Reincarnation has been a subject of fascination and speculation for millennia. It is a central belief in numerous religions, from Hinduism to some pagan faiths, and ancient Greek figures like Plato and Socrates also expressed the belief that souls could be reborn in different bodies.

Reincarnation has also been the subject of serious scientific study in America. Over the course of half a century, the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has amassed over 2,500 stories of people who claimed to remember their past lives, and the founder of the Division of Perceptual Studies, psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, gathered over 20,000 pages of material about reincarnation cases during his career.

The concept of reincarnation also raises some of the deepest and most universal questions of all, including the mystery of what happens when we die, whether our souls can live on beyond our bodies, and what it means to be human. Here are some of the most famous accounts that, according to believers, seem to involve people appearing to remember some aspects of previous lives.

1. James Leininger
2. Shanti Devi
3. Dorothy Eady
4. Ryan Hammond
5. Uttara Huddar
6. Gillian and Jennifer Pollock
7. Unnamed Druze Boy

James Leininger

When he was 22 months old, James Leininger’s father took him to visit the Cavanaugh Flight Museum outside of Dallas, Texas. There, according to his parents, he developed a fascination with planes that soon became an obsession. On his second visit to the museum, Leininger stopped in front of a hangar that encased a World War II airplane and gazed at it, apparently entranced. 

Soon after, he developed a habit of banging toy planes on the family’s table and saying, “Airplane crash on fire.” Around then, he also began waking up screaming in the middle of the night. When his parents asked him what he was dreaming about, he would always say, “Airplane crash on fire, little man can’t get out,” per a 2004 ABC News report. 

Eventually, he began claiming that his plane had been shot down by the Japanese, and also said that the boat he had flown his plane off of was called the “Natoma.” His parents soon discovered that there had been a ship called the Natoma Bay stationed in the Pacific during World War II. Leininger also claimed that there was someone with him named Jack Larsen, and often said that he himself was the “third James.” 

Eventually, his parents discovered that a man named Jack Larsen had indeed served on the Natoma Bay. They also discovered that a man named James M. Huston, Jr. was the only pilot from the ship who had died during the Battle of Iwo Jima. 

Leininger continued to impress his parents with his knowledge of World War II planes. He has since gone on to live a normal life, but his case has continued to garner serious inquiry and coverage from organizations such as the National Institutes of Health, and remains one of the most popularly cited alleged reincarnation stories in America.

Shanti Devi

One of the best-known reincarnation stories worldwide is that of Shanti Devi. Born in December 1926, at age four she reportedly began speaking in full sentences in a completely different dialect than that one her family used. As a child, she spoke frequently of a husband who owned a fabric store, silverware, and objects she used to own. Her family became even more suspicious when she began describing a Caesarean section in detail to a doctor. 

Eventually, more details convinced her school headmaster to reach out to a family that Shanti Devi claimed had once been hers. She gave the headmaster what she said was her husband’s address, and the cousin of the man she claimed was her husband came to visit the child.

According to the story, Shanti Devi appeared to recognize him and immediately regaled him with stories of their lives. Eventually, Kedar Nath, the man she claimed was her husband, came to see her as well. Though she was told that he was her husband’s brother, Shanti Devi said she recognized him instantly and embraced him. She also asked if he had kept the promise he made on her deathbed to be faithful to her after marriage. (He had not).

The case made the news and garnered the attention of Mahatma Gandhi, who invited her to his ashram and appointed a committee of fifteen people to investigate her claims. Together with the committee members, she visited what she claimed was her former home and immediately recognized and correctly identified Kedar Nath’s uncle, whom she had never met before. 

Similar events continued to occur, and members of the committee eventually concluded she was the reincarnation of Kedar Nath’s late wife, Lugdi Chaubey, who died of complications after giving birth by Caesarean section in 1925. Later, her story was recounted and spread around the world in a book by Swedish author Sture Lönnerstrand, who had spent time with her in India and appeared to believe her story as well. Shanti Devi never married and dedicated her life to spreading Hindu teachings until she died at 61. 

Dorothy Eady

Born in London in 1904, Dorothy Eady fell down the stairs at the age of three and hit her head. Upon waking up, according to her parents, her accent had changed and she kept asking to be brought home. Everything changed when she visited an Egypt-themed exhibit and claimed, “This is my home!”

Her obsession with Egypt would last the rest of her life. She was kicked out of her Catholic school for discussing her “old religion,” and even began claiming she had been the lover of the Egyptian pharaoh Seti I. She was committed to sanatoriums and dropped out of school at sixteen, but never wavered from her beliefs. 

As a teen, she claimed she was visited by a spirit called Ho-Ra, which she said helped her dictate the story of her past life. According to the story, in her past life, she had become a “consecrated virgin of Isis” at twelve but became a lover of the pharaoh Seti I at fourteen. Eady also said that in her past life, she became pregnant and committed suicide due to the shame that would come to her and her lover if their relationship was exposed. 

