Boy Claims To Be The Reincarnation Of 1930s Hollywood Agent

Stop me if you've seen this movie before: a little boy tells his mother he remembers his life as a Hollywood agent, so she takes him to a doctor that specializes in children with memories of past lives and they uncover some spooky coincidences.

There are two types of people in the world: Mulders and Scullys. Scullys, proceed as though you're reading your friend's admittedly played-out screenplay. Mulders, get excited.

Being a little kid is hard. You can't reach tall stuff, you're not allowed to drink and you're afraid of ghosts. But one Oklahoma boy had an extra challenge: he began experiencing memories from a former life.

Little Ryan Hammons was your average toddler until he began experiencing horrible nightmares at age four, Today reports. Ryan would cry to his mother, Cyndi Hammons, about going back to his home in Hollywood. Eventually, at age 5, he told Cyndi a secret: "I used to be somebody else."

Ryan, now 10, had plenty of tales about the person he used to be. He said he once danced on Broadway, vacationed in France and had met famous actresses who were long dead. Like any rational adult dealing with the ramblings of a child, the boy's mother took him at his word and decided to research his claims. She went to the local library. It's okay if you want to imagine some haunting music while they scroll through microfiche together, but really, she just checked out books and brought them home.

Eventually, the boy pointed out a man and identified him as his former self. The man in question was an actor seen in a still from 1932's Night After Night. Night After Night was Mae West's first film, and it told the story of a man who tries to woo a socialite.

Cyndi couldn't figured out who the actor was, so she went for help. No, not reverse image search on Google: to Dr. Jim Tucker, associate profession of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia. Tucker studies children who claim to have memories from a past life and has even written a book about the topic. Though skeptical, he became interested in the subject when working under Ian Stevenson, another psychiatrist who was a real Mulder. Stevenson studied thousands of children with memories from past lives. In Stevenson's obituary, it was written that some (Mulders) regarded him as a genius who was simply misunderstood while others (Scullys) found his work to be a product of his gullibility.

Mulders, isn't this getting weird? Scullys, isn't this the best speculative screenplay? I'm imagine a slow place and maybe brunette Lena Headey or Salma Hayek as the mother and Stanley Tucci as Tucker. Maybe we move this to the Pacific Northwest, where it rains more. I'm just throwing things out here.

Anyhow, Tucker and Hammons end up tracking this guy down. His name was Marty Martyn. Martyn was born in Philly and his last name had once been Kolinsky. Martyn is billed as a character named Malloy in Night After Night, however, his character didn't even have one line in the final cut of the movie. It was also the only film he ever appeared appeared in, but he did go on to become a successful agent. He was married four times and had one child, and died in 1964 of a brain hemorrhage while hospitalized for leukemia.

Tucker researched Martyn's life and says that Ryan was able to successfully identify 55 details, including Martyn's address. Well, sort of. Ryan said his former self lived on a street with a "rock" in it, and Martyn had lived at 825 N. Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. Close enough.

In one weird turn of events, Ryan identified Martyn's age at his time of death at 61, though Tucker's research showed he died at age 59. However, Tucker later found that Ryan was actually correct. Explain that one, Scullys!

At 10, Ryan isn't so interested in his former life. His memories are fading, something that Tucker said often happens with children with these memories as they get older. Was he just a imaginative child and a good guesser enabled by the adults around him, or is Ryan actually the reincarnation of Marty Martyn? You decide.

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