Speaker 1: Hello, This is Richard mclin smith here unexplained. Season seven
Speaker 1: has now finished, but we'll be back on Friday, September
Speaker 1: sixth to begin season eight. In the meantime, I'm replaying
Speaker 1: some of my favorite episodes from the archives. This week,
Speaker 1: we're going right back to the start with one of
Speaker 1: my all time favorite episodes and perhaps the most poignant.
Speaker 1: It was Hemingway who said, all stories if continued far
Speaker 1: enough and in death, But what then, of the stories
Speaker 1: that come after? Every community and a culture from as
Speaker 1: far back as we can remember told stories about what
Speaker 1: awaits us after death. But what might our dreams have
Speaker 1: to do with it? This is Unexplained Season one, episode two,
Speaker 1: Resurrected Dreams. Our ability to comprehend death is in many
Speaker 1: ways what makes us the self aware human beings that
Speaker 1: we are. For some, the realization that our life and
Speaker 1: maybe even all life, may one day come to an
Speaker 1: end can be a paralyzing fear. For all of us,
Speaker 1: it is the greatest of mysteries. The law of conversion
Speaker 1: dictates that energy can neither die nor be created. Instead,
Speaker 1: it merely changes from one form to another. So although
Speaker 1: there is little doubt what fate awaits us all in
Speaker 1: a material sense. Understanding what happens to our consciousness beyond
Speaker 1: that zero point has proved an altogether more difficult beast
Speaker 1: to pin down. It is an unknown that cause into
Speaker 1: question the very nature of consciousness itself. In his studies
Speaker 1: of dream theory, the psychiatrist car Jung draws the distinction
Speaker 1: between personal dreams and larger, more universal dreams. The theory
Speaker 1: suggests the possible existence of some kind of collective unconscious,
Speaker 1: a condition that he believed was demonstrated by a set
Speaker 1: of archetypes that we are all prone to recognize from
Speaker 1: our deepest unconscious states. When put like that, it's hard
Speaker 1: not to wonder just whose dreams exactly are we dreaming?
Speaker 1: You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard MacLean Smith. It
Speaker 1: could be said that all stories are ultimately about one thing, death,
Speaker 1: none more so than the stories we tell each other
Speaker 1: concerning what awaits us after life. It is a theme
Speaker 1: that can be found in stories told across every community
Speaker 1: and culture from as far back as we can remember.
Speaker 1: For Western and Middle Eastern cultures, these stories have tended
Speaker 1: to promote the idea of some form of continued life
Speaker 1: that remains true to our personal sense of ourselves. Where
Speaker 1: we end up is dependent on our actions in life,
Speaker 1: with the options invariably divided between either a heaven or
Speaker 1: a hell. For the ancient Greeks, you might find yourself
Speaker 1: traveling across the River Styx before being led to the
Speaker 1: veil of Mourning or the fields of Elysium. For the Egyptians,
Speaker 1: entry to the paradisiacal aru was granted only to those
Speaker 1: whose heart was as light as the ostrich feather that
Speaker 1: belonged to the goddess ma Art. For followers of Far
Speaker 1: Eastern teachings such as Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism, it is
Speaker 1: belief in Samsara which holds sway the infinite cycle of birth,
Speaker 1: life and death, or what is more commonly known as
Speaker 1: a reincarnation. Some believe that proof of reincarnate can be
Speaker 1: found through the practice of past life regression. Although common
Speaker 1: in ancient India, it wasn't until the teachings of occultist
Speaker 1: and founder of the Theosophical Society Elena Bulatsky that the
Speaker 1: idea gained prominence in modern European society. Famous accounts such
Speaker 1: as those of Wisconsin housewife Virginia Tie, who claim to
Speaker 1: have lived as a nineteenth century Irish woman named Bridie Murphy,
Speaker 1: helped to bring this controversial phenomenon into the mainstream. However,
Speaker 1: many such accounts have been latterly dismissed as simple cases
Speaker 1: of false memories recollections of names and places that have
Speaker 1: been subconsciously absorbed. But there are a few cases that
Speaker 1: have not been so easy to dismiss, cases that have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with hypnotic regression. On the fifth of
Speaker 1: May nineteen fifty seven, in the north of England, a
Speaker 1: beautiful spring day is breaking over the quiet market town
Speaker 1: of Hexham. John and Florence Pollock are busy reading their
Speaker 1: children for church. Their two daughters, Joanna seven and Jacqueline eleven,
Speaker 1: are especially excited by the promise of an afternoon trip
Speaker 1: to their favorite playground. On hearing the door bell, Jacqueline
Speaker 1: answers the door to find her young friend Anthony standing
Speaker 1: on the doorstep. He invites Joanna and Jacqueline to walk
Speaker 1: with him up to the church. Although they would usually
Speaker 1: travel to Saint Mary's as a family, John and Florence
Speaker 1: saw no reason not to let the three young children
Speaker 1: walk on ahead. As the loving parents waved them off.
