June and Jennifer Gibbons, known as the Silent Twins, are American twin sisters whose life story remains a mystery to psychiatrists, psychologists and linguists.

So, from childhood, girls communicated only and exclusively with each other, completely ignoring the outside world. They invented their own language and loved the only person in the world - their little sister. They wrote books that no one wanted to publish, but which were quite complete and good novels.

Later, after many years in a mental hospital, June and Jennifer decided that one of them should disappear - and soon, under very strange circumstances, Jennifer died of a heart attack. After this, June became more sociable, was able to socialize and continue living.

June and Jennifer Gibbons were born on the same day and at the same hour in 1963 and grew up in Wales. Their parents, Gloria and Aubrey Gibbons, were from the Caribbean islands, and in addition to the twins, the family had a younger sister named Rose.

June and Jennifer behaved very strangely from early childhood - they did not speak at all, but communicated well with each other.

Soon they discovered a certain speech impediment, but this did not seem to be the reason for their silence - the parents were surprised to note that the whole huge world around them seemed to not exist at all for the twins - they closed in on themselves and were completely satisfied only with each other’s company.

Time passed, and June and Jennifer continued to remain silent. However, they communicated perfectly with each other - in the same language they knew, completely incomprehensible to those around them. At the school where the girls were assigned, they had a hard time - they became targets for cruel peers, and soon the school administration was forced to constantly send them home.

It was during this period that it was decided to separate June and Jennifer - they were sent to different boarding schools so that, away from each other, they could socialize and begin to perceive the world around them. Alas, each of the sisters withdrew even more into themselves, and soon had to admit that this experiment was a failure.

However, there was only one person in the world with whom June and Jennifer communicated normally - their little sister Rose, whom the girls simply adored and dedicated all their games to her, and later the stories that they began to write together.

After the boarding school idea failed, June and Jennifer locked themselves in their room for a couple of years, and during that time they began writing books. Their stories were very entertaining, plot-driven, but somewhat strange, with unexpected twists and characters. So, they wrote several novels, and also read something into a tape recorder, dedicating it all to the same Rose.

Alas, the sisters were never able to sell their novels, although later at least one of them, ‘Pepsi-Cola Addict’, became a rare, collectible book.

At the very end of the 1970s, the sisters committed several minor crimes such as arson, and as a result, both ended up in the Broadmoor Hospital psychiatric hospital, where they spent 14 long years. Over the years, they were seriously treated with all kinds of psychotropic drugs, after which both lost their literary abilities and stopped writing completely. It is known that after the hospital, Jennifer began to suffer from a mental disorder.

It turned out that there had long been an agreement between the sisters that if one of them died, then for the other it would be a signal to start talking and living a normal life. And finally, after many years of hospitalization, the sisters came to the conclusion that one of them had to leave. Jennifer volunteered herself, June agreed.

Soon, an event occurred that still baffles medicine - in 1993, Jennifer suddenly died from acute myocarditis, which seemed to come out of nowhere. It was strange and inexplicable, but there were no signs of violent death or suicide - it really looked like death due to a bad heart.

Left alone, June, as the sisters had agreed, began to talk a little.

She later said in an interview that she now feels free, and it was Jennifer who gave her life with her death. She then gave several interviews, including for Harper’s Bazaar and The Guardian.

It is known that over time, June, who continued to live with her parents, completely settled into life, began to communicate and did not need psychiatric help at all. According to some information, she even began to live in a civil marriage. She never wrote any more books.

The case of the Silent Twins has forever remained a mystery to psychiatrists, psychologists and linguists, as well as speech therapists and pediatricians.

Source: peoples.ru ©

June and Jennifer Gibbons, known as the Silent Twins, are American twin sisters whose life story remains a mystery to psychiatrists, psychologists and linguists.

June and Jennifer Gibbons were born on the same day and at the same hour in 1963 and grew up in Wales. Their parents, Gloria and Aubrey Gibbons, came from the Caribbean islands, and in addition to the twins, the family had a younger sister named Rose.

June and Jennifer behaved very strangely from early childhood - they did not speak at all, but communicated well with each other.

Time passed, and June and Jennifer continued to remain silent. However, they communicated well with each other - in the same language they knew, completely incomprehensible to those around them. It was hard for them at the school where the girls were assigned - they became targets for cruel peers, and soon the school administration was forced to constantly send them home.

Alas, the sisters were never able to sell their novels, although later at least one of them, Pepsi-Cola Addict, became a rare, collectible book.

