In replacement reincarnation, a person remembers the life of someone who died after he or she was born. In psychical research, these cases have been called anomalous-date cases, possession, and parakaya pravesh, a Sanskrit and Hindi term that indicates a wandering spirit that takes possession of a living body. Unlike what in popular parlance are called walk-ins, replacement reincarnation brings with it an abrupt and complete change of personality, memory and self-identification.

Content

1. Possession or Reincarnation?

2. Replacement Reincarnation vs Walk-Ins

3. Post-Natal Replacement Reincarnation

• Introduction to Post-Natal Replacement Reincarnation

• Ruprecht Schulz (Germany)

• Juta (Thailand)

• Sudhakar Misra (India)

• Jasbir Lal Jat (India)

• Ca Hieu’s Daughter (Vietnam)

• Iris Farczády (Hungary)

• Sumitra Singh (India)

• The Hunter of Henan (China)

• Mrs Li (China)

4. Pre-Natal Replacement Reincarnation

• Introduction to Pre-Natal Replacement Reincarnation

• Toran (Titu) Singh (India)

5. Planned and Induced Replacement Reincarnation

• Introduction to Planned and Induced Replacement Reincarnation

• The Fourth Dalai Lama (Tibet)

• Karma Chagsmed Sprulsku (Tibet)

• 'Khrulzhig Rigpoche (Tibet)

• Mé Thôn-Tsampo (Tibet)

6. Understanding Replacement Reincarnation

Possession or Reincarnation?

Ian Stevenson, the pioneer of systematic reincarnation research, held that the difference between possession and reincarnation ‘lies in the extent of displacement of the primary personality achieved by the influence of the “entering” personality’.1 He described a continuum of possession states, from an over-shadowing influence in the Thompson-Gifford case2, through the thirteen-week possession of Lurancy Vennum by Mary Roth,3 to a longer term possession by the spirit of a deceased person in the case of Jasbir Jat4 (described below).

Stevenson’s definition of possession as ‘displacement of the primary personality’ led him to include reincarnation cases with intermissions (intervals between death and rebirth) of under nine months in length as instances of possession, on the assumption that the ‘primary personality’ connected with its body at conception.5 However, this assumption may not be warranted. In some animistic tribal cultures, stillbirths are said to occur when no spirit has attached itself to the body, and it may be that a spirit can join a body at any point during gestation without necessarily displacing one that was there before it.6

James Matlock proposes defining ‘possession’ as ‘the occupation of a body by a spirit’, which would allow all reincarnation to be considered possession, albeit a relatively long-term or permanent possession. When a reincarnation is terminated and superseded by another reincarnation in the same body, we may appropriately speak of ‘replacement reincarnation’. In the majority of cases that have come to the attention of researchers, the replacement occurred after birth, hence it is ‘postnatal replacement reincarnation’. Replacement in the womb is theoretically possible with intermissions of under nine months; this may be termed ‘prenatal replacement reincarnation’. There are in addition a few cases in which the replacement was planned before death or intentionally induced, 'planned' or 'induced replacement'.7 This article adopts Matlock’s terminology.

Replacement Reincarnation vs Walk-Ins

Replacement reincarnation may easily be confused with what are popularly called walk-ins, and the terms are sometimes assumed to be synonymous.8 However, there are significant differences between the replacement phenomenon and walk-ins.

As the examples of replacement reincarnation described below show, replacement involves an abrupt and complete substitution of one controlling spirit by another. Personalities and memory streams are irrevocably altered. Moreover, the replacing personalities are those of other regular people, then recently deceased. Replacement reincarnation has been described in societies round the world, from as early as eighteenth century China.

The American writer Ruth Montgomery introduced the walk-in phenomenon in her 1979 book Strangers Among Us.9 She described walk-ins as 'enlightened beings' which take possession of human bodies with the mission of helping repair lives and lead humanity into a new age of spiritual progress. Walk-ins introduce new personalities and interests, but do not entirely displace the old memory streams, which are retained due to their instantiation in cellular memory. Walk-ins negotiate their entry with the 'walk-out' and only enter with permission, but afterwards, walk-ins are not aware of who they are. Montgomery identified walk-ins of the past as including Abraham Lincoln, Emanuel Swedenborg and Mahatma Gandhi.10

Although this concept of walk-ins as enlightended beings continues to be promoted in popular writings,11 one also now finds the idea that they may be regular people, who wish to continue their lives, but not necessarily with the goal of aiding mankind. In one recent book, the walk-in is said to be an old boyfriend of the author, who takes over her husband's body with his permission.12 Unlike replacement reincarnation, purported walk-in claims have yet to be studied by psychical researchers. Although the concept is well known in the popular sphere, its evidential status is unclear.13

Post-Natal Replacement Reincarnation

Introduction to Post-Natal Replacement Reincarnation

Post-natal replacement reincarnation happens when the spirit which has been with a body from birth is supplanted by another spirit, bringing with it a radical change of personality and self-identification. These cases are rare, yet may be more common than is realized. By 2001 Stevenson knew of ten cases of this type,14 and others have come to light since then.15 Jürgen Keil, who investigated reincarnation cases in Turkey, Thailand and Myanmar says that he heard of ‘something like 30 to 50’ of them.16 Unfortunately, Keil tells us nothing about these cases, except for noting that in one from Turkey, the child subject was fifteen to eighteen days old when the replacement occurred.17 A possible Sri Lankan case is mentioned by HSS Nissanka18 and a Lebanese Druze case by Littlewood19, but too briefly to assess.

Three of the nine replacement cases summarized below (Ruprecht Schulz, Jaspar Jat, and Sumitra Singh) were investigated in depth and reported in the scholarly literature. Accounts of two others (Juta and Sudhakar Misra) were presented more briefly by their investigators. There is uncertainty about the Hungarian case of Iris Farczády, which began in the 1930s, with its most recent investigators disagreeing about how best to interpret it, perhaps in part because they were aware of only one other case (Sumitra Singh) with which to compare it. All except the last two Chinese cases are from the twentieth century. The ten cases are presented in the order of the case subject’s age at replacement. 

