Our children's haunting stories of past lives - from an inexplicable connection with a dead sister to vivid stories of ancient times

 A version of this article was published in the Daily Mail on January 4, 2016

These are Mail readers' haunting descriptions of how their children have startled them with articulate accounts of a past life, seemingly believing they have lived before. 

From a daughter's inexplicable connection with a dead sister who she never met, to descriptions of Nazi gas chambers and ancient Egypt - their families insist the details defy explanation.

The phenomenon has often been reported by parents and was explored in a 2015 book, Memories Of Heaven, by the motivational speaker Dr Wayne Dyer.

Over the years, scores of readers have written to the Mail describing how their own young children have come out with perplexing and sometimes painful ‘revelations’ about their past selves.

While it's not clear where these stories come from inside these young minds - one thing is for certain: they make compelling reading...

Children as young as two or three have given vivid details of former lives, startling parents with their articulate accounts (file photo)

Memories of Egypt

The article about children who feel they have had past lives particularly resonated with me.

When my grandson was about two, he started to talk about ‘his other mummy’. He frequently asked when he would be going back to her.

I was quite spooked and didn’t want to mention it to my daughter.

I asked where he had lived and he told me Egypt, in a house made of mud.

When I asked about his ‘other mummy’, he said he did not know what had happened to her because he had been bitten by a snake and died . . . and he never saw her again.

Eventually, I told my daughter, expecting her to laugh and think it was just his imagination, but she said he had talked to her of his other life.

He continued to mention his past life until he went to school and then it faded away. He is now 12 and cannot remember anything at all about it.

Margaret

‘I am buried over there’

Our youngest child, Estelle, was born 16 years after her sister, Virginia, had died in a car crash aged six months.

Estelle looked very similar to Virginia, with big dark eyes and thick black hair.

When Estelle was a year or so old, just beginning to talk, we were driving near the cemetery where Virginia was buried — the first time we had visited the area since Estelle was born.

Out of the blue, from her baby seat, Estelle said ‘I am buried over there’ and pointed towards the cemetery, which could not be seen from the road. We were shocked, and said nothing.

One night, when she was in bed, she looked at me and said, ‘Can I have a wide straw hat and long dress like I had before with my other Mum and Dad?’ I agreed and asked when that was. ‘A long time ago when I lived in a house with a big field of flowers around it.’

John

‘We feasted on peacocks’

When our daughter, Ella, was about three, we took her to Caernarvon for the first time. As we drove along and the castle came into view, Ella pointed to it and said: ‘I used to live there! When I was a little girl’.

What followed was an astonishing story of her life in that castle. She talked of big parties with lots of people, roaring fires with huge dogs lying around, of eating peacocks and swans.

She wore a long gown that was too big so she tripped on it, and a crown that would slip down over her eyes.

She talked very freely and confidently, in such fascinating detail, that we were stunned into silence.

Kirsty

What followed was an astonishing story of her life in that castle. She talked of big parties with lots of people, roaring fires with huge dogs lying around, of eating peacocks and swans

‘We fly up to see God’

My son, Jamie, must have been about three when he began talking about a little boy called Chris.

I thought it was probably an imaginary friend, as some children have at that age, because he didn’t know any children with that name.

When I asked him about Chris, Jamie said: ‘Chris is a little boy and at night we fly up and see God.’

I thought this was very unusual because my husband and I are not particularly religious.

My mother-in-law then told me that she’d had a brother, who died before she was born. His name was Chris.

I ordered the death certificate and his name was ‘Chris’, rather than ‘Christopher’, and he had died aged four of a childhood illness.

Barbara

Home on the farm

Between the ages of about two and three years, my daughter had memories of a past life. She would play games, as I thought, with her six siblings in which she called herself Julia. She would often stand by her bedroom door, calling them in and ushering them to bed.

The most striking episode came one day when she caught sight of a Victorian-style farm on the television, with a flat-back farm wagon driving past.

She became excited, telling me very urgently to look.

‘We had one of they. We had one of they. Before, before when I was Julia,’ she exclaimed.

I was struck by how definite she was, and also by the colloquial use of ‘they’, not ‘them’ or ‘those’. This was not how she would usually phrase something.

Jill

‘I used to be my uncle’

From his first marriage, in the early Fifties, my late husband Maurice had a son, who died just before he was three.

Three years ago, I was walking with my grandson, Ben, who was then three-and-a-half.

As he strolled by my side, he suddenly said. ‘My Grandad Maurice used to be my daddy when I was a little boy, and then I died.’

Ben had never met his Grandad and certainly never knew he had a son who died, because we never discussed it.

I asked him how old the boy, Neil, was when he died, and he replied that he was three.

I can only assume Ben is a reincarnation of his late uncle. Ben is now almost seven and no longer remembers anything about it.

