Not many people working in the film industry are aware of a 1930’s Hollywood actor-turned-agent named Marty Martin, so it’s rather baffling that 10-year-old Ryan is familiar with the man’s life and work. In fact, Ryan is able to recount vivid and stunningly accurate descriptions of the actor and the era he lived in, even those that have never been documented. And he’s able to do so because he claims to be the incarnation of Martin himself!

Ryan, who lives in Muskogee, Oklahoma, was born to Baptist parents in 2005. When he was only four years old, he started having nightmares that his parents had no idea how to stop. He would often talk about his heart exploding, and of Hollywood, a place that is several thousands of miles away from Oklahoma. According to Ryan’s mom Cyndi, he would always talk in a matter-of-fact manner during these incidents.

After a year, Cyndi said that Ryan confided to her about his  reincarnation. “He said, ‘Mom, I have something I need to tell you. I used to be somebody else,’” she said. Being a Baptist, Cyndi’s first reaction was to deny everything and hide it from her husband, but she slowly became curious as Ryan revealed more details of his past life, especially because he would cry and beg for his mom to take him ‘home’. “His stories were so detailed and extensive, that it just wasn’t like a child could have made it up,” Cyndi said.

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Ryan spoke at length about Hollywood, his five marriages, vacations in Europe, his old houses, and his career as an actor and agent. In an attempt to understand what he was talking about, Cyndi checked out books about Hollywood from the library and showed them to her son. And that’s how they had a breakthrough – when Ryan happened to see a still in one of the books, from the 1932 movie Night After Night starring Mae West. “That’s me,” he said to his mother. He was pointing to an extra in the film. The family later found out that the man in the picture was bit-actor-turned-agent Marty Martin.

Armed with a face to match Ryan’s bizarre memories, Cyndi gathered the strength to approach a professional for help. Ryan is now seeing Dr. Jim Tucker, a highly respected child psychiatrist from the University of Virginia, with experience in studying children who claim to remember past lives. “These cases demand an explanation,” Tucker said, “We can’t just write them off or explain them away as just some sort of normal cultural thing.”

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Although he’s dealt with thousands of such cases, Dr. Tucker said that there’s something very different and special about Ryan. He says that the boy’s incredibly detailed descriptions and accurate claims that have matched up with Martin’s life are truly remarkable. “If you look at a picture of a guy with no lines in a movie, and then tell me about his life, I don’t think many of us would have come up with Marty Martyn’s life,” Tucker said. “Yet Ryan provided many details that really did fit with his life.”

With the help of Dr. Tucker, Ryan’s parents have reached out to a film archivist, who put them in touch with one of Martin’s daughters. And when they spoke to her, it turned out that all of Ryan’s stories check out – 55 of his statements matched up perfectly with Martin’s life. The boy was able to accurately name the street he lived on, and the names of his children, siblings and ex-wives.

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The most shocking revelations came later, when Ryan told Dr. Tucker during a session that he wondered why God had him die at 61-years-old, only to be reincarnated as a baby. This clashed with the official records – Martin’s death report stated that he was 59 when he had died. But then Dr. Tucker looked through old census reports and discovered that the certificate was incorrect, not Ryan!

As he grows older, Ryan’s memories of Martin are beginning to fade. But Dr. Tucker has managed to chronicle everything that the boy has spoken about his past life. The complete story is a part of his book on 2,500 cases he has studied over the years, called Return to Life.

Source: NBC Today