The Prophet

Extrasensory

The episode explores the extraordinary story of John Pollock, a 1950s English milkman who believed his two daughters were reincarnated after

Key takeaways

• John Pollock predicted the birth of identical twins as a sign of his daughters' return.
• A specific birthmark on a newborn girl matched a facial scar on the deceased daughter, Jacqueline.

Main topics

• Reincarnation
• The Pollock Family Tragedy

Notable quotes

Thy dead men shall live.

Conclusion

A profound look at how personal conviction and scientific inquiry inte

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:07) Where to start? Because there's a lot of ways to tell this story. A lot that's weird, dark, freaky. A lot that just, well, doesn't add up. Do we start with the premonition? Or the strange birthmarks? Or maybe we just cut straight to the accident? The event that sets everything in motion? I mean, that's probably where John would start it. Because everything in this story comes back to John. Speaker 6 (0:38) And I think if you understand him, then you understand the story. Speaker 4 (0:41) That's Lauren. I'll tell you more about her in a bit. But for now, let's just say this is her story too. OK. John was a milkman. He delivered milk. But he wasn't just any old milkman. John was a milkman who really knew how to tell a story. And this story, well, I mean, it is phenomenal. Speaker 6 (1:05) Every time I tell somebody, it's like their faces are gasping and they're just mouth wide open and like, oh my gosh. Speaker 4 (1:14) So, let's start the story how John might start it. John's version of events and see how it goes. There are plenty of other versions, but all in good time. Now it begins as a tragedy. And, of course, it remains a tragedy. But then it becomes something else. Speaker 6 (1:35) Thankfully, at the end of this, there's hope in there. It holds something hopeful. Speaker 4 (1:40) So, bear with us. It happens on a Sunday. We're talking about May 5th, 1957 in Hexham, a market town in the north of England. And in the 50s, basically nothing happens on Sundays. Apart from this Sunday, that is. Speaker 6 (2:05) So John was married to Florence and they've got four boys and two girls at this point in their life. Joanna's about 11 and Jacqueline's six. They're, yeah, very sweet, cute girls with brown hair, big smiles. They spend almost all of their time together, even though they're quite different in age. Speaker 4 (2:29) It's just after 9am, a gorgeous spring day. John's out with his boys delivering milk. His two girls, Joanna and Jacqueline, are walking along the road hand in hand. And their nine-year-old friend, Tony, is with them. Speaker 6 (2:44) They used to go to church every Sunday. Speaker 4 (2:47) The road is really quiet, and that's when it happens. Maybe they hear it coming. Maybe they're just too busy chatting and singing. But behind them, green car on the wrong side of the road mounts the footpath and heads towards the three kids. There can be no other outcome. The car is going too fast. The collision is too direct. The children are all killed. Speaker 6 (3:35) The accident is unimaginable. It's horrific. It's the worst thing that can possibly happen to a family. Speaker 2 (3:43) Thy dead men shall live. Together with my dead body shall they arise. Speaker 4 (3:50) Of course, Hexham goes into mourning. The sense of loss is deep. Very deep. Three children on their way to church. Taken. Speaker 2 (4:01) But Speaker 4 (4:02) one man recovers from his grief in short order. Surprisingly short order. Before long, he feels no sorrow, no pain. And he lays no flowers at the little girl's grave. And that man is John. John Pollock. Because John Pollock becomes convinced that his daughters aren't dead. Utterly convinced. And he is certain that he'll see them again. Not in the afterlife, but right here on Earth. It's Speaker 6 (4:45) kind of extraordinary, but he really meant it. He really believed that they were coming back to life. Speaker 4 (4:50) And before long, he'll show the world evidence, hard evidence, that it's true, that his little girls have been reborn. Before long, John Pollock isn't mourning, isn't grieving, he's celebrating. Speaker 4 (5:16) This is Extrasensory, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House. I'm Will Sharp. Episode one, The Prophet. Time to introduce you to Lauren. She's 