The Macabre Story of the Pollock Twins Reincarnation The Case That Defied Science

In the quiet English town of Hexom, just outside Newcastle, something impossible happened that would challenge everything we thought we knew about life, death, and the human soul. On May 5th, 1957, two innocent sisters were violently killed in a car accident while walking to Sunday church service.

Exactly 18 months later, their devastated parents welcomed twin daughters into the world. What followed would become one of the most documented and chilling cases in modern history. A story that forced even the most skeptical scientists to question whether consciousness can truly survive death.

The twins would display knowledge they couldn’t possibly possess. Bear physical marks identical to their deceased sisters and speak in terrifying detail about their own violent deaths. For 20 years, researchers from the University of Virginia would study this family, documenting evidence that defied every law of science and reason.

Before we continue with the story of the Robertson family and their impossible daughters, subscribe to Liturgy of Fear and tell us in the comments what state you’re listening from. We love hearing from our community of mystery seekers across America. What you’re about to hear isn’t folklore or legend.

This is a case that was meticulously investigated by Dr. Ian Stevenson, one of the most respected psychiatrists of the 20th century and documented in peer-reviewed medical journals. The evidence is so compelling, so disturbing that it continues to haunt researchers decades later. In 1957, Hexom was the kind of small English town where everyone knew everyone, where church bells marked the rhythm of life, and where tragedy, when it struck, shattered the entire community.

The Robertson family had built their lives around routine and faith. John Robertson, a devout Catholic convert, ran a modest grocery and milk delivery business with his wife Florence, a former Salvation Army member who had embraced Catholicism upon their marriage. Their home buzzed with the energy of a large family.

Six children in total with four boys and two precious daughters who were the light of their parents’ eyes. 11-year-old Joanna was the family’s little mother. Mature beyond her years with a natural gift for creativity and an unshakable devotion to her younger sister. Six-year-old Jacqueline was Joanna’s shadow, a bright, energetic child who followed her older sister everywhere, mimicking her every gesture and hanging on her every word.

The two girls were inseparable in that special way that only sisters can be. Jacqueline bore a distinctive scar on her forehead from a childhood accident when she had fallen and struck her head on a metal bucket, leaving a permanent mark that would become significant in ways no one could imagine.

She also had a small dark birthark on her left side just above her hip. Little details that seemed insignificant at the time. The Robertson family’s life revolved around their Catholic faith and their close-knit community. Every Sunday, like clockwork, the family would attend morning service at the local church. The girls loved these walks to church, chattering about their week, their friends, their dreams for the future.

Florence would dress them in their finest clothes, and they would skip ahead of their parents, their laughter echoing through the quiet streets of Hexom. But beneath the surface of this picture perfect family life, John Robertson harbored a secret belief that would soon become central to our story.

Despite his devout Catholic faith, or perhaps because of a deeper spiritual curiosity, John had long believed in reincarnation. This belief had taken root when he was just 9 years old after reading a novel that introduced him to the concept. Throughout his adult life, he would pray not just for the salvation of souls, but for proof that consciousness could return, that death was not the final chapter.

Florence, practical and grounded in traditional Christian doctrine, found her husband’s beliefs troubling, even blasphemous. It was a source of tension in their otherwise harmonious marriage. None of them could have imagined that John’s private prayers were about to be answered in the most horrifying way possible. May 5th, 1957, dawned bright and clear in Hexom.

The Robertson family prepared for their usual Sunday routine. Breakfast, getting dressed in their church clothes, and the familiar walk to morning service. Joanna wore her favorite blue dress, while little Jacqueline had chosen a yellow frock that made her feel grown up. The girls were excited because their friend Anthony Leaden, a 9-year-old boy from the neighborhood, would be joining them for the walk to church. At approximately 10:15 a.m., the three children set off together, taking the route they had walked countless times before. The streets were quiet. As most of Hexom was either preparing for church or already in attendance at earlier services, the children walked along the familiar path, their voices carrying on the crisp spring air as they discussed the upcoming church service and their plans for the afternoon.

What happened next would haunt the community for decades to come. A local woman named Marjgerie Wyn, who lived in the area, had been struggling with severe personal problems for weeks. Days earlier, her own children had been taken from her custody due to her unstable mental state and growing dependence on prescription drugs. On this particular Sunday morning, she had consumed a dangerous combination of barbiterates and was in a state of complete psychological breakdown. At 10:27 a.m., witnesses would later testify Wyn deliberately drove her car onto the sidewalk where the three children were walking. The impact was instantaneous and devastating. Joanna Robertson was killed immediately. Jacqueline Robertson suffered massive head trauma and died on route to the hospital. Young Anthony Leaden fought for his life but succumbed to his injuries hours later.

The scene that greeted first responders was one of unimaginable horror. The peaceful Sunday morning had been shattered by an act of senseless violence that would leave scars on everyone who witnessed it. Blood stained the pavement where moments before children’s laughter had filled the air.

