This case was studied by Dr. Jim Tucker, a past-life researcher who worked alongside Ian Stevenson and has continued his research work at the University of Virginia.

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Ryan Hammons is a boy from Muskogee, Oklahoma, who, at the age of 4, started having frequent nightmares and woke up crying, telling his mother Cyndi that he wanted to go to Hollywood, more than 2,000 kilometers from the city where they lived. He also began to tell detailed stories about life in the 40s’ and 50s’, until one day he told his mother that he had been someone else.

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His mother Cyndi, as well as her husband, were Baptists and did not believe in the possibility of Reincarnation. But her son's reports were so detailed that she decided to search for information about them. As she flipped through some old movie books, Ryan, next to her, pointed to a picture of a background actor in a movie named "Night after night" and said: "This is me!" They then discovered that this was an actor whose name was Marty Martin. Then Cindy decided to seek  Dr. Jim Tucker's help, who, in studying Ryan's case, was impressed by the amount of detail he presented.

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Ryan claimed to have lived in Hollywood, on a street that contained the word "rock." Conducting a research, Dr. Tucker discovered that Martin lived on the street "North Roxbury" in Bervely Hills - "rox" has the same pronunciation of "rocks". Ryan also reported on a number of other details, such as the five weddings he had had, the number of sisters and the age at which he died, as well as details about parties, actresses and Hollywood life in the 1940s and 1950s.

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As he grows older, Ryan says memories are getting weaker. His complete story is part of the book written by Dr. Tucker called "Return to Life", which contains cases he has studied over the years.