Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence For Past Lives

Book Overview: Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence For Past Lives by Tom Shroder

- Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence For Past Lives is a non-fiction book by journalist Tom Shroder, editor at The Washington Post, who traveled extensively with psychiatrist Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia. Stevenson conducted past life and reincarnation research in Lebanon, India, and the southern states of the U.S. Dr. Stevenson investigated children who spontaneously remembered recent ordinary lives. He was mainly seeking hard evidence such as birthmarks that occur at the sites of injury in the previous life. To him these marks constitute important proof of reincarnation. Many of the stories cannot be dismissed by simple explanations. The events and the recollections are just too incredible.

Dr. Stevenson’s methodology involved listening to stories, comparing and contrasting variants of stories, verification of empirical claims, and constructing long, detailed narratives that attempted to “capture” the complex experience of his informants, who claimed to remember incidents from past lives. At the outset, Shroder saw his role not only as an observer, but also as a skeptic. But as his journey with Stevenson progressed, Shroder found it increasingly difficult to reject the possibility of past lives and I think you may agree once you read the case details of the case of Hanan Monsour / Suzanne Ghanem, which is one of the few that are Western based.

Previous Life / Current Life

The Reincarnation Case of Hanan Monsour / Suzanne Ghanem is a story about a little girl who telephoned her still living past-life husband every day and was heartbroken and angry when he re-married. Hanan was born in Lebanon, in the mid-1930s. When she was twenty, she married Farouk Monsour, a member of a wealthy Lebanese family. The couple had two daughters, named Leila and Galareh. Hanan had a brother named Nabih, who became prominent in Lebanese society, but died as a young man in a plane crash.

After giving birth to her second daughter, Hanan developed heart disease and her doctors advised her not to have any more children. Not heeding the warning, she had a third child, a son, in 1962. In 1963, shortly after the death of her brother Nabih, Hanan’s health started to deteriorate. She then started to talk about dying. Hanan’s husband, Farouk, said that Hanan told him that “she was going to be reincarnated and have lots to say about her previous life.” This was two years before her death.

At age thirty-six, Hanan traveled to Richmond, Virginia to have heart surgery. She tried to telephone her daughter Leila before the operation, but couldn’t get through. Hanan died of complications the day after surgery. Ten days after Hanan died, Suzanne Ghanem was born. Suzanne’s mother told Ian Stevenson that shortly before Suzanne’s birth, “I dreamed I was going to have a baby girl. I met a woman and I kissed and hugged her. She said, ‘I am going to come to you.’ The woman was about forty. Later, when I saw Hanan’s picture, I thought it looked like the woman in my dream.” In other words, Suzanne Ghanem’s mother had a dream that she would have a child that had the appearance of Hanan Monsour, and this dream became reality.

Little Suzanne trying to call her daughter from her previous life!

At 16 months of age, Suzanne pulled the phone off the hook as if she was trying to talk into it and said, over and over, “Hello, Leila?” The Ghanem family didn’t know who Leila was. When she got older, Suzanne explained that Leila was one of her children in her past life and that she was not Suzanne, but Hanan. The family asked, “Hanan what?” Suzanne replied, “My head is still small. Wait until it is bigger, and I might tell you.”

Suzanne Names & Identifies 13 Past Life Family Members By the time she was two, she had mentioned the names of her other children, her husband, Farouk, and the names of her parents and her brothers from the previous lifetime—thirteen names in all.

In trying to locate Suzanne’s past life family, acquaintances of the Ghanems made inquiries in the town where the Monsours lived. When they heard about the case, the Monsours visited Suzanne. The Monsours were initially skeptical about the girl’s claims, but they soon became believers when Suzanne identified all of Hanan’s relatives, picking them out and naming them accurately. Suzanne also knew that Hanan had given her jewels to her brother Hercule in Virginia, prior to her heart surgery, and that Hanan instructed her brother to divide the jewelry among her daughters. No one outside of the Monsour family knew about the jewels.

Before she could read or write, Suzanne scribbled a phone number on a piece of paper. Later, when the family went to the Monsour’s home, they found that the phone number matched the Monsour’s number, except that the last two digits were transposed. As a child, Suzanne could recite the oration spoken at the funeral of Hanan’s brother, Nabih. Suzanne’s family taped the recitation, though the tape was eventually lost.

Suzanne Still Loves Farouk, her Past Life Husband At five years of age, Suzanne would call Farouk three times a day. When Suzanne visited Farouk, she would sit on his lap and rest her head against his chest. At 25 years of age, Suzanne would still telephone Farouk.

Suzanne Identifies Past Life Friends from Photos Farouk, a career policeman, accepted Suzanne as the reincarnation of his deceased wife, Hanan. To support this conclusion, Farouk points out that from photographs, Suzanne accurately picked out scores of people they had been acquainted with, and knew other information that only Hanan would have known.

In the image comparison, Hanan Monsour is on the left side and Suzanne Ghanem is on the right. There is a striking physical resemblance which supports the premise that facial features remain consistent from one incarnation to another.

We in the West have a very limited understanding of the nature of reality, and as this case demonstrates, there is much more to our life than we presently acknowledge. This is one of many examples of people who have died only to return with the memory of their past life, and when the rebirth occurs while past life relatives and family are still alive, the evidence can be verified and shared. We need to be more open and be especially attentive and inquisitive regarding the statements of little children who may have much to say about their life before this life. What they say should not be ignored as mere imagination, but should be thoughtfully considered, for we are much more than we presently understand.