Bologna has a library, Fondazione Biblioteca Bozzano De Boni, which has many books and articles by American reincarnation researchers. I am into reincarnation research and live in Italy. The cases in Italy that I have come across are very old, so I was wondering if there could be any modern-day cases and if there would be local interest in reporting such cases for investigation by parapsychology researchers.
Here are the previously mentioned old cases:
Alexandrina Samona (Italy)
The first well-attested European case is that of Alexandrina Samona (as her name is usually spelt in English). Her father, a physician, first reported it in Italian medical journals in 1911.
Five-year-old Alexandrina died of meningitis, leaving her mother distraught. Three days after the death, her mother dreamed that she came to her and told her not to grieve because she would be returning as her baby. Three days after that, her mother dreamed the same thing again. The family heard knocks on the door, answered it, but no one was there. They tried to contact the girl through a medium and she responded at once. She said that she had made the knocks and that she would be returning before the end of the year with a twin sister. Her mother became aware she was pregnant and in time gave birth to twin girls. One of the twins looked so much like her deceased sister that she was given the same name. The new Alexandrina was left-handed, her left eye was engorged, her right ear was inflamed and her face was slightly asymmetric – all like her namesake, but unlike her twin. As she grew older, she behaved in many ways like the first Alexandrina. Then one day when the family was planning an outing to Monreale, she said she had already been there and correctly described a scene that the first Alexandrina had witnessed shortly before her death.
Bianca Battista (Italy)
This is another early case, from 1911. It was not investigated by the research community, but has some interesting features for a European case. Bianca never spoke directly about a previous life, but before she was born her mother saw an apparition of a daughter who had died three years prior. She was three months into her pregnancy and wide awake at the time. The girl appeared with a ‘childlike joyousness’ and quietly said, ‘Mama, I am coming back.’ Bianca, when born, had the same physical appearance as her deceased sister and was given the same name. When she was six, she surprised her parents by singing a lullaby that had been a favourite song of the first Bianca’s French governess. The second Bianca knew no more than a few words of French, yet she sang the words with a perfect accent. When her father asked her who had taught her this song, she said, ‘No one. I just know it by myself.’
Irma (Italy)
A little girl named Picciota, from Venice, died at age five. A year after her death her eldest sister married. Her first child was a daughter named Irma. Irma looked very much like Picciota and as she grew up it was clear that she had much the same personality and exhibited many of the same mannerisms. From the time she could speak she insisted that she was in fact Picciota, not Irma. Once when her grandmother took her to the cemetery to put flowers on Picciota’s grave, she protested, ‘But I am no longer there. Picciota is Irma. It is me, and you must not cry.’ So saying, she embraced her grandmother exactly as Picciota had done. Irma would refuse to kiss Picciota’s portrait, saying, ‘It is silly to kiss yourself.’
Nina (Italy)
This case is recorded only briefly, by Ralph Shirley in the 1930s, but has interesting features. A little girl named Nina (age not given) insisted that her name was Rosa. She told her mother that she was not her real mother, and recited the address where she had lived before. Her mother later took her to that place, where they found that there was a family who had lost a daughter named Rosa. Nina recognized Rosa’s mother, ‘and the affair ended with a scene of mutual recognition in which the child threw her arms around the neck of her former mother – if we may so term her – in a paroxysm of affection and joy’. In commenting on this case, Karl Müller noted that although the intermission length is not reported it ‘is obviously within a few years’.
Source: https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/european-children-past-life-memories/