The Incredible Afterlives of Dr Stevenson: One Scientist’s Epic Quest for Evidence of Reincarnation, Apparitions, Poltergeists, and other Matters of the Soul

By Jesse Bering

The remarkable story of a brilliant scientist who would stop at nothing to find evidence of life after death

Are stories of near-death experiences, apparitions and memories of previous lives tantalizing glimmers of conscious minds beyond death? Or are they reflections of our own living brains giving credence to the patently absurd?

So asks psychologist Jesse Bering in The Incredible Afterlives of Dr Stevenson, a wide-ranging enquiry into the strangest – and most elusive – question that humans ask: what happens when we die? And what does the way we think about life after death – the way we’re able to think about it – say about the workings of our mind and brain?

Why are at least eight out of ten of us so unbothered by the idea of consciousness surviving death, given that it violates the most basic premises of neuroscience? Did evolution favour a cognitive system that convinces us that we are psychologically everlasting? And if you pop a breath-mint into your mouth right before you die, can you still taste it on the other side?

Drawing on some of the most baffling cases in the annals of paranormal research, Bering juxtaposes the storied career of the late Dr Ian Stevenson – the most polarizing parapsychologist of the past century – with his own trailblazing work.