背景介绍：

事件发生于 20 世纪 50 年代英国诺森伯兰郡赫克瑟姆镇，波洛克夫妇经营杂货与送奶生意。夫妇育有两个女儿，11 岁的乔安娜与 6 岁的杰奎琳，姐妹二人关系十分亲密；小女儿杰奎琳身上有两处明显印记：腰左侧深色胎记、右眼附近额头的旧伤疤。

1957 年 5 月 7 日，两个女儿和同伴出门前往教堂时遭遇车祸，三个孩子全部遇难，家庭遭受巨大打击。父亲约翰自幼相信轮回转世，尽管他的天主教信仰并不支持该观点，妻子弗洛伦斯也不认同，但约翰坚信死去的两个女儿会再次投胎回到这个家庭。

之后弗洛伦斯再次怀孕，医生判断腹中只有一个胎儿，约翰却坚持会生下两个女孩，为后续整个争议事件埋下伏笔。

事件简介：

1958 年，妻子产下一对双胞胎。其中一名女婴身上，出现和过世小女儿位置大致吻合的胎记与疤痕。孩子三岁前后，能分清已故姐姐们的旧玩具，还出现特殊握笔姿势、惧怕汽车、预判公园位置等一系列反常行为。

事件见报后，研究前世记忆的学者伊恩・史蒂文森介入调查并长期跟进。但随着长大，双胞胎所谓前世记忆逐步消退，成年后已不记得相关经历。

案例几乎全部依据父母口述，缺少第三方实时记录。有评论认为父亲的信念、家庭环境、巧合都可以解释这些现象，整件事至今无法证实轮回，是二十世纪极具争议的转世案例。

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In October 1958, Florence Pollock gave birth to twin girls in the English county of Northumberland.

The doctors had expected only one baby. Twins did not run in that family. Yet John Pollock, the girls’ father, claimed that he had known two children would arrive.

He was also convinced that he knew who they were.

The babies, he believed, were his daughters returning from the dead.

This is the strange and controversial story of the Pollock twins—one of the twentieth century’s most famous alleged cases of reincarnation.

John and Florence Pollock lived with their children in Hexham, a historic market town surrounded by the green hills of northern England. John and Florence ran a grocery and milk-delivery business, and family life revolved around the shop, school and church.

Their daughters, Joanna and Jacqueline, were five years apart in age but extremely close.

Joanna, the elder sister, was lively, generous and protective. She enjoyed dressing in costumes and creating little plays. Jacqueline followed her everywhere. The girls played together, shared their possessions and liked combing their father’s hair.

Jacqueline had two distinctive marks. One was a round, dark birthmark on her left side of her waist. The other was a small scar on her forehead, close to her right eye, caused by an accident when she was very young.

On 7 May 1957, eleven-year-old Joanna and six-year-old Jacqueline left home to attend church. They were walking with another child, nine-year-old Anthony Layden, when a car left the road and struck them.

All three children were killed.

The loss devastated the Pollock family.

Florence tried to cope by putting away objects that reminded her of her daughters. Their toys were packed into boxes and stored out of sight. She also stopped helping with milk deliveries and placed her work coat in a cupboard.

John responded differently.

Since childhood, he had believed in reincarnation—the idea that after death, a person can be born again in another body. His Catholic faith did not support this belief, and Florence strongly disagreed with him. Nevertheless, John became convinced that Joanna and Jacqueline would return to the family.

Then Florence became pregnant.

Her doctor believed that she was carrying one child. John insisted there would be two—and that both would be girls.

On 4 October 1958, Florence gave birth to twins.

They were named Gillian and Jennifer.

Almost immediately, John noticed something unusual about Jennifer. She had a pale mark on her forehead in approximately the same place as Jacqueline’s old scar. She also had a dark birthmark on the left side of her waist, where Jacqueline had possessed one.

For John, the meaning was obvious.

Gillian was Joanna, he decided. Jennifer was Jacqueline.

Florence remained unconvinced.

A birthmark could be a coincidence. The twins belonged to the same family as the older girls, so physical similarities were hardly surprising. More importantly, Gillian and Jennifer were babies. They could not describe memories or recognise anything.

For the moment, John had only a belief.

Then the twins began to speak.

When they were about three years old, their parents brought down the boxes containing Joanna and Jacqueline’s belongings. According to John and Florence, the twins immediately separated the toys.

