Subashini Gunasekera’s reincarnation case

Step 1

Around 1983 · Subashini is about three years old · Told by her parents

A girl says a hill fell on her house

Subashini Gunasekera was born on January 13, 1980, in Sri Lanka. She lived in Kuliyapitiya, a town in the west of the island. Her parents were teachers, and she was the youngest of four children.

Around age three, she began to talk about another life. She said she had been trapped when a hill fell on her house, in Sinhapitiya, near the city of Gampola. Gampola is in the mountains in the center of the island, about 95 kilometers away by road.

According to her parents, Subashini said that in that life she had an older brother and sister, and a younger brother and sister. She named someone called Vasini, without saying who she was. She said her mother and brother picked tea on a plantation, and that they lived in little houses in a row, like those of tea workers. And she said there was a tap at home that wouldn’t close all the way.

She also said the hill made a noise, “gudu, gudu,” as it fell. Her mother called her and asked her to go outside with a flashlight to see if the hill was about to come down on them. That is where she was trapped, she said, and she came to her present family with the flashlight in her hand.

Her parents knew that area well.

Step 2

1983 · The parents tell the researchers

The father asks around the area before anyone arrives

Subashini’s mother had a sister and a brother in villages near Gampola, 10 and 15 kilometers away. The family visited them at least once a year. In 1977, soon after the landslide, the mother heard that there had been one in Sinhapitiya. She says she didn’t learn any more details and didn’t read anything in the press. The father says he knew nothing until the girl spoke.

When Subashini was about three, her parents took her to a wedding near Gampola. The father told his wife’s family what the girl was saying. A brother-in-law remembered that years earlier there had been a landslide in Sinhapitiya with several deaths.

The father took Subashini along a path on the tea plantation where, he was told, it had happened. The girl got scared, screamed, and wouldn’t go on. She said she was afraid of being trapped. The father turned back.

Later he wrote to his brother-in-law and asked him to find out more. The brother-in-law learned that plantation workers died in the landslide. Among them was a Sinhalese family. The Sinhalese are the majority people of Sri Lanka. They lived in the little houses in a row for workers, as Subashini described. The father didn’t ask anything more.

Months later, a researcher arrived.

Step 3

November 24, 1983 · Subashini is almost four · Told by Stevenson and his colleague Godwin Samararatne

An assistant to Stevenson writes down ten things the girl says

Tissa Jayawardane looked for reincarnation cases in Sri Lanka for the psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, of the University of Virginia in the United States. He heard about Subashini in late 1983 and went to see her on November 24. The girl was still talking about that other life, and he wrote down ten things he heard her say herself.

Jayawardane sent the list to Stevenson. He also sent a news item from the newspaper “Ceylon Daily Mirror,” dated October 25, 1977. It reported a landslide in Sinhapitiya three days earlier, on October 22, and had a photo of the coffins.

According to the researchers, there had been heavy rain. That night, between 7:30 and 8:30, earth and rocks from a hill fell on a row of tea workers’ houses. They were buried with the people inside. One witness spoke of 17 dead, and the plantation owner of 28.

The team didn’t return to the case until 1986.

Step 4

May 1986 · Told by the researcher Godwin Samararatne

The team finds Devi Mallika’s family

Godwin Samararatne, who did research with Stevenson in Sri Lanka, went to Sinhapitiya. The plantation owner introduced him to H. G. Piyasena. Piyasena lost five members of his family in the landslide, including his parents and his little sister, Devi Mallika. He survived because he wasn’t home.

According to the researchers, of the eight buried houses, all but one belonged to Tamils. The Tamils are another people of Sri Lanka, and they make up most of the tea plantation workers. Subashini said her family was Sinhalese, and she got angry if her brothers called her Tamil. The only Sinhalese family was Devi Mallika’s.

In that house, the parents and the three youngest children died. Devi Mallika was the oldest of the three, and the only one with a younger brother and sister, as Subashini said. The little sister, a year and a half old, was named Chandrakanthie, but at home they called her Vasanthie. For the researchers, that is the name Subashini remembered as Vasini.

No one knows for sure how old Devi Mallika was. Estimates run from three and a half to seven. One coroner’s record says four and another says seven. The researchers go with seven, which is what her older sister, who survived, and a neighbor say.

Then they took Subashini to Sinhapitiya.

Step 5

August and September 1986 · Subashini is six years old · Told by Samararatne

Subashini calls Piyasena “older brother,” but doesn’t recognize anyone else

Samararatne talked with Subashini’s parents and wrote down 22 more things that, according to them, the girl had said. Then they took her to Sinhapitiya, to the plantation owner’s house, to meet Devi Mallika’s family.

Subashini called Piyasena “older brother.” But he had stepped ahead of the group and stood in front of her, and Samararatne asked her who he was. She didn’t pick him out from among others, and the researchers admit she could have worked out that he was an older brother. She didn’t recognize Devi Mallika’s older sister, whose name was Mallika, or a neighbor who knew Devi Mallika well.

Of the 32 things written down, Devi Mallika’s family and the neighbor confirmed 25. The other seven couldn’t be checked or weren’t true. The one about the flashlight has no witnesses, because everyone in the house died. Subashini said there was a waterfall near the house, but what there was, was a stream. And she talked about a strict “uncle,” but no one knew who that was.

This time, on the plantation path, the girl wasn’t afraid, and she didn’t seem to recognize any place either.

The team kept looking for how the girl could have known these things.

Step 6

November 1986 to 1988 · Told by Stevenson and Samararatne

Stevenson climbs the hill and publishes the case

In November 1986, Stevenson went in person. He walked four kilometers uphill to the landslide site, by then covered in vegetation. In Gampola he examined and copied part of the judicial inquiry into the deaths.

The researchers also wrote down the girl’s habits. Subashini called her father in the other life “Thatha.” It is the word Devi Mallika used for hers. In Subashini’s home, the word for “dad” was “Apachie.” Subashini put the sugar for her tea in the palm of her hand and licked it. According to Devi Mallika’s sister, her family did it that way because they were very poor. She described tea plants, which don’t grow where she lived. And she was very afraid of thunder.

Stevenson and Samararatne published the case in 1988. They acknowledge that Devi Mallika’s family had relatives in two villages in the same area as Subashini’s mother’s family. The girl’s parents could have heard about the landslide there. But they don’t believe that the girl or her parents heard 25 details about an unknown family and then didn’t remember hearing them.

The question from the start remains. Did Subashini remember Devi Mallika’s life?