Patrick remembers his prior life as Kevin

Jim B. Tucker is Bonner-Lowry Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia, and Director of the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies. Tucker has spent more than a decade continuing the research of Ian Stevenson into past lives. In his previous book Life Before Life, Tucker provides an overview of fifty years of research, mostly supervised by Stevenson. Return to Life focuses on a few cases, and explains why quantum mechanics supports the conclusion that consciousness is not simply the product of brain activity. This new way of understanding consciousness also offers a possible explanation of the past life memories that Tucker and Stevenson have documented.

Tucker’s explanation of both the theory and experimental evidence that support quantum mechanics is remarkably clear, and his use of dreams as a useful analogy for living other lives is unique and evocative. Tucker’s book is not directly about NDEs, but explores one form of extraordinary knowing. Return to Life considers comments from children about their experiences in the “afterlife” of a previous life before they were reborn—which Tucker refers to an as an “intermission experience.”

Tucker begins his book with a quote from Voltaire: “It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.”

Patrick told his mother, Lisa, that he had a prior life as Kevin, her first child who had died due to a metastatic neuroblastoma when he was about two years old. Patrick was born twenty years later. After Patrick’s birth, Lisa: “soon noticed a white opacity covering Patrick’s left eye. The doctors diagnosed it as a corneal leukoma. Patrick was seen by an ophthalmologist and examined periodically. The opacity shrunk after several weeks but did not completely disappear. While his vision was hard to assess with any precision when he was very young, Patrick was essentially blind in his left eye—just as Kevin had been blind in that eye at the end of his life.

“Lisa also felt a lump on Patrick’s head above his right ear at the same location where Kevin’s tumor had been biopsied. When we [Tucker and Ian Stevenson] examined Patrick [at age five], we felt the nodule above his ear. It had migrated slightly behind his ear by the time he was five, but Lisa said it was directly above the ear when he was born. It was hard, elevated, and more or less round. But it was not tender at all.

“Patrick was also born with an unusual mark on his neck. A dark slanted line that was about four millimeters long when we met him; it looked like a small cut. It was on the front of his neck on the right side. This was the area where Kevin’s central surgical line had been inserted.

“When Patrick was four years old, he began talking about Kevin’s life. Lisa was getting ready for work one day when Patrick asked if she remembered when he had surgery. After she told him he had never had surgery, he said, ‘Sure I did, right here on my ear’ and pointed to the spot above his right ear where Kevin’s tumor was biopsied.

“Another time, Patrick became excited when he saw a picture of Kevin. He had never seen it before because Lisa didn’t keep pictures of Kevin up in the house. His hands shaking, Patrick said, ‘Here is my picture. I’ve been looking for that.’ He was definite as he said, ‘That’s me.’ He also talked once about the small, brown puppy that stayed with the family. Lisa and Kevin had indeed kept a dog like that, one belonging to Lisa’s mother when she moved into an apartment complex that didn’t allow pets.

“One of the most inexplicable features of the case was that Patrick limped once he got old enough to walk. He had an unusual gait in which he would swing out his left leg. This matched the way Kevin had walked, since he had to wear a brace after breaking his leg. We asked Patrick to walk across the room several times and he was still limping slightly at age five, even though he seemed to have no medical reason to do so.

“Two years later, we visited Patrick and Lisa again. Patrick had continued to say unusual things. He had talked about a life prior to the one as Kevin, this one in Hawaii. He talked about his family there and a son who died. He mentioned a statute that melted due to a volcano and how the townspeople rebuilt it. From his descriptions, his parents believed he was recalling events from the 1940s.

“Several months before we met this second time, Patrick began talking one night as his mother fixed dinner. He asked, ‘Do you know that you have a relative that no one talks about?’ He said he had met this relative in heaven before being born. He was tall and thin with brown hair and brown eyes. The relative told Patrick that his name was Billy and he was called ‘Billy the Pirate.’ He had been killed by his stepfather, shot point-blank up in the mountains. Patrick said Billy was upset that no one talked about him after his death.

“Lisa knew nothing about any relative named Billy. When she called to ask her mother, she discovered that her mother’s oldest sister had a son named Billy. The details Patrick gave were correct. His stepfather killed Billy three years before Lisa was born. The murder was never talked about in the family. When Lisa asked about the nickname ‘Billy the Pirate,’ her mother laughed. His wildness had led to the nickname, and Lisa’s mother hadn’t heard it since Billy’s death. There seemed to be no way Patrick could have ever heard about Billy or his nickname before.

The considerable number of cases involving coincidences and memories of a previous life are not proof of reincarnation, but verify that the human experience is not uncommon. More of the cases occur in India and other countries where Hindu and Buddhist beliefs in reincarnation are deeply embedded in the culture, but there are also examples in the West.

Jim B. Tucker, Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives (St. Martin’s Press, 2013), 63-87.