Speaker 1: They couldn't possibly have known the tragedy that was about
Speaker 1: to befall them. On the other side of town, a
Speaker 1: woman's life was spiraling out of control. It's not known
Speaker 1: if Marjorie Wynn had always suffered from severe depression, but
Speaker 1: clearly the death of her husband five years previously had
Speaker 1: been a crippling blow. Despite moving to Hexham for a
Speaker 1: fresh start, things became worse after Marjorie was judged too
Speaker 1: ill to retain custody of her two teenage daughters. It
Speaker 1: was to prove the final straw. Considering how uncommon it
Speaker 1: was for a mother to lose custody of her children
Speaker 1: at this time, it's not hard to speculate on Marjorie's
Speaker 1: state of mind as she stepped into her car that
Speaker 1: fateful Sunday morning, A state of mind not helped by
Speaker 1: the bottle of painkillers and barbiturates that she had just
Speaker 1: before ingested. As the three young children walked hand in
Speaker 1: hand towards the church, Marjorie's car turned speedily into the road.
Speaker 1: As it neared the children, it swung into the opposite lane,
Speaker 1: jumped the curb, and careered straight into them. There was
Speaker 1: a moment of stun silence before the first screens of
Speaker 1: onlookers cut through the air. Joanna and Jacqueline were killed instantly.
Speaker 1: Nine year old Anthony Leyden, who had been due to
Speaker 1: act as older boy that morning, died in the ambulance
Speaker 1: on the way to the hospital. After a short police investigation,
Speaker 1: Marjorie was committed to a psychiatric unit after it was
Speaker 1: found that her actions had been deliberate. In the days
Speaker 1: that followed, the small, close knit community was united in
Speaker 1: its grief for the young victims. For John and Florence Pollock,
Speaker 1: the parents of Joanna and Jacqueline, the sense of loss
Speaker 1: would have been unimaginable. For two devout Catholics. There was
Speaker 1: some solace to be found in the belief that their
Speaker 1: two girls might, at the very least now be in
Speaker 1: a better place. It makes what happened next or the
Speaker 1: more extraordinary, and is a mystery that remains to this
Speaker 1: day unexplained. After an incredibly difficult eight months, the polyx
Speaker 1: grief was somewhat lifted when Florence discovered that she was
Speaker 1: pregnant again. The couple could not have been more delighted
Speaker 1: by the news. However, not long into the pregnancy, John
Speaker 1: developed a peculiar feeling about the impending birth. Despite being
Speaker 1: told by the obstetrician that there was only one beating
Speaker 1: heart inside Florence's womb, John was insistent that she would
Speaker 1: give birth to a set of twins. Sure enough, much
Speaker 1: to the surprise of everybody except John, on the fourth
Speaker 1: of October nineteen fifty eight, Florence gave birth to two
Speaker 1: baby girls, later named Jillian and Jennifer. The twins were monozygotic,
Speaker 1: or what is more commonly known as identical, having developed
Speaker 1: from the same egg, and yet they showed remarkable physical differences,
Speaker 1: differences that correllid perfectly to Joanna and Jacqueline. One morning,
Speaker 1: while looking after young Jennifer, John noticed a peculiar mark
Speaker 1: on her forehead, just above the nose. The mark was
Speaker 1: identical to a scar that Jacqueline had received after falling
Speaker 1: from her tricycle when she was two years old. The
Speaker 1: mark may well have gone unnoticed if it wasn't for
Speaker 1: the fact that Jennifer had also reasonably developed a very
Speaker 1: distinct birthmark on her left hip. The brown coloring of
Speaker 1: the skin, shaped like a thumbprint, was indistinguishable from a
Speaker 1: birthmark that Jacqueline once had in the exact same spot,
