There are many accounts in newspapers, magazine articles and on the internet about young children who remember a previous life. The amount of detail in their story is amazing. But how can we believe or know for sure that the child is actually recalling a past life, or is just being imaginative? This article does give a way to trust that these children actually are recalling another lifetime experience. 

 When a child is around three years old, you can ask them “Where did you live, before?” They just might tell you about a recent past life. Children of that age seem to have amazing recall of a previous lifetime - full of details. Some information can be checked out.

 My Grandson Kris and His Fear of Water

My grandson Kris’s stepdad took the family boating on the local reservoir on weekends. My grandson Kris, age 2 ½, cried in terror whenever he was taken on the boat. He feared being out on the big lake. Kris’s stepdad hated that Kris was “such a baby.”

When Kris was about three years old, he and I were looking out my front window one night, watching a torrential downpour. We live in Southern Colorado in flash-flood country. Rushing water began flooding down our street. 

 I said, “Look!” Kris, “It looks like a river.” 

 In a very old voice tone he said, “I don’t trust it.” 

 Knowing that at this age many kids do remember their past lives, I asked him, “What happened to you before?” 

 “I drowned,” he replied. 

“Where,” I asked? 

In a matter-of-fact voice, he said, “China.” 

“Were you a man or a woman?” 

“I was a little boy,” he said. 

Ah well, I thought. That explains his fear of water. Interestingly this recall helped him understand why he hated being out on the boat with his stepdad. 

Toddler Remembers How He Died in A Past Life

There isn't really a way to prove reincarnation, but a two-year-old has a lot of folks convinced that it can happen, thanks to a video his mom shared on TikTok. Kelsey Pomeroy captioned her clip, "Do you think this is a true past life memory or just his imagination?" and in it, she explains how out of nowhere, her toddler, Theo, stated, "I used to be an adult but then I sunk, and I became a kid." He went on to give more details, saying, "When I used to be an adult, I had a map, and I was traveling through the sand to try to find water. But when I found water, I sunk, and then I became a kid again." 

Little Theo has also been talking about things that happened to him "when he was an adult," and they are things that he has never experienced during his (current) lifetime. 

Having seen the post, Kelsey's local news station, FOX8, caught up with her to talk about Theo. She told them that she has no idea how her son could come up with this story, saying, "I'm watching the shows that he's watching, I'm reading the books that he's reading and nothing he's doing is talking about this life to death cycle." 

Theo sometimes mentions "his other mommy and daddy." In addition, he hates the sand, refusing to walk on it in bare feet. and he's also obsessed with maps. All of these characteristics could potentially be carryovers from his past life. As for that life, Kelsey thought that, based on Theo's story, he was describing someone who drowned in water, but Theo, who doesn't even know what drowning is, corrected her and said, "No I sunk in the sand."

Commenters on the post are convinced Theo is describing a past life, and some people related similar stories about their own kids. One wrote, "When my kid was two she saw a fire on the news and said, 'I was in one of those before. I miss my sons, will I ever see them again?'" and another wrote, "My son does this too. He told me, 'When I was big, I worked on cars like daddy. Then one day I went into the woods and didn't come back." 

It's not the first time a story like this has gone viral either. In 2015, a boy not only remembered details of his past life in which he was a Hollywood actor, but he was able to identify exactly who he was and even meet that person's family. 

Of course, plenty of people think that these stories are just the result of children's imaginations and their inability to tell the difference between dreams and reality.

Article: Children who remember their past lives: thousands of toddlers are being haunted by memories that aren't theirs 

'That is the field where I died', a five-year-old boy tells his parents. 

'I remember because the mud was so deep it went over my gaiters', he says serenely while pointing across a former historic battlefield in southern England. Quite apart from the shock of their son claiming to have been reincarnated, his parents listened opened mouthed because he had no knowledge of history yet had referred to his gaiters - a protective leg covering worn by soldiers from 1700 until the end of the First World War. 

He is not alone. An American university has compiled a database of more than 2,200 children who have been haunted by 'carry-over of memories' of past lives since the 1960s. 

Critics believe that these tales are inspired by other sources of information such as TV, the internet, family stories - or just figments of a child's active imagination. 

But two thirds of those cases contained enough detail to identify the deceased person the child believes they may have been, a recent study by the University of Virginia School of Medicine found. 

The most famous case in Britain was Scottish toddler Cameron Macaulay, star of the 2006 documentary: Extraordinary People — The Boy Who Lived Before. 

