Author Matt Miksa found these facts when researching his novel, Don’t Get Close, available on Amazon:

• According to Gallup, reincarnation appears to be making a comeback (pun intended). 65% more people believe now compared to 20 years ago

• 36% of Catholics and one in four Protestants believe in reincarnation, also based on that Pew Research

• Dr. Jim Tucker, psychiatrist and past-life researcher at the University of Virginia, analyzed over 2,000 cases of remembered past lives. "30% of the cases he studied involved a past life of someone who had died a natural death. These cases were evenly split between males and females, reflecting the general population. However, of the remaining 70% of cases, where the past life ended in an accidental or unnatural death, a whopping 73% involved males." Considering that men's dangerous jobs lead to far more men than women dying unnaturally, "Dr. Tucker reasoned that someone may be more likely to remember a past life if it ended in a violent or unnatural death." (This tracks with my experiences with clients, especially in the first session.)

• The University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies investigated those unnatural deaths—people who believe they were murdered or accidentally killed— and found that “subjects in over one third of these cases exhibit an intense fear of that particular cause of death. For some, their elevated level of anxiety resembled that of a patient suffering from PTSD after a traumatizing event.”

• Some good news: those same UV researchers found that nearly one in ten people who remember a past life exhibit a skill related to that former life.

• More good news: Kim Tucker also found 26% of people who remember a past life demonstrate some other form of ESP.

• Sorry, more bad news: 58% of people who remember drowning in a past life have an extreme fear of water. Dr. Jim Tucker speculates this may be because “drowning victims spend more time in the process of dying” than victims of other unnatural deaths. (This lends credibility to the importance of exploring and clearing the emotional state of our final moments in past lives.)

• Back to the good news: 20% of people who remember a past life also remember something from the time between death and rebirth. (I call this the Non-Physical Experience Between lives, and in my sessions, it’s more like 75% because we actively explore the NPE.)

• 2% of people who remember a past life can accurately describe their funeral.

  Thanks to author Matt Miksa, who found these facts when researching his novel, Don’t Get Close.”