Speaker 1: and the similarities did not end there. Despite being identical,
Speaker 1: Jillian's body was slender like Joanna, whereas Jennifer was stocky
Speaker 1: like Jacqueline. Where Jillian's gait was supply footed, again like Joanna,
Speaker 1: Jennifer's was ordinary, just like Jacqueline. And it wasn't only
Speaker 1: their physical attributes. Their personalities, too, seemed to precisely mirror
Speaker 1: those of their two deceased sisters. Joanna, who had been
Speaker 1: older by four years, was naturally more mature and protective
Speaker 1: over Jacqueline, although Gillian was only ten minutes older than Jennifer.
Speaker 1: Their relationship exhibited the very same dynamic. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: until the girls were able to speak that things would
Speaker 1: turn very strange. Indeed, three months after the twins were born,
Speaker 1: John and Florence moved the family to the nearby town
Speaker 1: of Whitley Bay. When they took the girls to visit
Speaker 1: Hexham a few years later, something extraordinary occurred. As John recounts,
Speaker 1: as he was walking with the twins up the hill
Speaker 1: towards Saint Mary's Church, one turned to the other and said,
Speaker 1: the school is up here where we used to go
Speaker 1: to and just around the back is the playground. At
Speaker 1: the time, not only would they have been too small
Speaker 1: to see the school from where they were standing, but
Speaker 1: there was also a large wall obscuring their view. Then,
Speaker 1: as they passed the church, the children continued to point
Speaker 1: out landmarks that they would never have seen before. They
Speaker 1: pointed out the grounds of Hexham Abbey and demanded to
Speaker 1: visit their favorite playground that was located on the far
Speaker 1: side of the hill. For John, the evidence was undeniable.
Speaker 1: Joanna and Jacqueline had been returned to them in the
Speaker 1: form of Gillian and Jennifer. Florence, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: refused to believe, to accept the bizarre events and startling
Speaker 1: coincidences as evidence of reincarnation was in short heresy. The
Speaker 1: more committed Catholic of the pair, she was determined that
Speaker 1: nothing would break her core belief. But all that was
Speaker 1: about to change. Anna and Jacqueline died. Florence found it
Speaker 1: too unbearable to be surrounded by their things, in particular
Speaker 1: their toys that had once been such a symbol of
Speaker 1: joy and life that were now just reminders of the
Speaker 1: horrific tragedy, so she packed them into a box and
Speaker 1: stored them away in the attic. By the time the
Speaker 1: twins were four, Florence felt able again to live with
Speaker 1: the toys and retrieved them from their storage with the
Speaker 1: twins beside her. She opened the box and was astonished
Speaker 1: that the two girls were able to name every one
Speaker 1: of the toys that used to belong to their sisters.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until Florence came across a far more
Speaker 1: disturbing scene that her mind was finally made up. Approaching
Speaker 1: the children's playroom one morning, Florence heard the twins in
Speaker 1: quiet conversation amongst themselves. What she saw when she looked
Speaker 1: into the room has haunted her to this day. There
Speaker 1: on the floor lay Jennifer with her arms and legs
Speaker 1: sprawled out, as Gillian crouched down beside her and cradled
Speaker 1: her head in her hands. The blood is coming out
Speaker 1: of your eyes, she said, that's where the car hit you.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty two, the story of the Pollock Twins
Speaker 1: was brought to the attention of US Canadian professor of
Speaker 1: psychiatry Ian Stephenson. Stephenson, from the University of Virginia's School
Speaker 1: of Medicine, had developed an international reputation for his investigations
