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, 1974), 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 subjected to previous scrutiny, most notably that of Roll (1984) . Roll did not question the correctness of Imad's statements for the life of Ibrahim Bouhamzy, but he drew attention to the substantial number of the statements that were equally correct for Ibrahim's uncle by marriage. Said Bouhamzy. He 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 16 applied to Ibrahim but not to Said. We 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 "reorganized" Imad's statements when I presented them in a tabular form after first summarizing 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 stated: "His family had put all this together as follows. They 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 statements" (Stevenson, 1974, p. 277) . Although Angel quotes the two words "they believed," 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 (Tabulation One 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. Beneath the heading of the tabulation I warned readers by stating: "For 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.'" 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 315 of my report); 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 Khriby I had accepted the inferences of Imad's parents concerning Mahmoud Bouhamzy. But few of Imad Bouhamzy's statements fit the life of Mahmoud, 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 Mahmoud as "baffling." I was, however, much more than baffled, and in a passage omitted by Angel I stated that the case "on two occasions...seemed to dissolve into unrelated and irrelevant fragments" (Stevenson, 1974, p. 280) . Angel states that I "understood right to the end that the boy took it that the past-life had died as a result of an accident" (Stevenson, 1974,

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p. 319) . This is wrong. In the full passage from which Angel took this quotation I referred to Imad's confusion. Earlier, I wrote: "Imad had never actually said the fatal truck accident had happened to him; he had merely described it vividly" (Stevenson, p. 277). And later, on p. 303 of my report, I referred to the possibility of a "fusion of images in Imad's mind of 'memories' related to Ibrahim's illness and the fatal accident of his friend Said." As I mentioned. Roll emphasized this possibility.

Angel rebukes me for not stating exactly when Imad first mentioned that he believed he had lived a previous life in Khriby. 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. His 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 "Tliby" (Khriby) . This mispronunciation must have occurred before he could pronounce the name correctly. I mentioned this in my Comments to item 12 of Tabulation One in my report. Imad was about two when he spontaneously recognized a man from Khriby who had married a girl from Kornayel (Imad's village) and occasionally came to Kornayel. 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 "well" in connection with two vats or large vessels used for holding grape juice. 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 French for me. A boy of 5, 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. He might then have fallen back on the word for a well. The 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 Haffez Bouhamzy, Ibrahim Bouhamzy'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 283) the following:

At the end of my stay in Lebanon in March, 1964, the verifications of the statements attributed to Imad Elawar had come largely from only one witness, Mr. Haffez Bouhamzy....I had no reason to doubt Mr. Haffez Bouhamzy'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, 1964.

After this passage I give the names of the additional informants I interviewed in August 1964. Angel makes no mention of this second trip to Lebanon made for the express purpose of extending the verifications. He states that Haffez Bouhamzy was a verifier for 28 items, which is true. What he leaves out is that of these items only 5 depended solely on Haffez Bouhamzy for their verification. (In this count I have omitted item 1 of Tabulation One of my report; although I recorded in the tabulation only Haffez Bouhamzy as verifying it, several other informants obviously did so also.) For all the other verifiable and correct items I found one or more other persons who verified them. Imad also made 20 other correct statements for which Haffez was not a verifier. I tabulated 61 statements in the two tabulations of my report (these are apart from Imad's

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recognitions). Of these, 49 were correct for Ibrahim, 5 unverified, 6 incorrect and 1 doubtful. Two of the items I list as incorrect were partly correct or doubtful.

Angel would disqualify Haffez Bouhamzy as a reliable witness because he said incorrectly that Ibrahim Bouhamzy had had tuberculosis of the spine. In emphasizing this discrepancy, however, he overlooks the confirmation by other informants of all but one of Haffez's 23 verifications for which there was another verifier. In confirming Haffez's statements Nabih Bouhamzy made a valuable witness, because he had not been present when I had interviewed Haffez. (Haffez was present during my interview with Nabih.) Also, having lived in the United States, he spoke English, which obviated possible errors in translation. I interviewed Ibrahim's brother Fuad without Haffez being present. In a footnote on pages 281-282 of my report of the case I drew attention to the concordance between Fuad's testimony and that of Haffez in matters other than Ibrahim's final illness. Angel does not mention this footnote or the general agreement of other informants with Haffez.

In preparing this Reply I consulted my original notes made in Lebanon and read in them that Ibrahim had been treated by pneumothorax. The possible significance of this detail had escaped me earlier, and I did not mention it in my report, but will do so now. The 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 1930s and 1940s, before the introduction of antibiotics superseded it. The air forced into the pleural cavity collapsed the lung and, if all went well, would abolish cavities in it and facilitate healing. The 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, 1937, p. 232). Fuad Bouhamzy, who told me that Ibrahim had been treated by pneumothorax, did not say where the operative needle was inserted, but it is conjecturable--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 this: and if he said this to Haffez, the latter might have understandably, although incorrectly, concluded that Ibrahim's tuberculosis also affected his spine. This 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 about; 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. He 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. First, such items have to be taken as a group altogether, not one by one. We have to ask ourselves how likely it is that all of Imad' s statements would apply to other Lebanese men. The 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 70 of Tabulation Two of my report), his knowledge of how Ibrahim talked to friends as he lay dying (item 64 of the same tabulation) , and of where Ibrahim kept his gun (item 65 of the same tabulation) . Jamileh (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 Jamileh, because three less qualified informants--none of them members of the Bouhamzy family--did not confirm Ibrahim's relationship with her.

Angel's reference to Imad's "malleability" displays the kind of misleading cunning that he is willing to employ when trying to make a point. He does not tell his readers that my interpreter

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(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 rejected efforts to mislead him when he was asked to recognize a portrait in Ibrahim's house (see item 69 of Tabulation Two of my report) . Item 49 of my Tabulation One 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 problem: that of finding a person exactly matching the subject's statements. Interested readers can find examples in reports--by myself and other investigators--of other cases, all with written records made before verification (Mills, Haraldsson, and Keil, 1994; Stevenson, 1977; Stevenson and Samararatne, 1988; and Haraldsson, 1992). Our endeavor in all such cases is not just that of finding a deceased person who matches the child's statements; 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, J. 1937. The collapse therapy of pulmonary tuberculosis. Springfield, I11.: Charles C. Thomas.

Angel, Leonard. 1994. Empirical evidence for reincarnation? Examining Stevenson's "most important" case. Skeptical Inquirer. 18:481-487.

Haraldsson, Erlendur. 1992. Children claiming past-life memories: Four cases in Sri Lanka. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 5:233-261.

Mills, Antonia; Haraldsson, Erlendur; and Keil, H. H. Jürgen.1994. Replication studies of cases suggestive of reincarnation by three independent investigators. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. 88:207-219.

Roll, William G. 1984. Rebirth memories and personal identity: The case of Imad Elawar. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. 78:182-185. (With Reply by Ian Stevenson, pp. 186-189.)

Stevenson, Ian. 1974. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 2nd ed. rev.

Stevenson, Ian. 1977. Cases of the Reincarnation Type: II. Ten Cases in Sri Lanka. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

Stevenson, Ian and Samararatne, Godwin. 1988. Three new cases of the reincarnation type in Sri Lanka with written records made before verification. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 176:741. (See also more detailed reports of these cases in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1988, 2:217-238.)

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Ian Stevenson, M.D.Carlson Professor of Psychiatry

Department of Psychiatric MedicineDivision of Personality Studies

Box 152 Health Sciences Center University of Virginia

Charlottesville, Virginia 22908U.S.A.

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