Children who claim to remember previous lives: Cases with written records made before the previous personality was identified

Children who claim to remember previous lives have been described in the research literature for over 40 years, and in many cases their families have identified a deceased individual whose life they believe the child is remembering. These cases have been criticized on the grounds that after the families of the child and the deceased individual meet and share information, they may end up attributing more knowledge about that individual to the child than he or she actually demonstrated. A case is presented in which the investigator recorded notes of a child's statements in Turkey and then subsequently found that they corresponded in great detail to the life of a man who lived in Istanbul 850 km away and who died 50 years before the child was born. A review of similar cases in which written records were made before the deceased individual was identified indicates that they present a significant challenge to the supposition that this phenomenon is due to falsely credited information.