Posted by On 5 May 1957, in Hexham, England, Joanna and Jacqueline Pollock, aged 11 and 6, were hit and killed by a car. In October 1958 their mother gave birth to twins, Gillian and Jennifer, who according to their parents had marks on their bodies like their sisters’ and remembered their toys and places. The case was studied by Ian Stevenson, but nothing has been proven.
On 5 May 1957 two little sisters died in an accident. A year later their mother gave birth to twin girls who seemed to be the reincarnation of their dead sisters. This is the story of the Pollock twins.
The Pollock sisters
John and Florence Pollock and their two daughters, Jacqueline and Joanna, were a happy family. They led a quiet life in their home in Hexham, England, until tragedy struck.
Jacqueline, 6, and Joanna, 11, were hit by a car while walking with a little friend. Both sisters were killed instantly.
The Pollocks were devastated, but did not lose hope, and a year after the accident they decided to have another child. Their prayers were answered and Florence became pregnant. On 4 October 1958 she gave birth to twin girls, whom she named Gillian and Jennifer.
The Pollock twins
Shortly after the birth, the parents noticed a mark on Jennifer’s forehead, exactly where Jacqueline had had a scar. On her leg there was also a mark identical to one Jacqueline had in the same place.
When the twins were 3 months old the family moved to the town of Whitley Bay. Two years later, when the twins started talking, they began asking for toys. But not just any toys: the little girls described toys that had belonged to their dead sisters and that they had never seen in their lives.
The strange coincidences continued when the family went back to visit relatives in their old town. There the Pollock twins began pointing to specific places as if they knew them, even though they had left when they were only 3 months old. In particular, they recognised the school they said they had attended, which had in fact been attended by their older sisters.
The parents then decided to give the twins some toys that had belonged to Jacqueline and Joanna: incredibly, the two girls recognised all of them and knew the names their dead sisters had used for them.
Strange coincidences
Things became truly sinister when the twins began behaving strangely: Jennifer would lie on the floor and rest her head on Gillian’s legs. Then Gillian would tell her sister that blood was coming out of her eye because that was where the car had hit her. It seemed as if the twins were reliving their dead sisters’ memories.
It all intensified when the two began getting hysterical as cars went by, screaming that the cars were coming to get them.
Once they turned 5, the memories of the twins’ supposed past life suddenly faded, and the two went on to live normal lives.
Dr Ian Stevenson
Naturally this story drew the interest of many researchers. In particular Dr Ian Stevenson (1908-2007), who studied the case of the Pollock twins and included it in his work on children who remember previous lives. Dr Stevenson believed in reincarnation and studied the subject for more than 50 years at the University of Virginia.
It must be said, however, that almost everything we know comes from the parents’ accounts, and the father, John, already believed in reincarnation before the twins were born. Sceptics point out that young children absorb a great deal from their family’s stories and expectations, and that the cases Stevenson collected were never independently verified.
Reincarnation or suggestion? The case of the Pollock twins remains a mystery.
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