The idea of life after death has left humans stroking their metaphorical beards for as long as we’ve been around.
While it is truly impossible to know, there are endless theories that have been proposed to lessen the blow of what is, quite possibly, an eternal abyss of nothingness.
Reincarnation being one of them. This is the belief that the soul will live on beyond the body, being born again in a new form.
There have been various instances of alleged reincarnation over the centuries. However, the case of the Pollock sisters is often cited as one of the stronger examples to support the theory and, to this day, the case continues to fascinate many.
Appearing first in newspapers, the story later featured in books written by reincarnation researcher, Dr Ian Stevenson.
In 1946 and then 1951, daughters Joanna and Jacqueline were born to a happy Catholic family who lived in the market town of Hexham in England.
Parents, Florence and John Pollock, ran a milk delivery business and already had four sons when the two daughters arrived.
While the parents were working, the girls were often left with their grandmother where they’d happily play dress up and games of imagination.
However, tragedy struck on May 5 1957. On the way to church with their friend, a car veered off the road and smashed into them.
The girls died on the scene and the friend they have been with, Anthony, died en route to the hospital. Joanna was 11 and Jacqueline only six- they’d had their whole lives ahead of them.
A woman named Marjorie Winn was responsible for their death. She’d been found to be intoxicated after overdosing on aspirin and the epilepsy medication, phenobarbitone.
The woman’s children had been taken away from her and, after attempting to take her own life, she was later committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Despite their despairing grief, it wasn’t long before Florence fell pregnant again. On October 4, 1958, she gave birth to twin daughters whom they named Gillian and Jennifer.
Strangely enough, John had suspected that they would have twins despite the midwife hearing only one heartbeat throughout the pregnancy and there being no family history of twins.
John feared that the death of his first two daughters was a punishment from God for his childhood fascination with reincarnation, leading him to question his Catholic faith. He believed that the twin girls were his dead daughters reincarnated.
The case for reincarnation was made compelling by the appearance of similar birthmarks between one of the twins, Gillian, and one of the dead sisters, Joanna. Both had a darker patch of skin, the size and shape of a thumbprint, on their hips.
In addition, the other twin, Jennifer, had a birthmark on her forehead that resembled a scar Jacqueline had received from a fall in 1954.
Similarly, despite being identical twins, there were other physical differences that made them look less like each other and more similar to one of their dead sisters that they’d never had the chance to meet.
Where Gillian’s gait was splay-footed, again like Joanna, Jennifer’s was ordinary just like Jacqueline.
However, the case for reincarnation is not merely physical. When Florence brought down the family's old toys from the attack, the girls automatically approached different toys without arguing or hesitation.
Gillian took Joanna’s favourite toys while Jennifer picked out Jacqueline’s. They were even able to identify which toys had been gifted to each sister by Father Christmas.
After the accident, the family moved 30 miles away from Hexham to Whitley Bay. However, a few years later, they returned to the market village where they had originally lived.
Despite the twins spending their early years in Whitley Bay, sources claim that they were able to identify areas they couldn’t possibly have visited before in their lives. These included Joanna and Jacqueline’s favourite park as well as Hexham Abbey.
John later recounted that “as he was walking the twins up the hill towards St. Mary’s church, one turned to the other and said the school is up here where we used to go to and the playground is round the back.
“At the time not only would they have been too small to see the school from where they were but there was also a large wall obscuring their view.”
While John was convinced that the twins were a reincarnation of the sisters, Florence was a committed Catholic who refused to believe in reincarnation.
However, even she was unable to rationalise certain events that followed. One day, she found the twins playing a game.
Jennifer was lying on the floor, her head being cradled in Gillian’s lap where she reported overhearing her saying: “The blood’s coming out of your eyes. That’s where the car hit you.”
In another incident, Gillian recounted exactly how Jacqueline had gotten her scar by pointing at Jennifer’s birthmark and saying, “That is the mark Jennifer got when she fell on a bucket.”
The peculiarities kept piling up: the twins liked the same clothing and songs as their predecessors, they identified friends and neighbours they’d never met, the elder twin looked after the younger in exactly the same way Joana had looked after Jacqueline.
Perhaps most noticeably was their tangible phobia of cars. The twins suffered from recurring nightmares of being hit by a car and, when startled by cars on the street, would shout something like: “The car! It’s coming for us!”
Many academics took interest in the girls. Dr Banerjee came over from India to interview the two girls in connection with his research into extra sensory perception and telepathy.
Dr Ian Stevenson studied their case and, in 1987, the professor of psychiatry from University of Virginia School of Medicine, included the Pollock girls in his book entitled ‘Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation’.
The girls were just one of fourteen case studies outlined in the book. Stevenson argued that cases involving children were more credible because they were less likely to make things up or understand the significance of their behaviour.
However, sceptics argue that the parents planted memories in the twins, Gillian and Jennifer, either consciously or unconsciously.
While they maintain that they never openly discussed their deceased daughters in front of the twins, it is feasible that they referred to events in passing and didn’t realise that the twins were absorbing the information.
Similarly, there is no mention of the four elder brothers who would have inevitably been a source of information on the events that happened before the twins were born.
Other people dismiss the theory, arguing that grieving parents would find comfort in the idea that their deceased daughters had returned to them in another form.
However, according to the Unexplained Podcast, Florence was considered to be an impartial witness by others.
It said: “Dr Jim Tucker, a research partner of Professor Stevenson, has also pointed out that for Florence it was a constant struggle to reconcile the evidence of her own eyes with the Church’s edict that belief in reincarnation was a mortal sin.
“As such the possibility that the girls had been reincarnated brought no comfort to her whatsoever and as such she should be regarded as an excellent impartial witness.”
As the girls grew older, the strange reminders of the family's past seemed to become further and further apart.
However, one further event in 1981 when Gillian was aged 23, further echoed the life of her deceased elder sister.
She revealed she’d had visions about playing in a sandbox in Whickham, giving vivid descriptions of her surroundings. While Gillian had never been to Whickham, the family had lived there when Joanna was a toddler.
The curious mystery of the Pollock twins has long haunted many people, including their own family. The two camps of reincarnation and coincidence remain as divided as ever.
