
Children's past-life memories, birthmark cases, and the rebirth interpretation.
Past-life memories, karma, soul contracts.
Whether anything of mind continues.
World religions and traditions, scored as systems.