The length of time from birth until replacement varies from a day or so to several years.20 In the majority of known cases, the replacement came by three years of age, whereas in two of them, it came in the teens. The replacement is often marked by severe, apparently terminal, illness, from which the subject unexpectedly recovers. Old personalities disappear and are replaced by radically different ones. The subjects identify themselves by different names and feel confused and out of place in what they claim are their new conditions. In most cases of this sort that occur at age three or after, the replacing personalities give enough information about the people they believe themselves to have been that these people can be traced and are found to have died shortly (usually a few months) before the replacement transpired. With older subjects, the replacement (or permanent possession) may be preceded by a succession of temporary possessions.

The case summaries are arranged according to the age of the subject at replacement, from the youngest to the eldest.

Ruprecht Schulz (Germany)

Ruprecht Schultz investigated his own case and related it to German newspapers, whose stories brought it the attention of researchers. Hans Bender and Karl Müller, as well as Ian Stevenson, looked into it, and Stevenson published his report in European Cases of the Reincarnation Type.21

Ruprecht was five weeks old when the man whose life he recalled killed himself, but there is no mention of whether he suffered any illness around that time. As a child, he sometimes pointed to his temple with his finger extended as if it were a gun and said, ‘I shoot myself.’ He had a keen interest in ships and shipping and collected pictures and models of ships, a rather odd hobby for someone living in land-locked Berlin. As an adult he started his own business, but was risk-averse, known among his friends to be ‘security conscious’. These behaviours, interests and attitudes fell into place when he discovered his previous identity.

He was already in his fifties, faced with a situation of withdrawing account books from a wall safe night after night. He had the feeling he had done this before and asked himself when and where. After a while, images of a man dressed in fine clothes, perusing an account book, came to his mind. Realizing that he was ruined, the man retireved a revolver shot himself. Ruprecht sensed that the man was involved in importing timber and that he lived in a seaside town. The memories included enough clues for him to figure out that he had been a timber importer and lumber merchant named Helmut Kohler. He tracked down Kohler’s son, who confirmed his memories. Kohler had made a bad business decision and was in danger of bankruptcy, when he was robbed by his accountant, and killed himself as a result.

Juta (Thailand)

Juta, a Thai boy, was four months old when his mother’s elder brother was killed in a traffic accident. Three or four months later, he contracted a respiratory illness and ran a high fever for several days, his body convulsing and his teeth chattering from chills. After he recovered, his family noticed two dark spots on his upper left arm. Almost triangular in shape and about a quarter of an inch across, the spots matched marks in the same place on his uncle’s left arm. They were the start of a tattoo which had not been completed.

When he became old enough to talk, Juta called his grandparents ‘Mother’ and ‘Father.’ He called other members of the family by names appropriate to his uncle, and behaved in other ways like him. When his uncle’s friends visited, Juta would play jokes on them, as the uncle had done. When he was two years old, he would say that said he worked for a construction company in Bangkok, which was true for his uncle. He would point to his uncle’s motorcycle and say it was his. These behaviours lasted until Juta was five, then subsided. The spots on his arm faded then, too.22

Sudhakar Misra (India)

An Indian boy, Sudhakar Misra, was less than a year old when he became seriously ill. At one point, he was taken for dead, but recovered. His memories of an earlier life began to emerge when he we has not quite three. He asked for shoes, which boys his age did not wear, and when told he could not have them, said that he would go to his previous house to get them. He insisted that his name was Vimal, not Sudhakar, and that he had a wife and daughter. His wife had covered him with a sheet when he was dying, and he had kissed her hand.

Sudhakar’s parents did nothing to confirm what he was saying. Like many Indian mothers, his was afraid of losing him to the previous family, and tried to suppress his memories by turning him counter-clockwise on a potter’s wheel. This ritual had no effect, however, and his father took him to one of his (the father’s) cousin’s clinics, which was on the way to the town in which Vimal had lived. The cousin had known Vimal and notified his family, who came to meet Sudhkara. Sudhkara recognized Vimal’s widow, daughter and other relatives. It turned out that Vimal had died of a heart attack six months after Sudhkakar was born. Vimal’s daughter asked if Sudhakar could come live with them, but his mother declined to let him go. Visits between the families were soon discontinued.23

Jasbir Lal Jat (India)

Another Indian boy, Jasbir Lal Jat, was three and a half years old when he contracted smallpox and appeared to die. As it was then late at night, his burial was postponed until morning, but before it could be accomplished, he began to stir again. Jasbir could not speak for several days and it was some weeks before he could express himself clearly. When he could talk, he did not recognize his surroundings or anyone in the Jat family. He asserted that he was Sobha Ram, son of Shankar of Vihedi, and asked go to that village. He had died, he said, when he was given poisoned sweets by a man who owed him money and fell off a chariot during a wedding procession traveling between villages.

The revived Jasbir insisted that he was Brahmin and refused to eat food prepared by the Jat family, who belonged to a lower caste. For almost two years, he would only knowingly eat things cooked in metal vessels by a kindly Brahmin neighbour. This woman’s cooking for Jasbir and the details of his memories came to the attention of Sobha Ram’s family in Vehedi, one of whom decided to visit Jasbir’s village. Jasbir recognized this woman when he saw her, and she told the rest of Sobha Ram’s family when she returned home. After that, Sobha Ram’s father and other family members went to meet Jasbir, who recognized all of them and correctly identified their relationships to Sobha Ram. Sobha Ram’s family confirmed the truth of what Jasbir had been saying, except for the alleged poisoning, about which they knew nothing.

