An old woman died in Thailand with the wish to reincarnate as a boy. Her daughter dipped a finger in white paste and marked the back of the woman’s neck with the paste.
Not long after the woman’s death, the daughter gave birth to a son with a white mark on the back of his neck that mirrored the white paste left on the woman’s neck. When the boy became old enough to talk, he would claim possession of things that belonged to his grandmother as though they'd always been his.
This is one of many cases recounted by Dr. Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia in which birthmarks seem to relate to past lives.
The late Dr. Ian Stevenson, whose work Tucker continues, investigated 210 cases of children with birthmarks or defects that related to memories they retained from past lives.
Stevenson obtained a post-mortem report in 49 cases. The wound and birthmark were within 10 square centimeters of each other on the body in 43 percent of these cases, and many were much closer to the same location.
In some cultures, people mark the deceased with soot or paste to recognize them when they are reborn.
