In the 1950s, 2 sisters died in a tragic accident. Years later, their parents had twins who spoke of memories from the crash

In May 1957, tragedy struck the quiet English town of Hexham when two young sisters, Joanna and Jacqueline Pollock, were killed on their way to church. On May 5, 1957, a speeding car veered onto the pavement, killing the girls, who were 11 and 6 years old when they died, and their young friend.

The driver was a local woman reportedly struggling with mental illness, making the loss particularly traumatic. This tragic event became the backstory for one of the most famous modern cases linked to reincarnation.

Seventeen months later, in October 1958, their mother, Florence, gave birth to twin girls, Gillian and Jennifer, now known as the Pollock twins. Their father, John Pollock, was a strong believer in reincarnation, and soon the family and later researchers began to note extraordinary similarities that seemed to defy coincidence.

Mysterious memories and eerie similarities

The similarities stunned the twins’ parents. Gillian and Jennifer not only mirrored their sisters’ personalities but also exhibited matching birthmarks and scars. Specifically, Jennifer had a mark on her waist that perfectly corresponded to a birthmark on Jacqueline, and a scar-like mark on her forehead that matched a scar Jacqueline had received from an earlier fall.

From early childhood, the twins appeared to recognize places they had never been and describe details of the fatal accident. Most strikingly, they would identify and demand toys that had belonged to their deceased sisters, objects which had been packed away before the twins were born.

The twins also exhibited a shared, spontaneous phobia of cars and traffic. On one occasion, the girls were reportedly discussing the accident when one of them pointed to the mark above the other’s eye and said, “That’s where the car hit you.”

As the girls grew older, their memories of their “previous lives” began to fade, a pattern that researchers have found in other alleged reincarnation cases.

A topic of research

Their story eventually caught the attention of Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia who meticulously documented hundreds of cases involving children who claimed to remember previous lives.

Stevenson, known for his methodical approach, considered the Pollock twins to be one of the most persuasive cases he had ever encountered. He documented the evidence in several of his books, including Children Who Remember Previous Lives, concluding that the data demonstrated a strong example of apparent carry-over of personality and memory. Stevenson stopped short of declaring reincarnation proven, but he argued that the twins’ knowledge and behavior could not be explained by coincidence or suggestion alone.

Other potential explanations

Skeptics remain unconvinced, pointing out that since the children’s memories did not surface until around age three, they could have absorbed details through overheard conversations or been subtly influenced by their father’s profound belief in reincarnation. Other explanations include cryptomnesia (the unconscious recall of forgotten information) or the natural grieving tendency of parents to connect their new children to those they lost. Regardless, nearly seventy years later, the Pollock twins’ case continues to captivate believers and skeptics alike, enduring as one of the most haunting mysteries in modern parapsychology.