This story shocked the whole world. It began as a tragedy, then moved into the inexplicable, and as a result led scientists to a dead end.

It all began in the middle of the twentieth century. The Catholic family of Hexham John Pollock and his wife Florence had a baby girl named Joanna, and five years later they had another baby girl named Jacqueline.

The Pollocks were the most ordinary family, and the only thing that distinguished them from other Catholics was the belief of the head of the family in reincarnation. He was so convinced of the transmigration of souls that he begged the God for proof.

Sisters Jacqueline and Joanna Pollock.

Meanwhile, his daughters were growing up and enjoying their childhood. One day Jacqueline fell into an empty barrel and hurt her forehead. She had a scar to remember the incident. And Joanna often said that she would not become an adult, but her parents did not pay much attention to what she said. She also had a notable mole on her stomach.

In 1957 an accident happened: the sisters were hit to death by a car. It was the driver’s fault. Jacqueline, her classmate Anthony, and her older sister Joanna were on their way to church. The female driver wanted to end her life and drank a dangerous dose of medication, because of which she failed to cope with the control… The irony is that she survived.

Newspaper with an obituary of the Pollock sisters.

John and Florence were heartbroken. But life went on and after a while the woman became pregnant again. It wasn’t until the time of delivery that it became known that Florence was carrying twins. John was sure that his dead girls came back to him in the guise of newborns.

It would seem that this was just speculation and a man’s blind belief in reincarnation. Especially his wife did not share his views. But it wasn’t that simple.

The new sisters Gillian and Jennifer (as the girls were named) had the same markings on their foreheads and abdomens, respectively, as the deceased sisters.

The strangeness continued. When the girls were three years old, their parents let them play with Jacqueline and Joan dolls. The twins knew whose doll was where, and that it was a Christmas present to their sisters from Santa Claus.

Later, her mother overheard the girls talking about the day of the accident and the incident with the barrel into which Jacqueline had fallen.

On numerous occasions, Gillian and Jennifer recalled things they could not have known.

For example, right after they were born, the Pollocks moved to another city. And when they came as a family to take a walk in the town where they used to live, the girls asked for a ride on their favorite swings and recognized “their” school…

According to Florence, on more than one occasion she heard her daughters discuss the details of an accident. One day she noticed a strange conversation between the twins. Gillian, touching Jennifer’s head, muttered:

“There’s blood coming out of your eyes… That’s where the injury from the car collision was…”

As time went on, and as the twins outgrew the ages of Jacqueline and Joan, the cryptic memories became fewer and fewer. Once, though, as an adult, Gillian shared her vision with reporters – she described in detail the house where her parents lived with her dead sisters. To the journalists’ surprise, the coincidence was 100 percent!

The little girls’ characters were exactly the same as those of their dead sisters. Jillian adored taking care of Jennifer, giving her the best she had. They loved to play with their mother’s hair, too, and were fidgety. Jillian was more outgoing than her twin and was interested in things that were uncharacteristic of her age. The girl seemed more mature than her sister. However, if you remember Joanna and Jacqueline and admit the existence of reincarnation, everything falls into place.

If the transmigration of souls is true, then it is not surprising that the little girls were very afraid of cars. Their fear sometimes escalated into hysteria. Mr. Pollock later confessed to reporters that once, when he and his daughters were walking down a dark alley and a car honked behind them, they began to sob so hard that they almost lost their senses. They couldn’t move, though. Their father recalled that Joanna and Jacqueline had nowhere to run that ill-fated day either, because there was a fence behind them.

At the age of twenty, Gillian had a vision in which she wandered into the house where the Pollock family had lived until Joanna was four years old. The girl described the mansion in all its colors, and the journalists, when they arrived there, were convinced of the truth of her words.

Gillian and Jennifer grew up to be perfectly ordinary women, married and had children. Unfortunately, there is no information about their later life.

Many years have passed since then, but the debate about the reincarnation of the Pollock sisters continues. Some believe that the parents were wishful thinking, while others are inclined to believe in the transmigration of souls.

One of those who studied this case was psychiatrist and biochemist Ian Stevenson. In 1987 he published a book in which he collected stories of children who remembered past lives. One of them is the story of the Pollock sisters.

Stevenson studied girls for 40 years but did not find any serious evidence of reincarnation. The doctor himself explained it this way:

The older Gillian and Jennifer became, the fewer details of their “past lives” they remembered. I also don’t rule out the possibility that everything the Pollocks described might have had something to do with common DNA and genetics.

Be that as it may, no one has ever been able to explain or disprove the mystical component of this story. After Gillian and Jennifer’s parents died, the psychiatrist stopped his observation of the twins.