Three-year-old claimed he remembered dying on 9/11 – then his mom found a startling connection

A young boy became so afraid of skyscrapers and airplanes that his family couldn't drive through downtown without him bursting into panic - and his mother thinks she now knows the reason.

Cade Wilson was just three years old when he began waking up in the middle of the night, crying about working in a tall building where he could see the Statue of liberty from his office.

According to his mother, who was speaking on LMN's The Ghost Inside My Child, he told her he'd dreamed of falling with the building, as the 'way he died'.

The mother, Molly Curnutte, said she brushed it off at first.

"I noted it, but I never thought anything of it. I noted it as an oddism. I just thought he had a vivid imagination," she said.

Dad Rick with Cade when he was a bay (LMN)

His father, Rick, backed that up, pointing out that Cade had never been to New York and that no one in the family had any connection to the World Trade Centre.

Not long after the nightmares started, Cade developed what his mother called an obsessive fear of aircraft, not of flying itself, but seemingly where the planes were headed.

Fae, Cade's grandmother said he was 'totally petrified' of them, 'like they were monsters'.

Driving through downtown became a struggle when Cade was in the car, with Rick saying Cade was frantic around tall buildings.

The turning point, according to his mother, came when Cade stopped describing vague fears and started giving specifics.

She said he 'flat out said that he was in a building that was hit by something, that it exploded, and that he had fallen'.

He also began insisting his name wasn't really Cade.

Cade's mum said she initially brushed it off to him having a 'vivid imagination' (LMN)

Struggling to make sense of it, Cade's mother turned to an online forum and posted his story, hoping someone could help.

"It was actually another mother who sent me the link," she explained.

"And she said there was a man that worked in the World Trade Center. And he died on 9/11. His life mimics what Cade describes his life and his death was."

She pulled up the man's obituary and photographs, and says the shock of the parallels was immediate, though she has never contacted his surviving family, wary of interrupting anyone's grieving process.

Cade's mother says another mother online sent her a link connecting his story to a man who died working in the World Trade Center on 9/11. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The fallout at home has reportedly been difficult.

Cade's mother said other children have called him a liar, and some parents in the neighbourhood don't want their kids playing with him, while teachers have grown frustrated with him disrupting class.

"I'm heartbroken, absolutely heartbroken," she said. "You just want everybody to like your kid."

Despite the strain, both parents say their focus now is simply on giving Cade as normal a childhood as possible.

"I need him to learn to be Cade, to learn to be a kid again, to learn to laugh," his mother said.

"And I think we're gonna get there. I do."