There's plenty of information to be found online about past life research.
One useful resource is the free archive of the Journal of Scientific Exploration, where scholarly articles by Ian Stevenson and other researchers can be found (see below). Another is Carol Bowman's Past Life Center, which provides a great deal of information about reincarnation and past life research, along with descriptions of books, research and links. The site's forum contains interesting descriptions by parents of children making statements appearing to relate to a previous life.
Many books about reincarnation cite cases collected by Ian Stevenson (for instance Children's Past Lives by Carol Bowman). But it makes sense to look at his original work, in order to make a judgement about the standards of his research and the strength of his arguments.
Stevenson's earliest book is Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, originally published in 1966. This and the more recent Children Who Remember Previous Lives could be a good place to start. See here for a full list of Stevenson's books.
See this summary of the Swarnlata case from Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, also the case of Titu Singh, which includes birthmarks.
A number of articles on past life research by Stevenson and others are freely available from the archive of the Journal of Scientific Exploration (see below for links and abstract summaries).
There's a useful description of Ian Stevenson's research methods by Carol Bowman and Steve Bowman. Also Old Souls: Scientific Search for Proof of Past Lives by Tom Shroder, a journalist who accompanied Stevenson on his research trips to different parts of the world, and found his scepticism being gradually overcome.
A complete volume of the JSE (22.1) was given over to articles about Stevenson following his death in 2007. See the archive contents for links.
Other Books and Articles
Researcher Antonia Mills suggests a link between recurrent nightmares and past lives.
A nineteen-thirties case: The Case of Shanti Devi
Adult Memories of Past Lives
Adult memories of past lives are rare. However an interesting case is Jenny Cockell, who followed up her spontaneous memories of a life lived in early twentieth century Ireland, and formed a relationship with the previous personality's children (Yesterday's Children: The Extraordinary Search for my Past Life Family (1993) and Journeys Through Time: Uncovering My Past Lives (2008) ).
Past Life Regression
Memories of 'past lives' gained through hypnotic regression are considered less evidential than conscious memories. However a frequently cited example is Helen Wambach's Reliving Past Lives. See here for a short abstract.
See also this on the earlier controversial case of Bridey Murphy
Tapes of regression sessions recorded by hypnotherapist Arnall Bloxham are described in Jeffrey Iverson, More Lives Than One? The Evidence of the Remarkable Bloxham Tapes
Michael Newton's Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives (2002) describes claimed memories of discarnate individuals making plans to return to Earth.
Reviews
Blogger Michael Prescott has commented on a number of books and cases - well worth a look.
General
Hans TenDam, Exploring Reincarnation (1990) is a good introduction to the subject of reincarnation, covering the history, experiences of various kinds, and possible interpretations.
Sceptics
Ian Wilson, Reincarnation? The Claims Investigated
Paul Edwards, Reincarnation: A Critical Examination (1996)
Robert T. Carroll's A Skeptic's Dictionary, which contains other useful references.
Also see this Christian site cataloguing the objections to past life research (click on 'contents' to see its objections to reincarnation generally).
JSE articles (abstracts are by the article authors):
Antonia Mills, A Replication Study: Three Cases of Children in Northern
India Who Are Said to Remember a Previous Life (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 133-184, 1989). This replication of Ian Stevenson's studies of spontaneous cases suggestive of reincarnation presents data from 3 of the 10 cases investigated by the author in northern India during 5 weeks in the summers of 1987 and 1988. The purpose of the study was to see if an independent investigator, following Stevenson's methods, would reach conclusions similar to his. Stevenson reports that the numerous cases in which a child speaks and acts from the point of view of a verifiable but deceased person about whom the child could not have normally known are best explained as cases suggestive of reincarnation. With one possible exception the author was satisfied that the cases she studied were not cases of deceit or self-deceit, although she noted that acceptance of the concept of reincarnation played a part in the diagnosis and unfolding of the case. While in some instances the child said no more than could be presumed to be known by the parents, in other cases the child's accurate and intense identification with someone unknown to the parents indicates something paranormal has taken place.
