Eerie connection between twins?

[SunDogDayze]

I read something a few weeks ago about a pair of twin sisters who were reunited after like 35 years, and it got me thinking about the odd connections some twins have (even though that was unrelated to that specific story.)

We have all heard about twins who were separated at birth who meet later and the similarities between them are incredible. Same children's names, jobs, wives names, likes and hobbies, illnesses, injuries, etc. There are a million examples, so I won't waste your time linking to a million webpages.

However, I came across this article and thought it was rather thought provoking. A pair of twins, one female and one male, who grew up separately and then met each other and felt an 'inevitable attraction' to each other.

BBC article.

The article doesn't have a lot of details about then twins themselves, but it suggests that when things like this happens, it's because people are attracted to people who are similar to them, and siblings are similar to each other, so when siblings are separated, they are more likely to become attracted to each other if they meet.

Does that seem preposterous to anyone else?

But when we are unaware of that relationship, we are naturally drawn to people who are quite similar to ourselves...

"And of course there is unlikely to be anyone more similar to any individual than their sibling.

I don't agree with that last statement at all. Siblings are usually alike physically because of genetics, but almost every other aspect is environmental. If most siblings are similar in their likes and personality (which is rare anyway, just ask my sister) then it is probably because they were raised together in the same environment.

In my opinion, siblings raised by different people in different environments would not be any more similar to each other than anyone unrelated to them.

I don't know what happened to make this set of twins unknowingly be attracted to each other. But in my opinion, it was either chance or some kind of connection that we don't fully understand yet. What do you guys think?

[SunDogDayze]

Seriously, no one has an opinion about this?

[cerberus]

I think you are right, you would definitely feel something odd.

It is like we had a litter of 4 kittens, 2 were seperated at birth and stayed with us, the other 2 went to relatives. Years later, we took our cats to them as we went on hols for 2 weeks. They were al adult cats by this time, and to my amazement they all seemed to know each other.

If cats have it, then surely we do.

[GypsyWolf]

My twin died at birth, well actually shortly before and I waited a bit longer before I was born. He was a boy of course, and every year on my birthday (march 17th)I find a penny with the date 1980 on it-- by my bed. Mom said it's been going on since I was an infant. I have always believed its him... so even from beyond...he connects with me.

[Intelligent Insight]

I read something a few weeks ago about a pair of twin sisters who were reunited after like 35 years, and it got me thinking about the odd connections some twins have (even though that was unrelated to that specific story.)

We have all heard about twins who were separated at birth who meet later and the similarities between them are incredible. Same children's names, jobs, wives names, likes and hobbies, illnesses, injuries, etc. There are a million examples, so I won't waste your time linking to a million webpages.

However, I came across this article and thought it was rather thought provoking. A pair of twins, one female and one male, who grew up separately and then met each other and felt an 'inevitable attraction' to each other.

BBC article.

The article doesn't have a lot of details about then twins themselves, but it suggests that when things like this happens, it's because people are attracted to people who are similar to them, and siblings are similar to each other, so when siblings are separated, they are more likely to become attracted to each other if they meet.

Does that seem preposterous to anyone else?

I don't agree with that last statement at all. Siblings are usually alike physically because of genetics, but almost every other aspect is environmental. If most siblings are similar in their likes and personality (which is rare anyway, just ask my sister) then it is probably because they were raised together in the same environment.

In my opinion, siblings raised by different people in different environments would not be any more similar to each other than anyone unrelated to them.

I don't know what happened to make this set of twins unknowingly be attracted to each other. But in my opinion, it was either chance or some kind of connection that we don't fully understand yet. What do you guys think?

yea i have always found this pretty neat and i have done a fare share of research on it and it looks like there is more than just a regular connection and possibly a real mental connection.

[Rolci]

IMHO it must be something to do with entanglement. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja0UUKbVlhA When the twins are still in the womb existing as split cells only microns away from each other, or even sooner, touching at a molecular level. Then they get entangled.

One of my favourite stories:

Identical twin boys, born in Ohio more than 40 years ago, were adopted by different families shortly after birth. In 1979, after 39 years apart, they were reunited. It was discovered that each has been named James; that each had law-enforcement training; that each liked mechanical drawing and carpentry. Each married a woman named Linda, had a son - one named James Alan and the other named James Allan - had divorced, and then married a second wife named Betty. Both had dogs named Toy and both favored Petersburg, Florida for vacation.

But like you said, you don't have to be twins, sometimes it's enough to be siblings:

A man riding a moped was killed by a taxi in Bermuda in 1975... exactly one year after his brother had been killed on the same street riding the same moped, by the same taxi driver carrying the same passenger.

