Old Souls (book)

Old Souls: The Scientific Search for Proof of Past Lives

Author	Tom Shroder
Cover artist	Julie Metz
Language	English
Genre	Investigative Journalism
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Publication date	1999
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	256
ISBN	0-684-85192-X
OCLC	42273755
Dewey Decimal	133.9/01/35 21
LC Class	BL515 .S46 1999

Old Souls: The Scientific Search for Proof of Past Lives is a non-fiction book by journalist Tom Shroder. An editor at The Washington Post, Shroder traveled extensively with psychiatrist Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia, who conducted past life and reincarnation research in Lebanon, India and the American South.^[1] Shroder's journalistic experience makes this book a valuable review of an often disparaged subject.

Stevenson's informants were 3000^[2] children spontaneously remembering recent ordinary lives, as opposed to adults remembering under hypnosis romantic or heroic lives in the distant past.^[3] In addition, birthmarks that occur at the sites of injury in the previous life constitute an important part of Stevenson's evidence.^[4]

Stevenson's methodology involved listening to stories, comparing and contrasting variants of stories, verification or falsification of empirical claims, and constructing long, detailed narratives that attempt to "capture" the complex experience of his informants, who claim to remember incidents from past lives. In this sense Stevenson's work is similar to that of ethnographers and cultural anthropologists.^[4]

While Stevenson wrote extensively on his reincarnation studies, his work earned limited circulation outside academia. At the outset, Shroder sees his role not only as observer, but also as skeptic. But as his journey with Stevenson progresses, Shroder finds it increasingly difficult to reject the possibility of past lives.^[5]