On the 5th May 1957, while playing on the pavement, eleven-year-old Joanna and her six-year-old sister Jacqueline Pollock were run down by a car. The woman driver had been semi-conscious due to drug abuse. Although the parent’s sadness was great, they pardoned the guilty driver and wrote a letter to her.

 

When Mrs. Pollock was pregnant a year later, her husband revealed to her that he had a vision. He saw that she would give birth to twin girls and that these two would be their two lost daughters reborn. Even though Mrs. Pollock was reassured by a gynaecologist that there was only one audible heartbeat present and not twins, Mr. Pollock was still convinced that his knowing was correct. Later he was proven to be right. On the 4th October 1958, Mrs. Pollock gave birth to identical girl twins. The first child was given the name Gillian; the second born ten minutes later was named Jennifer.

 

While their father was admiring his new daughters, he noticed a scar above the right eyebrow of Jennifer, the younger of the two girls. His recently deceased daughter Jacqueline had had the same scar in exactly the same place. She had fallen at about the age of three, and a visible scar had remained on her forehead. To his amazement he also discovered a brown birthmark the size of his thumb on Jennifer. His daughter Jacqueline had had exactly the same birthmark in the same place. All this proved to him that his earlier vision that he had received was true. Gillian and Jennifer were truly his first daughters reborn. Mrs. Pollock, being a strict Catholic, still rejected the idea of reincarnation until the following events occurred.

 

When the twins were four months old the Pollocks moved to a different area, only to return to Hexham on a visit two and-a-half years later. To the amazement of the parents, their two daughters knew their way around this area extremely well. Without being able to see the school, since it was hidden from sight by the church, one of the girls said, “The school is just around the corner.” The other one pointed to a hill and said, “Our playground was behind there. It had a slide and a swing.” When they approached their old house the two sisters recognised it immediately. Even so, Mrs. Pollock, unlike her husband, still did not want to believe that the twins were really her recently deceased daughters reborn.

 

When the twins were four years old, Mr. Pollock opened a box, which had been closed for over three years. In it had been kept the toys of his first children. He placed some of these outside the twins’ bedroom door, as he wanted to see whether they would recognise their toys from the past. When the girls came out of their room – where their mother stood as witness to their reactions – Jennifer picked up the first doll and said, “Oh! That’s Mary. (And picking up the second doll,) that’s my Suzanne! I haven’t seen them for ages.” She used the same names, which Jacqueline had previously given her two dolls. “Father Christmas gave us these a long time ago.” She turned to Gillian, and pointing to another toy she said, “And that’s your washing machine.” Now Mrs. Pollock was finally convinced that her twins really were her first daughters, and that her Church must be mistaken in refuting reincarnation.

 

Both the children developed over-cautious responses when crossing roads and feared speeding cars. The older daughter Gillian loved to comb peoples’ hair, especially her father’s. This interest had been the same in their fatally injured Joanna. Joanna had been five years older than her sister Jacqueline, and the sisters had spent most of their time holding hands and had seemed inseparable. Jacqueline always listened to her older sister; whatever she said was right for her. The same behaviour surfaced once again in the twins. The one born ten minutes later leaves all the decisions to her sister and does what she tells her. Once again both of them loved walking around hand in hand, and as before one never seemed to want to do anything different than the other