Left alone, June, as the sisters had agreed, began to talk a little.

She later said in an interview that she now feels free, and it was Jennifer who gave her life with her death. She then gave several interviews, including for Harper's Bazaar and The Guardian.

The case of the Silent Twins has forever remained a mystery to psychiatrists, psychologists and linguists, as well as speech therapists and pediatricians.

This strange story begins in 1963, when twins June and Jennifer Gibbons are born in Barbados. Known as the Silent Twins, this creepy duo used to write fantasy novels, but things aren't that simple. June and Jennifer only talked to each other! Yes, you heard it right: they ignored everyone and did not communicate with anyone except each other. 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...

Known as the "Silent Twins", the Gibbons sisters developed a secret language that distinguished them from friends, family, teachers and classmates.

However, their strange relationship drove them to despair - they loved and hated each other at the same time. Ultimately, one of them died so that the other could lead a normal life!

Born in 1963, June and Jennifer Gibbons became known as the "Silent Twins" because they only communicated with each other.

Soon after the birth, their family moved to Haverfordwest, Wales. Known for its calmness and orderliness, this town and the Gibbons twins seemed to have one thing in common - they were quiet. At first, the sisters' parents were afraid and assumed that their daughters were born mute. But very soon they realized that the girls understood all the words perfectly and knew how to pronounce them, but they flatly refused to communicate with others. Instead, they communicated exclusively with each other and a little with their younger sister Rose, inventing for this their own specific language, understandable only to them.

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 film and try to hear the words they were saying. However, in the process of slowing down the recorded conversation, it turned out that the girls spoke ordinary English, but very, very accelerated. And this fact indirectly indicated that the Gibbons sisters most likely had a high level of intelligence.

As children, the sisters were the only black children where they lived. Because of this, they were often bullied at school. This greatly traumatized their psyche, which led to their absolute isolation from others.

At the age of fourteen, the twins were sent to different therapists. It was even decided to separate them and send them to separate boarding schools in order to force them to communicate with others. This made the situation even worse.

Because of their refusal to talk to outsiders, the twins were referred to several therapists. However, none of the doctors could force the girls to communicate with other people. In an attempt to help them overcome their perceived need for isolation, they were sent to separate boarding schools, but as a result of the separation they became even more withdrawn.

After their reunion, the twins spent several years in voluntary isolation in their room, where they played with each other and wrote in diaries. There they described the dark side of their union.

When doctors saw the negative effects of separating the twins, they asked the family to reunite them. After this, the twins spent the next few years isolated in their room. For many of their life's troubles, June and Jennifer blamed not the world or themselves, but each other. After all, on the pages of their diaries they poured out such burning hatred for their double that reading this, the hairs on the back of the necks of the psychiatrists stood up.

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

Inspired by the diaries, they began writing novels about men and women involved in criminal activities. June wrote "The Pepsi Junkie," and Jennifer wrote "Fist Fight," "Discomania," "Taxi Driver's Son" and several other short stories.

Everyone who got acquainted with their works noted that the scripts written by the Gibbons sisters were 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 called “Pepsi-Cola Addict” (“Pepsi Coke Addict”), a high school student, the hero of the school, enters into a sexual relationship with one of the teachers. But caught red-handed, he is sent to a correctional facility, where he is harassed by a homosexual guard.

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

Another work by Jennifer, entitled “Discomania,” described the story of a young woman who ended up in a closed club at a disco, where sheer madness was happening with acts of violence and sexual perversion.

Due to the fact that publication was denied to them everywhere, the girls, having completely changed their tactics of behavior and attitude to life, unexpectedly went out onto the street with the goal of becoming criminals.

They committed a string of attacks on passers-by and each other, several shopliftings, as well as arson, after which they were caught by the police and charged with sixteen counts. Given their deviant and antisocial behavior, the court decided that the Gibbons twins should be placed in a closed secure institution , and they were sent to Broadmoor Hospital, a maximum security psychiatric hospital, where the sisters spent the next 11 years.

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

While they were in the hospital, they made an agreement that one of them would die. When doctors decided to transfer the twins to the Caswell Clinic, Jennifer died en route. Her death remains a mystery to this day.

During their stay in a 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 like to write about the story of the Gibbons twins. Ultimately, she will be the only person from the outside world who will be able 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 will hear her say “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 in June's lap with her eyes open. But upon arrival, it turned out that Jennifer had fallen into a coma in the car. Having taken her to the intensive care unit, doctors can only state her death, and an autopsy performed 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 study carried out will not find the presence of toxins or other substances in her body that could cause a person’s death.