Gillian claimed the doll that had belonged to Joanna. Jennifer took Jacqueline’s doll. Neither girl argued over which possessions belonged to whom.

Gillian then noticed a small toy clothes-wringer that Joanna had received as a Christmas present.

“There is my toy wringer,” she reportedly said, adding that Father Christmas had given it to her.

Other incidents followed.

One day, John took Florence’s old milk-delivery coat from the cupboard and wore it while decorating. Jennifer appeared to recognise it and asked why he was wearing her mother’s coat. When John questioned her, she explained that Florence had worn it while delivering milk.

But Florence had stopped doing that before the twins were born.

The family also noticed differences between the girls.

Although Gillian and Jennifer were the same age, Gillian behaved like an older sister. She looked after Jennifer just as Joanna had once looked after Jacqueline. Gillian enjoyed costumes and acting, while Jennifer appeared younger and more dependent.

There were smaller similarities too. Jennifer held a pencil upright in her closed hand—the same unusual grip Jacqueline had used. Gillian held hers conventionally, as Joanna had.

Then there was their behaviour near cars.

The twins were exceptionally cautious when crossing roads. On one occasion, a nearby engine suddenly started in a narrow alley. According to their father, both girls became terrified, clung to each other and cried that the car was coming towards them.

Their parents also claimed to have overheard them quietly discussing a collision while playing together.

Perhaps the most unsettling incident occurred when the family returned to Hexham.

The Pollocks had moved away when the twins were nine months old. Several years later, they brought Gillian and Jennifer back for a visit. As the family approached a part of town the twins had supposedly never seen, the girls became excited about a park and its swings before the park was visible.

They appeared to know where it was.

By then, newspapers had begun reporting the story. In 1963, it attracted the attention of Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist from the University of Virginia.

Stevenson spent much of his career investigating young children who appeared to remember previous lives. He interviewed witnesses, recorded children’s statements and compared birthmarks or behaviour with information about deceased people.

When Stevenson first met the Pollocks, the twins were four. He interviewed their parents and examined Jennifer’s marks. He returned to the family several times and maintained contact with them for many more years.

In 1978, medical testing confirmed that Gillian and Jennifer were identical twins. Stevenson found it particularly interesting that genetically identical sisters could possess different birthmarks, although this is medically possible and does not itself demonstrate reincarnation.

By then, however, the twins’ apparent memories had disappeared.

As Gillian and Jennifer grew older, they stopped speaking about the accident and the older girls’ possessions. When Stevenson interviewed them at twenty, neither remembered having lived as Joanna or Jacqueline. They knew what their parents believed, but expressed some uncertainty about reincarnation themselves.

Stevenson nevertheless regarded the Pollock case as important.

Critics saw serious weaknesses.

Nearly all the remarkable incidents had been reported by John and Florence. There were no recordings of the twins’ earliest statements and few independent witnesses. Stevenson did not meet the family until years after the twins were born and after their story had appeared in newspapers.

Most significantly, John believed passionately in reincarnation before the twins arrived. Even if he never deliberately coached them, he could have influenced their behaviour without realising it.

The twins also grew up inside the same family. Their parents, brothers, grandmother, neighbours or family friends could have mentioned Joanna and Jacqueline. Old photographs and familiar objects may have supplied information. Ordinary childhood imitation, coincidence and the family’s grief might then have transformed scattered  similarities into a larger story.

Memory is not a perfect recording. Each time a story is remembered and retold, it can change slightly. Details that fit may become more important, while those that do not fit may disappear.

None of this proves that the Pollocks invented the events. It simply means that the case cannot establish what John believed it did.

And that is what makes the story so compelling.

Two sisters died. Eighteen months later, twin girls were born to the same parents. One carried marks resembling those of the younger sister. The twins reportedly recognised stored possessions, repeated familiar behaviours and seemed to know a town they had left as babies.

Then, as childhood ended, the supposed memories faded.

Were Gillian and Jennifer really Joanna and Jacqueline returned?

Were grieving parents unconsciously shaping two new daughters in the image of the children they had lost? Or did a series of coincidences become more mysterious with every retelling?

The evidence cannot choose between those explanations.

The Pollock twins grew up and built lives of their own. Whatever their father saw in them, they were not simply replacements for two lost children.

They were Gillian and Jennifer.

And perhaps the deepest mystery is not whether a life can begin again, but how memory, grief and hope can make the past seem present once more.