An Ohio boy is making people reconsider what happens when you die, with claims that he once lived another life.
5-year-old Luke Ruehlman states that he once lived as an African-American woman named Pam Robinson, who lived in Chicago.
The odd story began when Luke started bringing up the name "Pam" randomly in conversation.
Luke's family knows no one named Pam, so his stay-at-home mom, Erica, decided to investigate further.
When she asked young Luke who Pam was, "He turned to me and said, 'Well, I was.'"
Erica told a local news station that the boy then said, "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."
The bewildered mother pressed him for more information, asking how he had died.
"He looked right at me and said, 'Yeah it was fire.' And at that point he made like a motion with his hand like he was jumping off a building," Ruehlman explained.
Luke told his mom that he had died in "a tall building," had been "a girl with black hair," and that he had "traveled by train in Chicago."
The 5-year-old has never visited Chicago.
With her curiosity peaked, Ruehlman took to her computer to try to find any information on a Pam from Chicago who had died in a fire.
Her Internet digging eventually brought her to an article about a fire that devastated Chicago's Paxton Hotel, and claimed the lives of 19 people in 1993.
One of the victims was an African-American woman named Pam Robinson, who, trapped by the raging fire, jumped to her death.
Luke's mother reached out to the Robinson family, and discovered the boy and the woman shared the same tastes in music.
After a while though, the boy seemed to let the memory of Pam fade.
Ruehlman says that she is telling her boy's story because it's a "positive one" of "unification."
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