Vintage 1950s
Mystery
The Mysterious Case of the Pollock Twins
My
husband, Will Zeilinger and I co-write the Skylar Drake Murder Mysteries, a
hardboiled Detective series that takes
the reader to 1950s Los Angeles and other areas of the west. Our new book, GAME
TOWN is set in Hollywood and exposes a scandal that rocks the Toy Companies in
Los Angeles.
While
doing in-depth research into the 1950s, we came across scandals that shocked and
amazed us. Really, you can't make this stuff up!
The
John and Florence Pollock family and their two young daughters Joanna, 11, and
Jacqueline, 6 lived in Hexham, in North- Cumberland, England.
On May 7, 1957, tragedy struck when the two girls
were on their way to church with a friend. They were hit by a car. The two
Pollock girls were killed instantly in the accident and their friend died later
at the hospital.
The
devastating news was widely covered in England and the US. Their parents were devastated over their
loss. Florence Pollock went into a deep depression, and John maintained hope
that his daughters would somehow return to them. Arguing ensued resulting in filing
for divorce.
Florence
became pregnant the following year, and on October 4, 1958 gave birth to
healthy twin girls. The twins, Gillian and Jennifer, as John had predicted. It
was a total surprise, since their doctor had told them it was to be only a
single birth and neither one of the parents had any history of twins in their
families.
John
considered them to be a miracle, and he truly believed that his dead daughters
had come back to them, citing as evidence an odd birthmark on Jennifer’s right
eye that resembled a scar that Jacqueline had had in the same exact spot, as
well as a matching round birthmark on her waist. Although they were identical
twins, Gillian lacked the marks.
The
family moved from Hexham to Whitley Bay when the twins were just a few months
old. Then things became strange. As soon as the twins were old enough to talk they
began asking for and describing specific toys that Joanna and Jacqueline had
owned, even calling their dolls by the same name. The twins had never seen them
before and were not aware that they had two sisters who had died. When the
toys were brought down from the attic each of the twins instinctively collected
the respective ones that belonged to Johanna and Jacqueline, stating that they
were “Santa’s gifts”. Eerie, because they were Christmas gifts.
Also, the two twins liked the same
foods as Joanna and Jacqueline had the same respective personalities,
mannerisms, and behaviors, liked the same games as their older sisters. The
twins had the same gait as their dead sisters when they walked, and the same
general builds, i.e. Gillian being slender as Johanna had been, and Jennifer
stocky, same as Jacqueline.
Oddities
continued over the years, with the girls eerily giving details of things that
only their parents and Joanna and Jacqueline would have known.
These
stories were unusual enough to make it into local newspapers, which caught the
attention of psychologists, Dr. Ian Stevenson, who was interested in evidence of
reincarnation in children. He began to make frequent visits to the Pollocks.
These
memories of the twins’ past lives began to fade at around the age of 5, after
which they led normal lives without being haunted by the past. Stevenson would keep in contact with the family
for years until the death of their parents.
Stevenson
was so enthralled with the Pollock case that he wrote a case report in a volume
of Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of
Birthmarks and Birth Defects, as well as mentioning it in 1987 in a book
called Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of
Reincarnation. He would go on to write a total of 12 books on the subject
of reincarnation and study thousands of such cases in children.
Stevenson
had considered the possibility that the twins could have been influenced by
their parents but he eventually came to the conclusion that it would have been
impossible for them to mold the behaviors and recollections of their twins to
match to their dead sisters. Stevenson pointed out that the birthmarks provided
physical evidence that something strange was going on, and indeed birthmarks,
matching injuries, scars or other birthmarks of past lives are fairly common
recurring phenomenon with reincarnation cases.
In
the end, Stevenson strongly believed that the evidence, when coupled with
hundreds of other similar cases were beyond rational explanation and
undoubtedly pointed to reincarnation is real, and he believed the Pollock
case to be genuine.
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