Xenoglossy: A Review and Report of a Case

Responsive xenoglossy — the ability to carry on a genuine two-way conversation in a language not learned in the current life — is virtually impossible to explain through ordinary means, since it requires not merely the production of memorized phrases but the genuine comprehension and spontaneous generation of language, including appropriate responses to questions and statements that the subject could not have anticipated. The investigation of a single high-quality case in depth — as Stevenson does in this book — is often more evidentially valuable than a survey of many cases of lower quality, because it allows every possible alternative explanation to be systematically examined and excluded. The Swedish language spoken in this case was not contemporary Swedish but contained archaic features suggesting it was spoken during an earlier historical period — a detail that is difficult to explain by any hypothesis other than genuine past-life memory.