Using pgpool and PostgreSQL in differents hosts.
They do not have to be on the same host; otherwise lots of the useful things you can do with PgPool-II would not be possible.

PgPool-II communicates with PostgreSQL over PostgreSQL's TCP/IP protocol.

The reason it wouldn't start on the same host is probably because you were trying to run both PgPool-II and PostgreSQL on the same port (5432).