If you thought reality TV was beyond anything close to reality, there's a new series coming your way that just may prove you right.
Two Hollywood producers are now conducting a nationwide casting call for children who have allegedly been reincarnated from other people.
The married team of Joke Fincioen and Biagio Messina are working on a reality series titled "The Ghost Inside My Child" for the Biography Channel, set to air later this year.
The producers ask in their online announcement:
"Are you a parent whose child has or is experiencing past life memories? Have you always wanted to meet and hear from other families/parents who are going through the same thing? Has your child told you details of his or her inexplicable memories of another life?"
A pilot episode that aired last November featured three children involved in recovering memories of what was claimed to be their past lives.
"We were pregnant at the time when the idea first came to us," Fincioen told the Huffington Post. "We thought what would we do if this happened with our daughter? It really was a phenomenon. We wanted to tell these parents' stories without trying to prove or disprove them."
On their own website, the producers added, "As new parents ourselves, we were both fascinated and a little terrified of the subject matter. Rather than approaching the show from the angle of 'is this a real phenomenon' or adding a skeptic to investigate, we took 'The Ghost Inside My Child' from the point of view of the parents.
"Think about it: What would you do if your child told you they missed their 'other mom' from a past life? Or remembered intricate details of dying in plane crash in World War II that, upon researching, you learned to be absolutely true?"
As far as selecting the children to appear on the show, Messina told the Huffington Post, "We need to make sure the parents are of sound mind and can handle TV," noting he wants to dismiss fabricated stories, or tales that seem evidently coached.
He's also looking for any possible access to documentation.
"It would be difficult to find out if the kid was an Egyptian pharaoh," Messina said.
The casting call for the TV series has attracted the attention of skeptic organizations such as the James Randi Foundation, noted for exposing paranormal and pseudoscientific frauds.
"Unfortunately, people use anecdote and stories as proof of these supernatural claims, and this is not dissimilar to ghost stories, or accounts of supposedly accurate psychic readings people will tell," organization president D.J. Grothe told Huffington Post.
He also objects to going to family members of deceased people and telling them a child could actually be a departed loved one.
"The people who lost a loved one have to re-experience the loss, are told outlandish claims about their loved one being alive again and stuck in the body of a child somewhere," he said. "I think this is a crassest manipulation of belief and of the fear of death merely for the sake of reality TV ratings."