The blue and yellow dresses that the Robertson girls had chosen so carefully that morning were now torn and stained with blood. News of the tragedy spread through Hexom like wildfire. The close-knit community was stunned into silence. How could something so evil happen in their quiet town? How could three innocent children walking to church on a Sunday morning be cut down in such a brutal manner? For John and Florence Robertson, the news arrived like a physical blow.

One moment they were worried about their daughters being late for church. The next they were being told their children were dead. The grief was overwhelming, allconsuming. Florence collapsed upon hearing the news while Jon stood in shock, unable to process the reality that his two beloved daughters were gone forever. The funeral was held 3 days later.

The entire town attended, unable to stay away from this collective tragedy. Two small white coffins side by side, flowers covering every available surface, and the sound of sobbing that seemed to echo from every corner of the church. The Robertson family was shattered, broken in a way that seemed irreparable. In the days and weeks that followed, Florence retreated into herself, barely speaking, barely eating.

The house that had once echoed with the girl’s laughter, now felt like a tomb. Their toys remained exactly where they had left them, their beds unmade from that final Sunday morning, their clothes hanging in closets like ghost reminders of lives cut tragically short. But while Florence mourned in silence, John Robertson began to pray with an intensity that frightened his wife.

Night after night, she would find him kneeling in their daughter’s room, whispering fervent prayers. But these weren’t prayers for the girl’s souls to rest in peace. These were desperate pleas for their return. As the months passed, the Robertson family struggled to rebuild their lives around the gaping hole left by their daughter’s deaths.

Florence had stopped going to church entirely, unable to reconcile her faith with the senseless tragedy that had befallen her family. Jon continued attending services, but his prayers had taken on an intensity that worried both his wife and their priest. 8 months after the accident, something happened that would change everything.

Florence discovered she was pregnant. The news should have brought joy to the grieving family, but instead it unleashed a storm of emotions and beliefs that threatened to tear the Robertson marriage apart. While Florence saw the pregnancy as a blessing, a chance for new life to heal their wounded family, Jon became convinced of something that terrified his wife. He was certain that Florence would give birth to twins.

More than that, he was absolutely convinced that their dead daughters would return to them through reincarnation. They’re coming back to us. Florence, Jon would whisper to his wife as she lay in bed at night. I can feel them. Joanna and Jacqueline are coming home. Florence was horrified by her husband’s certainty.

As a devout Catholic, she knew that belief in reincarnation was considered heretical. The very suggestion that souls could return to earth in new bodies went against everything the church taught about death and salvation. She begged Jon to stop talking about such things. Warned him that he was risking his immortal soul with such blasphemous thoughts.

But Jon’s conviction only grew stronger as the pregnancy progressed. He claimed to feel the presence of his daughters in the house, particularly in their old bedroom. He would spend hours sitting in their room, talking to them as if they were still alive, telling them about the new life growing in their mother’s womb.

The pregnancy itself seemed normal enough. Florence’s doctor, Dr. Margaret Thornton, conducted regular checkups and assured the couple that everything was progressing well. During multiple examinations, Dr. Thornton detected only one heartbeat, one fetus.

There was no indication of a multiple birth, but John remained adamant. There will be two, he insisted to anyone who would listen. My daughters are returning together just as they left together. The tension in the Robertson household became unbearable. Florence found herself caught between grief for her lost children and fear for her husband’s sanity.

She confided in close friends that she was considering leaving Jon, that his obsession with reincarnation was destroying what remained of their family. The very mention of the word twins would send her into tears of frustration and fear. As her due date approached, Florence’s anxiety reached a breaking point. She was terrified not just of the physical demands of childbirth, but of what her husband expected from this pregnancy.

What would happen if she gave birth to a single child? Would J’s disappointment destroy him completely? And what if, by some impossible chance, he was right? The labor began in the early hours of October 4th, 1958, exactly 18 months after the deaths of Joanna and Jacqueline Robertson.

Florence was rushed to the local hospital with Jon pacing anxiously in the waiting room, his prayers now mixed with an almost manic anticipation. Dr. Thornton had prepared for the birth of a single child based on all her examinations. The hospital staff was ready for a routine delivery. No one was prepared for what actually happened. At 3:47 a.m., Florence Robertson gave birth to her first daughter.

The baby was healthy, beautiful, with dark hair and piercing eyes that seemed to look directly at the people surrounding her. But before anyone could fully process this birth, the contractions began again. At 4:12 a.m., a second daughter arrived. The medical staff was stunned. Dr. Thornton would later admit that in 30 years of practice, she had never encountered a case where a twin pregnancy had gone completely undetected through multiple examinations. The technology of 1958 was limited, but she had been certain there was only one child. When John Robertson was told he had twin daughters, his reaction was unlike anything the hospital staff had ever witnessed.

Rather than the typical joy and surprise of a new father, he displayed an almost eerie calm, as if he had known this would happen all along. Of course, there are two, he said quietly. Joanna and Jacqueline have come home. The twins were identical, born from the same egg, a fact that would later be confirmed through blood tests. They were named Jillian and Jennifer, and at first glance, they appeared to be perfectly normal, healthy, identical twin sisters.