Eady wound up marrying and moving to Cairo, but her husband eventually left her, allegedly due to complications related to her claims about her past life. She was later given an opportunity to work at the Egyptian site of Abydos, the location where she claimed to have grown up in her past life.

Eady made many significant contributions to the field of Egyptology during this time and was known to have an advanced understanding of Abydos, even easily finding the location of certain murals that had never been shared with the public. She was also widely feared by locals and was eventually buried anonymously in Egypt in 1981 after her death at the age of 77.

Ryan Hammond

In 2015, a boy named Ryan Hammond made the news due to claims that he had been a talent agent in a past life. In an NBC broadcast that year, the child claimed that he told his mother, “Mama, I think I used to be someone else,” at the age of five. 

According to his mother, as a young child, Hammond would often ask to “visit his other family” at night, and would shout “action” as if he was on a movie set. Sometimes he would wake up crying, saying he had three sons and recalling a white house that had a swimming pool.

At one point, while looking through a book featuring movie stills from the Golden Age of Hollywood, Hammond reportedly said “that guy’s me!” when he saw a photo of the talent agent Marty Martyn. In the NBC broadcast, Hammond claimed to have vivid memories of a life in Hollywood, including one of being punched by Marilyn Monroe’s bodyguard. Martyn began his career as an extra and eventually wound up having a successful Hollywood career that culminated in a luxurious life in New York.

Hammond’s claims were investigated by child psychiatrist Dr. Jim Tucker, who said he believed the child’s claims were accurate. “The world just doesn’t work as we think or assume it does. The cases I have examined don’t come under a normal explanation of how we perceive the world,” Tucker wrote. 

Eventually, Hammond met with Martyn’s daughter. After the meeting, the boy said that the woman’s “energy” had changed, and his mother explained that people change as they get older. After that, Hammond’s interest in Hollywood seemed to wane, which, according to Tucker, can happen when children meet people they claimed to have known in a past life.

“I think they see that no one is waiting for them in the past,” Tucker said. “Some of them get sad about it, but ultimately they accept it and they turn their attention more fully to the present. They get more involved in experiencing this life, which, of course, is what they should do.”

Uttara Huddar

Born in 1941 in Maharashtra, India, Uttara Huddar had a normal childhood. At the age of 32, she already had a master’s degree in English literature and a doctorate in biology when she suddenly began speaking Bengali fluently and began to claim she was Sharada Chattopadhyay, a married woman who lived over a century prior. She also claimed she could no longer recognize her parents, and to those who were with her, it seemed almost as if she had mentally regressed to a past life. 

Suddenly, she appeared to have many detailed memories of Bengali traditions and customs. She was also able to correctly recall the details of Sharada’s family tree, and also said she remembered how she died: by being bitten by a cobra on her toe. Oddly, her mother later claimed to have had dreams about cobras biting her toe while pregnant with Uttara. 

For a few weeks, Uttara appeared to alternate mentally between being Sharada Chattopadhyay and Uttara Huddar. Eventually, she appeared to revert back to her original identity, though memories of Sharada would appear from time to time.

Gillian and Jennifer Pollock

In 1957, 11-year-old Joanna Pollock and six-year-old Jacqueline Pollock were killed in a car accident while a friend was driving them to church. 

Their parents, John and Florence, were heartbroken, but when Florence became pregnant, John was convinced the children would be reincarnations of his girls. John was a longtime believer in reincarnation, but his beliefs apparently drove a wedge between him and Florence and nearly led to their divorce.

Florence wound up giving birth to twins named Jennifer and Gillian. One had exactly the same birthmark that their daughter Jacqueline had. The family moved away from the town Joanna and Jacqueline had grown up in when the twins were three months old, but moved back when they were four. According to their parents, at that time, the girls began sharing memories of parts of the town that they had never seen. They were also able to name their late sisters’ toys and began asking for toys they’d never seen but that had belonged to Joanna and Jacqueline.

The twins even shared a similar relationship to the one their late sisters had. The girls also seemed to be afraid of cars, and at one point, Florence reportedly heard Gillian telling Jennifer, “The blood’s coming out of your eyes. That’s where the car hit you.”

After turning five, the twins’ memories seemed to start to fade, but the case remains yet another strange report of children who indeed appear to have possibly been reincarnated—if their parents are to be believed, of course.

Unnamed Druze Boy

One particularly fascinating story, which was reportedly witnessed and recorded by Dr. Eli Lach, was about an unnamed Druze child living in Syria’s Golan Heights region. In Druze tradition, Druze souls can only reincarnate into other Druze.

According to the story, a Druze boy told village elders that he had been killed by an ax. The boy had a red birthmark on his head, and birthmarks are often seen as evidence of past physical trauma in reincarnation stories. The boy wound up identifying his killer as well as the spot he said he was buried, where a cleaved skull was found. The man he had accused later confessed to the crime.

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