"Silent twins": mental hospital, crime and mysterious death

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

This strange story begins in 1963, when twins June and Jennifer Gibbons are born in Barbados. Known as The Silent Twins, this creepy duo has written science fiction novels, but it's not that simple. June and Jennifer only talked to each other! Yes, you understood correctly: they ignored everyone and did not communicate with anyone except among themselves. This case has not yet been solved …

Let's find out how their mysterious life led to crimes, a mental hospital and the mysterious death of one of the sisters …

Shortly after their birth, their family moved to Haverfordwest, Wales. Known for its serenity and tranquility, this town and the Gibbons twins seem to have one thing in common - they were quiet. At first, the sisters' parents got scared and assumed that their daughters were dumb from birth. But very soon they realized that the girls perfectly understand all the words and know how to pronounce them, but they flatly refuse to communicate with others. Instead, they communicated exclusively with each other and a little with the younger sister of Rose, inventing for this their own specific language, understandable only to them.

Even at school, the twins were found to have the so-called cryptophasia. This is such a specific language that can arise in a pair of twins that only they understand. Cryptophasia occurs in 30% of twins - this is due to the fact that twins grow up in close contact and great sympathy for each other. And when one says the wrong word (and kids do it often), the other remembers. Mistakes accumulate, but this does not prevent the kids from understanding each other. Usually, by the age of six to eight years, this problem in twins completely disappears.

But the Quiet Twins' cryptophasia reached the point of absurdity - those around them could not understand them. As a result, the girls became isolated and began to communicate mainly with each other and sometimes with their younger sister. They also started having big problems at school.

Much later, one of the psychiatrists trying to decipher the girls' behavior recorded their conversation on a tape recorder. She wanted to slow down the tape and try to hear the words they said. However, in the process of slowing down the recorded conversation, it turned out that the girls speak ordinary English, but very, very fast. And this fact indirectly indicated that the Gibbons sisters most likely had a high level of intelligence.

Psychologists could not understand how the girls manage to speak so quickly and, moreover, how they manage to recognize each other's speech and isolate words.

As a child, the sisters were the only black children in their place of residence. Because of this, they were often bullied at school. This greatly traumatized their psyche, which led to their absolute closure from others.

At the age of 14, their parents sent them to different boarding schools so that the shared rhythm of life would teach them how to adapt to society. And this was a fatal mistake. Almost immediately after the separation, both twins fell into a so-called catatonic stupor. This state of physical inhibition occurs with severe stress and, sometimes, with schizophrenia.

The parents united the twins again, but it was too late. The girls were isolated from those around them. They lived in their own room, where they were constantly engaged in creativity - they wrote plays and stories, staged puppet shows. They said something incomprehensible to those around them, but, as we remember, it was quite traditional English, just very fast. And they wrote the words correctly.

Due to their refusal to speak to strangers, the twins were referred to several therapists. However, none of the doctors could force the girls to communicate with other people.

In many of their life troubles, June and Jennifer did not blame the world and not themselves, but each other. Indeed, on the pages of their diaries, they splashed such a burning hatred of the double that reading this, the hair of the psychiatrists moved on the back of their heads.

For example, June wrote about her twin: “No one in the world suffers as much as my sister and I. Living with a spouse, child, or friend, people do not experience what we do. My sister, like a giant shadow, steals the sunlight from me and is the focus of my torment."

Inspired by the diaries, they began to write novels about men and women engaged in criminal activities. June has written Pepsi the Colt Addict and Jennifer has written Fistfight, Discomania, Taxi Driver's Son, and a few other short stories.

Everyone who got acquainted with their works noted that the scripts written by the Gibbons sisters are stuffed with a huge amount of unrealized cruelty and aggression of their authors. For example, in one of the works written in those years by Jennifer and bearing the name "Pepsi-Cola Addict" ("Pepsi-Colon Addict"), a high school student, the hero of the school, has a sexual relationship with one of the teachers. But caught "hot", he is sent to a correctional institution, where he is harassed by a gay guard.

In another story, Jennifer drew a story in which a doctor, in an attempt to save the life of his child, kills a beloved dog in order to use its heart in a transplant operation to his son. The spirit of the dog is supposedly transferred to the child and, ultimately, takes revenge on the doctor for his death, brutally killing him.

Another work by Jennifer, called "Discomania", described the story of a young woman who found herself in a closed club at a disco, where a sheer madness was going on with acts of violence and sexual perversion.

Due to the fact that they were denied publication everywhere, the girls, having completely changed their tactics of behavior and attitude to life, unexpectedly went out into the street with the aim of becoming criminals.

They carried out a series of attacks on passers-by and on each other, several thefts from shops, as well as arson, after which they were caught by the police and charged with sixteen counts.

Taking into account their deviant and antisocial behavior, the court ruled that the Gibbons twins should be placed in a closed, secure facility, and they were sent to Broadmoor Hospital, a maximum security psychiatric hospital, where the sisters spent the next 11 years.

At the hospital, the nurses' behavior puzzled the doctors. They took turns starving. The sisters were kept in different cells on opposite ends of the hospital, but at the same time, despite the fact that they were not next to each other, they often took the same postures and body positions, which caused some otherworldly horror among the clinic staff.

During their stay in the hospital, they made an agreement that one of them would die. When the doctors decided to transfer the twins to the Caswell clinic, Jennifer died on the way. Her death remains a mystery to this day.

During their stay in the mental hospital, the twins began to believe that in order for one of them to lead a normal life, someone would have to die. After much discussion, they both came to the conclusion that it was Jennifer who would die.

In March 1993, doctors decided to transfer the twins to the Caswell Clinic. At that time, Marjorie Wallace, one of the famous reporters for the Guardian newspaper, would want to write about the Gibbons twins story. Ultimately, she will be the only person from the outside world who will manage to break through the sisters' wall of silence. One day, visiting Jennifer Gibbons at the clinic on the eve of their move to Caswell, she hears from her the phrase "Marjorie, Marjorie, I'm going to die." And when asked what all this means, she will answer: "Because we decided so."

During the trip to the Caswell Clinic, Jennifer slept on June's lap with her eyes open. But upon arrival, it turned out that in the car, Jennifer fell into a coma. Having delivered her to the intensive care unit, doctors can only state her death, and an autopsy carried out on the same day will show that she died from acute myocarditis - an inflammatory lesion of the heart muscle.

Such a sudden and strange death will cause a lot of gossip, but the forensic and toxicological research carried out will not find in her body the presence of toxins or other substances that could cause the death of a person.

When June was interrogated during the investigation, she revealed that Jennifer had been acting strangely for several days prior to their move. June also said that her sister's speech was slurred and they both thought she was dying.

June later told Marjorie Wallace that in the car, her sister simply put her head on her shoulder and uttered one single phrase: "After a long wait, now we are free."

Jennifer was buried under a tombstone with verses engraved on granite: "We were once two, we were one, but there are no more of us, be one in life, rest in peace."

Today, June Gibbons is 53 years old, she lives in her parents' house, takes medications and has already socialized a little. As if even she sometimes began to talk a little with others, but still, not everyone understands her.

Even though no one really knew the bizarre and secret world of the Gibbons twins, an excerpt from Jennifer's diary speaks volumes.

She wrote: “We have become mortal enemies. We believe that energy emanates from each of us, stinging the other, like a red-hot blade. I constantly ask myself, can I get rid of my own shadow or is it impossible? Can a person exist without a shadow or, having lost it, he also perishes? Without my shadow, will I gain life and be free or die? After all, this shadow personifies my suffering, pain, deception and thirst for death."