Welcome to Unexplained Extra, with me Richard McLean Smith.

For the weeks in between episodes, we look at the stories that for one reason or other

didn't make it into the show.

In last week's episode, here is always somewhere else.

We looked at the beguiling story of Shanti Devi, a young girl from Delhi, India, who

believed she had once lived another life.

Devi's claim was considered so convincing, it was investigated by a number of journalists

and dignitaries, many of whom were left in no doubt that it was true.

When researching his first book in the early 1960s, psychiatrist Dr. Ian Stevenson, who

dedicated much of his life's work to investigating the possibility of reincarnation, travelled

to India for part of his study.

In just four weeks, he was said to have found 25 individuals with compelling claims of

a past life.

Critics of the book argued that such an overabundance of Indian-based stories revealed the folly

of his work, that so many people would claim to be reincarnated they argued, was evidence

of a clear cultural bias that readily accepted the apparent phenomena as fact.

Stevenson argued in response, it was precisely because it was more widely accepted that possible

incidences of reincarnation were recorded, when those from other cultures would instead

dismiss the evidence as merely a coincidence, or the result of a subconscious absorption

of information.

Regardless of what you believe, there is no doubt something fascinating at play at the

heart of all reincarnation stories, which is the notion of what it is exactly that is

...