A famous case of reincarnationis that of a Colorado housewife (left, from the film "The Search for Bridey Murphey") who, under hypnosis, was able to recall details of a past life. Her knowledge of the period was astonding. The woman, Virginia Tighe, regressed while under hypnosis to a life in Ireland, a country she had never visited. On each of these occasions Tighe spoke in an Irish accent and used words in the sense that they were used in mid 19th-century Ireland, not in the sense in which they were used in Colorado in the 1950s.

 Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist from Charlottesville, Virginia, has done the largest number of case histories of children who remember past lives, over 2,500 case histories to date. Another psychic investigator who studies past lives remembered by young children is Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson of Iceland. Since 1988, Dr. Haraldsson has been investigating cases in Sri Lanka of young children who speak about memories of previous lives. In addition to gathering extensive case reports he has also been conducting psychological studies of these children.