Speaker 1: into alleged cases of reincarnation. He had even created a
Speaker 1: specialized department known as the Division of Perceptual Studies to
Speaker 1: better conduct his research. Despite the oddity of his work,
Speaker 1: Professor Stephenson was well respected in the psychiatric community, at
Speaker 1: one time, being described in the Journal of the American
Speaker 1: Academy of Child and Adeless Psychiatry as a distinguished psychiatrist
Speaker 1: and scholar. For Stephenson, what stood out most about the
Speaker 1: Pollock's story was its provenance. In post war Britain, the
Speaker 1: notion of reincarnation was still a fairly alien concept, more
Speaker 1: commonly reserved for followers of the exotic Eastern philosophies of
Speaker 1: Hinduism and Buddhism. For a devout Catholic couple to announce
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two that their daughters were living proof
Speaker 1: of reincarnation was truly remarkable. Stephenson, who studied the family
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty four to nineteen eighty five, was also
Speaker 1: particularly interested in the scar and birthmark found on Jennifer's body.
Speaker 1: The transference of such marks had become a recurring feature
Speaker 1: in many of his case studies. The fact that Jennifer
Speaker 1: and Jillian were supposedly monozygotic, made the existence of Jennifer's
Speaker 1: marks all the more compelling. In spite of all this evidence,
Speaker 1: it would be far too simple to declare the story
Speaker 1: of the Pollock twins as an open and shut case
Speaker 1: for the existence of reincarnation. It would, of course not
Speaker 1: be beyond the realms of possibility that the magnitude of
Speaker 1: John and Florence's grief may have played a large part.
Speaker 1: Wanting to believe that their daughters had in some way
Speaker 1: been returned to them would have, no doubt, brought a
Speaker 1: great comfort as well, a point frequently left out of
Speaker 1: the story, as that John and Florence were not only
Speaker 1: the parents of two girls, but in fact had six children,
Speaker 1: with the twins sharing their home with four brothers. Although
Speaker 1: the parents maintain that they never openly discussed their recently
Speaker 1: deceased daughters, it is hard to believe that the four
Speaker 1: boys kept an equally quiet council. It would be impossible
Speaker 1: to tell just what may or may not have been
Speaker 1: projected onto the conscious or even subconscious minds of the
Speaker 1: young twins. Growing up under the shadow of such a
Speaker 1: harrowing family tragedy, it is also known that John became
Speaker 1: interested in the idea of reincarnation some time before the
Speaker 1: death of his daughters, so much so, in fact, that
Speaker 1: he had begun to question his commitment to his Catholic faith.
Speaker 1: And yet it seems extraordinary that a set of genetically
Speaker 1: identical twins drawn from the same egg would exhibit such
Speaker 1: fundamental differences at such an early stage, both physically and
Speaker 1: in terms of personality. Doctor Jim Tucker, a research partner
Speaker 1: of Professor Stevenson, has also pointed out that for Florence,
Speaker 1: it was a constant struggle to reconcile the evidence of
Speaker 1: her own eyes with the church's edict that belief in
Speaker 1: reincarnation was a mortal sin. The possibility that the girls
Speaker 1: had been reincarnated brought no comfort to her whatsoever, and
Speaker 1: as such she should be regarded as an excellent, impartial witness.
Speaker 1: By nineteen eighty five, the Pollock twins had ceased to
Speaker 1: feel a connection to any sense of a former life,
Speaker 1: and Professor Stephenson's studies came to an inconclusive end. In
Speaker 1: ancient Aboriginal culture, people speak of something known as eternal dreaming.
