At twenty-five, Suzy Ghanem still dotes on the man she says was her husband in a previous life, and has done so ever since she began calling his name as a toddler. The girl's devotion causes the old man nothing but trouble in his family, but he believes her, since she told him things that only his dead wife could know.

As soon as little Preeti could speak, she begged to be taken to her "real" family in a town she'd never seen before. She named a mother and father whose teenage daughter had died the year Preeti was born. And when she was brought to their home, she recognized, and named, the girl's brothers and sisters.

Nobody could persuade a little suburban Virginia boy that he had not owned a farm in a previous life. Then one day, while he and his parents were out driving near their new development, he began to yell: The farm, with cows and a shed, would be around an unfamiliar bend. They rounded the curve to see an old farmhouse, with cows grazing nearby. No shed. The boy's mother started to tell him he was mistaken. Then the shed appeared just beyond the trees.

These are among the many cases that psychiatrist and scholar Dr. Ian Stevenson has investigated and documented for more than three decades. Respected Washington Post editor Tom Shroder became the first journalist to accompany Stevenson on extensive field research. Thoseremarkable journeys, recounted in Old Souls, transformed his skepticism to awe.