Ian Stevenson - Retirement, Death and Experiment

Retirement, Death and Experiment

Stevenson stepped down as director of the Division of Perceptual Studies in 2002, though he continued to work as Research Professor of Psychiatry. He died of pneumonia at his retirement home in Charlottesville, Virginia in February 2007. Bruce Greyson, editor of the Journal of Near-Death Studies, became director of the division, while Jim Tucker, the department's associate professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences, has continued Stevenson's research with children, examined in his book, Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives (2005).

In the 1960s Stevenson set a combination lock using a secret word or phrase, and placed it in a filing cabinet in the department, telling his colleagues he would try to pass the code to them after his death. Emily Williams Kelly told The New York Times: "Presumably, if someone had a vivid dream about him, in which there seemed to be a word or a phrase that kept being repeated—I don't quite know how it would work—if it seemed promising enough, we would try to open it using the combination suggested." The Times reported that, as of February 2007, the lock remains unopened.