Extrasensory - The Two Johns | 6

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

John’s granddaughters Liza and Joanna speak out about the reincarnation story for the first time. Shocking revelations emerge about John and his version of events. Liza and Joanna examine each piece of evidence, and brand-new claims surface about Florence’s role in the reincarnation story.Extrasensory is an Apple Original podcast produced by Blanchard House. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.apple.co/Extrasensory

Hexham, May 1957. John's running late. He needs to hurry, it's 8 o'clock already, and he's going to miss the start if he's not careful. He's striding down Bournemont Street in the centre of town, and he stops outside the Queen's Hall cinema. He heads in. He buys a ticket, two shillings. Anusha takes him into the auditorium. It's full and the movie is just about to start. Now, to be honest, John's not much of a movie guy, but there's a bit of a buzz about this movie. The newspapers are calling it... Probably the strangest film that has ever been made. Perhaps the most amazing and thought-provoking story

of recent years. So John's pumped. He's excited for this. The usher shines a torch at a space in the back quo. John settles into the worn velvet seat. He lights the cigarette and the smoke curls upwards, illuminated by the projector. The movie is a Paramount Pictures film called The Search for Bridie Murphy.

It's pretty modern for the 50s. A suave looking guy speaks straight to the camera and he explains in a very suave voice that what follows is weirder than fiction. Ladies and gentlemen this is an account of actual events involving real people. The names have been changed and they'll be portrayed by professional actors for obvious reasons. That has got John hooked. The movie plays out in Pueblo, Colorado. The suave guy then goes into character. He plays a businessman who becomes an amateur hypnotist. He then starts hypnotizing his neighbor, as you do. I told you it was weird.

Anyway, his neighbor lies back on a rather nice couch, and the suave guy, his name's Maury, gets to work. Now we're gonna drift back through time and space. Back, back, as far back as your memory can go. Whatever you see, try and tell me about it. So far, so predictable. The hypnotist is straight out of central casting, but things start to get pretty interesting pretty quickly.

The neighbor tells Maury that she's a little girl living in rural Ireland. Yes, she's remembering a past life. Her name is what? Heidi. Don't you have any other names? Heidi Murphy. John is transfixed.

He lights another cigarette as the pictures flicker in front of him. On screen, a little girl in pigtails plays hide-and hide and seek in green fields by a large lake. Maury asks her what year it is. 1806. 1806. John raises an eyebrow. And then, Bridie is an old woman. On screen, the audience is shown her most shocking memory. Grave diggers and mourners round a grave.

You mean you can remember what happened after you died? Mm-hmm. After you died, could you watch them bury you? Could you watch them bury your body? Yes, I... I watched them ditch my body. Now, remember, this is the first time that most people in the audience have even contemplated anything like this. The idea of seeing your own funeral is just bananas and John for one is pulled deeper and deeper into the story. He thinks it's sensational. The woman's soul is then between lives, without a body,

discarnate. Well in this afterworld, were there such things as sickness or death? There was no death. You just pass from one existence to another. So Maury is having to work fairly hard to describe all of these ideas. Bridie is now in what Stevenson would call the intermission between lives. And then it all gets a bit dark. She's born again in America. Baby... dying... Who is dying? Me. Where are you? Do you have any idea? Then the climax. Maury gets spooked and worries that he's screwed up. He's worried that she'll never come back from her hypnotic state.

Remember, he's just an amateur. He's playing with fire. Ruth, can you hear me? Can you understand what I'm saying? John's on the edge of his seat. It's all very, very tense. But I'm not going to spoil the rest of the film for you. The movie ends. The moviegoers start filing out.

Except John. John stays seated, staring at the screen as the image fades to black. Because John is blown away. He loves the movie. He cannot stop thinking about it. And he has an idea. An idea that grows and grows and grows. Okay, so full disclosure, we have made some of that up. We don't actually know if John Pollock went to see the movie, sorry about that, but here's

what we didn't make up and it's pretty interesting. The movie is real and it is based on a real life story and we know for certain, 100% certain, that the movie was showing all over the UK in May 1957 even in the smaller cinemas. Our researcher Alan Sargent has sifted through all of the old newspapers and we can prove it. There's no doubt. So here's the thing, that date May 1957 is very significant. Because May 1957 is the very month that Jacqueline and Joanna Pollock are killed. So let's just think about this for a moment. Reincarnation isn't a thing in 1950s England.

