Back to life. I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Leeb and this is Ghost Town

On Sunday, May 5th, 1957, John Pollock and his wife Florence Pollock said goodbye to their daughters 11-year-old Joanna and

six-year-old Jacqueline. The two sisters were walking to mass, a normal activity for the girls, and the sisters met up with a

classmate. Though the walk was short, the three children wouldn't make it to church that day. Soon after leaving, the

sisters and best friend were struck and killed by a driver with their own grim backstory. But while the physical bodies of

the girls died that day, they were thought to live on in twins born just one year after their deaths. Today we're

talking about the mystery of the Pollock sisters, a case study, if you believe, in reincarnation. John and Florence Pollock, a

deeply religious Catholic and Protestant, respectively, met in the early 1940s. A few years later, Florence decided to convert to

Catholicism and the two were married, settling in Northeast England. Despite John and Florence Pollock's deeply held

Christian belief system, John was open to other cultural and spiritual ideas about the universe and was especially intrigued by

reincarnation. John believed strongly in the idea of past and future lives, and at the age of nine, read a novel that described the

concept in a way that intrigued and fascinated him, so much so that John would pray to God for evidence of reincarnation.

Of course, this was all in the past, and the two were dedicated to raising their children in the Catholic faith,

especially because Florence wasn't really having any of the reincarnation talk. To be sure, she was a bit more

straight-laced than her husband. In any case, the Pollocks were generally pretty happy. They owned a thriving grocery and

dairy delivery business, and had family support around them. They had two boys, and in 1946, they had their third child, a

daughter they named Joanna. In 1951, after the family moved to Hexham, Northumberland, their fourth child Jacqueline was born.

With the growing demands of their business, the four children were raised mostly by their maternal grandmother,

but in their free time, the parents did their best to ensure the Pollock children were loved and wanted for nothing.

Though all the Pollock kids were very close, sisters Joanna and Jacqueline were inseparable. The slender Joanna

took on a motherly role to her stocky, tough young sister, and both loved performing in art.

Joanna would often wear costumes and act in plays for Jacqueline and other neighborhood children.

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