But as the nurses cleaned and examined the babies, something unusual was noted in the medical records. While the twins were genetically identical, sharing the exact same DNA, Jennifer bore distinctive markings that her sister did not possess. On Jennifer’s forehead, just above her right eyebrow, was a peculiar birthark, a raised reddish mark that bore an uncanny resemblance to a scar. The marking was in exactly the same location where Jacqueline Robertson had carried her distinctive scar from the bucket accident.

Even more unsettling, Jennifer had a dark round birthark on her left side, just above her hip. It was identical in size, shape, and location to the birthark that Jacqueline had possessed. The medical staff found these markings puzzling. Identical twins, by definition, should share the same physical characteristics. They develop from a single fertilized egg and carry identical genetic information.

For one twin to have birtharks that the other lacked was scientifically anomalous. Dr. Thornton documented these markings carefully in the medical records, noting their unusual nature. She had delivered hundreds of twins over her career and had never encountered anything quite like this. The birthmarks were distinctive enough that she photographed them for the hospital records, a decision that would prove crucial to future investigators. When Florence first held her daughters, she felt a complex mixture of emotions.

Joy at their safe arrival was tempered by an inexplicable sense of unease. There was something about Jennifer, the twin with the markings that stirred uncomfortable feelings. The baby’s eyes seemed older somehow, more knowing than a newborns should be. John, meanwhile, studied his new daughters with an intensity that made the nurses uncomfortable.

He examined Jennifer’s birthmarks with a look of recognition that chilled Florence to the bone. When she asked him what he was thinking, he simply smiled and whispered, “Welcome home, Jacqueline.” The family returned to their house in Hexom when the twins were 3 weeks old.

But their homecoming would mark the beginning of a series of events that would challenge everything the Robertson family believed about life, death, and the nature of human consciousness. What happened next would attract the attention of researchers from around the world and force even the most skeptical scientists to confront the possibility that some mysteries cannot be explained by conventional understanding. For the first year of the twins lives, they seemed like perfectly normal babies.

They cried, they slept, they reached the typical developmental milestones right on schedule. Florence allowed herself to believe that perhaps Jon’s strange obsession had been nothing more than griefinduced delusion and that their family could finally begin to heal. But when the twins reached 18 months of age, the same amount of time that had passed between their sister’s deaths and their own birth, everything changed.

The first incident occurred on a cold February morning in 1960. Florence was cleaning the house while the twins played quietly in the living room. The family had recently returned from a trip to their storage shed in the garden where Jon had retrieved some old items they needed.

Among these items were toys that had belonged to Joanna and Jacqueline. Toys that had been carefully packed away after the accident and stored where the twins could never have seen them. Without any prompting or explanation, Gillian walked directly to a particular doll that had been Joanna’s most treasured possession.

A porcelainfaced doll named Margaret that Joanna had received for her 8th birthday. The doll had distinctive features, orbin hair, a blue velvet dress, and a small chip on her left hand from where Joanna had accidentally dropped her. Jillian picked up the doll, cradled it with the exact same protective gesture that Joanna had always used, and said clearly, “Oh, Margaret, I’ve missed you so much.”

Florence stood frozen, unable to process what she was witnessing. How could an 18-month-old child know the doll’s name? How could she display such familiarity with a toy she had never seen before? But this was only the beginning. Jennifer, meanwhile, had found Jacqueline’s favorite toy, a small stuffed rabbit with one ear slightly torn from years of constant companionship.

The rabbit had been Jacqueline’s bedtime companion for years, the toy she clutched during storms and carried everywhere she went. Jennifer held the rabbit with instant recognition, pressing it against her cheek in exactly the same way Jacqueline had done countless times. Bunny,” she whispered, using the specific nickname that only Jacquine had ever used for the toy.

Florence called for Jon, her voice trembling with shock and fear when he entered the room and saw his daughters playing with the toys of their deceased sisters, displaying knowledge and behaviors they couldn’t possibly have learned. His face went white with a mixture of vindication and terror. “You see,” he whispered to Florence. I told you they had come back.

But Florence was not ready to accept such an impossible explanation. There had to be a rational reason. Perhaps the children had overheard conversations about the toys. Perhaps they had seen them before and simply remembered. She desperately searched for any logical explanation that didn’t involve the supernatural.

Over the following weeks, however, the evidence became impossible to ignore. The twins began displaying knowledge and behaviors that defied every rational explanation Florence could construct. Just when we thought we’d seen it all, the horror in the Robertson household intensifies.

If this story is giving you chills, share this video with a friend who loves dark mysteries. Hit that like button to support our content, and don’t forget to subscribe to never miss stories like this. Let’s discover together what happens next. As the twins grew older and their vocabulary expanded, they began to speak about things that chilled their parents to the bone.

These weren’t the typical imaginative games of young children. These were detailed, specific references to experiences they couldn’t possibly have had. One afternoon in spring of 1961, when the twins were 2 and 1/2 years old, Florence overheard them playing together in their bedroom.