It's just not. Hardly anyone has heard of it. Then a bigger movie about reincarnation, one which gets loads of attention, which really gets people talking, is released nationwide just after the Pollock girls die. And it's massive. So now reincarnation is a thing, a pretty big thing. And very soon after that, John starts going around saying that his daughters will be reincarnated. What do you make of that? I mean, okay, I'm just going to come out and say it. I mean, that's all a pretty big coincidence, right? So how's this for a thought?

What if John stole the idea from that movie? What if John made the whole thing up? This is Extrasensory, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House. I'm Will Sharpe. Episode 6, The Two Johns. So where are we? Producer Poppy has bagged an interview with Lisa Pollock, one of John Pollock's older granddaughters. You heard a tiny bit of it in the last episode. But let's back up just a little bit, a bit of context. Poppy is on her way to record

that interview. She's on a train to the northwest of England. She's a bit nervous, not sure how it's going to play out. Because in one of her emails, Lisa says something rather cryptic. She says that she can't be impartial about John Pollock. Impartial. Curious word. And Lisa also says something else in her email. She says that she has an older sister. Seven years older. Who knows more than Lisa does? The only thing is, she lives in California. And getting there is obviously a bit of a mission. So first things first, to Lisa. Poppy arrives at the address in Northwest England. It's on a caravan site, trailer park. A nice one with hedgerows and flowers.

This isn't Lisa's house though. It's her mum's. Her mum Sylvia. But Sylvia doesn't want to speak on tape, doesn't want to speak ill of the dead apparently, okay. Interesting. Anyway, Sylvia is lovely, so is Lisa, and Sylvia sticks around as Poppy switches on the recorder. Lisa starts talking about the house on the coast in Scarborough where her grandparents lived in the 70s. We used to spend all holidays there Christmas, Easter, summer. She remembers spending time with the twins and with her brother Bobby. They'd take me out, Bob would go on long walks with the dog down to the seafront, up to the church, up to the ruins. At this point her grandmother Florence is running the bookshop and Lisa has super fond memories.

Spent a lot of time with her, I'd spend time in the bookshop with her. She was always in the kitchen would cook breakfast, she'd cut the rind off the bacon ID tip and get told off for it. We'd play card games. She was the instigator of Christmas. She was just very, very quiet, timid. But yeah, fun. But notice there's someone she hasn't mentioned yet. Yes, John. And there's a good reason for that. While Florence sounds like a pretty wonderful grandmother, John, well, John just isn't around. I can count on one hand the amount of times I saw him. He never ate with us, with the house being split on three floors.

He was always in the middle floor in his office. I spent most of my time with either my grandmother or Gillian. He was not to be seen. I didn't have a relationship as a grandfather, granddaughter relationship because he was there but he wasn't. But according to Lisa, even when John is shadowed away in his office, his presence is everywhere. It was never a nice atmosphere in the house.

Whenever he was around, it was toxic because you just had to be quiet. We couldn't make any noise or you had to creep about. He ruled with an iron rod, but ruled by not being there. So John sounds a bit scary, aloof. Then Lisa tells a story about the day Joanna and Jacqueline died. Something she heard from her dad, Ian, John's son. When the crash happens, Ian, who was 14 at this point, doesn't know straight away that his sisters have died.

So a concerned neighbour gives Ian an orange to take to the girls in hospital. Ian's clearly thinking that the girls will be sitting up in bed with just a few cuts and bruises. Anyway, Ian tells his dad that he's got this orange for the girls, but here is John's response. My grandfather had said well that's no use now they're dead. And when my dad started to cry, he was told to stop crying and have none of that. There was no compassion, there was nothing. So yeah, as I say, John sounds kind of old school.

Stiff upper lip, as we say. Doesn't like emotion, maybe. But then Lisa tells us something else. Something which kind of puts a different perspective on things. You might remember, on the same day as the accident, John gives an interview to the newspapers. And in the next day's Daily Herald, on their front page story reporting the crash,

they quote John saying, I have lived in fear of this since Tuesday when my eldest boy Ian told me about a dream. John tells the paper that Ian had dreamed of a serious accident involving the family. He said it would happen only a few hundred yards from where my little girls died. Five days later, Joanna, Jacqueline and Tony are killed. And here's where things start to get interesting. Because when Poppy asks Lisa about that premonition, this is Lisa's response. None of that was true.

Yeah, none of that was true. Hold on a second. Let's just think about this. Up until this moment, no one, not one person anywhere in any book or on the internet has ever claimed that John is anything other than completely sincere. Straight as a die, he just tells things as they are. But now here's Lisa, his granddaughter, saying that he's inventing things. And according to her, it's not just one or two things. It's everything. The idea that Jennifer and Jillian were reincarnations of their dead sisters.

