S01 Episode 2: Resurrected Dreams (RERUN)

that come after? Every community and a culture from as far back as we can remember told stories about what awaits us after death. But what might our dreams have to do with it? This is Unexplained Season one, episode two, Resurrected Dreams. Our ability to comprehend death is in many ways what makes us the self aware human beings that we are. For some, the realization that our life and maybe even all life, may one day come to an end can be a paralyzing fear. For all of us,

it is the greatest of mysteries. The law of conversion dictates that energy can neither die nor be created. Instead, it merely changes from one form to another. So although there is little doubt what fate awaits us all in a material sense. Understanding what happens to our consciousness beyond that zero point has proved an altogether more difficult beast to pin down. It is an unknown that cause into

question the very nature of consciousness itself. In his studies of dream theory, the psychiatrist car Jung draws the distinction between personal dreams and larger, more universal dreams. The theory suggests the possible existence of some kind of collective unconscious, a condition that he believed was demonstrated by a set of archetypes that we are all prone to recognize from our deepest unconscious states. When put like that, it's hard not to wonder just whose dreams exactly are we dreaming?

You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard MacLean Smith. It could be said that all stories are ultimately about one thing, death, none more so than the stories we tell each other concerning what awaits us after life. It is a theme that can be found in stories told across every community and culture from as far back as we can remember. For Western and Middle Eastern cultures, these stories have tended to promote the idea of some form of continued life

that remains true to our personal sense of ourselves. Where we end up is dependent on our actions in life, with the options invariably divided between either a heaven or a hell. For the ancient Greeks, you might find yourself traveling across the River Styx before being led to the veil of Mourning or the fields of Elysium. For the Egyptians, entry to the paradisiacal aru was granted only to those whose heart was as light as the ostrich feather that

belonged to the goddess ma Art. For followers of Far Eastern teachings such as Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism, it is belief in Samsara which holds sway the infinite cycle of birth, life and death, or what is more commonly known as a reincarnation. Some believe that proof of reincarnate can be found through the practice of past life regression. Although common in ancient India, it wasn't until the teachings of occultist and founder of the Theosophical Society Elena Bulatsky that the

idea gained prominence in modern European society. Famous accounts such as those of Wisconsin housewife Virginia Tie, who claim to have lived as a nineteenth century Irish woman named Bridie Murphy, helped to bring this controversial phenomenon into the mainstream. However, many such accounts have been latterly dismissed as simple cases of false memories recollections of names and places that have

been subconsciously absorbed. But there are a few cases that have not been so easy to dismiss, cases that have nothing to do with hypnotic regression. On the fifth of May nineteen fifty seven, in the north of England, a beautiful spring day is breaking over the quiet market town of Hexham. John and Florence Pollock are busy reading their children for church. Their two daughters, Joanna seven and Jacqueline eleven, are especially excited by the promise of an afternoon trip

to their favorite playground. On hearing the door bell, Jacqueline answers the door to find her young friend Anthony standing on the doorstep. He invites Joanna and Jacqueline to walk with him up to the church. Although they would usually travel to Saint Mary's as a family, John and Florence saw no reason not to let the three young children walk on ahead. As the loving parents waved them off. They couldn't possibly have known the tragedy that was about

to befall them. On the other side of town, a woman's life was spiraling out of control. It's not known if Marjorie Wynn had always suffered from severe depression, but clearly the death of her husband five years previously had been a crippling blow. Despite moving to Hexham for a fresh start, things became worse after Marjorie was judged too ill to retain custody of her two teenage daughters. It

was to prove the final straw. Considering how uncommon it was for a mother to lose custody of her children at this time, it's not hard to speculate on Marjorie's state of mind as she stepped into her car that fateful Sunday morning, A state of mind not helped by the bottle of painkillers and barbiturates that she had just before ingested. As the three young children walked hand in hand towards the church, Marjorie's car turned speedily into the road.

