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Out of the many creepy stories we have chanced upon, this tale of twin sisters is by far the creepiest story we’ve heard. Born in the year 1963, June and Jennifer Gibbons from Barbados, also known as the silent twins, were known to not have spoken to anyone but each other in their entire life. In order for one to live a normal life, one had to die. But, the events that lead up to that are unnerving.
The inseparable twins, June and Jennifer Gibbons, spoke in a secret language
— cryptophasia; a type of idioglossia which is an invented language spoken by twins — and often mirrored each other’s body language.
Here’s their story.
When June and Jennifer were very young, their parents Gloria (a housewife) and Aubrey Gibbons (an Air Force technician) moved to Haverfordwest, Wales.
June was ten minutes older than Jennifer and the twins were inseparable while they were growing up. Their jargon or words they used to communicate were pretty much difficult for anyone to understand. They spoke only to each other, and not even their parents. But they occasionally communicated with their younger sister Rose.
Since it was a quiet town, the twins not speaking to anyone earned them the name of “The Silent Twins”. While growing up, they faced racism immensely as they were the only black kids in the community and were ostracised at their school.
It was a traumatic experience for the girls and they were even dismissed from school early in order to check the bullying they faced. That became one of the factors due to which the Gibbons sisters stopped communicating with the outside world.
By the age of 14, they had had a series of therapists who tried really hard to make them open up to the outside world. They were even sent to separate boarding schools. But, instead of opening up, they further retracted in their close-guarded shells becoming catatonic.
Upon reunion, their bond strengthened further and they used to stay locked up in their bedrooms for longer durations. They became “elective mutes” and spoke only and only to each other. In their room, they played with their dolls, rehearsed plays, wrote plays for one another and found love in writing.
In their diaries for each other, they spoke of their love-hate relationship. The excerpts from their diaries are chilling,
June wrote about Jennifer: “She wants us to be equal. There is a murderous gleam in her eye. Dear lord, I am scared of her. She is not normal … someone is driving her insane. It is me.”
She also wrote, “Nobody suffers the way I do, not with a sister; with a husband, yes; with a wife, yes; with a child, yes, but this sister of mine, a dark shadow robbing me of sunlight, is my one and only torment.”
An excerpt from Jennifer’s diary: “We have become fatal enemies in each other’s eyes. We feel the irritating deadly rays come out of our bodies, stinging each other’s skin. I say to myself, can I get rid of my own shadow, impossible or not possible? Without my shadow, would I die? Without my shadow, would I gain life, be free or left to die? Without my shadow, which I identify with a face of misery, deception, murder.”
They wanted to become authors and even wrote a few novels. They took a mail order creative writing course and their books were published by a self-publishing press called New Horizons. Their novels couldn’t create an impact on the literary world.
According to their Wikipedia page,
In June’s Pepsi-Cola Addict, the high-school hero was seduced by a teacher, then sent away to a reformatory where a homosexual guard makes a play for him.
In Jennifer’s The Pugilist, a physician is so eager to save his child’s life that he kills the family dog to obtain its heart for a transplant. The dog’s spirit lives on in the child and ultimately has its revenge against the father.
Jennifer also wrote Discomania, the story of a young woman who discovers that the atmosphere of a local disco incites patrons to insane violence. She followed up with The Taxi-Driver’s Son, a radio play called Postman and Postwoman, and several short stories.
After their author stint was unsuccessful, the twins, in order to get recognition started committing petty crimes. They derived thrills from theft, choking each other, even burnt a building down to the ground. They were arrested on arson charges.
When in court, the judge ruled that since they were suffering from a severe social disorder, June and Jennifer were sentenced to be sent to a mental facility. They were confined at Broadmoor Hospital, where they spent 14 years of their lives.
At the hospital, June and Jennifer’s condition baffled the staff and the doctors. They even displayed uncharacteristic behaviour. Like, they took turns at eating – one day June would gorge on food and Jennifer would starve herself, and on the next day they would reverse their roles at eating. They were housed in different cells at opposite ends of the hospital, but the nurses would find them in odd-eerie and same poses.
The oddity continued for over eleven years. Meanwhile, a Sunday Times Reporter, Marjorie Wallace’s story on them caught attention.
During their stay at the mental facility, the twins made a pact that in order for one to lead a normal life either one has to die. And, after much discussions, they decided that Jennifer would sacrifice her life.
The doctors, later, agreed to transfer the twins to Caswell Clinic which was a lower-security facility in Bridgend, Wales. That very day, Majorie met with the twins and Jennifer announced to her,
“Marjorie, I’m going to have to die.”
When Wallace asked why? Jennifer answered calmly,
“Because we decided.”
In March 1993, Jennifer died in June’s lap and when she reached the facility she couldn’t be roused. The cause of Jennifer’s death was deemed to be acute myocarditis, a sudden inflammation of the heart. But there was no evidence of drugs or poison in her system, and her death was quite a mystery.
June said that Jennifer had been acting strangely for about a day before their release and that her speech was slurred and she said that she was dying.
When Wallace met June after Jennifer’s death, she found her in a strange mood. June told her,
“I’m free at last, liberated, and at last Jennifer has given up her life for me.”
Jennifer’s headstone reads a poem by June which is creepy too,
“We once were two
We two made one
We no more two
Through life be one
Rest in peace.”
After Jennifer’s death, June started interacting with people and became normal. She didn’t need any psychiatric help and lives in a house in West Wales, near her parents.
*Chills down the spine *
Fact Source: Wikipedia , The Line Up
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