From the age of two he had perfectly described his home on a beach in the Outer Hebrides - including the death of his father in a car crash and his pet black-and-white sheepdog - despite never visiting the Scottish island and nor had any of his Glaswegian family. ‘I have to go to Barra, I have to go to Barra, my family are missing me', he would tell his parents. He recalled swimming in rock pools and playing with friends on the beach where small planes would land. Cameron's visions of life there were so real to him that on occasion he would need to be collected from nursery as he was crying for his parents on Barra. 

Eventually his family relented and visited, and found a home on the beach there exactly as he described it. And there are more cases like it.

These children, generally aged between two and six, either had the epiphany having experienced déjà vu when visiting a certain place - or it came to them in lucid dreams. 

In the Northeast a father was shocked to hear his two-year-old daughter talking about 'Her other father who died a long time ago.' 

The father told MailOnline: 'The assumption at the time was that she had an imaginary friend called Charles because she would often appear to talk to him or about him.

'In the end we asked her more about Charles and he said 'he was my other father who died a long time ago. 'Little by little more details started to come out. She said he lived in a house with a black door and described an iron staircase that went upwards in circles. 

'It was a bit creepy, but I was intrigued enough to look into whether the houses in our suburb were likely to have had spiral staircases and discovered that it was a fairly common feature of some of the older properties. 

'It was very strange and lasted only a few months, in time she stopped talking about Charles, which I must admit was a relief.' 

The family of a little girl on holiday in the UK claimed she had pointed to a pair of graves in a rural church and declared that was where she had buried his parents, even reeling off their names on the stones and the dates they died as well as the epitaph: 'They were dearly loved and in God's arms'. 

 ‘I used to come here when I was a boy’, she said, and started to describe the inside of the church in great detail. Her parents told her she had a 'a really good imagination’ but found 'she was spot on with every single detail', one family friend said. 

A fourth child, aged three, told his parents 'many times' that he had drowned in a 'speedboat accident' when he was a 'much older man'. 

Focus on these tales have been reignited after an academic study in the US raised the possibility that reincarnation could actually happen - because hundreds of children have told them so. 

Spooky talk from youngsters aged between two and six who claim to have lived and died before should not be written off as nonsense, hypnotist and past lives expert Tony Rae has warned. 

Rae, who was Chairman of The British Council of Professional Hypnotists for 25 years, was reacting to a study in the US which has documented over 2,200 cases where children have inexplicably given detailed accounts of events they could not possibly have known about. 

Each year around 120 families with children with these vivid memories each year are contacting the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) within the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. 

It has led the department's director, and author on the subject, Dr Jim Tucker, to conclude: 'There is evidence here that needs to be accounted for and when we look at these cases carefully, some sort of carry-over of memories often makes the most sense.' 

Mr. Rae said: 'I would say to parents to keep an open mind if your children are saying inexplicable things and using strange language you wouldn't expect them to know. 

'The most common explanation that parents give for these behaviors is that their child has 'an imaginary friend' because that's often the way these things present themselves. 

'But I've had children brought to me by parents who have been utterly baffled and at the end of the day, having worked with the child, the conclusion he or she has lived before has been inescapable.' 

Dr Jim Tucker is the author of the US report and an afterlife expert and child psychiatrist at the University of Virginia. 

In one instance a five-year-old boy who lived near the site of an historic battlefield in the south of England began making strange disclosures to his mum and dad. 

As they drove past the site, the boy - who was yet to study any history in school - told them: 'That is the field where I died before.' 

The mother and father put it down to play acting until the youngster continued: 'I remember that place because the mud was so deep it went over my gaiters.' 

Mr. Rae said: 'Understandably, they found it baffling that a lad of such a young age would use language of that kind, it's a word he couldn't have known, and they came to me in the hope of finding some answers. 

'That young man went on to make other disclosures about his past life in which he'd died in battle using detail he couldn't have otherwise known and my presumption at the end of the day was that it could very well be a past life.' 

Hypnotist and past lives expert Tony Rae has warned parents not to dismiss children when they have visions or memories that cannot immediately be explained. 

Other parents have shared similar stories of their own children. 

 One said on the Mumsnet forum: 'My three-year-old has told us many times that he died in a speedboat accident. He described what happened then he fell in and sunk. He said he was a much older man and it was very sad. Pretty spooky. I didn't even know he knew what a speedboat was. 

 'It only came about as we saw some boats in the river, and he started saying that he had been on a boat. I told him he hadn't been on a boat yet and he said, "yes I have, that's how I died". Then proceeded to go into detail about how it happened. 

'Dying on speedboats certainly isn't a topic of conversation in our house although obviously he may have heard it somewhere. For him to say he was a much older man than he is now is strange'. 

Such instances are not unusual to Tony Rae.