Marie also knows that she is not alone — that since the 1960s, more than 2,200 children from across the world have described apparent recollections from a previous life, all documented in a database maintained by the Division of Perceptual Studies within the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

“Advice to Parents of Children who are Spontaneously Recalling Past Life Memories,” reads the headline on the page of the University of Virginia School of Medicine’s website, and further down, “Contact Us,” and that is how they come to the attention of Jim Tucker.

As director of the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) at the University of Virginia for the past 10 years, Tucker has worked directly with nearly 150 families, making comprehensive records of children’s descriptions of past-life memories.

Stevenson’s ideas faced no shortage of criticism from the scientific community: Some maintain that consciousness is generated by the brain and therefore cannot survive beyond its death; others have speculated that the children he documented could be reciting “false memories,” having been unintentionally pushed toward a particular narrative by their parents.

That impression is echoed by Tom Shroder, a former Washington Post editor and author of “Old Souls: Compelling Evidence From Children Who Remember Past Lives,” who accompanied Stevenson as he studied cases in Lebanon and India.

It didn’t feel lucky in the beginning, when Ryan was waking up sobbing at night and describing things his mother couldn’t fathom: that he remembered living in Hollywood in a big white house with a swimming pool.

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