In 2001 I got an email from a mother in Louisiana, Andrea Leininger. She told me that she had just gotten a copy of my first book, Children's Past Lives, and she believed that her two-year-old son, James, was having nightmares about a past life. He would wake up screaming about 3 or 4 times a week about his plane crashing. At the time, I thought their story was interesting, but not that different from other cases I had seen. I told her to follow the guidelines in my book for helping James work through his nightmares, and let me know if anything interesting developed. I filed her email away with hundreds of others.
In 2003, I was approached by a producer for ABC News, Shalini Sharma, who wanted to do a segment on children's past lives. Shalini's family was from India, and reincarnation was a part of their philosophical and religious beliefs. She wanted to expose American audiences to the phenomenon, and thought that a child's war memory would be just the ticket for one of their news shows. While going through literally hundreds of emails looking for a TV-worthy case, I came across Andrea's email and contacted her to see if James's story had progressed, or if his nightmares had gone away. Little did I know how extraordinary James's case would become. It turned out to be the most detailed case of an American child's memory I had seen in twenty years of doing this research.
I encouraged Andrea and her husband, Bruce, to write a book about James's memories. Finally, after three years, they were ready to do it. I introduced them to my wonderful agent, Al Zuckerman, and their book, Soul Survivor, will be released at the end of May. They will be appearing on "Good Morning America" on June 8th to tell their story. Tune in!
I encourage anyone has any interest in reincarnation, past lives, or what happens after we die to read it.
Here's a link to their website: http://www.soulsurvivor-book.com/
You'll be hearing more about this case from time to time.
IN-DEPTH DISCUSSION Here's the link to a long-running discussion about the Leininger case that started a few years ago in the Past Life Forum. There's actually a whole section devoted to the Leininger case on the Forum, including the older thread, and the foreword I wrote for the book.  Go directly to that section by clicking here.