Antonia Mills, Moslem Cases of the Reincarnation Type in Northern India: A Test of the Hypothesis of Imposed Identification Part I: Analysis of 26 Cases (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 171-188, 1990). The author describes the features of 26 Moslem (or half-Moslem) cases of the reincarnation type in India. In eight of these cases a Moslem child is said to have recalled the life of a Moslem. In seven cases a Moslem child is said to have recalled a life as a Hindu, and in 11 cases a Hindu child is said to have recalled the life of a Moslem (these are referred to as half-Moslem cases). Most Moslems in India do not officially endorse the concept of human earthly reincarnation. In some instances the absence of the doctrine in Islam made Moslems hostile to investigation of the cases. However, the cases are generally very similar to the more common Hindu cases, except that in solved Moslem and half-Moslem cases a higher proportion of previous personalities died violently, and the subjects in the half-Moslem cases showed behavior and (in two instances) birthmarks appropriate for the other religious community. Both Hindu and Moslem parents found it troubling to have a child recall a past life in a different religion. Such cases are unlikely to be the result of subtle clues given the child to adopt an envied identity.
Erlendur Haraldsson, Children Claiming Past-Life Memories: Four Cases in Sri Lanka (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 233-261, 1991). This is a report on an investigation of four children in Sri Lanka who claimed to remember a previous life at the early age of two to three years. Detailed written records were made of the statements of three of the children before any attempt was made to examine their claims. In two cases, these statements made it possible to trace a deceased person whose life history fit to a considerable extent the statements made by the child. In these cases, no prior connection of any kind was found to have existed between the child's family and that of the alleged previous personality. The pattern of these cases resembles those earlier reported by Stevenson: the children are at a preschool age when they start to make claims about a previous life; they usually start to "forget'' at about the time they go to school; some of them claim to have died violently earlier; they express the wish to meet their earlier families or visit their homes; and some of them show behavioral idiosyncrasies that seem to differ from what they observe and would be expected to learn from their environment. In Sri Lanka more than half of such cases remain "unsolved," i.e., no person can be traced that roughly matches the child's statements.
Ian Stevenson, Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 403-410, 1993). Almost nothing is known about why pigmented birthmarks (moles or nevi) occur in particular locations of the skin. The causes of most birth defects are also unknown. About 35% of children who claim to remember previous lives have birthmarks and/or birth defects that they (or adult informants) attribute to wounds on a person whose life the child remembers. The cases of 210 such children have been investigated. The birthmarks were usually areas of hairless, puckered skin; some were areas of little or no pigmentation (hypopigmented macules); others were areas of increased pigmentation (hyperpigmented nevi). The birth defects were nearly always of rare types. In cases in which a deceased person was identified the details of whose life unmistakably matched the child's statements, a close correspondence was nearly always found between the birthmarks and/or birth defects on the child and the wounds on the deceased person. In 43 of 49 cases in which a medical document (usually a postmortem report) was obtained, it confirmed the correspondence between wounds and birthmarks (or birth defects). There is little evidence that parents and other informants imposed a false identity on the child in order to explain the child's birthmark or birth defect. Some paranormal process seems required to account for at least some of the details of these cases, including the birthmarks and birth defects.
Jürgen Keil and Ian Stevenson, Do Cases of the Reincarnation Type Show Similar Features Over Many Years? A Study of Turkish Cases a Generation Apart (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 189-198, 1999). In order to examine stability over time in the features of cases of the reincarnation type in Turkey, 45 cases studied by one investigator were compared with 45 later cases studied by another investigator. The two sets of cases occurred about a generation apart. On the side of the subject 9 features were compared; on the side of the concerned deceased person (the "previous personality") 3 features were compared. Overall, the two groups of cases showed closely similar features. Three differences appear due to dissimilar emphases on the part of the investigators when they interviewed informants. A fourth difference - a lower incidence of homicide in the later series - reflects increased peacefulness among the Alevis of south central Turkey in the last few decades.
