Excerpts from Wikipedia:

Ian Stevenson (October 31, 1918 – February 8, 2007) was a Canadian-born American psychiatrist, the founder and director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of

He is best known for his research into evidence of reincarnation – the premise that emotions, memories, and even physical bodily features can be passed on from one life to another.^[3] Over his forty years of international research, he amassed three thousand cases of children who claimed to remember past lives.^[4][5][6] Stevenson was the author of around three hundred papers and fourteen books on reincarnation, including Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (1966), Reincarnation and Biology and its simplified version Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect (both 1997), and European Cases of the Reincarnation Type (2003).

Stevenson was cautious in making claims about reincarnation. He emphasized that the information he collected was suggestive of reincarnation but "was not flawless and it certainly does not compel such a belief." He did, however, believe he had produced a body of evidence for reincarnation that should be taken seriously. His position was that reincarnation might possibly represent a third contributing factor, in addition to genetics and the environment, in the development of certain phobias, unusual abilities, and illnesses.

Stevenson acknowledged, however, the absence of evidence of a physical process by which a personality could survive death and transfer to another body, and he was careful not to commit himself fully to the position that reincarnation occurs. He argued only that his case studies could not, in his view, be explained by environment or heredity, and that "reincarnation is the best – even though not the only – explanation for the stronger cases we have investigated. (…) Of the cases we now know, reincarnation--at least for some--is the best explanation that we have been able to come up with. There is an impressive body of evidence and it is getting stronger all the time. I think a rational person, if he wants, can believe in reincarnation on the basis of evidence.

Reincarnation (Rebirth)

Reincarnation is the philosophical and religious concept that nonmaterial essence of a living being begins a new lifespan in a different physical form after biological death In most beliefs involving reincarnation, the soul of a human being is immortaland does not disperse after the physical body has perished. Upon death, the soul merely transmigrates into a newborn baby or into an animal to continue its immortality (The term "transmigration" means the passing of a soul from one body to another after death.)

Reincarnation is a central tenet of Indian religons such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. In various forms, it occurs as an esoteric belief among certain streams of Judaism and pagan religions (including Wicca) and the indigenous people of the Americas and of aboriginal Australians (though most believe in an afterlife). Some ancient Greek historical figures, such asPythagoras, Socrates, and Plato, expressed belief in the soul's rebirth or migration.