[AUTHOR’S NOTE: As a Christian, I will admit this is information that I have trouble reconciling with my religious beliefs, and it especially bothers me because it’s something that wouldn’t upset me if true — it actually solves theological issues I have about sticky issues such as the premature death of a child. As a human being, curiosity got the better of me, and I’ve learned that I cannot simply reject the idea of reincarnation. Like Dr. Tucker, I’m merely more open to the possibility, in the light of evidence such as that I’m about to describe.]
Little five-year-old Ryan from rural Muskogee County, Oklahoma began having nightmares involving a past life.
Ryan claimed he had been a well-known actor who lived in Hollywood, had a sister who was a famous dancer, and once knew Rita Hayworth. He said that he had been really rich, married multiple times, loved Chinatown and Chinese food, lived in a house with a swimming pool on “rocks” drive, owned some sort of agency that changed names, and provided a host of other details about this mysterious “previous life.”
Ryan’s father Kevin, a police officer with thirteen years experience, proposed that mother Cyndi should keep track of all Ryan’s past-life claims. To be precise, over a period of several months Cyndi documented 102 unique claims that her son made about a past life.
Meanwhile, Ryan’s nightmares continued to get worse. He would turn white and gasp for air, struggling for every breath. He talked about things that seemed gibberish, like a meeting in a New York graveyard with someone he called “Senator Five.” His parents desperately felt the need to do something to help their son. “Do you know who I am yet?” Ryan would regularly demand.
Cyndi had heard that if you could get books about the places where children claimed to experience in their past lives, the children often opened up and found some relief. Cyndi began thinking it might help stop the nightmares, and she was willing to try just about anything to make them stop. So she bought a few books about Hollywood. Flipping through one of them one night, Ryan got excited when he saw a still photograph from an old movie. “You found me, Mama, you found me!”Ryan said excitedly. “That’s me, and that’s George” he said, pointing to a picture of George Raft.
The movie from which the promotional photo was taken was titled Night After Night.
Claiming he had worked on the film, Ryan proceeded to describe the plot in detail. He said that George Raft played a boxer who lived in a mansion and kept a closet full of guns.
Ryan pointed to an unidentified extra shown in the photo and claimed that had once been him. After his parents obtained a copy and watched Night After Night, they were flabbergasted as they realized Ryan had predicted specific details of the plot with eerie accuracy without ever having watched the movie.
But they were equally disappointed to discover that the actor Ryan had identified as his previous life had a minor, uncredited role. Desperate to help Ryan cope with his recurring nightmares, Kevin and Cyndi then contacted Dr. Jim Tucker, medical director of The Child and Family Psychiatry Clinic and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. After interviewing the young boy, Dr. Tucker decided that he and his parents were credible, and their claims merited further investigation. Tucker figured that the best way to help Ryan end his nightmares would be to identify the man from the movie, so he began to research.
Ryan and his parents looked through hundreds of head shots of actors from the 1930s. An actor named Ralf Harolde seemed to resemble the man in the photo, but Ryan wasn’t sure. Kevin and Cyndi were so determined to help their son they flew with Ryan to Hollywood, to trace the footsteps of Ralf Harolde. However, other than handling chopsticks like a seasoned pro in Fong’s Chinese restaurant, Ryan showed no signs of familiarity in his tour of Harolde’s old stomping grounds, and seemed particularly troubled to hear that Ralf Harolde didn’t have a sister. And when his mother told Ryan that Harolde’s wife’s name had been Mary, Ryan said, “Maybe that’s the wrong wife.”
But Dr. Tucker suspected Harolde was the wrong actor. And he believed Ryan harbored the same suspicion. So he enlisted the aid of professional film footage researcher Kate Coe. She went to the physical Academy Library archives and carefully pored over every scrap of information that she could find about the movie Night After Night. Finally she identified actor Marty Martyn as the man in the picture with George Raft.