Jim B. Tucker, A Scale to Measure the Strength of Children's Claims of Previous Lives: Methodology and Initial Findings (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 571-581, 2000). To assess the relative strength of children's claims to remember previous lives, a strength-of-case scale has been developed. It assigns weights to features of each case that are more suggestive of a paranormal explanation. The scale was found to have a high degree of internal consistency. Analysis of 799 cases with the scale indicated that the strength of a case correlated with the economic status of the child but not his or her social status or caste. It did not correlate with the initial attitudes of the child's parents toward the case but did correlate with an early onset of statements about the previous life, the amount of emotion shown by the child when recalling the past life, and the amount of facial resemblance between the child and the deceased individual. These results are more consistent with a paranormal explanation for the cases than with a normal one.
Satwant K. Pasricha, Cases of the Reincarnation Type in South India: Why So Few Reports? (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 211-221, 2001). Nearly 450 cases of children who claim to remember a previous life have been professionally investigated in India. With one exception, all published reports of such cases have hitherto involved children in North India, which raises the questions of whether there are similar cases in South India and whether they are underreported. This paper presents features of seven additional cases in South India. The cases were investigated primarily by means of interviews with firsthand informants for the subject's side of a case and for that of the concerned deceased person, if such a person has been identified. The cases of South India show features similar to those of North Indian cases. The belief in reincarnation is held as strongly in South India as it is in North India, yet there is a marked disparity in terms of the ease with which cases can be found in the North compared to the South. Cases in the South may be underreported, but there is some indication that they may actually be less frequent, and the paper draws attention to this anomaly.
Erlendur Haraldsson and Majd Abu-Izzeddin, Development of Certainty About the Correct Deceased Person in a Case of the Reincarnation Type in Lebanon: The Case of Nazih Al-Danaf (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 363-380, 2002). This case concerns a young boy in Baalchmay, Lebanon, who made specific statements before several family members asserting memories of a previous life, such as being a man who carried pistols and hand-grenades, having a mute friend, describing a house, having children, living in the village of Quaberchamoun, and being shot by armed people. The case is unusual because when the child was taken at age 7 to the village, a corresponding deceased person was identified by means of his claimed memories, and the widow and the man's brother became certain of the authenticity of the child's reincarnation through his correct answers to their questions, recognition of people and possessions, and his own knowledgeable questions to them.
Titus Rivas, Three Cases of the Reincarnation Type in the Netherlands (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 527-532, 2003). This article presents brief summaries of three unsolved Dutch Cases of the Reincarnation Type (CORTs). The author believes these cases show a similar structure as the CORTs studied by Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia, his associates and other, independent researchers in the field. Therefore, he concludes that it is plausible to interpret these cases in a similar way. Furthermore, at least one of these cases seems to show paranormal features which appear to corroborate a reincarnation hypothesis. The main contribution of this paper may consist of the addition of Dutch CORTs to the literature about reincarnation research.
Antonia Mills, Inferences from the Case of Ajendra Singh Chauhan: The Effect of Parental Questioning, of Meeting the ''Previous Life'' Family, an Aborted Attempt to Quantify Probabilities, and the Impact on His Life as a Young Adult (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 609-641, 2004). Ian Stevenson and associates (Stevenson et al., 1974, 1975, 1997) have compiled a large body of ''Cases of the Reincarnation Type'' from a variety of cultures around the world, asking the question ''Do these cases indicate that reincarnation is the best explanation, or is some other explanation adequate to explain the phenomena?'' Alternate explanations proposed include wishful thinking, the interpretation of the utterances of children on the basis of prior belief in reincarnation, that is, cultural construction, or even deception and self-deception (Chari, 1986; Mills, 1988, 1989; Stevenson et al., 1988). It has long been recognized that the cases which are most significant in answering these questions are those in which the person identified as the deceased person the child is claiming to be (called the Previous Personality, or PP, by Stevenson) is someone initially entirely unknown to the child and his family. In some cases such a PP is later identified through a subsequent search made on the basis of the child's statements. These cases represent a subset of the ''solved'' cases that Stevenson has amassed, as opposed to the ''unsolved'' cases, those in which a child makes a number of statements but no one is ever found who matches the statements of the child.1 When a written record exists of the statements the child made before the case is solved, the possibility that familial knowledge about the deceased person has influenced the child's statements and the presentation of the child's utterances is eliminated. Cases with a written record before the two families meet are quite rare but have been reported by Stevenson (1975), Stevenson and Samararatne (1988), Haraldsson (1991), and Mills et al. (1994). Schouten and Stevenson (1998) have compared the small sample of cases with a written record made before the case is solved, which they call Type B cases, with those with a written record made after the families have met, or Type A cases. Because Type B cases are rare and deserve careful consideration, here I present an expanded description of the Type B case of Ajendra Singh Chauhan and consider some of the inferences from the case.
