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Ian Stevenson Replies to Leonard Angel

If I could be sure that readers of Skeptical Inquirer would examine my report of the case of Imad Elawar Stevenson! "#$%&! I should have no need to reply to Leonard Angel's criticism of my investigation of it( Readers of my report would quickly learn that Angel's statements show grave omissions of important information that I included in the report as well as inappropriate emphases on certain discrepancies in the testimony and verifications( I shall only comment on a few of these( In the first place! contrary to Angel's assertion! the case of Imad Elawar has been sub)ected to previous scrutiny! most notably that of Roll "#*%& ( Roll did not question the correctness of Imad's statements for the life of Ibrahim +ouham,y! but he drew attention to the substantial number of the statements that were equally correct for Ibrahim's uncle by marriage( Said +ouham,y( -e suggested the Imad had two streams of memories in his consciousness! and that his was a case of double reincarnation as peoples of some cultures believe possible&( In my Reply published in the same issue as Roll's criticism& I pointed out that! although some of Imad's statements were indeed correct for Said! no fewer than ". applied to Ibrahim but not to Said( /e should not be surprised that some statements! especially those giving names of relatives! are equally true for two or more persons who are closely related! as Ibrahim and Said were( Angel suggests that I 0reorgani,ed0 Imad's statements when I presented them in a tabular form after first summari,ing what his parents told me about them( In my report I informed readers that Imad's parents had tried to make sense out of his initially fragmentary references to a number of different persons( I stated1 0-is family had put all this together as follows( 2hey believed( ( ( ( ( ( Although I tried to learn exactly what Imad had himself said! his parents passed on to me as having been said by Imad some of the inferences which they themselves had made in their effort to find some coherent pattern in his statements0 Stevenson! "#$%! p( 3$$& ( Although Angel quotes the two words 0they believed!0 he makes no reference to the rest of the paragraph in which these words occur and leads readers to think that at this point I am telling them exactly what Imad stated and that I then change this when I present his statements in tabular form 2abulation 4ne of my report&( In compiling the tabulation I did my best to get behind the inferences that Imad's parents made and list what I believe were Imad's actual statements( +eneath the heading of the tabulation I warned readers by stating1 05or some items I have indicated the vagueness of Imad or his parents about a particular relationship by using quotation marks around the indicated relations! e(g(! 'brother('0 Angel does not mention my disclaimer or the quotation marks and refers throughout to these relations as son! brother! and so on( Angel also fails to mention that Imad's parents acknowledged that they had made inferences from Imad's statements see page 6"7 of my report&8 and he gives me no credit for ultimately getting behind these inferences and finding a deceased person different from the one his parents expected& whose life closely matched Imad's statements( It is true that when I first went to 9hriby I had accepted the inferences of Imad's parents concerning :ahmoud +ouham,y( +ut few of Imad +ouham,y's statements fit the life of :ahmoud! and so I tried their fit on other persons of the family! eventually coming to Ibrahim( Angel refers to my description of the failure to find a correspondence between Imad's statements and the life of :ahmoud as 0baffling(0 I was! however! much more than baffled! and in a passage omitted by Angel I stated that the case 0on two occasions(((seemed to dissolve into unrelated and irrelevant fragments0 Stevenson! "#$%! p( 3*;& ( Angel states that I 0understood right to