The conversation she heard made her blood run cold. Do you remember when we walked to church that Sunday? Jillian was saying to Jennifer, her voice carrying the authority of an older sister. You were wearing your yellow dress, the one with the little buttons. Jennifer nodded solemnly. I remember. We were with Anthony. He was telling us about the new bicycle he wanted for his birthday.

Florence crept closer to the door, straining to hear every word. The details they were discussing were accurate. Jacqueline had indeed worn a yellow dress that fatal Sunday, and Anthony Leaden had been talking about wanting a bicycle for his upcoming birthday. “And then the car came,” Jennifer continued, her voice becoming small and frightened. “It was so loud,” and the lady behind the wheel looked so angry.

“Do you remember how much it hurt?” Jillian’s response sent shivers down Florence’s spine. “I remember the blood. There was so much blood and the sounds, the screaming. Florence burst into the room, her hands shaking. “What are you girls talking about?” she demanded, though part of her didn’t want to know the answer.

The twins looked up at her with eyes that seemed far too old for their young faces. “We were just remembering,” Jillian said simply, “before we came back.” The conversations between the twins became a regular occurrence, always when they thought no one was listening.

They would discuss details about their previous life that they couldn’t possibly know. The layout of their old bedroom, the names of schoolmates, specific conversations they had supposedly had with their grandmother. But perhaps most disturbing were the moments when they would discuss their own deaths. Florence would sometimes find them comforting each other after nightmares. Nightmares filled with the sound of screeching tires and the impact of metal against flesh.

One particularly unsettling incident occurred when the twins were 3 years old. They were playing with dolls when Florence heard Jennifer say to Jillian, “When the car hit us, I couldn’t breathe. My nose and mouth were full of blood and everything went dark.” Jillian responded by gently touching Jennifer’s forehead.

Right on the birth mark that matched Jquelyn’s scar. “That’s where you hit your head,” she said softly. “That’s where the mark came from.” Florence consulted their family doctor about these conversations, worried about the psychological impact such memories might have on her daughters. Dr. Thornton was puzzled, but suggested that children often have vivid imaginations and might be picking up details from overheard adult conversations. But Florence knew this explanation didn’t account for the specificity of their knowledge or for the emotional weight behind their words. These weren’t the products of childish imagination.

They carried the gravity of actual memory. The most chilling moment came when Jennifer at age 3 and a half pointed to her birthark during bath time and said matterofactly, “This is where I got hurt when I fell on the bucket. It never stopped hurting even after I died.” Florence’s skepticism was crumbling.

The evidence was becoming too overwhelming, too specific, too emotionally authentic to dismiss as coincidence or imagination. Word of the Robertson twins had begun to spread beyond their small community. Local newspapers picked up the story and it wasn’t long before it reached the attention of the international research community. In 1963, Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist from the University of Virginia, contacted the Robertson family about studying their case. Dr. Stevenson was already well known in academic circles for his research into reported cases of reincarnation. Though his work was often met with skepticism from mainstream science, he had been documenting cases of children who claimed to remember previous lives, traveling around the world to interview families and gather evidence. When Dr. Stevenson first met the Robertson family, the twins were four years old, an optimal age for his research, as he had found that children’s memories of supposed past lives were strongest between the ages of three and six, typically fading as they grew older. The first thing Dr. Stevenson did was conduct a thorough physical examination of both twins, paying particular attention to Jennifer’s distinctive birth marks. He photographed and measured the markings, noting their exact location and characteristics.

He then compared these findings to medical records and photographs of Jacqueline Robertson’s scar and birthmark. The correlation was startling. Not only were the marks in identical locations, but they shared the same size, shape, and even texture. Dr. Stevenson noted that Jennifer’s forehead marking would become more pronounced during cold weather, exactly as Jqueline’s scar had behaved.

Dr. Stevenson conducted extensive interviews with both parents, documenting every incident, every unusual behavior, every statement the twins had made that suggested knowledge of their sisters lives. He was particularly interested in the timeline of events and the credibility of the witnesses. What impressed Dr. Stevenson most was Florence Robertson’s reluctance to accept the reincarnation explanation. Unlike her husband who embraced the possibility, Florence continued to search for rational explanations. This made her testimony particularly valuable as she had no psychological investment in proving reincarnation. During his visits, Dr. Stevenson observed the twins directly, noting their behaviors and interactions.

He watched as they demonstrated familiarity with objects and places from their sister’s lives, displaying knowledge that seemed impossible for children their age to possess. One particularly compelling test occurred when Dr. Stevenson showed the twins photographs of various people from their community, including some who had been friends of Joanna and Jacqueline.

Without prompting, the twins were able to identify several individuals by name, including some they had supposedly never met in their current lives. Dr. Stevenson also documented the twins phobias and fears. Both children displayed an intense fear of automobiles that seemed disproportionate to any normal childhood anxiety.

They would become agitated at the sound of car engines and would refuse to walk near busy streets. This fear was particularly pronounced when they encountered cars being driven erratically or at high speeds. The researcher was struck by the twins different personalities which seemed to mirror those of their deceased sisters. Jillian displayed the nurturing protective instincts that had characterized Joanna while Jennifer exhibited the more dependent follower personality that had defined Jacqueline. Dr. Stevenson would continue to study the Robertson family for over 20 years, documenting their case in multiple academic papers and books. He considered their story one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for reincarnation he had ever encountered. As the twins grew older, their unusual behaviors and memories continued to manifest in ways that terrified their parents.

