University of Virginia Library

Identifying The Individual

"At first we had some
trouble identifying the person
he was talking about. We made
an initial mistake of tentative
identification, When we drew
up a list of all the statements
he had made, they didn't
adequately fit the person we
were thinking about.

"But then, one of our
informants thought of another
person who was a relative of
the first one. So we tried to fit
him into the framework of the
boy's statements, and found
that 95 per cent fit the person
exactly. This was clearly the
person he was talking about.

"Actually the boy made
quite a number of impressive
recognitions of people and
places where this other person
who had died eight years
before him had lived."

"For example, he pointed
to a place where the deceased
man had kept his rifle. The
mother of the deceased man
said there were only two
people who knew where that
rifle was kept – the deceased
man and she.

"That's very plausible,"
concluded Dr. Stevenson,