the end that the boy took it that the past<life had died as a result of an accident0 Stevenson! "#$%! p( 6"#& ( 2his is wrong( In the full passage from which Angel took this quotation I referred to Imad's confusion( Earlier! I wrote1 0Imad had never actually said the fatal truck accident had happened to him8 he had merely described it vividly0 Stevenson! p( 3$$&( And later! on p( 6;6 of my report! I referred to the possibility of a 0fusion of images in Imad's mind of 'memories' related to Ibrahim's illness and the fatal accident of his friend Said(0 As I mentioned( Roll emphasi,ed this possibility( Angel rebukes me for not stating exactly when Imad first mentioned that he believed he had lived a previous life in 9hriby( It is reasonably certain! however! that he did so when he first began to talk about the previous life when he was less than two years old( -is father had then chided him for lying( Imad's grandparents who were close observers of the case& told me that when Imad was young he had said he was from 02liby0 9hriby& ( 2his mispronunciation must have occurred before he could pronounce the name correctly( I mentioned this in my =omments to item "3 of 2abulation 4ne in my report( Imad was about two when he spontaneously recogni,ed a man from 9hriby who had married a girl from 9ornayel Imad's village& and occasionally came to 9ornayel( Incidentally! it is not uncommon for parents of children like Imad to belittle or ignore what the child is saying until it makes some startling statement or! as in Imad's case! a spontaneous recognition that they find difficult to dismiss( Angel draws attention to the use of the word 0well0 in connection with two vats or large vessels used for holding grape )uice( In recording this item an error of translation may have occurred( I remind readers that Imad's statements were made in Arabic and translated into 5rench for me( A boy of 7! as Imad then was! would surely have known the word for well! but he might not have known another word to describe these vats or large vessels( -e might then have fallen back on the word for a well( 2he fact remained that he said correctly that there were at the house two large vessels or containers for fluid! one of which was empty when the other was filled( I have been in the compounds of many houses in Lebanon and I do not remember ever having seen two vessels or containers for fluids similar to those at Ibrahim's house( Angel claims that I placed too much reliance on the testimony of -affe, +ouham,y! Ibrahim +ouham,y's cousin( I cannot say whether Angel made this statement from ill<considered guile or from carelessness( In either event! it seems risky! because anyone turning to my report could read on page 3*6& the following1 At the end of my stay in Lebanon in :arch! "#.%! the verifications of the statements attributed to Imad Elawar had come largely from only one witness! :r( -affe, +ouham,y((((I had no reason to doubt :r( -affe, +ouham,y's testimony! but believed that I ought to check it against that of other witnesses( I therefore decided to return to Lebanon and did so in August! "#.%( After this passage I give the names of the additional informants I interviewed in August "#.%( Angel makes no mention of this second trip to Lebanon made for the express purpose of extending the verifications( -e states that -affe, +ouham,y was a verifier for 3* items! which is true( /hat he leaves out is that of these items only 7 depended solely on -affe, +ouham,y for their verification( In this count I have omitted item " of 2abulation 4ne of my report8 although I recorded in the tabulation only -affe, +ouham,y as verifying it! several other informants obviously did so also(& 5or all the other verifiable and correct items I found one or more other persons who verified them( Imad also made 3; other correct statements for which -affe, was not a

verifier( I tabulated ." statements in the two tabulations of my report these are apart from Imad's recognitions&( 4f these! %# were correct for Ibrahim! 7 unverified! . incorrect and " doubtful( 2wo of the items I list as incorrect were partly correct or doubtful( Angel would disqualify -affe, +ouham,y as a reliable witness because he said incorrectly that Ibrahim +ouham,y had had tuberculosis of the spine( In emphasi,ing this discrepancy! however! he overlooks the confirmation by other informants of all but one of -affe,'s 36 verifications for which there was another verifier( In confirming -affe,'s statements >abih +ouham,y made a valuable witness! because he had not been present when I had interviewed -affe,( -affe, was present during my interview with >abih(& Also! having lived in the ?nited States! he spoke English! which obviated possible errors in translation( I interviewed Ibrahim's brother 5uad without -affe, being present( In a footnote on pages 3*"<3*3 of my report of the case I drew attention to the concordance between 5uad's testimony and that of -affe, in matters other than Ibrahim's final illness( Angel does not mention this footnote or the general agreement of other informants with -affe,( In preparing this Reply I consulted my original notes made in Lebanon and read in them that Ibrahim had been treated by pneumothorax( 2he possible significance of this detail had escaped me earlier! and I did not mention it in my report! but will do so now( 2he operation artificial pneumothorax& of introducing air into the gap between the lung and the chest wall the pleural cavity& was a popular treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis during the "#6;s and "#%;s! before the introduction of antibiotics superseded it( 2he air forced into the pleural cavity collapsed the lung and! if all went well! would abolish cavities in it and facilitate healing( 2he operation was performed with a local anesthetic( Although the needle to introduce the air might be inserted at different sites! the preferred sites were at the back of the axilla armpit& or in the upper back Alexander! "#6$! p( 363&( 5uad +ouham,y! who told me that Ibrahim had been treated by pneumothorax! did not say where the operative needle was inserted! but it is con)ecturable<<even probable<<that the needle was inserted in Ibrahim's back( If this happened! Ibrahim would have had had an operation on his back and know this1 and if he said this to -affe,! the latter might have understandably! although incorrectly! concluded that Ibrahim's tuberculosis also affected his spine( 2his is a minor point! but since my early days in investigating these cases I have tried to understand how discrepancies in different testimonies have come about8 this seems a better course than dismissing one or both of the discrepant informants as useless( Angel claims that I concluded that Imad was referring to the life of Ibrahim on insufficient evidence( -e correctly states that some of the personal names and features of property are and were& common in Lebanon and might be true for many persons( I will make two points about this( 5irst! such items have to be taken as a group altogether! not one by one( /e have to ask ourselves how likely it is that all of Imad' s statements would apply to other Lebanese men( 2he answer is to none( Second! a few of the individual statements were specific by themselves for Ibrahim( Examples are Imad's correct statement of Ibrahim's last words item $; of 2abulation 2wo of my report&! his knowledge of how Ibrahim talked to friends as he lay dying item .% of the same tabulation& ! and of where Ibrahim kept his gun item .7 of the same tabulation& ( @amileh Ibrahim's mistress! whose name Angel repeatedly misspells& was also specific to Ibrahim( Angel discounts the clear statements of members of Ibrahim's family about @amileh! because three less qualified informants<<none of them members of the +ouham,y family<<did not confirm Ibrahim's relationship with her(