The children seemed to carry not just the knowledge of their sister’s lives, but also the trauma of their violent deaths. Both Jillian and Jennifer suffered from recurring nightmares that would leave them screaming in the middle of the night. Florence would rush to their bedroom to find them trembling, describing dreams of being hit by cars, of feeling pain and terror, of experiencing the moment of death itself.

The lady in the car looked so angry. Jennifer would sob after one of these nightmares. She wanted to hurt us because she was sad about her own children. I could see it in her eyes just before. These dreams were so vivid and traumatic that Florence began sleeping in the twins bedroom, afraid to leave them alone with their terror-filled memories of events they had supposedly never experienced.

The twins fear of cars became so severe that it impacted their daily lives. They would refuse to ride in vehicles, becoming hysterical at the mere suggestion. When they had to travel by car for necessary trips, they would huddle together in the back seat, clutching each other and whispering reassurances.

But perhaps most disturbing were the moments when the twins would comfort each other with knowledge that seemed to come from beyond their current existence. Florence once overheard Jillian telling Jennifer, “Don’t worry about the scary dreams. I know it hurt when we died, but we’re safe now. We came back together just like we promised we would. The psychological weight of these experiences began to take its toll on the entire family.

Florence found herself questioning her own sanity, wondering if she was somehow encouraging these behaviors or misinterpreting normal childhood development. The strain on her marriage with Jon intensified as his conviction about reincarnation clashed with her desperate need for rational explanations. Their older children, the twins brothers, also struggled with the situation.

They had loved their deceased sisters deeply and found it both wonderful and terrifying to see glimpses of Joanna and Jacqueline in their new siblings. The family dynamics became complex and emotionally charged. As the twins approached their fifth birthday, Dr. Stevenson warned the family that the memories and behaviors might begin to fade. His research had shown that children typically lost their supposed past life memories around this age as their current life experiences began to dominate their consciousness. Dr. Stevenson’s prediction proved accurate. As Jillian and Jennifer approached their fth birthday in 1963, the behaviors and memories that had defined their early years began to fade like morning mist. The change was gradual at first.

The twins stopped spontaneously discussing their previous life experiences. They no longer demonstrated the same immediate recognition of their sister’s belongings or showed knowledge of events from before their birth. The intense fear of automobiles began to diminish, though it never completely disappeared.

By the time they turned six, Jillian and Jennifer had no conscious memory of ever claiming to be reincarnated. When asked about their earlier statements and behaviors, they would look confused, as if their parents were describing the experiences of completely different children. Dr. Stevenson documented this transition carefully, noting that the fading of memories coincided with the twins increased socialization through school and their growing identification with their current lives. It was as if their childhood personalities had been temporarily inhabited by something else, something that had now departed.

Florence felt a complex mixture of relief and loss as she watched her daughters become normal children. On one hand, she was grateful that the unsettling behaviors had ended, and her family could finally begin to live without the constant reminder of tragedy and impossible explanations. On the other hand, she found herself mourning the loss of what had felt like a final connection to Joanna and Jqueline. Jon’s reaction was different.

He viewed the fading of the twins memories not as a return to normaly, but as the completion of some cosmic process he didn’t fully understand. They came back to show us that death isn’t the end. He would tell anyone who would listen. And now they’ve moved on to live their own lives. The twins grew up normally after this transition, excelling in school and developing their own distinct personalities and interests. They maintained a close relationship throughout their childhood and adolescence.

But it was the normal bond of sisters, not the other worldly connection they had seemed to share in their early years. Dr. Stevenson continued to check in with the family periodically, documenting the twins development and the long-term impact of their early experiences.

When he met with Jillian and Jennifer as adults in their 20s, they had no memory of their supposed past life experiences and were somewhat skeptical about the whole concept of reincarnation. However, there was one final unsettling development that occurred when Jillian was 23 years old. In 1981, she began experiencing what she described as inner visions, vivid mental images of playing in a garden with her brothers as a young child.

She could describe in perfect detail a house with orchards and specific landscape features. The descriptions perfectly matched the family’s former home in Wickham, where they had lived when Joanna was very young. Jillian had never visited this house in her current lifetime. Yet her descriptions were so accurate that they shocked her parents and Dr. Stevenson, but these visions faded quickly and never returned. Dr. Stevenson’s study of the Robertson twins became one of the cornerstone cases in reincarnation research. He documented over 30 specific correlations between the twins behaviors and memories and the lives of their deceased sisters. The case was featured prominently in his academic papers and books, including children who remember previous lives and reincarnation and biology.