With that breakthrough in hand, Tucker thoroughly researched the life of Martyn, and then put Ryan to a full battery of tests while employing the scientific method at every opportunity to ensure the results were genuine. Without mentioning his name, Tucker showed Ryan “photo lineups” of pictures in groups of four, and the boy easily identified Marty Martyn (born Marty Kolinsky) at various stages of his life.
As another test, Dr. Tucker asked Ryan’s father to read several other alliterative names such as John Johnson, Willie Wilson, and Robert Robertson, and Ryan quickly chose the name culled by Coe’s research, that of Marty Martyn. From photo lineups Ryan also correctly identified photographs of Senator “Five” (Senator Ives of New York), Martyn’s former wife Margie, and several other key figures that Ryan had mentioned on the bullet list of 102 memories from his alleged previous life.
Tucker managed to contact the daughter of Marty Martyn as part of his research efforts. He was able to confirm that 90 of 102 specific details from Ryan’s list were confirmed to be accurate and true. There was insufficient documentation to validate or refute the other 11 claims.
Next Ryan and his family traveled out to Hollywood again, this second trip to meet his “daughter”, who was now approximately the same age as Ryan’s grandmother. Seeing his “daughter” had grown to adulthood seemed to give Ryan closure. He no longer has nightmares and now acts much like any other child his age.
Now as a professed Christian, I readily admit that this sort of information falls well outside my comfort zone in terms of experience. But as someone who regularly chastises my atheist friends for being unwilling to challenge their personal system of beliefs with new information, it would be hypocritical for me to refuse to acknowledge that information such as this allegedly exists. If I’m going to “practice what I preach”, I have to investigate. And only a fool would suggest a 90 percent success rate was due to luck, or a fluke.
It turns out that Dr. Tucker is a well known, accredited expert in his field. I respected how he applied the scientific method to the bizarre, and somewhat unbelievable problem of reincarnation. And I also respected his candor in an interview with David Ian Miller about his book Life before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives when Dr. Tucker said,
What I say in the book is that after reviewing many of the strongest cases we have, the best explanation for them is that memories and emotions at times seem to be able to carry from one life to the next. So I think the evidence is there to support [reincarnation]. Now, if you are asking, Is it part of my personal belief system? Not particularly. I’m not a Buddhist or Hindu or anything like that. I’m open to the possibility, obviously, or I wouldn’t be spending time on this research. But I’m not a zealot as far as pushing some sort of religious doctrine.
The problem with information such as this is that it falls outside of our comfort zone, or our normal expectations of reality. On the surface it sounds like, well, something that could only be dreamed up in Hollywood. I can’t say I’ve experienced a previous life. I have no memories or experiences that would be in any way comparable to those Ryan claimed to have.
Could it be a hoax? Anything is possible. I can understand why Dr. Tucker might hope to perpetuate a ruse — the person who could confirm reincarnation, or life after life, might expect to achieve some level of fame and fortune. What I cannot understand is why Ryan or his parents would participate in a fraud.
I cannot simply dismiss the evidence offered in this particular case, especially in light of the fact it was so thoroughly documented, and the scientific method was applied during the data collection process. I can’t swear under oath that the information is true, either. I can only ask “Cui bono?” (who benefits) from the lie? I can also call to your attention that such alleged information exists, and relay that information as accurately as possible.
But I cannot tell you what this alleged information means, not with any certainty.
[Primary original source: The Unexplained television program on the Biography Channel, episode on reincarnation.]
Satan certainly benefits. Perhaps there are other explanations that don’t involve reincarnation?
I don’t understand the benefits of reincarnation to Satan. I respect your opinion very much though and think highly of you as a person, so I’d like to try to see this from your point of view.
Of course there are other possible explanations. I mentioned fraud, and surely there are other possibilities. But I am troubled by the insinuation that sharing this information would help the cause of Satan in any way, shape, or form. In my mind, if this turned out to be real, it would satisfy one of the most troubling aspects of a loving God in my mind — what happens to the starving child in Ethiopia who dies without ever hearing the gospel? And what about the millions of innocent unborn murdered in the womb? Do you believe our loving creator God condemns those innocent souls to an eternity in hell?
