Katharina Buczek
If your child has ever told a story or described an event that they definitely did not experience in this lifetime, then they might have been recalling a past life memory.
Memories of past lives are thought to remain with young children since they are closer to what possibly came before. There are records of children recalling everything from fighting in World War II to being Hollywood agents to actually being in their mother’s womb.
And sometimes, young children speak about more unsettling details– such as family strife or even their supposed cause of death in the past.
This phenomenon hints at reincarnation, or the belief that a person’s soul can be reborn in a new physical form or body after biological death. Interestingly, though, one 1961 study suggested that past life memories are not the only evidence of reincarnation.
That year, Ian Stevenson– who was the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia at the time– began to study children from all over the world who claimed to remember their past lives. And though every case was different, nearly all of the children still had a striking similarity– a birthmark.
More specifically, when Ian interviewed the children about their memories, many spoke of how they suffered in their past life. And most commonly, these instances of suffering coincided with memories of their death.
And what Ian found was that those children who spoke about violent or suffering pasts had birthmarks that reflected their stories.
Ian noted how the birthmarks were not like the common “beauty marks” or small discolorations that people have on their skin, either. Instead, they were much more prominent, unusual in size or shape, and commonly raised or puckered rather than flat on the skin.
Eighteen of the children also had two of these birthmarks in opposing places, which signified entry and exit wounds.
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