The physical evidence, particularly Jennifer’s birthmarks, remained the most compelling aspect of the case. Blood tests confirmed that the twins were monozygotic, identical, meaning they shared identical DNA. This made Jennifer’s distinctive markings scientifically anomalous, as identical twins should not have such significant physical differences. Dr. Stevenson’s documentation of the case included detailed photographs of Jennifer’s birthmarks and their correlation to Jacqueline scars, extensive interviews with family members and community witnesses, medical records from both the deceased sisters and the twins, behavioral observations conducted over multiple visits spanning 20 years. Testimony from independent witnesses who observed the twins unusual knowledge and behaviors. The case attracted both supporters and critics within the scientific community. Skeptics argued that the parents, particularly Jon, with his strong belief in reincarnation, might have unconsciously influenced the twins behaviors through suggestion or selective interpretation of normal childhood development.

However, supporters pointed to several factors that seem to argue against this explanation. Florence Robertson’s initial skepticism and resistance to the reincarnation interpretation, the specificity and accuracy of the twins knowledge about events they couldn’t have learned through normal means. The physical birtharks that matched the deceased sister’s scars, the consistent pattern of behaviors observed by independent witnesses. Dr. Stevenson himself remained cautious in his CE conclusions, stating that while the case provided compelling evidence for some form of survival of consciousness after death, he could not definitively prove reincarnation. He did note, however, that conventional explanations seemed inadequate to account for all the observed phenomena. The Robertson twins case continues to challenge our understanding of consciousness, memory, and the nature of human identity.

Even decades later, researchers and philosophers debate the implications of Dr. Stevenson’s findings. What makes this case particularly compelling is not just the individual pieces of evidence, but their cumulative impact. The birthmarks alone might be dismissed as coincidence. The behavioral similarities might be explained by genetics or family influence.

The supposed memories might be attributed to imagination or suggestion, but taken together, these elements create a pattern that seems to defy conventional explanation. How do we account for identical twins who share the same DNA but have different birtharks that match their deceased sister’s scars? How do we explain young children’s detailed knowledge of events from before their birth? How do we understand the psychological and emotional authenticity of their supposed memories? The case forces us to confront fundamental questions about the nature of consciousness itself. Is our sense of individual identity truly confined to our physical bodies? Can memory and personality somehow persist beyond biological death? Are there aspects of human experience that science has yet to understand or explain? For the Robertson family, these philosophical questions became intensely personal reality.

They lived through experiences that challenged everything they thought they knew about life and death. Whether we interpret their story as evidence of reincarnation, as an extraordinary series of coincidences, or as something else entirely, it remains one of the most thoroughly documented and puzzling cases in the annals of unusual phenomena. Florence Robertson, who died in 1979, never fully resolved her feelings about what her family had experienced.

In her final years, she would tell interviewers that while she still struggled with the theological implications of reincarnation, she could not deny what she had witnessed with her own eyes. John Robertson, who passed away in 1985, maintained until his death that his daughters had indeed returned to him through reincarnation. He viewed their brief time showing memories of their past lives as a gift, a confirmation that love transcends death and that families can be reunited across the boundaries of mortality. Today, Jillian and Jennifer Robertson live quiet, normal lives as adults. They have families of their own, careers, and the typical concerns of middle-aged women. They remember nothing of their early years when they seem to carry the memories and personalities of their deceased sisters, but their story continues to resonate with researchers, believers, and skeptics alike. Dr. Stevenson’s documentation of their case remains one of the most detailed studies ever conducted into alleged reincarnation phenomena.

The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies, which Dr. Stevenson founded continues to investigate similar cases around the world. The Robertson twins case stands as a testament to the mystery that still surrounds human consciousness and the possibility that death may not be the absolute end we assume it to be.

Whether we view their story as compelling evidence for reincarnation, as a fascinating psychological phenomenon, or as an elaborate series of coincidences, it challenges us to keep our minds open to possibilities that extend beyond our current scientific understanding. But there’s one more piece to this puzzle that Dr. Stevenson discovered during his decades of research.

Something that makes the Robertson case even more extraordinary and terrifying than we’ve yet revealed. In 1978, when the twins were 20 years old, Dr. Stevenson arranged for comprehensive blood tests to definitively establish their genetic relationship. The results confirmed what had been suspected all along.

Jillian and Jennifer were indeed monozygotic twins, sharing identical DNA from a single fertilized egg. This finding was crucial because it made Jennifer’s birthmarks scientifically impossible according to conventional understanding. Identical twins by definition should share the same genetic blueprint and therefore the same physical characteristics.

The presence of distinctive marks on only one twin suggested something beyond normal biological development. But Dr. Stevenson’s investigation revealed something even more unsettling. Through painstaking research into medical records and family histories, he discovered that similar birthmark anomalies appeared in approximately 35% of the reincarnation cases he studied.

Children bearing marks that corresponded exactly to wounds or scars from their supposed previous incarnations. This pattern suggested that whatever phenomenon was occurring wasn’t limited to the Robertson family. Around the world in cultures both believing and skeptical of reincarnation, similar cases were being documented. Children bearing the physical marks of strangers who had died before their birth, carrying memories of lives they had never lived, displaying knowledge they could never have acquired through conventional means. The implications were staggering. If these cases represented genuine phenomena rather than elaborate coincidences, they suggested that human consciousness might operate according to laws that science had yet to discover or understand. Perhaps even more disturbing than the twins own experiences was what Dr. Stevenson discovered about the community of Hexom itself.

