Skip to main content

Case of Ryan Hammons

Case of Ryan Hammons:



I am using this one case out of the two I discuss as the primary source to illustrate children with past lives. This one is regarded as having the most verified information, which is why it's the main case to discuss.  

Ryan Hammons’ case deals with a child who details his “spy” and great Hollywood life to his mother at a relatively young age. Ryan’s mother decides to take him to a library to see if any books about old Hollywood would start a spark within Ryan. As they flipped through a book, they found an image that Ryan said was the person who made up the memories of his past life experiences. His parents, firm non-believers in the reincarnation phenomenon, did not know what to do with their son. Tucker, a child psychiatrist who was known to play a vital role in the research within this field, is when the discovery into Ryan’s past life becomes more apparent. With minimal information about this mystery man, a Hollywood historian is left to dig into archives of who this personality could be. Once the data was uncovered, Ryan was told to take recognition tests (many images or names were given four at a time from which Ryan had to see which ones drew towards his memory). He successfully matched all corresponding information to the image of his past life. It was then discovered that this man was Marty Martyn, who ran a talent agency in Hollywood. This summarization ran the basis of the very detailed storyline that Ryan Hammons had. His case has the most verified information, with that being “grand” details like information about age (which was proven to be wrong on documentation) and “smaller” details like the color of his car. 

My frame deals with the idea of synchronicity. Which, in brief, is what I describe as synonymous with the idea of coincidence. This idea where archetypal evidence is not seen as meaningful until the very end when there is an end result (identity of a past life personality). It can also be attributed to the “collective unconscious” that presents these symbols. I also add that this frame essentially begins the domino effect for all cases. So with this case, in particular, synchronicity is seen with the book that Ryan and his mother discover. Out of all the books they could have chosen, this one, in particular, had the picture of Martyn, which then starts the domino effect of trying to discover who this man was, and this was until Martyn was found.     

The sources I am using in this story are Leslie Kean’s Surviving Death, Jim Tucker's Return to Life. While not using direct quotations, I have watched the Netflix show Surviving Death based on the novel, which provided a visual description of cases like Ryan’s.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Topics for Consideration

For this assignment, I had some difficulty deciding on the main topic that I would want to tackle. At first, I was considering looking into the Mandela Effect. I found this idea fascinating in terms of how a group of individuals can form a collective memory that somehow, in some cases, years later find out was misheard or misread. However, looking into the matter, I realized that some of the Mandela Effect’s examples were already things that I have always thought to be correct. In searching for another exciting topic, I came across the frequently asked question of what life is beyond death. As a child, like most other kids, there was this idea exposed to us of heaven and hell or this fantasy land that long-awaited us after death. However, having a Hindu upbringing, there is a major tenet towards reincarnation. For this project, I feel it would be interesting to explore the different ways that life after death is carried through different cultures, religions, and even how it is present...
1 comment
Read more

Scouting the Territory

My topic has not changed since the first blog post. I have not redefined it, but I know that I would like to also focus on the cases of children who remember their past lives. So while I explore the afterlife, I want to incorporate and add on the reincarnation aspect seen with these cases. Looking on Google, keywords like “afterlife,” “reincarnation,” and “children with past lives” opens up a realm of possibilities for exploring routes for the paper. The word “afterlife” showcased a variety of shows and documentaries from Time and Netflix. Using “reincarnation” brought me to links that we’re defining what the term meant, but interestingly, it also showed results of ways in which it’s real and the signs that prove it. On Wikipedia, most of the information was based on the different types of ways religions saw the afterlife and dove into the issue's psychological and philosophical sides. The arguments presented were just trying to find ways to prove what the afterlife is like and had...
1 comment
Read more

Research Questions and Scholarly Sources

Shifting away from the afterlife and into past lives, there needed to be a little bit of adjustment; however, I believe I included the research questions I’d like to explore. Many children are able to vividly remember and provide descriptions of what they preserve as their “past life.” How accurate are these cases, and do these cases pose any benefits for children? Are children just highly imaginative, and does a child’s highly developmental mind play a role in their experiences? Could there be any overlap between these children? Sources: Haraldsson, Erlendur. “Children Who Speak of Past-Life Experiences: Is There a Psychological Explanation?” Psychology & Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, vol. 76, no. 1, Mar. 2003, p. 55. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1348/14760830260569256. Kean, Leslie. Surviving Death: a Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife. Three Rivers Press, an Imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018.  Pasricha,...
1 comment
Read more