According to US show Today, Ryan used to suffer from vivid and haunting nightmares from the age of four but it wasn’t until a year later that he told his mother what he had been hiding – that he believed he used to be a Hollywood star.
Talking to the daytime programme, Cyndi Hammons, Ryan’s mum, said: "He said mom, I have something I need to tell you - I used to be somebody else."
Admitting that she doesn’t believe in reincarnation, Cyndi said his stories were so detailed that she couldn’t help but do a little research.
When the family found a picture of an extra in the 1932 movie Night after Night in a Hollywood Memorial book, and Ryan said, “that’s me, that’s who I was”, Cyndi admits that “it changed everything”.
The young boy’s mum sought help from Dr Jim Tucker a professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences who said: "These cases demand an explanation. We can’t just write them off or explain them away as just some sort of normal cultural thing."
"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. Yet Ryan provided many details that really did fit with his life," he added.