Jasbir was allowed to visit Vihedi and continued to do so as he matured. He had recently been there before Stevenson’s last interview with him, when he was 21. He told Stevenson then that he still had clear memories of Sobha Ram’s life and death.24

Ca Hieu’s Daughter (Vietnam)

In December 2010 the Vietnam Post published a brief account of an apparent case of replacement reincarnation that had occurred in a southern Vietnamese village twenty years before. The nineteen-year-old daughter of a man named Ca Hieu of Ten Viet fell ill and died at around the time that a girl in another village, of an unspecified age but evidently young, became sick and appeared to die. She was about to be buried when she suddenly revived, claiming to be the daughter of Ca Hieu. She pleaded to go to Ten Viet to see him. Her parents were worried that she had gone mad, but in order to pacify her, took her to Ten Viet. The girl led the way to what she said was her home. She ran into the house and embraced Ca Hieu, telling him, ‘Dad, it’s me!’ Ca Hieu did not recognize the girl and was confused until her parents explained the situation. Meanwhile, she walked about the house comfortably and with familiarity, as if it were her own home.25

Iris Farczády (Hungary)

The Hungarian Iris Farczády was a fifteen-year-old26 Spiritualist medium who regularly became possessed by spirits, sometimes for periods that lasted beyond the séances. In 1933 she was taken over by a spirit who identified herself as a 41-year-old Spanish charwoman named Lucía Altarez de Salvio. Lucía did not leave Iris, as earlier communicators had done. She spoke Spanish, understood no Hungarian, and only gradually learned German, the language spoken by Iris’s family. She said that she had died three months before in Madrid, leaving a husband and numerous children. After the transformation, Iris found a new talent in cooking and enjoyed singing Spanish songs and flamenco dancing. The case was investigated first by Karl Röthy,27 then by Cornelius Tabori28, and most recently by Mary Rose Barrington, Peter Mulacz and Titus Rivas 29. Iris was nearly eighty at the time of the last interviews, but still identified herself as Lucía.

Researchers have never been able to find a record of Lucía in Madrid or elsewhere in Spain. Some people who came into contact with Lucía doubted that she really was from Madrid, although it was discovered that besides speaking Spanish responsively, and singing and dancing in a Spanish style, she was acquainted with devices that would have been appropriate to a Spanish woman at her purported station in life. Barrington, Mulacz and Rivas asked her how she felt about displacing Iris. Tears came to her eyes as she recalled happily floating in space after her death. She had not asked or expected to be reborn, she said. She had no idea how she had come to replace Iris in her body, and believed that it was not her fault.30

Sumitra Singh (India)

A young married Indian woman of seventeen, Sumitra Singh, began going into trances during which she seemed to be possessed by the goddess Santoshi Ma and others. She predicted her death in three days’ time, and indeed, on the third day, appeared to die, then revived with a distinctly different personality. She now identified herself as another young woman, Shiva, and wanted to be called by that name. She said she had been murdered by her in-laws. She did not recognize anyone in Sumitra’s life and for a while refused to care for her young son or to be a wife to Sumitra’s husband.

Word of Shiva’s reappearance reached Shiva’s father, who went to Sumitra’s home to check out the reports. Shiva recognized him and others of Shiva’s family and friends in person and in photographs – 23 of them altogether. Shiva was much better educated than Sumitra and after she took over, Sumitra’s manner of speaking changed and her literacy level improved substantially. She wrote several letters to Shiva’s family that an expert judged to be closely similar to Shiva’s handwriting when she was alive.31

Shiva related that after her death she had been taken before Lord Yama, the Hindu god of death. Santoshi Ma helped her by hiding her under the plank on which Yama sat, and feeding her. Yama at first said he would allow her another three years of life, in compensation for her premature death, but after the intercession by Santoshi Ma and Lord Hanuman, agreed to send her back for seven years.32 In fact, Sumitra lived for thirteen years after her revival as Shiva. Except for a brief return of Sumitra’s personality on one occasion, Shiva remained in control until the end of her life.33

This case was closely investigated by Stevenson and others. For a more extensive summary, see Shiva/Sumitra.

The Hunter of Henan (China)

The Chinese writer Pu Sonling included a replacement case in his book, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, first published in 1740. A young man from a wealthy family in Henan was out hunting hares with falcons when he fell from his horse, unconcious and apparently dead. As his servants gathered round him, he gradually regained his senses, but did not recognize them and was confused about why he was there. 'How did I get here?' he asked. 'I am a Buddhist priest.' Thinking he was merely delerious, his servants accompanied him home, but once there he refused wine and meat and avoided the society of his wife. Soon he set out for the monastery he believed was his true residence. When he reached there, he asked the monks what had happened to the priest he believed was himself. They told him that he had died suddenly at eighty years and showed them a new grave, in which his body was buried. The man went back to the rich youth's house, but despite his attempts to live as a layman, found that he could not, and returned to the monastery. He explained to the monks what had happened, relating so many details of his priestly career that they accepted him as the old priest returned in the youth's body.34

Mrs Li (China)

This last case, also from China, has the oldest subject of any recorded case of replacement reincarnation. In 1756, a married woman with the surname Li, thirty years old, appeared to die, due to what causes we are not told. Her husband went into a nearby town to buy her a coffin, but when he reached his home with it, was overjoyed to discover her still alive. However, when he went near her, she protested that he must not touch her. She was a Miss Wang, from another village, and was unmarried. How she got there, she did not know. Her frightened husband contacted the Wang family. It turned out that they had just buried an unmarried daughter and they went post haste to the Li house. The revived Mrs Li embraced them and told them so many things about her life as Miss Wang that they had no doubt that she had reappeared in Mrs Li's body. Miss Wang's fiance then came and Mrs Li blushed, showing that she recognized him also. Because she was claimed by both the Wang and Li families, the case was brought before a sub-prefect, who decided that she must be considered to be Mrs Li.35

Pre-Natal Replacement Reincarnation

Introduction to Pre-Natal Replacement Reincarnation

There are many reincarnation cases with intermissions of under nine months in length, more from some cultures than others (see Patterns in Reincarnation Cases). We cannot know how often a replacement of spirit has occurred in these cases, or even if it has happened in them at all. However, when there are discrepancies between marks on the bodies of the case subjects and police or autopsy reports of the people whose lives they remember, as in the case of Toran (Titu) Singh, we may wonder if a prenatal replacement is involved.