When June was questioned during the investigation, she said that Jennifer had been acting strangely for several days before they moved. June also said 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 laid her head on her shoulder and said one single phrase: “After a long wait, now we are free.” Jennifer was buried under a tombstone with verses engraved on granite: “ There were once two of us, we were one, but there are no longer two of us, in life be one, rest in peace» .

Today, June Gibbons is 53 years old, she lives in her parents' house, takes medication and has already socialized a little. It’s as if even she sometimes began to talk a little with those around her, but still not everyone understands her.

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

She wrote: “We have become mortal enemies. We believe that each of us emits energy that stings the other like a 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, does he also die? Without my shadow, will I gain life and be free, or will I die? After all, this shadow personifies my suffering, pain, deception and thirst for death.”

December 3, 2017, 00:18

The Silent Twins: The Mysterious Story of the Gibbons Sisters Who Only Talked to Each Other

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

Known as the "Silent Twins", the Gibbons sisters developed a secret language that distinguished them from friends, family, teachers and classmates.

However, their strange relationship drove them to despair - they loved and hated each other at the same time. Ultimately, one of them died so that the other could lead a normal life!

Born in 1963, June and Jennifer Gibbons became known as the "Silent Twins" because they only communicated with each other.

Soon after the birth, their family moved to Haverfordwest, Wales. Known for its peace and quiet, this town and the Gibbons Twins seemed to have one thing in common - they were quiet.

At first, the sisters' parents were frightened and decided that their daughters were mute from birth. But very soon they realized that the girls understood all the words perfectly and knew how to pronounce them, but they flatly refused to communicate with others. Instead, they communicated exclusively with each other and a little with their younger sister Rose, inventing for this their own specific language, understandable only to them.

At the age of fourteen, the twins were sent to different therapists. It was even decided to separate them and send them to separate boarding schools in order to force them to communicate with others. This made the situation even worse.

After their reunion, the twins spent several years in voluntary isolation in their room, where they played with each other and wrote in diaries. There they described the dark side of their union.

When doctors saw the negative effects of separating the twins, they asked the family to reunite them. After this, the twins spent the next few years isolated in their room.

For many of their life's troubles, June and Jennifer blamed not the world or themselves, but each other. After all, on the pages of their diaries they poured out such burning hatred for their double that reading this, the hairs on the back of the necks of the psychiatrists stood up.

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

Inspired by the diaries, they began writing novels about men and women involved in criminal activities. June wrote "The Pepsi Junkie," and Jennifer wrote "Fist Fight," "Discomania," "Taxi Driver's Son" and several other short stories.

Everyone who got acquainted with their works noted that the scripts written by the Gibbons sisters were stuffed with a huge amount of unrealized cruelty and aggression of their authors.

For example, in one of the works written by Jennifer in those years, and called “Pepsi-Cola Addict”, a high school student, the hero of the school, enters into a sexual relationship with one of the teachers. But caught red-handed, he is sent to a correctional facility, where he is harassed by a homosexual guard.

Due to the fact that publication was denied to them everywhere, the girls, having completely changed their tactics of behavior and attitude to life, unexpectedly went out onto the street with the goal of becoming criminals.

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

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

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 like to write about the story of the Gibbons twins. Ultimately, she will be the only person from the outside world who will be able 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 will hear her say “Marjorie, Marjorie, I'm going to die.” And when asked what all this means, she will answer: “Because we decided so.”

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

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

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

June and Jennifer Gibbons (born April 11, 1963) are twin sisters best known as “The Silent Twins,” a name given to them because of their decision to communicate only with each other and members of their family. As teenagers, they became interested in literary creativity, but after a number of crimes they committed, including arson (according to one version, to attract attention to themselves), they were sent to a psychiatric clinic prison-type Broadmoor Hospital, where they spent 14 years and, due to the effects of medications, stopped writing new works.

The Gibbos sisters were born in Barbados (Caribbean Islands), but soon moved to Wales, England (the father was a mechanic in the Royal Air Force). The girls had a speech impediment(high-speed speech with a specific pronunciation) - they were difficult to understand outside the family circle. The twins could talk to each other even with nods of their heads, facial expressions, and finish each other’s sentences; they were inseparable. The girls were the only black children in the English school, and they were constantly bullied by their classmates. Eventually, school officials began sending the twins home early to avoid the traumatic bullying of their classmates.
[journalist pictured Majorie Wallace, Jennifer and June Gibbons]

When the sisters were 14 years old, their speech could only be understood by their younger sister Rose, British doctors tried unsuccessfully to get them to talk to other people, separating them and sent to study at different boarding schools, but after the separation the sisters completely withdrew into themselves. They were soon reunited. The sisters spent the first couple of years closed off from the world in their bedroom, creating puppet shows, many plays and stories, which were usually dedicated to their sister Rose.

