By High Desert Medium | Palm Springs Psychic Medium
Reincarnation is one of those subjects that can immediately divide a room.
For billions of people around the world, the idea that consciousness may continue after death and eventually return in another physical life is part of a longstanding spiritual tradition.
For others, reincarnation seems impossible.
But what if we put belief aside for a moment?
What happens when researchers actually investigate people—particularly young children—who appear to remember events from lives they could not possibly have experienced?
That question has been studied for decades at a place some people might find surprising:
The University of Virginia School of Medicine.
Its Division of Perceptual Studies has been investigating children who report memories of previous lives, along with near-death experiences and other questions surrounding consciousness and survival after death. The reincarnation research stretches back to the work of psychiatrist Dr. Ian Stevenson, who spent decades systematically investigating these cases.
And that research continues today.
Children Who Say They’ve Lived Before
Some of the most fascinating reincarnation cases don’t begin with adults undergoing hypnosis or intentionally trying to discover a past life.
They begin spontaneously with young children.
A child may suddenly talk about another family.
Another home.
A former occupation.
A spouse or children they once had.
They may describe how they died.
Sometimes they give names, locations or other details associated with someone who actually lived and died before the child was born.
UVA researchers specifically seek cases in which children spontaneously report detailed information they seemingly could not have learned through ordinary means. Importantly, the researchers advise parents not to prompt or intensely question children, since doing so could influence what the child reports.
That’s an important part of this research.
If you’re genuinely trying to determine whether something unusual is happening, you don’t want adults inadvertently supplying the child with the story.
Dr. Ian Stevenson and Decades of Research
Much of the University of Virginia’s work in this area began with psychiatrist Dr. Ian Stevenson.
Rather than simply collecting interesting stories, Stevenson attempted to investigate the claims systematically.
His work examined reported memories, behavioral similarities, circumstances surrounding the death of the person the child appeared to remember, and—in some particularly unusual cases—birthmarks or birth defects that appeared to correspond with injuries associated with the deceased individual.
Stevenson spent almost forty years studying children who reported memories of previous lives, and his work eventually encompassed cases from numerous cultures and countries.
Later researchers at UVA, including Dr. Jim Tucker and others, continued and expanded this work.
The university’s academic publication record now includes research on past-life memories, psychological characteristics, unusual behaviors, birthmarks, memories of the period between lives and numerous other aspects of these cases.
And the Research Is Still Happening
This isn’t simply an interesting research project from the 1960s or 1970s.
UVA researchers are still studying reincarnation-type cases today.
In 2025, the Division of Perceptual Studies announced a two-year, $750,000 research initiative devoted to investigating children’s reported past-life memories.
And just last month, in August 2026, UVA announced results from a new analysis of 1,678 cases.
Researchers examined what they call the “intermission time”—the period between the death of the person apparently remembered and the birth of the child reporting the memories.
They found a statistical relationship involving the circumstances of death: more unexpected deaths were associated with shorter intervals before the child’s birth. According to UVA, median intervals decreased by roughly 40–45% between the least and most unexpected deaths in the cases analyzed.
The researchers also tested several possible sources of bias, including verification quality and the families’ beliefs about reincarnation, and reported that the pattern remained.
Does that prove reincarnation?
No.
But it certainly gives us something interesting to think about.
Science Doesn’t Require Belief
This is one of the reasons I find the University of Virginia research so fascinating.
You don’t have to begin by believing in reincarnation.
The question can simply be:
What best explains these cases?
Could some involve coincidence?
Certainly.
Could children sometimes pick up information without adults realizing it?
Of course.
Could cultural or family beliefs influence some reports?
That’s a legitimate question too.
Good research should consider conventional explanations before reaching extraordinary conclusions.
But when researchers continue encountering cases containing specific information that appears difficult to explain through ordinary means, the question becomes much more interesting.
UVA itself generally refers to these as “cases of the reincarnation type” or children reporting “purported past-life memories.”
That’s careful language—and I think it’s appropriate.
Research doesn’t need to tell us what to believe.
It gives us evidence to consider.
What Might Reincarnation Tell Us About Consciousness?
For me, the larger question isn’t simply whether we’ve lived before.
It’s:
What are we?
Are we physical bodies that somehow produce consciousness?
Or could consciousness exist independently of the physical body?
My take is everything is consciousness, and it is consciousness creating ourselves, not the other way around.
If consciousness survives physical death, then mediumship, near-death experiences, reincarnation and other seemingly separate phenomena are merely different pieces of the same much larger puzzle.
That’s where this subject becomes particularly interesting to me as a psychic medium.
Reincarnation and Mediumship
Mediumship is based on the idea that consciousness continues after physical death.
When I work as a medium, my intention is to connect with the consciousness of someone who has died and provide information that helps identify and validate that individual for the person receiving the reading.
Reincarnation raises an obvious question:
If someone reincarnates, how can a medium still communicate with them?
I don’t pretend to have a definitive answer, but for me, it would make sense that consciousness never dies. Like energy, it changes form.
Consciousness is much larger than the portion of ourselves expressed through one physical lifetime. Indeed, there may be nothing outside of consciousness.
We tend to think of as an individual personality is but one expression of something greater.
Consciousness doesn’t operate according to the limitations of time, identity and physical location that we experience while we’re alive. Consciousness is not limited to the laws of a 3D world.
Its reality is something many of us are struggling to understand.
I think it’s perfectly acceptable to say:
We don’t know.
That doesn’t make the question any less fascinating.
Maybe We’re More Than One Lifetime
Imagine for a moment that consciousness does continue.
Imagine that the person you are today isn’t the entire story of who you are.
The people we’re inexplicably drawn toward.
Places that somehow feel familiar even though we’ve never visited them.
Talents that seem to come naturally.
Fears we can’t easily explain.
That strange experience of meeting someone for the first time and feeling as though you’ve known them forever.
Are these evidence of past lives?
Not necessarily.
But viewed through the possibility of reincarnation, they certainly raise interesting questions.
And sometimes asking the question is where exploration begins.
We Don’t Need All the Answers to Remain Curious
I don’t believe spirituality requires us to blindly accept everything we’re told.
And I don’t believe skepticism requires us to automatically reject everything we don’t yet understand.
There’s a very large space between those two positions.
That’s where curiosity lives.
The University of Virginia’s decades of research into children reporting previous-life memories doesn’t settle the reincarnation question once and for all.
But the fact that researchers at a major university medical school continue investigating these cases—and are still publishing new findings in 2026—should at least remind us that questions surrounding consciousness, death and what may happen afterward are far from closed.
Perhaps we are more than our bodies.
Perhaps consciousness continues.
Perhaps we’ve been here before.
Or perhaps the truth is stranger and more complicated than any of those possibilities.
Whatever the answer, I think it’s worth remaining curious.
Curious About What Lies Beyond the Physical?
At High Desert Medium, my work explores some of these same questions from a personal rather than academic perspective.
Through psychic and evidential mediumship readings, I help clients seek clarity about their lives and experience connections that may offer a very different perspective on consciousness, Spirit and what happens after physical death.
High Desert Medium serves Palm Springs, Cathedral City, the Coachella Valley and clients worldwide.
Phone and WhatsApp Video sessions are available.
Ready to experience a reading for yourself? Call High Desert Medium at 760-898-2172 to schedule your session.
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