As it neared the children, it swung into the opposite lane, jumped the curb, and careered straight into them. There was a moment of stun silence before the first screens of onlookers cut through the air. Joanna and Jacqueline were killed instantly. Nine year old Anthony Leyden, who had been due to act as older boy that morning, died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. After a short police investigation, Marjorie was committed to a psychiatric unit after it was

found that her actions had been deliberate. In the days that followed, the small, close knit community was united in its grief for the young victims. For John and Florence Pollock, the parents of Joanna and Jacqueline, the sense of loss would have been unimaginable. For two devout Catholics. There was some solace to be found in the belief that their two girls might, at the very least now be in

a better place. It makes what happened next or the more extraordinary, and is a mystery that remains to this day unexplained. After an incredibly difficult eight months, the polyx grief was somewhat lifted when Florence discovered that she was pregnant again. The couple could not have been more delighted by the news. However, not long into the pregnancy, John

developed a peculiar feeling about the impending birth. Despite being told by the obstetrician that there was only one beating heart inside Florence's womb, John was insistent that she would give birth to a set of twins. Sure enough, much to the surprise of everybody except John, on the fourth of October nineteen fifty eight, Florence gave birth to two

baby girls, later named Jillian and Jennifer. The twins were monozygotic, or what is more commonly known as identical, having developed from the same egg, and yet they showed remarkable physical differences, differences that correllid perfectly to Joanna and Jacqueline. One morning, while looking after young Jennifer, John noticed a peculiar mark on her forehead, just above the nose. The mark was identical to a scar that Jacqueline had received after falling

from her tricycle when she was two years old. The mark may well have gone unnoticed if it wasn't for the fact that Jennifer had also reasonably developed a very distinct birthmark on her left hip. The brown coloring of the skin, shaped like a thumbprint, was indistinguishable from a birthmark that Jacqueline once had in the exact same spot, and the similarities did not end there. Despite being identical, Jillian's body was slender like Joanna, whereas Jennifer was stocky

like Jacqueline. Where Jillian's gait was supply footed, again like Joanna, Jennifer's was ordinary, just like Jacqueline. And it wasn't only their physical attributes. Their personalities, too, seemed to precisely mirror those of their two deceased sisters. Joanna, who had been older by four years, was naturally more mature and protective over Jacqueline, although Gillian was only ten minutes older than Jennifer.

Their relationship exhibited the very same dynamic. But it wasn't until the girls were able to speak that things would turn very strange. Indeed, three months after the twins were born, John and Florence moved the family to the nearby town of Whitley Bay. When they took the girls to visit

Hexham a few years later, something extraordinary occurred. As John recounts, as he was walking with the twins up the hill towards Saint Mary's Church, one turned to the other and said, the school is up here where we used to go to and just around the back is the playground. At the time, not only would they have been too small to see the school from where they were standing, but there was also a large wall obscuring their view. Then, as they passed the church, the children continued to point

out landmarks that they would never have seen before. They pointed out the grounds of Hexham Abbey and demanded to visit their favorite playground that was located on the far side of the hill. For John, the evidence was undeniable. Joanna and Jacqueline had been returned to them in the form of Gillian and Jennifer. Florence, on the other hand, refused to believe, to accept the bizarre events and startling

coincidences as evidence of reincarnation was in short heresy. The more committed Catholic of the pair, she was determined that nothing would break her core belief. But all that was about to change. Anna and Jacqueline died. Florence found it too unbearable to be surrounded by their things, in particular their toys that had once been such a symbol of joy and life that were now just reminders of the horrific tragedy, so she packed them into a box and

stored them away in the attic. By the time the twins were four, Florence felt able again to live with the toys and retrieved them from their storage with the twins beside her. She opened the box and was astonished that the two girls were able to name every one of the toys that used to belong to their sisters. But it wasn't until Florence came across a far more disturbing scene that her mind was finally made up. Approaching the children's playroom one morning, Florence heard the twins in

quiet conversation amongst themselves. What she saw when she looked into the room has haunted her to this day. There on the floor lay Jennifer with her arms and legs sprawled out, as Gillian crouched down beside her and cradled her head in her hands. The blood is coming out of your eyes, she said, that's where the car hit you. In nineteen sixty two, the story of the Pollock Twins was brought to the attention of US Canadian professor of

psychiatry Ian Stephenson. Stephenson, from the University of Virginia's School of Medicine, had developed an international reputation for his investigations into alleged cases of reincarnation. He had even created a specialized department known as the Division of Perceptual Studies to

better conduct his research. Despite the oddity of his work, Professor Stephenson was well respected in the psychiatric community, at one time, being described in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adeless Psychiatry as a distinguished psychiatrist and scholar. For Stephenson, what stood out most about the

Pollock's story was its provenance. In post war Britain, the notion of reincarnation was still a fairly alien concept, more commonly reserved for followers of the exotic Eastern philosophies of Hinduism and Buddhism. For a devout Catholic couple to announce in nineteen sixty two that their daughters were living proof

of reincarnation was truly remarkable. Stephenson, who studied the family from nineteen sixty four to nineteen eighty five, was also particularly interested in the scar and birthmark found on Jennifer's body. The transference of such marks had become a recurring feature in many of his case studies. The fact that Jennifer and Jillian were supposedly monozygotic, made the existence of Jennifer's

marks all the more compelling. In spite of all this evidence, it would be far too simple to declare the story of the Pollock twins as an open and shut case for the existence of reincarnation. It would, of course not be beyond the realms of possibility that the magnitude of John and Florence's grief may have played a large part.

