Ryan, a 10-year-old boy from Oklahoma, believes he is the reincarnation of Hollywood actor Marty Martyn, a man who died in 1964.
Today reported that Ryan began having nightmares at age 4 and then, at age 5, told his mother, Cyndi, “I used to be somebody else.”
The then-5-year-old would cry to his mother to take him “home to Hollywood” and recounted stories of meeting Rita Hayworth, dancing on Broadway, traveling overseas and working at an agency. When his mother showed him a library book with movie publicity shots, Ryan pointed to a man in the 1932 Mae West film Night After Night.
“She turns to the page in the book, and I say ‘that’s me, that’s who I was,’ ” said Ryan. Cyndi, a Baptist who previously didn’t believe in reincarnation, reached out to child psychologist Dr. Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia. Tucker tracked down the identity of Martyn, who was a movie extra turned Hollywood agent. He had, in fact, danced on Broadway, traveled overseas and worked at an agency. Tucker said almost none of these details were available online.
Tucker recounts Ryan’s story, as well as the stories of other children who say they remember past lives, in his book Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives.
