Cincinnati Kindergartner Claims He Was A Woman Killed In A Chicago Hotel Fire In A Past Life

By Chuck Sudo in News on Feb 20, 2015 9:00PM

Do you believe in reincarnation or that you lived past lives and can channel memories from them? A 5-year-old Cincinnati boy is making national headlines for claiming to have lived a past life as a black woman from Chicago who died in a horrific hotel fire 22 years ago.

According to Luke Ruelhman’s mother Erika, the boy always seemed older and wiser than his years, with an obsession for safety and a growing fascination with being called “Pam.” Upon further prodding, Luke allegedly told his family that he is the reincarnation of Pamela Robinson, who died in a fire at the Hotel Paxton in 1993.

"I had found a picture of Pam, we had put it on a piece of paper with a lot of fake pictures," Ruehlman said. "Luke goes, 'Well I don't recognize anybody, but I remember when this one was taken' and he pointed to the correct one."

Nineteen people were killed in the fire at the single room occupancy hotel on the Near North Side in March 1993. The fire was whipped along by 20 mph winds and an investigation found the building itself was up to code, but there was no sprinkler system installed, prompting then-Mayor Richard M.Daley to call for tighter safety measures in SROs.

Luke's story attracted the attention of Lifetime, which will feature the family in a future episode of the series Ghost Inside My Child. But telling the story in full to his family seemed to serve as an exorcism of sorts for Luke. Again, according to Erika Ruehlman, who conveniently now says her son doesn't channel Robinson anymore.

"It was like he got it out," Erika Ruehlman said. "He was finished and had nothing more to say about it."