Wanting to believe that their daughters had in some way been returned to them would have, no doubt, brought a great comfort as well, a point frequently left out of the story, as that John and Florence were not only the parents of two girls, but in fact had six children, with the twins sharing their home with four brothers. Although the parents maintain that they never openly discussed their recently deceased daughters, it is hard to believe that the four

boys kept an equally quiet council. It would be impossible to tell just what may or may not have been projected onto the conscious or even subconscious minds of the young twins. Growing up under the shadow of such a harrowing family tragedy, it is also known that John became interested in the idea of reincarnation some time before the death of his daughters, so much so, in fact, that he had begun to question his commitment to his Catholic faith.

And yet it seems extraordinary that a set of genetically identical twins drawn from the same egg would exhibit such fundamental differences at such an early stage, both physically and in terms of personality. Doctor Jim Tucker, a research partner of Professor Stevenson, has also pointed out that for Florence, it was a constant struggle to reconcile the evidence of her own eyes with the church's edict that belief in

reincarnation was a mortal sin. The possibility that the girls had been reincarnated brought no comfort to her whatsoever, and as such she should be regarded as an excellent, impartial witness. By nineteen eighty five, the Pollock twins had ceased to feel a connection to any sense of a former life, and Professor Stephenson's studies came to an inconclusive end. In ancient Aboriginal culture, people speak of something known as eternal dreaming.

For them, a person's actions during their lifetime have no bearing on the destination of their spirit in the afterlife. There is no heaven or hell. Rather, they believe in the indestructible nature of the human spirit. Although the spirits of the recently deceased may retain their individual identities immediately after death, it is regarded as only a temporary state.

Perhaps in life, as far as we know it, we might imagine ourselves a version of Kurt Vernigut's hero major Alan Rice from the story Thanosphere, Our bodies nothing but soft machine receptors, tuning into the lives of the dead as they wait to be absorbed into the one universal consciousness. Or perhaps the explanation is something else entirely, something that might allow for Young's archetypes and the collective unconscious, but

from a far more material point of view. Prior to Charles Darwin's Origins of the Species, another naturalist by the name of Jean Baptiste Lamarque had been causing a stir with an evolutionary theory of his own. He suggested that an organism might pass characteristics to his offspring not only through internal genetic mechanisms, but also through external influences that

it would have been affected by During its lifetime. Although the theory known as Lamarckism gained some traction, it was widely discredited after the inception of Darwinism, and so it was destined to remain. However, a number of recent discoveries in the newly fashionable study of epigenetics has led to sus somewhat of a Lamarchist comeback, similar to what Lamarque proposed.

Epigenetics is the study of external and environmental factors on the behaviour of genes and their relationship to our cells. In twenty thirteen, a paper titled Parental olfactory experience Influenced Behavior and Neural structure in Subsequent Generations appeared in the leading medical journal Nature. The paper was written by neurobiologist

Kerry Resler and his research partner Brian Dias. What Wrestler and Dias had discovered was that by conditioning a set of mice to associate a sent with the specific trauma, in this case, a small electrical shock, the fear they would then associate with this scent would incredibly be passed down to at least two subsequent generations of pubs. Taking this extraordinary discovery into account, might it be possible that not only do we inherit our grandparents noses and eyebrows,

but in some way their thoughts as well. For Jillian and Jennifer Pollock, is it beyond the realms of possibility that, rather than being the reincarnated souls of their recently deceased sisters, they had instead merely inherited their parents' own memories of their young daughters. There is little doubt that in a physiological sense, we are all in some way the reincarnation of those that have come before us. But perhaps might we also be carrying their dreams as well. This episode

of Unexplained was produced by me Richard McLain smith. Unexplained as an AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, were also produced by me Richard mccleinsmith. There's no such thing as a natural myth. Nothing that happens to men is ever natural. It's his present scores of her word in question. All members die, but for every man is dead as an excellent even if he knows it to be sisted

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