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We'll Be Back · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
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  Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
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  Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. What happens when we die? Everyone has their
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  Speaker 1: own theory. According to some religions, if we're good people
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  Speaker 1: on earth, then our souls are rewarded in heaven, or
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  Speaker 1: if not, they're tormented down below. Others believe that our
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  Speaker 1: souls are joined with a higher power in what is
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  Speaker 1: known as eternal unity. In Buddhism, there is something called
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  Speaker 1: the rebirth doctrine or reincarnation. A person may be reborn
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  Speaker 1: into an existence at drew death based on how they
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  Speaker 1: acted when they were still alive. As far as we know,
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  Speaker 1: the Pollock family of Hexham, England, were not Buddhists, but
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  Speaker 1: what we do know is that what happened to them
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  Speaker 1: has confounded experts for decades. Jacqueline and Joanna were six
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  Speaker 1: and eleven, respectively when the unthinkable happened. It was May
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  Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty seven, and the girls were walking to
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  Speaker 1: church with a friend of theirs. A woman driving under
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  Speaker 1: the influence of drugs hit them, killing all three children.
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  Speaker 1: It was a horrific tragedy and the girls parents, Florence
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  Speaker 1: and John, were racked with grief. In the months following
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  Speaker 1: the incident, Florence became pregnant, and something about the pregnancy
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  Speaker 1: affected John somehow. He knew that his little girls were
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  Speaker 1: not gone forever well. One year after the accident, Florence
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  Speaker 1: gave birth to twin daughters, Jillian and Jennifer. Both babies
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  Speaker 1: were almost identical save for differing sets of birth marks,
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  Speaker 1: but to add to the strangeness of the birth marks themselves,
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  Speaker 1: their locations were also highly unusual. Jennifer had a mark
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  Speaker 1: on her left hip and a spot on her forehead,
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  Speaker 1: which was eerily similar to her late sister Jacqueline, who
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  Speaker 1: had a similar marking of her own on her hip
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  Speaker 1: and a scar in the same spot on her forehead.
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  Speaker 1: Three months after Jennifer and Jillian were born, the whole
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  Speaker 1: family moved out of Hexham to nearby Whitley Bay. As
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  Speaker 1: they were only a few months old when they moved,
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  Speaker 1: they shouldn't have remembered anything about their time in Hexham,
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  Speaker 1: and yet upon a return visit four years later, they
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  Speaker 1: started exhibiting some odd behavior. For one, the twins knew
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  Speaker 1: several landmarks in Hexham despite never having seen them before.
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  Speaker 1: The school, for example, seemed very known to them, even
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  Speaker 1: though they had never stepped foot inside it. There was
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  Speaker 1: also a local playground they never been to, yet they
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  Speaker 1: knew exactly how to get there. The only members of
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  Speaker 1: the family who had known about that playground were their
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  Speaker 1: parents and their older brothers, and of course, their late sisters,
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  Speaker 1: Jacqueline and Joanna. Only a few years earlier, the girls
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  Speaker 1: had started asking to play with certain toys. These had
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  Speaker 1: been their late sisters to poise that their mother, Florence,
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  Speaker 1: had packed away after their death. Jennifer and Jillian had
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  Speaker 1: never seen them before, didn't even know they existed, but
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  Speaker 1: they started asking to play with them by name, as
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  Speaker 1: if they had done so all their lives. And the
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  Speaker 1: more John and Florence watched their girls, the more similarities
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  Speaker 1: they saw between them and the sisters they had never known.
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  Speaker 1: They played the same games and loved the same foods.
