Birthmarks and wounds: Taylor excerpt #19

Greg Taylor writes: In the course of his work collecting reports of past-life memories over several decades, Dr. Stevenson had also noted – and investigated, but not published – a curiously large subset of the cases: those in which the person reporting past-life memories was born with birthmarks or defects that matched wounds on the body of the claimed previous personality. In 1997, he published a 2268-page-long, two-volume collection detailing more than 200 of these cases, titled Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects (along with a shorter, more accessible synopsis, Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect).

As such cases provided corroborating physical evidence to back up the testimony of the children regarding their past-life memories, Stevenson went to great lengths to verify their details. He obtained autopsy reports, medical or police reports, and eyewitness testimony about the wounds on the past-life personality, and in his book included numerous pictures substantiating the similarities between the birthmarks/defects and the wounds. Some notable cases include a young girl with malformed fingers who remembered a previous life as a man whose fingers were chopped off; another girl with a pale, scar-like birthmark that encircled her head who remembered the life of a man who had skull surgery; and a boy with a malformed right side of his face and ear who had past-life memories of being a man who died as a result of a shotgun blast to the right side of his face.

Furthermore, a number of the cases involved double birthmarks, and were tied to deaths of the previous personality by gunshot. In most, the size and shape of the birthmarks on the children also corresponded with the entry and exit wounds of the bullet: a small, neat mark where the bullet entered the body of the previous personality, and a larger, more irregularly shaped mark matching the location of the bullet’s exit.

For example, a three-year-old boy in Thailand named Chanai Choomalaiwong began saying he had been a schoolteacher named Bua Kai, and that he had been shot and killed on his way to school. He also provided the names of his parents, his wife, and his children. When Chanai was taken back to the town where he said he lived, he led the way to his house, which was discovered to be the home of an elderly couple whose son, Bua Kai Lawnak, had been a teacher. He had been murdered eight years previous (five years before Chanai was born), shot in the head as he rode his bicycle to school. The elderly couple tested Chanai, who recognized Bua Kai’s belongings and one of his children (insisting that they call him ‘Father’).

Dr. Stevenson spoke with several of Bua Kai’s family, including his widow, who remembered that the doctor who examined her husband’s body had said he must have been shot from behind, because he had a small wound on the back of his head and a larger wound on his forehead. Bua Kai’s wounds matched two birthmarks on Chanai’s head, a small one on the back of his head, and a bigger one on the front. Overall, Dr. Stevenson published eighteen cases that involved double birthmarks matching wounds on the body of the previous personality.

Many children also exhibit behaviors that seem connected to their memories and become emotional when discussing events and people from their previous life. For instance:

A little girl in India named Sukla Gupta was under the age of two when she began cradling a block of wood or a pillow and calling it ‘Minu’. She gave a number of details about a past life, such as the name and section of a village eleven miles away. A woman there, the mother of an infant named Minu, had died six years before Sukla was born. When Sukla was five and Minu eleven, she met Minu and cried. Sukla acted maternal toward the older girl, and when Minu later fell ill, Sukla became distraught upon hearing the news and demanded to be taken to her.

A large number of children also have phobias that are linked to the manner of death of the previous personality. Of the 52 cases that DOPS has on file where the previous personality drowned, 43 of the children were scared of water. Dr. Stevenson examined a series of 387 cases and found that 36% of the children exhibited such fears, usually from an extremely young age, sometimes manifesting even before they had begun making claims about past life memories. They also sometimes, rather disconcertingly, acted out the way in which the previous person died, such as one child who re-enacted the suicide of the previous personality by putting a stick under his chin and pretending it was a rifle.

Many also display play behaviors consistent with their previous life, such as a young boy who spent much of his time pretending to be a shopkeeper of biscuits and soda water, which was the occupation of the previous personality. In a series of 278 cases, Dr. Stevenson found that almost a quarter of the children engaged in play related to their memories of a past life, despite it not being a part of their current life and surroundings.

 

Greg Taylor, “What is the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death?” An essay written for the Bigelow contest addressing this question. I am presenting excerpts without references, but this essay is available with footnotes and a bibliography at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.