Toran (Titu) Singh (India)

This case is featured in a video available on YouTube and is treated in another Psi Encyclopedia article.

At less than two years of age, Titu Singh began speaking about the life and death of Suresh Verme, a vendor of transistor radios and a player in the regional black market of Agra, India, who had been assasinated by a shot to the head. He wanted to go to Suresh’s shop in Agra. An elder brother and his friend went there without taking him, and made contact Suresh’s widow. She notified his birth family, several of whom went with her to meet Titu, who responded to the party with great excitement. When taken to the shop and other places known to Suresh, he recognized them, even as attempts were made to mislead him. Titu identified with Suresh intensely and was as active, intrepid and hot-tempered as he had been.36 Titu changed as he grew older, however. He studied yoga and became a university professor.37

Titu had a birthmark on his forehead and a bony protrusion by his left ear, commemorating the fatal bullet’s entry and exit points on Suresh's body. Titu also had three smaller birthmarks on the back of his head, unrelated to Suresh. Although the date of Suresh’s death is documented in police and medical reports, there is a question about Titu’s birth date, so the length of the intermission between the lives is uncertain. Titu’s father thought that he was born three months after Suresh died, and if that is so, the three birthmarks on the back of his head may be associated with an earlier tenant of the body in his mother’s womb, evicted by Suresh in an impulsive desire to get back to avenge himself for his murder. Interestingly, Titu’s mother had a normal pregnancy until her last trimester, but suddenly became sick and remained ill throughout that period.38

Planned and Induced Replacement Reincarnation

Introduction to Planned and Induced Replacement Reincarnation

There are reports from Tibet of planned replacement reincarnation. Before Buddhism reached Tibet, rulers used replacement reincarnation to perpetuate their reigns by being reborn in younger bodies when their older ones wore out,39 and this was continued in into historical times with both political and religious leaders, including the Dalai Lama. In several cases, the planned replacement reincarnation took place before the person died40 and the current fourteenth) Dalai Lama has suggested that he might reincarnate into a named successor before his death.41 In an exceptional case, a child successor was chosen after a lama's death and the replacement was induced by placing the child on the body of the decased lama.42

The Fourth Dalai Lama (Tibet)

In the summer of 1665, French physician François Bernier was told by a Tibetan doctor that when his Grand Lama (the fourth Dalai Lama) 'was very old and on the point of death, he assembled the council, and declared to them that his soul was going to pass into the body of an infant recently born. The child was nourished with tender care; and when he had attained his sixth or seventh year, a large quantity of household furniture and wearing apparel was placed before him, mixed up with his own, and he had the sagacity to discern which part was his own property, and which was not; a decisive proof, the physician observed, how true is the doctrine of the transmigration of souls'.43

Karma Chagsmed Sprulsku (Tibet)

American anthropologist Marcia Calkowski learned about ten accounts of planned reincarnation said to have occurred before death. In two of these cases, the reincarnation was apparently into a child already living at the time. Karma Chagsmed Sprulsku gave evidence of having unusual abillities from a young age and was recognized as the sixth in the lineage of Karma Chagsmeds. When he grew old, he announced that the body of his next incarnation was a twelve-year-old boy to whom he had sent his mind emanation. This was confirmed in a meditative quest by the appropriate authority. The seventh Karma Chagsmed showed the same unusual abilities as had his predecessors.44

'Khrulzhig Rigpoche (Tibet)

In another of Calkowski's cases, an elderly guru by the name of 'Khrulzhig Rigpoche one day visited a family who had a young son. There was an instant rapport between them, so 'Khrulzhig Rigpoche picked up the boy and put him on a seat, placed his amulets and rosary on the boy's lap, and sat back to observe him. He then announced that from that day forward, this boy was 'Khrulzhig rigpoche. His mind had gone to the child, so henceforth people were to go to the boy for rituals, teachings and consultations. His former body, however, lived for another two years.45

Mé Thôn-Tsampo (Tibet)

An even more extraordinary event was observed by Jean-M. Rivière and reported in his 1929 book, A l’ombre des monastères tibétains. Rivière witnessed a ceremony at the death of the head of the Ky-rong Monastery, Lama Mé Thôn-Tsampo. An eight-year-old boy had been identified by ‘astrologers and magicians’ as the appropriate body for the lama’s next incarnation. The boy was placed at the knees of the lama’s embalmed body and the two were covered with a veil. He uttered a cry and when he emerged from under the veil, proclaimed that he was Lama Mé Thôn-Tsampo. There were noticeable changes in the boy’s demeanour. Before he had looked afraid, but now he was in command. He discussed Buddhist doctrine and made prophecies. He was presented a group of objects as a test and without hesitation picked out those that had belonged to the lama.46

Understanding Replacement Reincarnation

The idea that one spirit may replace another in control of a body may seem strange and exceedingly unlikely, but it is attested in these cases from around the world and across time. There is no agreement among commentators that the cases are what they seem to be, however. Barrington, Mulacz and Rivas are divided over the best way to understand what happened to Iris Farczády. Barrington provisionally accepts it is a case of possession, but Mulacz shies away from the implication of post-mortem survival and is content to declare the case a mystery, whereas Rivas favors dissociation plus cryptomnesia.47  Stephen Braude thinks that dissociation plus a motivated super-psi is the answer for the Sumitra Singh and Jasper Jat cases, although he admits that that is more of a stretch in Jasbir’s case, given how young he was when the change began.48 Robert Almeder,49 Nahm,50 and Matlock51 accept the cases as possession or replacement reincarnation.