After receiving a pair of diaries as a Christmas present, they began writing. They mailed a writing course, and each sister wrote several novels, mostly set in the United States, about young people engaging in strange, often criminal behavior. The sisters wrote in a very unique style, often with funny, unusual combinations of words. Their novels were published in samizdat (small editions created by hand).
Jennifer and June unsuccessfully tried to sell their stories to magazines. Many years later one of the stories, "Pepsi-Cola Addict", has become a rare, collectible book(not because of artistic qualities, of course).

According to writer and journalist Majorie Wallace (who made them famous with her book The Silent Twins), the sisters had a long-standing agreement that if one of them died, the other would start talking and live a normal life.
In March 1993, while moving to another, more open clinic, Jennifer died in her sleep at the age of 29 from myocarditis, an acute inflammation of the heart.
A few days later June said: “ I'm finally free, liberated, and Jennifer has finally given me her life. “ (“I"m free at last, liberated, and at last Jennifer has given up her life for me.”).

As of 2008, June lives alone near her parents in West Wales and no longer uses the services of a psychiatrist.

Yes, by the way, there is also a mysterious moment in this dramatic story; the biography of the twins surprisingly echoes the plot of the novel “Balagan, or the End of Loneliness"(Slapstick, or Lonesome no more!, 1976) by American writer Kurt Vonnegut.

The case of the silent twins has forever remained a mystery to psychiatrists, psychologists, linguists, speech therapists and pediatricians, but became a real source of inspiration for musicians, screenwriters, journalists, actors and other creative bohemia. Several plays have also been written about the Gibbons sisters, and in 1999 the Manic Street Preachers' song Tsunami, with lyrics dedicated to the Gibbons sisters, reached number 11 in the UK music charts (excerpt):
Tsunami tsunami
Came washing over me
Can"t speak, can"t think, won"t talk, won"t walk

Doctors tells me that I"m cynical
I tell them that it must be chemical
So what am I doing girl
Cry into my drink I disappear

Eyes for teeth gratifying over me
Bring down the shadows of my mind

P.S.: in recent years, the psychiatric prison Broadmoor Hospital, which discouraged the sisters from being creative, has been mired in a series of scandals and lawsuits, including sexual abuse; it was revealed that some administration employees in the period 1968 to 2004 had a double set of keys and visited prisoners “out of work.” time".

The mystery of the "silent twins": the life story of the mysterious Gibbons sisters. The Scary Story of the Twins June and Jennifer Gibbons The Story of June and Jennifer Gibbons

Known as the "Silent Twins", the Gibbons sisters developed a secret language that distinguished them from friends, family, teachers and classmates.

Born in 1963, June and Jennifer Gibbons became known as the "Silent Twins" because they only communicated with each other.

At the age of fourteen, the twins were sent to different therapists. It was even decided to separate them and send them to separate boarding schools in order to force them to communicate with others. This made the situation even worse.

After their reunion, the twins spent several years in voluntary isolation in their room, where they played with each other and wrote in diaries. There they described the dark side of their union.

Inspired by the diaries, they began writing novels about men and women involved in criminal activities. June wrote "The Pepsi Junkie," and Jennifer wrote "Fist Fight," "Discomania," "Taxi Driver's Son" and several other short stories.

Due to the fact that publication was denied to them everywhere, the girls, having completely changed their tactics of behavior and attitude to life, unexpectedly went out onto the street with the goal of becoming criminals.

While they were in the hospital, they made an agreement that one of them would die. When doctors decided to transfer the twins to the Caswell Clinic, Jennifer died en route. Her death remains a mystery to this day.

When June was questioned during the investigation, she said that Jennifer had been acting strangely for several days before they moved. June also said her sister's speech was slurred and they both thought she was dying.

Today, June Gibbons is 53 years old, she lives in her parents' house, takes medication and has already socialized a little. It’s as if even she sometimes began to talk a little with those around her, but still not everyone understands her.

The Silent Twins: The Mysterious Story of the Gibbons Sisters Who Only Talked to Each Other