Speaker 1: For them, a person's actions during their lifetime have no
Speaker 1: bearing on the destination of their spirit in the afterlife.
Speaker 1: There is no heaven or hell. Rather, they believe in
Speaker 1: the indestructible nature of the human spirit. Although the spirits
Speaker 1: of the recently deceased may retain their individual identities immediately
Speaker 1: after death, it is regarded as only a temporary state.
Speaker 1: Perhaps in life, as far as we know it, we
Speaker 1: might imagine ourselves a version of Kurt Vernigut's hero major
Speaker 1: Alan Rice from the story Thanosphere, Our bodies nothing but
Speaker 1: soft machine receptors, tuning into the lives of the dead
Speaker 1: as they wait to be absorbed into the one universal consciousness.
Speaker 1: Or perhaps the explanation is something else entirely, something that
Speaker 1: might allow for Young's archetypes and the collective unconscious, but
Speaker 1: from a far more material point of view. Prior to
Speaker 1: Charles Darwin's Origins of the Species, another naturalist by the
Speaker 1: name of Jean Baptiste Lamarque had been causing a stir
Speaker 1: with an evolutionary theory of his own. He suggested that
Speaker 1: an organism might pass characteristics to his offspring not only
Speaker 1: through internal genetic mechanisms, but also through external influences that
Speaker 1: it would have been affected by During its lifetime. Although
Speaker 1: the theory known as Lamarckism gained some traction, it was
Speaker 1: widely discredited after the inception of Darwinism, and so it
Speaker 1: was destined to remain. However, a number of recent discoveries
Speaker 1: in the newly fashionable study of epigenetics has led to
Speaker 1: sus somewhat of a Lamarchist comeback, similar to what Lamarque proposed.
Speaker 1: Epigenetics is the study of external and environmental factors on
Speaker 1: the behaviour of genes and their relationship to our cells.
Speaker 1: In twenty thirteen, a paper titled Parental olfactory experience Influenced
Speaker 1: Behavior and Neural structure in Subsequent Generations appeared in the
Speaker 1: leading medical journal Nature. The paper was written by neurobiologist
Speaker 1: Kerry Resler and his research partner Brian Dias. What Wrestler
Speaker 1: and Dias had discovered was that by conditioning a set
Speaker 1: of mice to associate a sent with the specific trauma,
Speaker 1: in this case, a small electrical shock, the fear they
Speaker 1: would then associate with this scent would incredibly be passed
Speaker 1: down to at least two subsequent generations of pubs. Taking
Speaker 1: this extraordinary discovery into account, might it be possible that
Speaker 1: not only do we inherit our grandparents noses and eyebrows,
Speaker 1: but in some way their thoughts as well. For Jillian
Speaker 1: and Jennifer Pollock, is it beyond the realms of possibility that,
Speaker 1: rather than being the reincarnated souls of their recently deceased sisters,
Speaker 1: they had instead merely inherited their parents' own memories of
Speaker 1: their young daughters. There is little doubt that in a
Speaker 1: physiological sense, we are all in some way the reincarnation
Speaker 1: of those that have come before us. But perhaps might
Speaker 1: we also be carrying their dreams as well. This episode
Speaker 1: of Unexplained was produced by me Richard McLain smith. Unexplained
Speaker 1: as an AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain smith.
Speaker 1: All other elements of the podcast, including the music, were
Speaker 1: also produced by me Richard mccleinsmith. There's no such thing
Speaker 1: as a natural myth. Nothing that happens to men is
Speaker 1: ever natural. It's his present scores of her word in question.
Speaker 1: All members die, but for every man is dead as
Speaker 1: an excellent even if he knows it to be sisted
Speaker 1: and adjustable. Violation. Unexplained the book and audiobook with stories
Speaker 1: never before featured on The show is now available to
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