It was just something he made up. So Lisa is saying that John was lying, lying about everything. Lying to his neighbors, lying to the newspapers, lying to the TV documentary, lying to Stevenson even. Lying for 25 years until the day he died. And that means all of Stevenson's transatlantic trips, one after the other, were, well, a complete waste of time, all for nothing. Because the whole story was a hoax. The claims about reincarnation weren't some kind of prophecy. Far from it. They were John's big lie. big lie. So I guess the next question is why? Why on earth would John do that? Why would he lie? To be the big man, to be popular. He wanted everybody to notice him. He wanted to be like a celebrity. If it was these days, he'd be classed as trying to be an influencer.

If it was these days, you'd be classed as trying to be an influencer. But let's just hold on a second. Lisa wasn't actually around when the reincarnation claims were first made. Remember, she learnt about this all from a VHS, years later. And Lisa does say that she only met her grandfather a handful of times. They didn't really have a relationship. Sure, there was an atmosphere in the house, but in those days, maybe grandparents were just a bit strict and scary.

Children should be seen and not heard and all that. So none of that automatically means that John is a liar, right? Maybe Lisa's got some of this a bit wrong. I mean, she was young after all, it was a long time ago. Well that's where Lisa's older sister, Joanna, comes in. She's seven years older, in fact, and remember, Lisa promised to put Poppy in touch with her. And Lisa is as good as her word. So Poppy gives Joanna a call and asks her if she can fly over

and visit her in California. And Joanna says yes. So Poppy gets on a plane and finds herself in central California just outside the city of Fresno, surrounded by 400 acres of pistachio farms. Round here you can even smell the pistachio in the wind. Joanna welcomes Poppy into her costume cupboard. This is my hobby room, sewing room, where I sew my Renaissance costumes. Yep. Joanna makes outfits for Renaissance fairs, where people dress up as gallant knights, fair maidens, that kind of thing. So the room is full of hats, wigs, dresses and a lot of shoes. And when Poppy and Joanna speak, they aren't alone.

Oh, this is Piggly. This is my newly adopted kitten. Piggly is tucked into Joanna's shirt. So yes, this is all quite a long way from John and Florence Pollock's home in the north of England in the 1960s where it's dark and cold and grey and they're just like smoking all the time. Joanna's lived in California for 22 years now. But even all of these thousands of miles away, all these years later, the past has a way of showing up. I dream about the house.

I mean, it was just a tall, thin row house. But it had four floors because you had the attic and then the three floors and then the basement. And I have these dreams where I've bought it and we found secret passages and just very Narnia-like, you know? And of course, Narnia is a place filled with wonders, but it's also a place filled with dangers.

There's plenty to be scared of. Now, Joanna knew the twins very well because they were pretty close in age. They're three years older than me. They were born what, 58? Yeah, I'm born 61. So yeah, it's weird having a grandmother who's just given birth to twins, you know. But we were raised together. And that happens because Joanna's parents, Ian and Sylvia, have Joanna when they're young, just 17.

And it's not long after the girls died in the crash, which is why Ian decides to name his new daughter Joanna in memory of his dead sister. But growing up, all of that is kind of shrouded in mystery. I didn't know any of the background. I knew they died. I didn't know how they died. It was never explained.

You know, and then all of a sudden it was like, you know, oh, the twins are reincarnations. What? And like her sister, Lisa, Joanna doesn't believe a word of it. She thinks John made it all up, every last detail. He wanted to be respected. And that's what John was all about. He wanted to be somebody big. He wanted to be important.

And that's what started off the reincarnation. So, okay, John did it for the attention. And if he did, he certainly got it. But Joanna thinks something must have happened which gave John the spark of an idea. And then he just ran with it. Ran with it for a quarter of a century. But what was that something? Was it that movie that we heard about at the start of the show?

Or was it something else? Joanna has an idea. Remember what John and Florence told Stevenson about the dolls? Those dolls which had belonged to the twins' dead sisters. You know, Dr Stevenson, after Jacqueline and Joanna passed away, we packed up all of their toys in a box and put them in the attic. Didn't we, Flossie? Yes, John. This was in Hexham. It was just too painful. We didn't want to remind the boys of what had happened. Anyway, when we moved here of course we found that box and we decided to give those toys to the twins and guess what? Completely unprompted. Jennifer claimed Jacqueline's doll, held it to her as if it Now, what makes the story significant is that apparently, in so many ways, Jennifer was always seen as being like Jacqueline and Jillian like Joanna. But John's granddaughter