Matlock views reincarnation as possession by its nature and argues that whether we designate a case as involving possession or reincarnation should depend on how long the possession lasts. Reincarnation is simply a long-term possession, he thinks. From this perspective, the short-term possessions that Iris Farczády experienced during her mediumship are ‘possession’, whereas the lasting possession by Lucía counts as ‘reincarnation’. Similarly, Santoshi Ma and the other spirits that manifested in Sumitra Sharma before the coming of Shiva possessed her, but Shiva reincarnated in her.52

Cases of replacement reincarnation closely resemble cases of reincarnation without replacement.53 The same psychological identification with the previous person, veridical episodic memories of that person’s life and similarities of personality and behaviour show up in both types of case. In both, there are procedural memories, such as Sumitra’s improved literacy and Iris’s ability to cook, sing and dance in ways appropriate to a Spanish charwoman. There are recognitions of people and places associated with the previous life in both types of case. However, there are also some differences.

For the most part, physical carryovers are missing from post-mortem replacement reincarnation, but minor effects like the spots on Juta's arm may occur with replacement reincarnation, consistent with the idea that physical signs associated with reincarnation are psychogenic.54 Memories appear to last longer with replacement reincarnation, especially when the replacement occurred at three years or later. Jasbir remembered Sobha Ram at least until he was 21, when Stevenson last saw him, and Sumitra Singh and Iris Farczády retained their memories until the end of their lives.

Post-natal replacements are usually but not invariably preceded by the subject’s illness and apparent death. In one of Stevenson’s as-yet-unpublished cases, the illness came after the replacement rather than before.55 There is no clear pattern to how replacement comes about, from the previous person’s side. Lucía was content in her post-mortem state and could not say how or why she displaced Iris in her body. Sumitra said that Yama had allotted her another seven years of life. After reviving as Sobha Ram, Jasbir said that he had been led to Jasbir’s body by a holy man.56 The Tibetan planned replacement cases appear not to involve illness, but we have so little information about these cases we cannot sure what is going on in them.57

Clearly, replacement reincarnation is not the same thing as the walk-in phenomenon described by Ruth Montgomery in Strangers among Us. According to Montgomery, walk-ins are ‘high-minded entities permitted to take over the bodies of human beings who wish to depart this life. Their mission is to lead us into an astonishing new age’.58 The cases of replacement reincarnation that have been studied by psychical researchers provide no support for these suppositions.

James G Matlock

Source: https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/replacement-reincarnation

Contents

1. Shiva Tripathi

2. Sumitra Singh

3. Investigations

4. The Transformation

5. Intermission Period

6. Separation Between the Families

7. Verified Statements

8. Contact and Recognitions

9. Behaviours

10. Literacy Levels

11. Sumitra’s Later Life

12. Possession, Reincarnation or Both?

13. The Super-Psi Hypothesis

Shiva Tripathi

Shiva Tripathi was born on 24 October 1962 to a family of the Brahmin caste. Her father, Ram Siya Tripathi, was a college lecturer. Shiva grew up in the city of Etawah and graduated from college with a BA in home economics. At age eighteen, she entered into an arranged marriage with Chhedi Lal, and moved in with his family in the small town of Dibiyapur, according to Indian custom. The couple had two sons nicknamed Rinku and Tinku.

There was considerable animosity between Shiva and her in-laws. The researchers who first investigated the case speculated that the in-laws were irritated by Shiva’s superior education and more urbane manners.1 However an Indian psychologist, Parmeshwar Dayal, who also investigated the case, wrote that Shiva’s family by marriage considered her dowry insufficient, and often complained about this verbally and in letters.2 Whatever the cause, the quarrel came to a head in late May 1985, when Shiva’s in-laws forbade her to attend an exam (or according to a different source, the wedding of a member of her birth family). On the evening of 18 May, Shiva’s maternal uncle by marriage visited the family and was told by a tearful Shiva that her mother-in-law and one of her sisters-in-law had beaten her. He tried to calm matters, to no avail.

The next morning, the uncle heard that Shiva’s corpse had been found on railway tracks at a nearby station. Her in-laws said she had thrown herself in front of a train. Reincarnation researcher Ian Stevenson and his colleagues interviewed the uncle and four other people who said they had seen her body on the morning of 19 May, prior to cremation. When discovered, it had been lying between the two rails, and was intact except for an injury to the head. According to Shiva’s sister Uma, she and her husband were the first to see the body: she said ‘the head was bashed and the brains were showing, almost like pulp’.3

The uncle requested that cremation be delayed until Shiva’s father could be brought, but while he was travelling to fetch Ram Siya Tripathi, the in-laws obtained permission from local authorities to cremate Shiva’s body, expediting the burning by adding fuel oil. There were rumours in Dibiyapur that people had seen Shiva’s in-laws carrying her to the railway station under cover of darkness.

By the time Tripathi arrived at Dibiyapur, his daughter’s corpse was ashes and bone. He reported the death to police, who began an inquiry. Shiva’s husband and father-in-law were arrested but then released for lack of evidence. Her mother-in-law and sister-in-law went into hiding for some months, and were arrested when they returned in 1986. Eventually they too were released due to lack of evidence. Several newspapers ran stories about the death and the murder accusation.

Sumitra Singh

Sumitra was born around 1968, the daughter of a male native of Angad ka Nagla in Etawah District. The family was of the Thakur (warrior/landlord) caste, one level below the Brahmin caste. Her mother died when she was eleven; earlier she was often separated from one or both parents, and lived for eight years with an older cousin in a neighbouring district. Sumitra never attended school but was taught rudimentary reading and writing by the cousin, who had attended school only for a year or two.