During his investigation, he interviewed dozens of residents who had witnessed the twins unusual behaviors firsthand. What emerged was a pattern of collective fear and deliberate silence. Many community members admitted that they had observed the twins demonstrating impossible knowledge about their deceased sisters, but had been too frightened to discuss it openly.

Some described feeling spooked or unnatural when around the children during their early years as if they were in the presence of something that defied natural order. Mrs. Elellanena Hartwell, the twins former nursery school teacher, eventually confided to Dr. Stevenson about incidents that had occurred in her classroom.

She described how Jennifer, at age three, had drawn detailed pictures of the car accident that killed her sisters. Pictures that included accurate details about the vehicle, the location, and even the expression on the driver’s face. Mrs. Hartwell had been so disturbed by these drawings that she had destroyed them and never mentioned them to the twins parents. “I didn’t want to add to their burden,” she told Dr. Stevenson years later.

“But those drawings, they were drawn by someone who had been there, someone who had seen what happened. How could a three-year-old child know those things?” The local postman, William Davies, reported that during his deliveries to the Robertson home, he had sometimes overheard the twins having conversations about people in the community who had died before the children were born.

They would discuss these deceased individuals as if they had known them personally, referring to private details about their lives that weren’t common knowledge. Dr. Stevenson realized that the Robertson twins case wasn’t just about two extraordinary children.

It was about an entire community that had collectively witnessed something that challenged their understanding of reality. The silence that surrounded their experiences wasn’t just skepticism. It was fear. As Dr. Stevenson’s research progressed, he began to understand the psychological toll that the twins experiences had taken on the entire Robertson family.

The phenomenon that Jon had prayed for and welcomed as a blessing had become a source of ongoing trauma and disruption. Florence Robertson’s health had deteriorated significantly during the twins early years. She suffered from chronic insomnia, anxiety attacks, and periods of deep depression. Medical records showed that she had been prescribed various medications for stress related conditions, though she rarely discussed the true source of her distress with her doctors.

How do you explain to a physician that your children remember being murdered? She once asked Dr. Stevenson during an interview. How do you describe the feeling of watching your dead daughters looking at you through the eyes of their sisters? The twins older brothers also struggled with the situation.

They had loved Joanna and Jacqueline deeply and seeing glimpses of their personalities in the twins created a confusing mixture of joy and grief. Some of the boys reported having nightmares about their deceased sisters, dreams where they were told that death wasn’t permanent, and that anyone could return.

John Robertson, despite his satisfaction at having his beliefs validated, also paid a psychological price. Friends and neighbors began to avoid him, viewing his certainty about reincarnation as evidence of mental instability. His business suffered as customers felt uncomfortable around him. The Catholic Church eventually asked him to stop attending services after he repeatedly contradicted church doctrine during discussions about death and salvation. I got what I prayed for, John told Dr. Stevenson in 1982, 3 years before his death. But I never realized that proof would be so terrifying to live with. One aspect of the case that Dr. Stevenson found particularly compelling was the medical impossibility of Jennifer’s birthmarks appearing on only one of two identical twins.

He consulted with geneticists, dermatologists, and embryologists, seeking any conventional explanation for this phenomenon. Dr. Margaret Fitzgerald, a leading geneticist at Cambridge University, examined Dr. Stevenson’s documentation and photographs. Her conclusion was unequivocal. Given that these twins are monozygotic, sharing identical DNA, the presence of distinctive birtharks on only one child is medically unexplainable using our current understanding of human development. The birtharks themselves defied normal patterns. Jennifer’s forehead marking not only matched the location of Jacqueline’s scar, but also exhibited the same unusual characteristics. Like Jacqueline’s scar, it would become more pronounced during cold weather and would occasionally cause Jennifer discomfort in exactly the same way Jacqueline had described.

Even more puzzling was the emotional and psychological response these marks triggered in Jennifer. As a young child, she would sometimes touch the birthark on her forehead and describe feeling sad or hurt, though she couldn’t explain why. She would tell her parents that the mark remembered being hurt, using language that suggested the birthmark itself carried some form of memory. Dr. Stevenson documented 14 other cases in his research where children bore birtharks or birth defects that corresponded to injuries sustained by individuals who had died before the children’s birth. In every case, the marks appeared in exactly the same location and exhibited similar characteristics to the original wounds.

This pattern suggested to Dr. Stevenson that whatever mechanism might be responsible for reincarnation, it somehow retained not just memories and personality traits, but also physical imprints of traumatic experiences. The implications were staggering. If consciousness could survive death and return in a new body, it apparently carried with it the scars of its previous existence.

Despite his reputation as a leading researcher in reincarnation phenomena, Dr. Stevenson himself struggled with the implications of the Robertson case. His private journals made available after his death in 2007 reveal a man torn between scientific skepticism and the weight of evidence he had accumulated. “I cannot honestly say that I believe in reincarnation in the traditional sense,” he wrote in 1979.