Joanna thinks the whole dolls thing is just a coincidence. A coincidence which gave John his bright idea, which would bring in the fame that he craved. I can't say this truth, you know, I can't say it's a fact, but I can see those kids in the playroom. Jillian or Jennifer goes there picks up a toy and says, oh, this is mine. Because any three year old in a room full of toys, you know, and it clicked with him. It bloody clicked and he thought, well, you know, there you go, we can start on this now. But of course, the story went much further than that. There's also the claim that the twins instinctively knew the names of the dolls,

the names that their dad's sisters had given those dolls. Here's Lisa. How much of that coaching was from my grandfather going, here's Rosie, here's Sally, you know, yeah, it's not believable. So yeah, he likes to make things up. The dolls were called Susan and Mary, in fact, but you get the idea. So Lisa thinks John was coaching the twins. But there is a problem here, because in a TV interview,

it's Florence who says the girls knew the names of the dolls, not John. So if there was a deception it looks like Florence was in on it. And there's another problem. Reading Stevenson's account of this whole thing about the dolls names it's all a bit unclear, a bit hazy. And Stevenson concludes that it's unverified. Are Florence and John saying one thing to Stevenson and then something else to the media? Or are the media distorting the story? So let's take a look at the other evidence, the birthmarks. Remember this?

Jacqueline Pollock is three years old. She falls off a tricycle onto a metal bucket. It causes a nasty wound above her eye, one which needs three stitches and leaves a scar. And of course, when the twins are born, Jennifer apparently has a birthmark which matches her dead sister's scar exactly. And she has a second birthmark too. That one is above her hip, which also matches a birthmark on Jacqueline. Jennifer, love, come here a moment. Stand here, love. Stand in front of Dr. Stevenson.

Show him your waist. Look, there it is. There's the one birthmark, and there. Just above her left eye. That's the other. Can you see that? Just there. I never saw a birthmark. But Joanna also says this.

I think Jillian had a scar on her forehead, but it wasn't from, I think she probably ran into something or this tiny little scar. I know she wasn't born with it, because there are pictures of them as babies and there's no scar there, you know? Is Joanna mistaken? Is she mixing up Gillian with Jennifer? And was it in fact a birthmark and not a scar? I mean, this is all a long time ago.

Have they got pictures of these birthmarks on Joanna and Jacqueline to prove that Gillian and Jennifer have got the same scars, the same birthmarks. Okay, good questions. Well, it seems Stevenson did see Jennifer's birthmark, and he writes, In August 1963, I made a sketch of the birthmark as it then appeared. It was then an area of hyperpigmentation about one centimeter long and six millimeters wide. And Stevenson also vouches for Jacqueline's scar. In fact, he even reproduces a sketch that I made in 1967 of a photograph of Jacqueline, which showed the scar distinctly. But as for Jennifer's second birthmark, Stevenson doesn't seem to verify

that one. It doesn't sound like there were any photos that show Jacqueline had a similar mark. We only have John Pollock's word for it. So yes, the birthmark's thing is all a bit complicated, a bit murky. And Joanna and Lisa think it's just another thing that John made up. and Joanna and Lisa think it's just another thing that John made up. Then there's the trip to Hexham. Remember, the twins had never lived there, never been. Yet they were able to point out their dead sister's school, which was hidden from view. That part John told Stevenson. But when he spoke to the newspapers, John added this bit. way significant. And do you know what they both said? We used to live there, yes. Both of them said that. We used to live there. If they ever went, if they ever went, you know? The amount of stuff he made up and made it sound credible. And what about the fear of cars? Remember, it's apparently common in cases where kids

claim to be reincarnated that they have some kind of phobia. A phobia related to how they died in a previous life. In the case of the twins, it was a phobia of cars. And there's something we haven't told you about yet, something which happened close to here. The twins were playing in a little alleyway nearby. It's enclosed to a dead end. There's a car park nearby and the driver gets into the car. Well, I'm in the house and I hear this hysterical screaming, absolutely hysterical it was. And I go outside and the twins are cowering in the corner,

holding on to each other as if their lives depended on it. They were absolutely petrified and the car wasn't close. It wasn't very close. I'm really not sure how to respond to that. He can say, or could say, and would say anything to make this more believable. You know, a car backfires or revs an engine in an alleyway, if it was revved loudly and they're young, yeah they're gonna squeal or whatever. I didn't see any phobias of cars at all. God, he's full of crap. Sorry, I've got to keep saying. I'm gonna have it embroidered on a t-shirt. Strong words. Except

there is a problem with just writing this off as John's lies. Because it isn't just John who talks about this stuff. It's Florence too. She tells Stevenson. They talk about it, you know. The accident, that is. I've heard them discussing it more than once. But you've never spoken to them about it? No. We're very careful about that. We never discuss reincarnation, never. And we never discuss the crash. So what's going on here? Sure, I get that John could be doing it for the attention. Yes, he seems like a bit of a narcissist. He loves being in the spotlight, self-publicist. But Florence sounds different.