When Sumitra was thirteen, her family arranged a marriage with Jagdish Singh of the village of Sharifpura, and moved in with his family. Just as her father had been, her husband was often absent, sometimes for months at a time, pursuing employment in Delhi. After three years of marriage, she gave birth to a boy in December 1984.

A month or two later, Sumitra began having episodes of loss of consciousness, or trance, in which her eyes would roll upward and she would clench her teeth. These events varied in duration from a few minutes to a full day. Sometimes she would say afterwards that she had been possessed by the goddess Santoshi Mata, of whom she was a devotee. On two occasions she was apparently possessed briefly by communicating personalities, one a Sharifpura woman who had drowned herself in a well, the other a man from another part of India. Her family sought the aid of local healers, to no avail.

On about 16 July 1985, Sumitra predicted that she would die three days later. On 19 July, after an unexplained fever, she lost consciousness and appeared to die. Eyewitnesses agreed that her respiration and pulse stopped and her face drained of blood for at least five minutes. But as her family members began mourning her, she came back to life. Her identity appeared to have completely changed. She now called herself Shiva Tripathi.

Investigations

This case was first investigated by Stevenson and fellow reincarnation researcher Satwant Pasricha independently, having been brought to their attention in October 1985, when each was sent a newspaper article about it. Their principal method was to interview people who had witnessed Sumitra’s apparent death and subsequent transformation, and members of Shiva’s family. Pasricha carried out a series of interviews in November 1985. In February and March 1986, Stevenson, Pasricha and a third researcher, Nicholas McClean-Rice, re-interviewed most of the same informants as well as numerous others in Sharifpura, Angad ka Nagla and four other towns and villages in neighbouring districts. In November 1986, February 1987 and October 1987, Stevenson and Pasricha interviewed informants who had not been interviewed before to confirm that the two families had not had previous contact. Pasricha acted as interpreter and took notes in Hindi, while Stevenson and McClean-Rice took notes in English. Some tape recordings were also made.

The researchers also studied newspaper reports of Shiva’s death and the murder allegation, and viewed the photos of Shiva’s family members whom Sumitra had correctly identified, despite not having known them as Sumitra before the transformation.4

Psychologist Parmeshwar Dayal carried out an investigation concurrently and presented it at a conference in India in March 1987. As well as interviewing Sumitra and the families, Dayal asked people who knew her well to complete a psychological questionnaire, and performed a Rorschacht test on Sumitra herself; he also had a handwriting analysis performed on three letters, two written by Shiva and another said to have been written by Sumitra following the transformation.5

Two later attempts at follow-up investigations were made, but in both cases Sumitra and her husband Jagdish Singh could not be contacted. In 2009, Antonia Mills and Kuldip Dhiman learned from the Singh family in Sharifpur that Sumitra had died in 1998 and Jagdish in 2008. Mills and Dhiman were able to obtain two previous unpublished letters written by Shiva and by Sumitra after her changeover; they also interviewed Shiva’s parents, sister, brother and other relatives, Shiva’s husband, son and mother-in-law, and Sumitra’s brother-in-law, sister-in-law and other associates. The purpose of this follow-up investigation was to reassess the case, learn whether Sumitra had continued to identify as Shiva, and compare the case with other cases both of possession and reincarnation. Mills and Dhiman also revisited Dayal’s handwriting comparison in the light of the two newly-found letters. They published their findings in 2011.6

The Transformation

As Sumitra’s father recounts in a BBC film documentary on Stevenson’s research,7 when Sumitra awakened she appeared not to recognize her surroundings or the people around her. She spoke very little for a day, then began saying that her name was Shiva and she had been murdered by her in-laws in Dibiyapur. She wanted nothing to do with Sumitra’s husband and infant son, but wanted to be taken to see Shiva’s two children. She stated many details about Shiva and her life that the researchers learned from relatives who had been witness to the statements.

Sumitra’s family told interviewers that at this time they had known nothing of a woman named Shiva who had died in Dibiyapur. They first thought that Sumitra had gone insane, then that she was possessed, so they made no attempt to verify the stated facts. According to Dayal, because she was deemed possessed, she was ‘cruelly tortured continuously for a long period by Ohjas (exorcists or spirit healers) for redemption and cure’.8 It was to no avail; she remained in the Shiva persona, apart from a brief re-emergence of Sumitra when she ‘became confused for a few hours and seemed to resume her ordinary personality’9 in the autumn of 1986.

Intermission Period

Dayal noted that Shiva, once awakened in the body of Sumitra, claimed to have had memories from the intermission between Shiva’s death and her awakening. Sumitra’s father told Dayal that she had told him she had been brought before Lord Yama, the Hindu god of death. She saw people with their feet turned backward being punished according to their karma, some being whipped, some being thrown into boiling water. The goddess Santoshi Mata came to her aid, hiding her under the plank on which Yama sat, and feeding her. After some days Sumitra begged for mercy from Yama, who agreed to send her back for seven more years of life.10

Separation Between the Families

Stevenson and his colleagues were careful to ascertain that the two families had not been in contact prior to these events. Dibiyapur and Sharifpura are about 60 miles apart. Shiva’s family likewise maintained that they had known nothing of Sumitra’s family prior to the events. As well as being geographically separated, the two families were of different castes and educational levels, and followed very different lifestyles, one urban and professional, the other rural and agricultural.

However, some information was available in the newspaper reports about Shiva’s suspected murder. Stevenson and his colleagues were careful to compare her statements to these articles in order to identify information given by her that they did not contain.11

Verified Statements

Stevenson and his colleagues counted nineteen correct statements from Sumitra that were not given in any newspaper report. These showed apparent paranormal knowledge of:

• a particular yellow sari that Shiva had owned

• a watch she had owned, and the box in which it was kept in the Tripathi home before she married and moved out

• the order in which Shiva’s maternal uncles were born

• a pet name for Shiva used by her family

• the names of two schools where Shiva had studied

• the pet names of Shiva’s two children

• the names of two friends

• the names of Shiva’s two brothers, two of her sisters, two of her maternal uncles, a maternal aunt by marriage and a nephew

Contact and Recognitions

While visiting Dibiyapur, Shiva’s father Ram Siya Tripathi heard a rumour that his deceased daughter had possessed a girl in Sharifpura. However, it was some three months before he visited Sharifpura, on 20 October 1985, having first had an associate check the story; he was further delayed by monsoon rainfall. Sumitra wept when they met, although it cannot be claimed that she recognized him since she had been told he was Shiva’s father.

