The girl told the story of her "past life" in detail, including labor pains, and science was stumped.

Shanti Devi in India began telling details of her "past life" in a town more than 100km away from home, when she was 4 years old. What she said surprised everyone.

Religion and philosophy have long discussed the existence of past and future lives of humans. And the case of a little girl named Shanti Devi, who lived in New Delhi, India in the 1930s, is considered a convincing example of reincarnation.

Shanti Devi was born on December 11, 1926 in a small town in Delhi, India. She did not talk much as a child until she was 4 years old. At this time, she began to show a difference from her peers, talking endlessly about unimaginable stories.

Any event in her current life triggers memories of her “past lives.” For example, a meal reminds her of the food she enjoyed in the past, or while dressing, telling her mother about the clothes she used to wear.

Shanti Devi also told her parents that her former name was Lugdi, and that Lugdi had died after giving birth to a son in October 1925. Remarkably, she recounted strange details about the labor pains and surgical procedures that Lugdi had to face as if she had witnessed or even experienced them herself.

Anyone could see that such things could not have been made up by even the most imaginative child. Not stopping there, Shanti Devi also recalled all the shops and streets of Mathura, which she and her family had never been to before.

Shanti spoke of her ex-husband as a businessman, but only revealed his name when she was nine, along with his features such as a wart on her left cheek and always wearing reading glasses. When told of these strange memories by their daughter, her parents initially dismissed them as childish fantasies.

But when Shanti Devi revealed that her "past life" husband's name was Pandit Kedarnath Chaube, sometimes called Kedar Nath, a family friend decided to find out if what she said was true.

The man then wrote to a merchant named Kedar Nath in Mathura asking about Shanti’s memories. And surprisingly, the merchant Nath wrote back, confirming that all the details the girl had told were true. Nath also agreed to go with a relative to the “ex-wife” to check on the situation.

In order to test Shanti Devi, a relative was brought to her by Kedar Nath and introduced as her husband. Shanti immediately rejected him, saying that he was just her “husband’s” cousin. To her surprise, Nath and his child with Lugdi, now 10 years old, entered the house. When Shanti saw them, she burst into tears.

Nath asked to speak to the strange girl alone, then declared that each of her answers to his “test” questions had been perfectly correct. “He was so moved by the correctness of the answers that he wept! It was as if his dead wife were speaking,” an investigator wrote in a 1937 report on the case.

Shanti Devi spent a few days with Kedar Nath and his son before they returned to Mathura. Distraught at being separated from her “husband and son,” she begged her parents to take her back to their old home. She promised to take Nath and his son straight to their old home, even revealing that a box of money had been buried in the house.

Shanti Devi's reincarnation story caught the attention of researcher Mahatma Gandhi. He set up a committee to investigate the matter. On November 15, 1935, Mahatma's group of 15 prominent people including parliamentarians, media people, leaders, along with Shanti Devi and her parents took a train to Mathura.

As soon as she reached the station, she recognized her “husband” in the crowd. On the way back to her old home, Shanti also noted many previously unpaved streets and buildings that had not been there in her previous life. The driver confirmed these observations.

When she arrived at the house where Kedar Nath and his son lived, Shanti Devi immediately recognized who her “father-in-law” was. A member of the investigation committee ordered by Ghandi asked about the money box that Shanti had mentioned. At this point, she immediately ran up to the second floor, went straight to a corner of the room and declared that the box was hidden under the floorboards.

They opened the floor and found a small silver box, but it was empty. Kedar Nath later admitted to taking the money after his wife died. Notably, not only did Shanti Devi recognize many people and places in Mathura, but she also shared many of Lugdi's habits. When she was brought to Lugdi's house, she immediately recognized her father from her previous life.

Shanti Devi spent the following years in solitude remembering her so-called "past life". She finally passed away in 1987 at the age of 61. Her fascinating story was preserved in a book written by Swedish author Sture Lonnerstrand in 1994 and translated into English in 1998.

However, some scholars still deny reincarnation and believe that Shanti Devi's memories of her past life are not actually her memories. According to modern science, under hypnosis, the human brain can recall all kinds of information it receives from books, newspapers, stories, etc. However, to this day, Shanti's case remains a great mystery in the world.