“Stevenson, an expert on psychosomatic medicine, suspected strong emotions are related to a child’s retention of past-life memories. Traumatic deaths, he thought, leave an emotional imprint. Indeed, most of the children he studied claimed that they had met a violent end previously. There was also a gap of a few years between lives; reincarnation is never immediate. And for the most part, souls seemed to stay local. That's to say, the ‘previous personality’ often lived in a distant village, but not quite so far away as to require a passport.”