Tripathi now showed Sumitra some pictures in a photograph album. She correctly identified all six family members in a photograph that had been taken eighteen years earlier: Shiva’s parents, grandmother, brother, sister, and Shiva herself. She recognized all five of the Tripathi children shown in another picture, and Shiva’s mother, brother and maternal aunt in a third. Upon seeing a photo of Shiva’s young son Tinku, Sumitra began to cry and asked where Tinku and Rinku were. Upon seeing a photo of Shiva’s sister-in-law, she said, ‘this is Rama Kanti, who hit me with a brick’. This statement convinced Tripathi entirely that Sumitra was his daughter returned. Of seventeen people in eight photographs, she identified twelve without hesitation and three with some hesitation, failing to recognize only two.

Stevenson and colleagues counted as twelve the number of friends and relatives of Shiva that Sumitra recognized without prompting or other cues. They included:

• Shiva’s maternal uncle by marriage (recognized on the second attempt)

• Shiva’s mother, recognized on Sumitra’s visit to Etawah (Tripathi attempted to confuse her by saying her mother was in a group of women near the house, but Sumitra declared she was not there, found her inside the house and embraced her in tears, as both Shiva’s parents describe in the documentary.12

• a second maternal uncle

• a third maternal uncle, who had grown a beard after Shiva’s death, whom she identified by name as soon as he spoke, recognizing his voice

• Shiva’s nephew

• Shiva’s sister

• a friend from Shiva’s youth, whom Shiva had not seen in the eight years prior to her death, whom she happened to meet in a different town, and whom she addressed as ‘Jiji’, meaning ‘sister’, a form used by close female friends in India

In total, Sumitra recognized 23 of Shiva’s relatives and friends either in person, in photographs, or both.

Conversely, Sumitra was no longer able to recognize people in her own family: her husband, her nine-month-old son, her in-laws, her father when he visited, the cousin she had lived with for eight years, and the cousin’s husband. She was also confused about places, commenting when told of a field that was used as a latrine, ‘We have a latrine inside the house’, which was true of both homes in which Shiva had lived.

Behaviours

Sumitra’s behaviours changed markedly after her transformation, being appropriate to a high-caste, educated woman – Shiva had been a Brahmin with a university degree – and not at all that of the rural village family Sumitra had been born into. In the documentary, Pasricha noted that Sumitra now wore her sari in a more dignified way and wore sandals instead of going barefoot.13 Sumitra also became an early riser, as Shiva had been.

Sumitra now refused to respond unless she was addressed as Shiva. She also became more formal in the way she addressed other people, including her husband and his parents. On the grounds of her higher caste, she behaved snobbishly towards her in-laws, even asking her husband to wash his plates and utensils while they were visiting a Brahmin home, since he was of a lower caste. She refused to participate in an important Hindu ritual in which a sister ties a string around her brother’s wrist, despite her brother begging her to do so.

Sumitra refused at first to be intimate with her husband or acknowledge her baby son, claiming he was a product of Jagdish’s previous marriage. Eventually, however, she accepted the roles of wife and mother, while still insisting she was Shiva. She is reported to have said ‘If I look after this child, God will take care of them [Shiva’s children]. If I neglect this child, would God not punish me?’

Literacy Levels

Prior to her transformation, Sumitra’s level of literacy was rudimentary. She had never attended school and was taught only a little reading and writing by a cousin who herself had only one year of primary schooling: she was said variously to have been unable to write at all, or at best to write the occasional letter. Her husband said she wrote ‘a very little, like a child in kindergarten’.14 In contrast, Shiva had written frequently to her birth family following her marriage. After the transformation, Sumitra’s ability to read and write improved strikingly. Stevenson and his colleagues wrote, ‘We observed her in both these activities and found her able to read and write Hindi with great facility.’ Her letter-writing became frequent, and she often wrote to the Tripathi family, just as Shiva had.15

During Mills’s and Dhiman’s investigation, Ram Siya Tripathi had copies made of his collection of letters, articles and other memorabilia of Shiva. The collection included Dayal’s 1988 paper, along with five letters, two previously-unpublished – a total of four letters written by Shiva and one by Sumitra post-transformation. In their 2011 case report, Mills and Dhiman provided Dhiman’s English translations.16

In her letters to her parents following her marriage, Shiva wrote frequently that she missed them, expressed concerns about not having enough time to visit or write them or study for her BA, asked to be kept posted on how her sister and friends were doing in their studies, and shared news. The latest-dated letter, written five months before her death, reveals distress: ‘Every night I get scared in my dreams and sometimes I wake up screaming.’

Sumitra’s letter was written to Tripathi about five months after she reawakened as Shiva. The handwriting is hurried, less tidy and with far more words crossed out. The tone is desperate. She wrote repeatedly, ‘I don’t like it here,’ pleaded to be taken away, avowed that she was indeed Shiva, and even wrote, ‘God is bad as he has dumped me here.’ Dhiman assessed the writing ability of Sumitra in this letter as at least Grade 10.

Mills and Dhiman note that the way Sumitra signed her letter and the expressed sentiments of missing her family bear similarities to Shiva’s letter-writing habits and style.