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  Speaker 1: John was convinced that Jacqueline and Joanna had come back
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  Speaker 1: to them that they had been reincarnated as Jennifer and Jillian,
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  Speaker 1: but Florence refused to listen, and then the twins started
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  Speaker 1: talking about the car accident Florence once heard. The girls
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  Speaker 1: re enacted the event, with Jillian holding Jennifer in her arms,
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  Speaker 1: telling her the blood's coming out of your eyes. That's
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  Speaker 1: where the car hit you. After that, Florence quickly changed
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  Speaker 1: her mind. Jillian once told her sister that the birthmark
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  Speaker 1: on her forehead was a result of Jennifer falling on
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  Speaker 1: a bucket. That was actually how Jacqueline had received a
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  Speaker 1: scar before she died. And perhaps the most bizarre behavior,
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  Speaker 1: the twins exhibited their fear of cars. They hated being
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  Speaker 1: around them, and once held on to each other at
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  Speaker 1: the sound of a car starting, they screamed that it
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  Speaker 1: was coming to get them. It wasn't after Jillian and
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  Speaker 1: Jennifer turned five that the memories and similarities with their
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  Speaker 1: deceased sisters began to disappear. As they continued to grow,
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  Speaker 1: they developed personalities of our own, although Jillian did have
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  Speaker 1: occasional instances where she remembered something Joanna had done years earlier.
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  Speaker 1: The case of the Pollock Twins is widely considered to
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  Speaker 1: be proof that reincarnation is real. Others have claimed that
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  Speaker 1: the girls went through was simply the past lives overlapping
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  Speaker 1: with the present time. Whatever the case, it was enough
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  Speaker 1: to convince their parents that at least for a short while,
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  Speaker 1: Joanna and Jacqueline had come back to them, perhaps to
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  Speaker 1: say the goodbyes they never could, or to hug their
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  Speaker 1: mom and dad again. Either way, it gives us hope
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  Speaker 1: that the ones we love are never truly gone, and
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  Speaker 1: if we're lucky, we might get to see them one
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  Speaker 1: last time. June and Jennifer Gibbons were close, like really
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  Speaker 1: really close. They were both born on April eleven of
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  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three to Gloria and Aubrey Gibbons, a West
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  Speaker 1: Indian couple who noticed strange behavior from the girls early
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  Speaker 1: on after they moved from Barbados to England. Shortly after
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  Speaker 1: the twins birth, those behaviors started to grow more noticeable.
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  Speaker 1: For one, they didn't speak, at least not to their
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  Speaker 1: parents or anyone else. June and Jennifer were known as
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  Speaker 1: elective mutes. They could speak, they just chose not to
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  Speaker 1: unless they were talking to each other. They came up
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  Speaker 1: with their own language based on a sped up version
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  Speaker 1: of Beijing Creole that only they could understand. Their special
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  Speaker 1: language also helps solidify their bond. The girls were in
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  Speaker 1: separate r bowl One time, when they were teenagers, June
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  Speaker 1: and Jennifer were split up and sent to different boarding schools.
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  Speaker 1: Each twin immediately started pulling away from everyone else, classmates, teachers, administrators, everyone.
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  Speaker 1: They eventually reached a catatonic states and were unable to
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  Speaker 1: function until they were finally reunited. Their childhood was tough.
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  Speaker 1: The girls and their three other siblings were the only
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  Speaker 1: black children in their neighborhood. They were shunned at school,
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  Speaker 1: and teachers often allowed them to leave before the bell
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  Speaker 1: rings so that they could avoid being bullied on their
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  Speaker 1: way home. Their lack of friendships with the other kids
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  Speaker 1: only drove them closer together, especially June and Jennifer, who
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  Speaker 1: only played with and spoke to one another in their bedroom.
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  Speaker 1: They did everything together, much of it creative in nature.
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  Speaker 1: The girls would often use their toys and dolls to
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  Speaker 1: put on plays, which they recorded on tape for their
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  Speaker 1: younger sister Rosie to play. They were also given diaries
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  Speaker 1: one Christmas, which ignited a passion for writing within them.
