When Sukla Gupta was a year and a half old and barely able to talk, she used to cradle a pillow or a block of wood in her arms and address it as “Minu.” Minu, she said, was her daughter.

And if you believe the story Sukla gradually told over the next three years, Minu actually was her daughter—but in a previous life.

Sukla, the daughter of a railway worker in Kampa, a village in West Bengal, India, was one of those rare children whose testimony and behavior give evidence for the theory that your personality survives the death of your body and travels on to live in another body. This is the theory of reincarnation.