Kate

My son would march doing the Nazi goose-step

Was my boy once a Nazi?

When my son, 52, was three, he would march around doing a Nazi goose-step, saluting and saying ‘Hi Hitler’.

We found this very strange, as there was no way he could have seen or heard anything like this. We didn’t have a TV.

When he was eight he had some teeth out under anaesthetic at the dentist.

My son failed to come round, but the dentist was unperturbed and just told me to put him to bed at home and keep an eye on him. He ‘slept’ for two days, was a healthy colour, and breathing steadily. I had the strong impression that he was somewhere else.

On the third morning he was back, wide awake. ‘Hello, darling,’ I said, ‘where have you been?’

‘Back in the gas chamber with them all,’ he told me.

He married a German girl, speaks fluent German and lives very happily in Frankfurt, working in the finance sector.

He tells me that he loves Germany, and has no desire to live in England.

Angela

Tears for a lost wife

My son first mentioned that he had been here in a previous life aged three, saying that he used to be a grown-up man whose wife had died before they had children.

One day in the car, he started crying. When I asked what was wrong, he pointed at a tree and said: ‘That’s where my wife died.’ Apparently she had crashed her car. For a while, he would mention odd details about his previous life, and become frustrated when I told him how to do things because, as he would say: ‘I did it when I was a grown up!’

These past lives are very real for small children.

Amy

He knew how to ride

From the age of two-and-a-half, my son, James, would tell us the same story. He had lived in a wooden house with stairs next to a ‘big water’. One day, someone left the door open and he walked out, fell in the water and drowned. He went to heaven, and then he was James.

Aged four, he cried when he saw a horse on the television. He was hitting the screen, saying his horse was waiting, and he had promised it he would go back. He was so upset that I took him to some stables the next day. When a pony was brought out, James knew exactly how to ride, even though he had never even been on a donkey.

A few people I consulted about this all said the same thing. By the age of five he’d stop talking about it, and sure enough he did. It certainly opened my mind and today I am a firm believer in past lives.

Joanne

Was she my grandma?

When my granddaughter was two-and-a-half, we were looking at a magazine photograph of a park. She said: ‘That’s like when I was big and you were little, and I took you for walks in your pram.’

I was struck by her use of the word ‘pram’, instead of ‘buggy’. As a baby, we had lived with my paternal grandparents and I was often taken to the park by my grandma.

Shortly after this, she became obsessed with telling me stories about a cat called ‘Asquid’, and I was struck by the unusual name. Several years later I was telling my uncle about Asquid, and he vividly remembered a childhood book about Asquith the cat, which his mum, my grandma, read to him.

Marilyn

I was struck by her use of the word ‘pram’, instead of ‘buggy’. As a baby, we had lived with my paternal grandparents and I was often taken to the park by my grandma.

‘I need to go home’

When my son was about three, he frequently asked if he could go home, I used to tell him he was at home, but he still said: ‘Can I go home now?’

It really used to unsettle me . One day, he told us that he had lived in a cottage in our town about four miles away. We found out it had been demolished many years before he was born — we had never heard of the place so he could not have heard us talk about it. I am a very sceptical person, but this was totally real.

Mrs S. George

‘I cleaned that church’

When my daughter, Charlotte, was three we were in the car, and you couldn’t see the buildings set back from the road.

Charlotte said out of the blue: ‘Remember when I used to clean the windows of the white church down there?’

As it wasn’t the first odd remark Charlotte had made, curiosity got the better of me and I went to where Charlotte had indicated the church was. Sure enough, there was a church, painted white.

I have asked Charlotte about this since, and she has no recollection of any things she may have said.

Denis

Salute from little soldier

When Diamond, our daughter, was about two, she would use words so uncommon I had to open the dictionary to find their meanings.

When she saw a new food, she would call out its name. Her mother and I would mutter under our breath: ‘This child has been here before.’

Once when she saw a military parade on TV for the very first time, she screamed ‘Soldiers!’ She jumped out of her seat, stood to attention and gave a perfect salute. The men parading were neither at attention nor giving a salute.

When we asked if she was a soldier in her first life, she smiled and replied coyly: ‘Yes, Daddy. I was in the military before.’

Ade

‘When I was a big man’

We have rarely mentioned, for fear of ridicule, the strange responses of my son to learning new skills, and the nightmare that plagued him when he was three.

When we taught him to do things, such as tying his shoelaces, he would constantly tell us: ‘When I was a big man I could do that.’

His recurring nightmare was that he was shot and killed in a pub. Dreadful.

Kate

Memories Of Heaven by Wayne Dyer and Dee Garnes is published by Hay House at £9.99.

[video_shortcode_video_html_5 src="" itemprop="image" content="" data-src=""]

•  A version of this article was published in the Daily Mail on January 4, 2016