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  Speaker 1: Around nineteen seventy nine, June and Jennifer used a mail
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  Speaker 1: order creative writing course to learn how to write short
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  Speaker 1: stories and novels, becoming prolific authors early on in their lives,
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  Speaker 1: but their lack of a connection to others influenced their
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  Speaker 1: work in questionable ways. One book was titled Pepsicola Addict,
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  Speaker 1: and the twins put the money they earned from their
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  Speaker 1: unemployment together to have it published. It remains the only
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  Speaker 1: publicly available work by either of the sisters, and although
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  Speaker 1: it's no longer in print, copies are held within the
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  Speaker 1: collection of five libraries all over the world. Jennifer's work
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  Speaker 1: was similar, if not darker. Her novel The Pugilist told
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  Speaker 1: the story of a doctor who used the heart from
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  Speaker 1: the family dog to save the life of his son,
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  Speaker 1: but the dog's spirit took over the child and got
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  Speaker 1: revenge on the man who killed him. One of the
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  Speaker 1: few things about their lives that followed a typical childhood
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  Speaker 1: was the rebellious teenage phase for the twins that included
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  Speaker 1: drinking and drugs and acts of petty theft. Eventually, those
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  Speaker 1: crimes grew into vandalism and arson, resulting in the burning
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  Speaker 1: down of attract shop. They almost torched a local technical
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  Speaker 1: school as well, but were arrested and sent to Broadmoor
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  Speaker 1: Hospital in Berkshire, England. That was a high security mental
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  Speaker 1: facility where they lived for over ten years. June believed
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  Speaker 1: that they were being punished for refusing to speak. She
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  Speaker 1: was quoted as saying, juvenile delinquents get two years in prison.
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  Speaker 1: We got twelve years of hell because we didn't speak.
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  Speaker 1: She once wrote the Queen for a pardon, but it
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  Speaker 1: never came. Sadly, the medication they were placed on, as
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  Speaker 1: well as their time of confinement, affected them deeply. They
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  Speaker 1: continued to write in their diaries, but their passion for
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  Speaker 1: creative writing had gone. But they did become more social
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  Speaker 1: as the twins grew more comfortable with life within the hospital.
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  Speaker 1: They even joined the choir. But they also had a secret.
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  Speaker 1: Unbeknownst to the hospital staff or anyone really, June and
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  Speaker 1: Jennifer had made a pact with one another. If one
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  Speaker 1: of them were to somehow die first, then the surviving
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  Speaker 1: twin was to begin speaking and living her life as
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  Speaker 1: normally as possible. It was a Roman It's an idea,
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  Speaker 1: this notion that the surviving sister had to carry on
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  Speaker 1: and succeed, but it was life in broad Moore that
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  Speaker 1: turned that promise into reality. In March of n as
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  Speaker 1: the twins were being transferred to a more relaxed facility
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  Speaker 1: in Wales, Jennifer placed her head in her sister's lap
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  Speaker 1: and fell asleep. When she failed to wake up, she
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  Speaker 1: was rushed to the hospital, but sadly, she was pronounced dead.
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  Speaker 1: The cause, they said, was an inflamed heart. There was
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  Speaker 1: nothing in her system that could have caused it either.
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  Speaker 1: It was almost as if she had given up on
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  Speaker 1: her own life for the sake of her sister. June
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  Speaker 1: believed that Jennifer's sacrifice had a cleansing effect on her,
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  Speaker 1: and in a way it did. She left the hospital
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  Speaker 1: system and moved into a place near her parents. She
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  Speaker 1: also started giving interviews to newspapers and magazines about her
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  Speaker 1: life growing up, and she became an active member of
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  Speaker 1: her community. A journalist who met the girls while they
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  Speaker 1: were incarcerated read their diaries. She determined that June and
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  Speaker 1: Jennifer Gibbons wanted two things from life, fame and freedom,
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  Speaker 1: but not freedom from the hospital. Freedom, they said from
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  Speaker 1: each other. They loved one another, but their bond had
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  Speaker 1: become a burden. Jennifer gave her sister the freedom she
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  Speaker 1: craved and the fame. Well that happened anyway. The Silent Twins,
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  Speaker 1: as they were called, became the subjects of numerous documentaries,
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  Speaker 1: a play, songs, and even a feature film, and for
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  Speaker 1: good reason, their story was quite unique. Throughout it all,
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  Speaker 1: June and Jennifer Gibbons never shied away from who they
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  Speaker 1: really were. Smart, resourceful and creative women with a bond
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  Speaker 1: as deep as the ocean, and a relationship that was
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  Speaker 1: more than a little curious. I hope you've enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
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  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show is created by
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  Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
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  Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,