37 and a self-confessed beach girl. She lives on the south coast of England and keeps a surfboard in her living room. And she's spiritual. Speaker 6 (6:17) Because I've lost people in my family, I feel them around me all the time. And there's moments where I just can't explain things and I'll feel them or see them or something will happen that's unexplainable. And I know that it's their spirit. Speaker 4 (6:38) So here's her connection to this story. Let's go back to when she's 13 and she's at an all-girls school. Speaker 6 (6:44) We wore kilts, so it was quite fancy. Speaker 4 (6:47) Yeah, kilts. They wore kilts. So Lauren's in her kilt and a navy school sweater. It's a rainy Tuesday morning. Religious studies class, which is generally seen in most British schools as a DOS, as we say, i.e. the least important subject when you can just sort of lark about. Anyway, just like all the other kids, Lauren is slouched over her desk. Her teacher is a short woman with short hair. Speaker 6 (7:13) She was nice. She was a bit stern. Speaker 4 (7:15) The nice but stern teacher says that for this class, the kids are going to learn about reincarnation. But there's a massive plus. They're going to learn about it from a VHS. Speaker 6 (7:27) And obviously everyone's like, woohoo! We're not looking at textbooks, we're looking at TV. This is great. Speaker 4 (7:35) Picture the scene. A massive old-school TV and video machine is wheeled in. Of course, that's a bonus. But I mean, this is religious studies, so it's never going to be that interesting, right? Speaker 4 (7:49) Anyway, Lauren is sitting there. The teacher's telling people off for chatting in the back row, like the lessons at DOS, remember? But the VHS flicks on and Lauren has a shock. Speaker 2 (8:04) This looks like an ordinary family photograph, but it tells a quite remarkable story. Speaker 4 (8:09) Because on the screen is a photo of a family. Speaker 6 (8:13) And I was like, that's the photograph that we've got on the mantelpiece at home. All right. Speaker 4 (8:20) That's a bit weird. And then this TV show starts to tell the story about two little girls walking to church. It tells the story of the horrible crash that we heard about at the start of the show and the prediction by their father, John Pollock, that his two daughters would be reborn. Speaker 4 (8:45) So here's the reveal. Turns out that the two little girls who died are Lauren's aunties. Which means that, yes, John Pollock is Lauren's grandfather. And now here, in class on a rainy Tuesday morning, in a class which is supposed to be just like a DOS, Lauren is hearing about this mad, crazy story that nobody in her family has ever talked about. Lauren wants to know more. Of course she does. Speaker 6 (9:17) I remember looking to my friends in the class and being like, what the heck is going on? Yeah, I was like astounded. Speaker 4 (9:23) She's stumbled upon a family secret. Lauren is bursting to get home to ask her parents about it, but her dad's out at work. Speaker 6 (9:31) I do really remember mum telling us, like kind of rolling her eyes in a way and being like, oh, you know, yeah, your dad never tells us about it. I mean, she sort of brushed it off because I think dad had brushed it off. Speaker 4 (9:42) So Lauren decides to leave it there. It's just a pretty cool story, spooky story. And everything that she knows is from what she saw on that grainy old VHS in religious studies class. Speaker 6 (9:56) We were kids, so it was just quite amusing. We weren't asking the right questions at the time. Speaker 4 (10:02) And in any case, her dad's not interested in talking about it. It's all in the past, you know. But now here we are, 24 years later. Lauren's an adult. And she wants to know the full story, the real story. Speaker 6 (10:18) I just want to know the truth, finally. My whole life I've questioned what actually happened and I'm, yeah, I'm ready to find out the true story. It's all been just a secret for too long now, so yeah, I need to know. Speaker 4 (10:30) So I guess the obvious thing would be to ask her parents, but sadly there's a problem with that in that they've both passed away. And that's where we come in. Nobody has told the full story of all this before, so we've been tracking people down, digging through all the newspaper cuttings and archives and piecing it all together. We'll be telling this story