Children's Past Lives

I gave her Carol Bowman's number, so they called Carol, and-

This eventually turned into a whole episode on Oprah about children's past lives.

Carol, how did that feel? 'Cause up until then, you were kind of, you know, privately toiling away.

Did this feel like, you know, a big break?

So it's kind of like a rags to riches story with the publishing, and everything just fell into place.

The cases Carol had been collecting over the past six years, the research, the phone conversations, the dream of writing a book that could help parents, was suddenly on its way.

My first book, Children's Past Lives, was published in March of 1997.

And with that greater exposure came what would become one of the best known and most widely publicized American cases of a child who appeared to remember a past life.

She started asking other parents whether their children had said similar things, and she kept finding them.

She wrote it all down in a book, Children's Past Lives, in 1997.

Four years later came a second one, Return from Heaven, about families where a loved one seems to come back as a new child.

We'll meet that idea again.

Jim Tucker's book before.

Carol Bowman's book, Children's Past Lives, um, she was with her child one day and, and he went into a Civil War cemetery and pointed to his tomb.

And, "Mom," you know, "that's who I was." And that allowed her, because she knew he wasn't making it up...

You know, I mean, he could've been, but, you know, she knew that wasn't that, the way he presented it.