Dr. Jim Tucker works with Dr. Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatric Medicine in Charlottesville, Virginia. They have studied hundreds of cases of children who have spontaneously (without hypnosis) remembered a past life. Examples from their research include: a boy who remembered being a 25-year-old mechanic, thrown to his death from a speeding car, recalling the name of the driver, the exact location of the crash, the names of the mechanic's sisters and parents and cousins; a girl who remembered being a teenager named Sheila who was killed while crossing the road, naming Sheila's hometown and the names of her parents and siblings; and a boy in Virginia who, from the time he learned to talk, called his mother by her name and called his grandmother Mom, and as he grew, began recalling obscure events from the life of his Uncle David, who died in an accident 20 years before Joseph was born.

In scores of cases around the world, multiple witnesses have confirmed that children have spontaneously supplied names of towns and relatives, occupations and relationships, attitudes and emotions that pinpointed a single, dead individual - often apparently unknown to their present families. If their work is largely ignored by their peers, Stevenson's collection of cases - nearing 3,000 - and his meticulous documentation and cross-checking have made the work believable to many people who need more than Carol Bowman's anecdotal evidence to believe.