Joe Yates
Parents of a five-year-old boy were terrified to hear how their son believes he used to be a woman named Pam who died in a fire.
Okay, at that age I liked to dress up as characters from shows and what not, but I never thought I had been reincarnated after dying in a hotel fire like little Luke Ruehlman.
The youngster, of Cincinnati, Ohio, is adamant that his name is Pam Robinson - a woman who was killed in a fire at Chicago's Paxton Hotel back in 1993.
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It must be pretty traumatic for Pam's family to hear, but Ruehlman's mom Erika certainly believes him.
Her name first came about when he was just two years old, he started talking about a mysterious woman named Pam.
Recalling the incident to Fox8, Luke's mom Erika described how she asked her son who Pam was, saying: "He turned to me and said, 'Well, I was. 'Well, I used to be, but I died and I went up to heaven. I saw God and then eventually, God pushed me back down and I was a baby and you named me Luke'."
That must have been unsettling to hear from your own son, but it got worse and he went into more detail about his 'past life'.
Luke told his family that he'd travelled by train in Chicago - despite the five year old never having been to Chicago.
Bewildered by who this woman was that he was talking about, as no one in the family was named Pam, Erika did some digging about and it was only then that she read about Robinson.
Luke then indicated to his mom that he had leapt from a burning building to his death, before he was brought back to life in a new body.
Erika described a number of details her son 'remembered' from his past life, including having 'black hair'.
"I used to have earrings like that when I was a girl," he reportedly said at one point.
The mum believes the fact Luke's comments match facts he can't possibly have learned himself is 'proof' that he is reincarnated, and when asked to pick Pam out of a number of pictures of Black women in their 30s, Luke succeeded in spotting her first time.
Luke's comments and 'memories' prompted Erika to reach out to Pam's family, who told her more about their lost loved one. According to the details she learned from the family, both Pam and Luke are said to share a love for Stevie Wonder, and an enthusiasm for playing the keyboard.
Luke's story proved so compelling that it even caught the attention of producers of a paranormal investigations TV show, The Ghost Inside My Child.