Angel's reference to Imad's 0malleability0 displays the kind of misleading cunning that he is willing to employ when trying to make a point( -e does not tell his readers that my interpreter unknown to me& offered Imad a substantial bribe if he would accept as true words that the interpreter put in his mouth( And he fails to mention that Imad re)ected efforts to mislead him when he was asked to recogni,e a portrait in Ibrahim's house see item .# of 2abulation 2wo of my report& ( Item %# of my 2abulation 4ne provides another example of Imad's resistance to attempts to mislead him( In conclusion! I would like to mention that since my investigation of Imad's case my colleagues and I have studied other cases that presented a similar problem1 that of finding a person exactly matching the sub)ect's statements( Interested readers can find examples in reports<<by myself and other investigators<<of other cases! all with written records made before verification :ills! -araldsson! and 9eil! "##%8 Stevenson! "#$$8 Stevenson and Samararatne! "#**8 and -araldsson! "##3&( 4ur endeavor in all such cases is not )ust that of finding a deceased person who matches the child's statements8 we want to be as certain as we can that the statements match the life of no one else( I believe that the case of Imad Elawar reaches this standard! and I continue to think it one of the strongest cases that I have investigated( Since its investigation we have found others as good or stronger( It is therefore particularly foolish for Angel to claim that if he could discredit the case of Imad Elawar! his work would be over(

References Alexander! @( "#6$( 2he collapse therapy of pulmonary tuberculosis( Springfield! I""(1 =harles =( 2homas( Angel! Leonard( "##%( Empirical evidence for reincarnationA Examining Stevenson's 0most important0 case( Skeptical Inquirer( "*1%*"<%*$( -araldsson! Erlendur( "##3( =hildren claiming past<life memories1 5our cases in Sri Lanka( @ournal of Scientific Exploration! 71366<3."( :ills! Antonia8 -araldsson! Erlendur8 and 9eil! -( -( @Brgen("##%( Replication studies of cases suggestive of reincarnation by three independent investigators( @ournal of the American Society for Csychical Research( **13;$<3"#( Roll! /illiam D( "#*%( Rebirth memories and personal identity1 2he case of Imad Elawar( @ournal of the American Society for Csychical Research( $*1"*3<"*7( /ith Reply by Ian Stevenson! pp( "*.<"*#(& Stevenson! Ian( "#$%( 2wenty =ases Suggestive of Reincarnation( =harlottesville1 ?niversity Cress of Eirginia( 3nd ed( rev( Stevenson! Ian( "#$$( =ases of the Reincarnation 2ype1 II( 2en =ases in Sri Lanka( =harlottesville1 ?niversity Cress of Eirginia( Stevenson! Ian and Samararatne! Dodwin( "#**( 2hree new cases of the reincarnation type in Sri Lanka with written records made before verification( @ournal of >ervous and :ental Fisease!

"$.1$%"( See also more detailed reports of these cases in the @ournal of Scientific Exploration! "#**! 313"$<36*(&

Ian Stevenson! :(F( =arlson Crofessor of Csychiatry Fepartment of Csychiatric :edicine Fivision of Cersonality Studies +ox "73 -ealth Sciences =enter ?niversity of Eirginia =harlottesville! Eirginia 33#;* ?(S(A(