Edited January 13, 2008 by Rolci

[Mr Walker]

The thing which interests me is that this phenomenum is one of the few examples of possible paranormal activity being seriously studied by western science. They don't actually admit this is what they are studying, but there is a worldwide study of twins focussing on those raised together and those raised separately. A lot of interesting data is being gathered, but so far I have not seen any scientific determinsation or analysis of results. Given that it is a longitudinal study over a considerable period of time, it may be a while before anything definitive emerges.

[BlueSevenFive]

In another forum on this board there is a thread titled something like "Cloning Can Not Succeed" and it's based on religious arguments. Whether you agree with the scientific efforts to clone or not, I pointed out, you know, what do you mean cloning cannot succeed? It's already a success; it happens spontanously in humans in the form of identical twins.

I know this is not the exact thing you are addressing here (and yet it is, western science does study twins, as another poster pointed out, but often verges on euphemisms when classifying or describing precisely what it is studying about them).

In college I lived with one of identical twins I had known in high school (the second twin wasn't accepted). I will never forget one night, in the middle of the night, say around 3 or 4 o'clock, the twin I lived with burst out of bed, waking me up, she was pacing, pacing, in a panic. I asked what on earth was wrong. She said something's wrong with X (her twin, who I also knew from high school), something's wrong, something's wrong. And sure enough before we could continue the conversation even a step farther the fricken phone rang, it was her twin sister with an emotional drama. Nothing like it at any other time during the years before and after I knew them.

Now I've got nieces who are fraternal twins, but they are too young for me to make any personal observations that are in any way relevant to what you are describing, I'm sorry. I am, however, certain you are about to have posters come in assuring you there are perfectly banal and mundane scientific explanations for the story you are telling and that they are twins, oh nevermind that, not a factor at all, ignore it, just a bizarre coincidence, it's just hormones, perfectly natural course of human attraction, whatever, yadda yadda, enough to make you never want to post on the board again.

Edited January 14, 2008 by BlueSevenFive

[Sporkling]

its on this fourm isn't it

[Shiftycove]

Rolci - I saw a case like yours (the two James') reported on TV once. Whether the same case or not I'm not certain, but I think not - I think they were both accountants in this case - both drove a Ford Granada (the American model) at the time, both married women of the same name, and both seemed to have genetically inherited a distinctive way of reflexively brushing back the hair on one side of the head - almost like a nervous tick. They looked similar and dressed the same, so side by side it was almost like looking at mirror images of one individual. Very thought-provoking, not to say eerie.

One female I met once was a twin. Her sister and she both got pregnant. In the event they both gave birth on the same day at about the same time - one a few days early, the other a few days late. There are plenty of other startling twin stories too. Small things, perhaps easy to dismiss on a piecemeal basis, but taken together a massive collection of anecdotal evidence of high strangeness. There is something more in all this than simple coincidence or fertile imagination.

My own feeling is that when all is revealed, all the legions of inexplicable oddities in our lives, we may end up with a very different view of existence. As I have mentioned elsewhere, we live a tenuous sensory existence, seeing and feeling things that only our flesh and blood machine of a brain chooses to spoonfeed us, giving us our false sense of direct experience, whether within or beyond ourselves.

My own experience includes precognitions, synchronicity, deja vu, apparitions, unexplained aerial phenomena, telepathy, and (for instance) seeing a place you have never visited (or seen a picture of), then later discovering the place really exists (or had once existed). Personally, I want to know what makes everything work. I want truth, and am not about to arbitrarily pick and choose from within my life experience what to believe and what to reject, or to dismiss as illusory something as recurrent, clear-cut, specific and unequivocal as some of these phenomena are, just to provided myself peace of mind and to avoid the jabs of the closed-minded.

Just one point of view of course.

[Rolci]

There are plenty of other startling twin stories too. Small things, perhaps easy to dismiss on a piecemeal basis, but taken together a massive collection of anecdotal evidence of high strangeness. There is something more in all this than simple coincidence or fertile imagination.

My own feeling is that when all is revealed, all the legions of inexplicable oddities in our lives, we may end up with a very different view of existence. As I have mentioned elsewhere, we live a tenuous sensory existence, seeing and feeling things that only our flesh and blood machine of a brain chooses to spoonfeed us, giving us our false sense of direct experience, whether within or beyond ourselves.

My own experience includes precognitions, synchronicity, deja vu, apparitions, unexplained aerial phenomena, telepathy, and (for instance) seeing a place you have never visited (or seen a picture of), then later discovering the place really exists (or had once existed). Personally, I want to know what makes everything work. I want truth, and am not about to arbitrarily pick and choose from within my life experience what to believe and what to reject, or to dismiss as illusory something as recurrent, clear-cut, specific and unequivocal as some of these phenomena are, just to provided myself peace of mind and to avoid the jabs of the closed-minded.

Just one point of view of course.

I completely agree with every word you said.