In Ian Stevenson’s assessment, although Sumitra’s level of literacy had increased significantly, it still fell somewhat short of Shiva’s. Commenting on this, Stevenson compared the situation to ‘a master pianist sitting down to play a broken-down piano. It wouldn’t sound the same as a highly-tuned piano. You have to allow for the new instrument.’17

Sumitra’s Later Life

Interviewed by Mills and Dhiman,18 Sumitra’s family members in Sharifpur all reported that Sumitra remained ‘Shiva’ to the end of her life, a period of thirteen years. According to Jagdish Singh’s younger brother Arjun, their mother ‘did feel odd about it, but later she got used to it’.

For their part, Tripathi family members concurred that Sumitra had retained the persona of Shiva as long as they retained contact with her, up until 1988, and that it was somewhat hard for them. Three of Shiva’s siblings all said independently, ‘You see the body, not the soul.’ Her sister Uma added that Sumitra ‘loved me the same way… only the face was different’. 

Ram Siya Tripathi recalled that Shiva had told him she was saddened to find herself in a strange body. He said she would ‘point to a blemish on her foot and some marks on her face and tell him that these marks remind her that “this body is not mine.” ’ At first the Tripathis welcomed Sumitra and Jagdish into the family, finding Jagdish a job in Etawah. But due partly to the social stigma of a man living with his wife’s parents, and partly to Jagdish’s difficulty retaining employment, the couple returned to Sharifpur, and the Tripathis slowly distanced themselves from them. They were not aware that Sumitra had passed away until Dhiman told them, and were saddened at the loss of their ‘dharma daughter’, that is, she who had returned due to cosmic justice.

During a visit to Dibiyapur, Mills and Dhiman learned that Shiva’s sons Tinku and Rinku, now in their teens, had no memory of their mother. Rinku was being raised by his paternal aunt, the person suspected of killing Shiva.

Possession, Reincarnation or Both?

Journalist Tom Shroder remarked that, while subjects in others cases investigated by Stevenson seemed entirely sane, ‘with Sumitra, you had something that looked almost like multiple-personality disorder’. He was particularly puzzled about the episode in which ‘Shiva’, occupying the body of Sumitra, gave way for a short time to the original ‘Sumitra’. How could this be, if Sumitra had in fact died?

The similarity and consistency of the other cases we had studied, and, in a way, their simplicity, contributed to the feeling that they could be real, part of the natural order of things… By contrast, the account of Sumitra’s possession and personality shifts had a disturbing illogic about it, a taint of body-snatching.19

Stevenson created a typology of possession and reincarnation, ranging from partial temporary possession to complete temporary possession to complete permanent possession after birth to reincarnation.20 Of course, he could not be certain whether Sumitra’s experiencing of herself as Shiva would turn out to be temporary or permanent until she died; only when Mills and Dhiman confirmed her death could the condition be considered permanent.

Reincarnation researcher James Matlock coined the term ‘replacement reincarnation’ for cases in which one spirit replaces another permanently without the body dying, such as Sumitra’s. Matlock notes that the replacement usually happens after an (often severe) illness, and that only two age ranges have been observed so far: up to age three, most commonly, and more rarely, as with Sumitra, in the teen years.21

Mills and Dhiman examined Sumitra’s case in the context both of possession cases and reincarnation cases. They note that the duration of a possession can last from a short time to many years, so that for Sumitra to have experienced herself as Shiva for thirteen years is not implausible.22 They observe that while typical reincarnation cases often feature birthmarks or birth defects that echo wounds or injuries sustained by the previous person, this tends not to happen with possession cases, presumably because the body is already formed.23 Following her transformation, Sumitra showed no birthmark reminiscent of the fatal wound to Shiva’s head.

The Super-Psi Hypothesis

In mediumship cases, a communicator who provides information known only to family and friends is often considered to have given evidence of his or her survival of death. However, in at least some cases, such ‘veridical’ information might have been gained by the medium from the sitters, by a telepathic process, giving the spurious appearance of survival.

This so-called ‘super-psi hypothesis’ can also be invoked in cases of the reincarnation-possession type. Philosopher Stephen Braude suggests it may apply in the Shiva-Sumitra case. For instance, he points out that every time Sumitra was asked if she recognized a person, someone was present who knew the answer, making telepathic transfer among the living a plausible alternative to reincarnation or possession.

But in that case, what would the underlying motivation have been? Braude suggests that Sumitra might have constructed the Shiva personality psychically to achieve one or both of two possible objectives: a promotion in caste and/or increased attention from her husband, which she presumably yearned for after a childhood history of frequent abandonment, especially by male figures.24

Braude also questions why, if Sumitra was genuinely Shiva, she did not move back in with her birth family and continue her relationship with her two infant sons.25 As for her increased literacy, he argues this can be explained by ‘latent faculties’ that have been observed to emerge in cases of dissociative identity disorder.26

However, Braude concedes that the consistency of Sumitra’s ability to recognize individuals known to Shiva exceeds that of the best psychics. He also points to the ‘crippling complexity’ that tends to weaken the force of super-psi as an explanation.

Responding to earlier statements by Braude of these ideas, Mills and Dhiman argue that evidence in reincarnation and possession cases convinces not just in terms of abilities or knowledge of facts, but ‘the full embodiment and enactment of personality characteristics’. It was this, they contend, that persuaded Shiva’s relatives that Sumitra had indeed become Shiva.27 They also point out that Sumitra demonstrated no psychic ability, in contrast to mediums, who can apparently psychically contact any number of beings both living and dead. Furthermore, even though she had experienced short-term possessions by other spirits, she remained Shiva, never becoming Sumitra again except momentarily.28 They conclude that the case is ‘one of the strongest indicating that survival after bodily death can occur’.29

But as Shroder points out, it remains mysterious that Sumitra’s original persona reappeared for a short time two years after Shiva’s emergence, just once. Did she return and reclaim her body momentarily? Did her soul remain in the body, latent, and only come out at that time? The truth may never be known.

KM Wehrstein

Source: https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/sumitrashiva-replacement-reincarnation-case