- chilling phenomenon of why thousands of toddlers are being haunted by memories that aren't theirs - and when to worry about your child's 'imaginary friend'

Did your child remember a past life? Email [email protected] 

By MARTIN ROBINSON, CHIEF REPORTER and KEVIN DONALD

'That is the field where I died', a five-year-old boy tells his parents.

'I remember because the mud was so deep it went over my gaiters', he says serenely while pointing across a former historic battlefield in southern England.

Quite apart from the shock of their son claiming to have been reincarnated, his parents listened opened mouthed because he had no knowledge of history yet had referred to his gaiters - a protective leg covering worn by soldiers from 1700 until the end of the First World War. 

He is not alone. An American university has compiled a database of more than 2,200 children who have been haunted by 'carry-over of memories' of past lives since the 1960s.

Critics believe that these tales are inspired by other sources of information such as TV, the internet, family stories - or just figments of a child's active imagination. 

But two thirds of those cases contained enough detail to identify the deceased person the child believes they may have been, a recent study by the University of Virginia School of Medicine found. 

Scottish child Cameron Macaulay visits the home he believes he grew up in in a former life in the 1960s on Barra in the Outer Hebrides