But I also cannot deny what I have documented. The Robertson twins, along with hundreds of other cases I have studied, present evidence that demands an explanation. If not reincarnation, then what? Dr. Stevenson considered various alternative explanations for the phenomena he observed. Could telepathy or psychic phenomena account for the children’s knowledge? Could some form of genetic memory explain their behaviors? Could unconscious suggestion from family members create such elaborate and consistent patterns? Each potential explanation had serious limitations. Telepathy couldn’t account for physical birtharks. Genetic memory couldn’t explain knowledge of specific events and conversations. Suggestion couldn’t produce the emotional authenticity and spontaneity of the children’s responses. In his final years, Dr. Stevenson began to focus less on proving reincarnation and more on documenting anomalous phenomena that challenged conventional understanding of consciousness and memory. The Robertson case remained central to his work because it combined so many different types of evidence, physical, behavioral, emotional, and testimonial.

Science advances by acknowledging what we cannot yet explain, he wrote in his last paper on the Robertson twins. These children have shown us that there are aspects of human experience that our current paradigms cannot accommodate. Whether we call it reincarnation or something else entirely, we must remain open to the possibility that consciousness operates according to laws we have yet to discover.

The story of the Robertson twins continues to influence research into consciousness and survival after death. The University of Virginia’s division of perceptual studies, now directed by Dr. Jim Tucker continues to investigate similar cases around the world, building on Dr. Stevenson’s pioneering work. Modern technology has allowed researchers to conduct more sophisticated investigations than were possible in Dr. Stevenson’s era. DNA analysis, brain imaging, and computer databases have provided new tools for verifying and analyzing claimed reincarnation cases. Yet the fundamental questions raised by cases like the Robertson twins remain as puzzling as ever. The twins themselves, now in their 60s, rarely discuss their early experiences.

They have requested privacy and have declined most interview requests in recent decades. However, in a rare statement given to researchers in 2010, Gileian acknowledged that while she has no conscious memory of claiming to be reincarnated, she cannot dismiss the extensive documentation of her childhood behaviors. I don’t remember saying or doing those things, she said.

But I trust that my parents and Dr. Stevenson were honest in their reporting. Something happened to my sister and me during our early years. I don’t know what it was, but it was real enough to affect our entire family. Jennifer has been more reluctant to discuss the case at all, but close friends report that she sometimes experiences vivid dreams about events from before her birth.

Dreams that disturb her enough that she has sought counseling on several occasions. The Robertson twins case raises profound questions that extend far beyond the specific details of their experiences. If consciousness can somehow survive death and return in a new form, what does this mean for our understanding of personal identity, moral responsibility, and the nature of existence itself? Philosophers and theologians have grappled with these questions for centuries, but cases like the Robertson twins provide specific documented examples that bring abstract theories into sharp focus. If Jillian and Jennifer truly carried the consciousness of their deceased sisters, were they the same individuals returning or were they new beings influenced by residual memories from previous lives? The case also challenges our understanding of trauma and healing. If consciousness can carry physical and emotional scars from one lifetime to another, what are the implications for psychology and medicine? Could some forms of mental illness or unexplained physical conditions be related to experiences from previous existences? These questions remain unanswered, but the Robertson twins case ensures that they cannot be easily dismissed. Whatever the ultimate explanation for their experiences, their story demonstrates that human consciousness may be far more complex and mysterious than we currently understand. Perhaps the most haunting aspect of the Robertson twins case is what it suggests about the nature of love and family bonds.

If we accept even the possibility that Joanna and Jacqueline somehow returned to their family as Jillian and Jennifer, it implies that the connections between family members might transcend death itself. The twins brief period of carrying their sisters memories lasted only until their fth birthday, exactly the age that Dr. the Stevenson identified as the typical limit for past life recall in children. It was as if their consciousness had been temporarily shared with their deceased sisters, allowing for a final reunion before moving on to live their own lives. This pattern suggests that whatever mechanism might be responsible for reincarnation phenomena serves not just individual consciousness, but also the healing of families torn apart by tragedy. The Robertson parents, devastated by the violent deaths of their daughters, were given a few precious years of feeling that their children had returned to them, if only briefly.

The message seemed to be one of comfort and continuity, that love endures beyond death, that families can be reunited across the boundaries of mortality, and that tragedy, while painful, might not be the end of the story. This mystery shows us that there are aspects of human experience that challenge our deepest assumptions about life, death, and consciousness. The Robertson twins lived through something that defied conventional explanation, leaving us with more questions than answers about the true nature of existence. What do you think of this story? Do you believe everything was revealed, or are there deeper mysteries yet to be uncovered? Could the Robertson twins truly have been the reincarnation of their deceased sisters? Or is there another explanation for their extraordinary experiences? Leave your comment below with your thoughts. If you enjoyed this tale and want more stories that challenge everything you thought you knew about reality, subscribe to Litigy of Fear, hit the notification bell and share this video with someone who loves mysteries that blur the line between the possible and impossible. The truth might be stranger than we dare to imagine. See you in the next video where we’ll explore another case that science still cannot explain.