The Silent Twins: A Journey Into Madness | Random Thursday

In this special Halloween video, we examine June and Jennifer Gibbons, twin girls who became known as the "Silent Twins" due to the fact that they never spoke except to each other, and even then, they did so in their own language nobody else could understand.

As they grew older, they became obsessed with their twinhood, and their obsession consumed them, leading them into violence and crime.

The twins were trapped in their relationship. They couldn't be together and they couldn't function apart. They came to believe that the only way either of them would be happy was for one of them to die.

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Merc

Silent Twins: Without my Shadow

#halloween #truestory #creepy

[delfin]

"They burned down a tractor..."
Oh, that's not so bad.
"...factory."
Nvm.

[kaijaro]

"They were obsessed with their twinship."

They were bullied. They probably felt nobody understood them but each other.

[JupiterSun-]

"Their secret language was actually just English"-- Troll Level: 10, 000

[avienblue]

One thing bothers me, how did jennifer know she was gonna die? How did she will herself to death?

Jennifer's headstone has a creepy poem inscribed, "“We once were two/We two made one/We no more two/Through life be one/Rest in peace.”

It's almost as if they were one soul split in two bodies.

[Exevium]

Quick sidenote: schizophrenia has nothing to do with having multiple personalities. It's actually a disorder where you suffer a lot from psychosis, delusions and hallucinations. You're often heavily medicated to prevent an attack, and there's no permanent fix for it.

[EvilTwin]

My twin is an asshole.
But I only see him in mirrors so it's a limited interaction.

[AgentWaltonSimons]

"Burned down a tractor..." just the one? That doesn't sound _that_... "...factory" oh, right, uh yeah.

[andreen]

Black, twins, female, unique dialect-bullied was probably an understatement. And on top of that they were probably treated like oddities and were put in really stressful situations. No wonder they withdrew into themselves. I think that this is less creepy and more of another sad example of how we treat people who are different.

[rinima]

This is more of a tragic story than a creepy one. The girls were started being bullied at a very young age and did not receive proper psychiatric help until many years later. It would have been easily for anyone to develop mental conditions under those circumstances, be it twins or not. You shouldn't mock them as being creepy.

[nealsterling]

Such a tragic story.
Nothing creepy here like the first few minutes of the video suggest, it's just a sad and tragic story. I hope the remaining girl has a quiet and content life now.

[trinsit]

"Neither can live while the other survives."

[awesomedeloris]

It probably started out as them not being able to talk to anyone but eachother then getting sick of eachother but because of the speech imepediment and bullying they werent really able to talk to anyone for a while and by the time they were, it had already been too late and they were too dependent on eachother to leave one another even if one didnt like the other

[utmbunderground]

Their wiki says that the surviving sister lives without psychiatric help and independently in her home; I can therefore guarantee she is not schizophrenic, as their condition is not curable and does not vanish. They would require their medications for life. Having very little knowledge of their case other your video and the short wiki article, it sounds more like Shared Pyschosis subtype folie imposée; whereby, two people have a close bond and one suffers from psychosis. Due to the close bond and such, the second person begins to share in their delusions...after some time of separation, the one individual would be expected to return to normal. It's more of an...educated stab in the dark...but the surviving twin was definitely not schizophrenic.

[AnonRanGER]

4:36
"...moved on to arson. They burned down a tractor..." -"Oh ok." -"...factory.". -"Oh".

[amicloud_yt]

That little tiny pause was funny af. "They burnt down a tractor... factory". What a sad story. It was really interesting until you got to the part where they started to hate each other, when it quickly became sad.

[AlexGlod]

Creepy, but actually a valuable story on how lucky most of us are to not have drastic mental heath problems. Thanks for sharing!

[shadowraith]

The human mind is a very strange place. Thanks for the story.

[Fusspilzsammler]

It is actually not very uncommon that twins develop thier own language before learning their native tongue. Especially when one or even both of them has/have autistic tendencies which might have been the case with those two girls. I am working with young adults with autism and I can see several similarities in their behaviour.

[jujubs]

They were treated like monsters due to how racist the medical system used to be, many twins do not need to talk to each other simply because they know one another very well, if you've ever communicated with your best friend or family member with a single glance, it's the same thing. These girls were locked away because they were simply misunderstood and mischaracterized, partly because they had mental illness, and partly because they were black. Their story is scary not because of what two minds became, but because of the system that abused them since they were children.

[thejesuschrist]

I can always count on you to creep me out. Never stop being you.