Jürgen Keil and J.B. Tucker, Children Who Claim to Remember Previous Lives: Cases with Written Records Made before the Previous Personality Was Identified (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 91-101, 2005). 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.
Satwant K. Pasricha, Jürgen Keil, Jim B. Tucker and Ian Stevenson, Some Bodily Malformations Attributed to Previous Lives (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 359-383, 2005). Abstract-Bodily malformations that are unusually large or otherwise unusual in shape or location occur somewhat rarely. Sometimes a young child having such an abnormality speaks about the life of a deceased individual who suffered a wound that is said to have corresponded somehow to the abnormality. We aimed at investigating the justification for attributing malformations to wounds in a particular deceased person. Cases of this type occur frequently in Asia, but also in Western countries. The principal method of investigation is interviews with firsthand informants for the subject and concerned deceased person. Medical reports, such as postmortems, are examined when available. In Part I we present three reports of skin anomalies and tabular summaries of an additional five cases. We have obtained evidence of a close correspondence between the skin anomalies and the wounds on the concerned deceased person, although the evidence is not conclusive. In Part I1 we report four cases of birth defects attributed to previous lives. We present and discuss some evidence, again not conclusive, that tends to support this attribution.
Ian Stevenson, Children of Myanmar Who Behave like Japanese Soldiers: A Possible Third Element in Personality (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 171-183, 2005). Among more than 750 cases of persons in Myanmar (formerly Burma) who as children claimed to remember a previous life, 24 said they had been Japanese soldiers killed in Burma during World War 11. Unlike most Burmese subjects of such cases none of these children stated any personal names or addresses that might have permitted verification of their statements. However, they showed habits of dress, food preferences, industriousness, insensitivity to pain, and other behaviors unusual in Burma, but typical of Japanese people, especially Japanese soldiers during their occupation of Myanmar (Burma). The oppressive rule in Burma of the Japanese Army during World War I1 makes it unlikely that any Burmese parent would instigate or encourage a child to behave like a Japanese soldier. Genetic factors cannot account for the children's unusual behavior because all of them were (with two exceptions) born after 1945, when there were no Japanese in the villages of Burma. The behavioral features of these children suggest a third factor (additional to genetic ones and known environmental influences) in personality.
Ian Stevenson and Godwinsa Mararatne, Three New Cases of the Reincarnation Type in Sri Lanka With Written Records Made Before Verifications (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 217-238, 1988). Three new cases in Sri Lanka of children who claim to remember previous lives were identified before the statements made by the children subjects of the cases had been verified. The authors made a written record of what the child said and then located a family corresponding to the child's statements. Although none of the children stated the name of the deceased person whose life the child seemed to remember, they all furnished details that, taken together, were sufficiently specific to identify one particular person as the only person corresponding to the child's statements. Careful inquiries about the possibilities for the normal communication of information from one family to the other before the case developed provide no evidence of such communication and make it seem almost impossible that it could have occurred. The written records of exactly what the child said about the previous life make it possible to exclude distortion of memories of the child's statements on the part of informants after the two families concerned have met. The children seem to have shown paranormal knowledge about deceased persons who were previously completely unknown to their families.
A complete volume of the JSE (22.1) was given over to articles about Stevenson following his death in 2007. See the archive contents for links.
