All religions have insane ideas and stupid habits. I remember helping out at a gathering at a city park I once volunteered for. It was a Jewish celebration held in our lodge. I saw an elderly man dressed in the traditional clothing with locks/beard and the full traditional garb. He was walking in the front hall talking on a cell phone and constantly bowing. A woman came to the door and knocked to be let in. The man look at her but did nothing except keep bowing and talking. I opened the door for the woman but also saw the wives bringing up food from the kitchen. It is not allowed to turn on or off lights (a cell phone is ok?) or do any work (at least for the men) so if not for the women everything would come to a standstill. Sorry, I find this crazy.

So, in this story, the young boy is supposedly bored at a wedding he's attending with his family, away from his regular home. He wanders off and enters a neighborhood house where he knows how to unlock the door, is welcomed by "his previous mother" as if he was expected. He goes on to form a bond with the family, and towards the end of the story (years later) attends the wedding of his "previous daughter", who is actually his own age, as her father. It's really a weird story. What bothers me is that the story was on NPR, which should normally do responsible reporting. Anyway, as I said, need to dig more into this. One explanation can be that the guy is narrating the story when he's an adult. He may have no real memory of the actual first encounter, other than what he heard from the adults.

When I was in Israel in 1970 I saw Druze villagers in Northern Israel near the Golan Heights and took pictures of them working with a horse grinding grain of some kind.

There is a similar story of a boy who believed he was the reincarnation of a WW2 fighter pilot of crashed / died in some air battle. He supposedly become obsessed with the story of this pilot at around age 10 and when he met the family of the pilot he had allegedly info about the pilot's personal traits / habits / jokes / whatever that "no one else could possibly have". On the other hand, see above; he'd been obsessing, reading / studying about this guy for years, and his parents were egging him on because they ended up writing a book about it, etc. etc.

The simplest explanation is the most likely one ... take a bright, observant youngster with an obsession, give him lots of attention and validation and reinforcement for said obsession, and then combine with a family that really really wants to have some connection with dear old Uncle Fred, and this is what you get.

More importantly, what’s the non-anecdotal evidence for reincarnation?
The explanation is probably a lot of wishful thinking, as with most religions.

Insanity?

There are many unexplainable things in this world.

Read the books by Dr Jim Tucker of the University of Virginia.