I can understand the comment that says this information isn’t supported by Christian doctrine, but I also offered that another possible explanation was demonic possession, where the demon pretended to be Marty Martyn. No matter if reincarnation is real or this is a case of demonic possession, without clear evidence of fraud, we’re looking at a supernatural explanation for an observed phenomena. I’m just not the type of person who can hear about something like this and not follow up with some sort of investigation.
Sorry if this article upset you. If it makes any difference, I see no reason to belabor this topic with future articles, even though I’ve found other cases that were equally interesting. But I’m not interested in cultivating belief in reincarnation because I can’t really say with certainty that I believe it myself.
I have personally rented the film in which Marty Martyn is seen in. He is credited both at the beginning and the end. This part of the narrative of this story is suspiciously inconsistent.
I take you at your word, having never seen the film myself. Several possible explanations exist; however, I will concede that the most likely explanation, if your recollections are indeed correct and accurate, is fraud…but then new questions arise. For this account to be fraudulent, Dr. Tucker could only be the mastermind. The Hollywood archive researchers also interviewed for the “documentary” if you will, were legitimate people who seemed to be staking their reputations on their work. Also, I watched the whole reveal of the research, and the identification of Marty Martyn, while clearly quite important and significant, was nevertheless only about 1/100th of the documented claims. Either the five-year-old boy knew very intimate and specific details of this deceased person’s life because his parents had forced him to do so for no tangible benefit whatsoever, or he knew these details for no known rational or explicable reason. Obviously, I strongly lean toward the latter position because I always ask the question, “Cui bono?” because for a hoax of this detail to exist, there must be some profit to be gained. The parents seemed to want to help their child, and when Ryan gained closure as “Marty” met his daughter, but she was now an old woman, and the problem was solved. Ryan became a normal boy as if he’d gone through an exorcism. So I ask myself–if this was a hoax, why didn’t they try to write a book? Sales would go through the roof, I expect, because people want to believe just about anything except the truth.
I’ll tell you the truth–this story fell so far outside of my comfort zone that I was initially reticent to say anything about it. I can reconcile the idea of believing in ghosts, which I do, and the Bible, but it has nothing for me on the subject of reincarnation. I think the ultimate justification for writing the article was self-explanatory…if I’m going to take what I do seriously, when writing a nonfiction book or even articles, it isn’t right nor fair for me to censor what I find on my journey from the reader. Truth does not have to be, and probably shouldn’t ever be comfortable. It cannot be sugarcoated or varnished and remain the truth. Truth shouldn’t need our protection. It should withstand the harshest scrutiny. And the truth is, I no longer know exactly what to think about the subject. I’ve only got this one apparently well-documented example even seven or eight years minimum after first stumbling across the story, but one example is more of an anomaly that indisputable evidence, especially since you’re now the first person in eight years to challenge any of it.
In summary, I accept your belief that you saw the film in question and that some of the information provided in the account was erroneous. As I think of it further, the idea that the researchers, upon learning the identity of Marty Martyn, altered the credits after the movie’s release wouldn’t seem to be reasonable or logical–either you could be mistaken, or alternatively Tucker, the parents, the Hollywood researchers, and the documentarians themselves were all wrong. I suppose the best way for me to resolve this is to watch the movie for myself.
Thank you for the information. I hope it was a good movie. I hadn’t really planned on watching it, but now you have me curious.
I could not find the original documentary online, but I found this mainstream media story from a few years ago. There are several discrepancies between this account and the one I saw, and specifically one on the number of accurate claims Ryan was credited with–this story says only 55, but it was over 100 of 105, and the other five were not “disproved” simply unable to be verified. This was three years after the story I saw.
So, I must concede that the story has one tangible benefit for Ryan and his mother that did not occur to me–publicity. They got attention. I guess my “cui bono?” question needs to account for the fact there are some people who want the attention, and not just the cash equivalent.
Perpetrating a hoax strikes me as work. I like to get paid for work.
https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/boy-says-he-remembers-past-life-hollywood-agent-n327506