We used photos of people from three time periods: many decades ago, a few decades ago, and recently. The mediums’ performance was much more accurate with the “newly deceased” (56.8 percent correct) than with the “older deceased” (51.7 percent) or the “long deceased” (50.2 percent). This result, which surprised us, suggests a possible way to experimentally explore the idea of reincarnation, because mediums sometimes report that a person who passed away long ago no longer “feels” dead, presumably because that person (or some aspect of that person’s spirit) has gone on to another incarnation.
