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Volume 7: Number 4: Article 4
Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons
Ian Stevenson, Department of Psychiatric Medicine, University of
Virginia, School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia 22908
Almost nothing is known about why pigmented birthmarks (moles or nevi)
occur in particular locations of the skin. The causes of most birth
defects are also unknown. About 35% of children who claim to remember
previous lives have birthmarks and/or birth defects that they (or adult
informants) attribute to wounds on a person whose life the child remembers.
The cases of 210 such children have been investigated. The birthmarks
were usually areas of hairless, puckered skin; some were areas of little
or no pigmentation (hypopigmented macules); others were areas of increased
pigmentation (hyperpigmented nevi). The birth defects were nearly always
of rare types. In cases in which a deceased person was identified the
details of whose life unmistakably matched the child's statements, a
close correspondence was nearly always found between the birthmarks
and/or birth defects on the child and the wounds on the deceased person.
In 43 of 49 cases in which a medical document (usually a postmortem
report) was obtained, it confirmed the correspondence between wounds
and birthmarks (or birth defects). There is little evidence that parents
and other informants imposed a false identity on the child in order
to explain the child's birthmark or birth defect. Some paranormal process
seems required to account for at least some of the details of these
cases, including the birthmarks and birth defects.
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