She sounds very different. From Lisa's description, she's a lovely, kind grandmother, kind of shy and timid, not the sort of person who craves publicity, just the opposite in fact. Why would she lie? Well, there might be an answer to that, because according to Joanna and Lisa, it sounds like John was more than just a narcissist, more than just an attention seeker. To his drinking buddies, John was the life and soul of the party. But that wasn't the full story.

Far from it. That was John the amazing. John the always-buy-you-a-drink, always-had a drink, always had a funny joke. And then at home he was a total bastard. Wow. So, remember Joanna grew up with the twins. So she spent a lot of time in the Pollock home and this goes much further than John just being a bit strict and scary. No. Joanna remembers John being nasty. Vileile in fact, especially towards Florence. He would berate her for stupid things like his coffee wasn't hot enough,

or you know they'd run out of whiskey. Stupid bloody things. You know, you better do this. How dare you embarrass me. How dare you do it all in this very, very low tone. Um, and you knew. You knew to go to the playroom and not come out. So, controlling behaviour, manipulation, actually serious psychological abuse. With my grandmother, it was if she did something wrong he would keep her up all night cleaning, cooking. But according to Joanna it goes even further than that. He was a wife beater. She'd always be covered in bruises.

Her arms, her legs. I think I saw with with a black eye once. He used to kick her, kick her in her shins and punch her on the arms and stuff like that. Spiteful, very spiteful person, you know? If things weren't going his way, no, you didn't do what he wanted, he'd do horrible little things. So if this was all just John's big lie, and Florence was in on it, in on the deception, maybe that's because she was just scared, terrified. I don't think she had much choice than to go along with him. If you got out of line, you'd know about it.

And then Joanna tells us about a conversation that she had with Florence about the crash which killed Joanna and Jacqueline. And she basically said, well you know what happened after that don't you? I was like no not really. Oh there was this whole reincarnations thing and he said there were Joanna and Jacqueline. Said that was the upsetting part because it was all bullshit. Yeah, bullshit. That was the conversation. I didn't really know a lot about it. I know they'd been famous for some reason.

And I said, what, you thought there were Jacqueline and Joanna had come back? Yes, God, the amount of times we had to sit there and listen to this shit. But, you know, I had to say this to reporters, I had to say that to reporters, or I had to shut up. If I didn't back him up, then I had to shut up. According to Joanna, Florence said what she said because she had no choice. So here's how Lisa and Joanna sum up the John Pollock they knew. Truthfully, narcissistic gaslighting little man.

Pathological, narcissistic, liar. Self-aggrandizing. Hateful. Pathetic little man. You know. And he roped everybody into it. Everybody. He tainted everybody. He didn't care who he upset, who he hurt in the process.

It was all about John Pollock. And it's to set the record straight that it was him, nobody else. Now for years, Joanna thinks the reincarnation thing is just a tabloid news story. But then, she reads about Stevenson's work. I just remember being so angry. Because I just thought it was the newspapers. I didn't know they were in books. God, that must have just been so great for my granddad to be published in a book. You know, a pinnacle.

Because it's there for history now. Well, now there's another history. Not John's or Stevenson's. This one. The one you've just heard. Joanna and Lisa's history. But there is one more history we need to hear, right? The big one. Jennifer's. Jennifer, the surviving, will she want to speak? If you or someone you know has been affected by domestic violence and needs support, go

to apple.com slash here to help. You've been listening to Extra Sensory, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House and hosted by me, Will Sharpe. The producer is Poppy Damon. Extra Sensory is written by Lawrence Grizzel. Additional production by Seren Jones. Original music by Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis Nank, Manel and Toby Matimong. Sound design and mix engineering by Vulcan Kiseltug and Daniel Lloyd Evans. The part of John Pollock was played by Peter Pevely, Florence Pollock by Jasmine Hyde, and Dr Ian Stevenson by Mark Arnold. The Pollock children are played by Francisco and Edie Pibola and Stevie Pye. Other parts by Jasmine Hyde, Mark Gillis, Ben Fox

and Saul Boyer. Research by Alan Sargent, fact checking by Jesse Behring and Karen Walton. Our managing producer is Amika Shortino Nolan. The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosie Pi. The executive producer and head of content at Blanchard House is Laurence Grizzell.