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Hey up guys? How una dey? Hope you all are doing splendidly. Nice day for another post, isn't it? Students, hope you guys are keeping it together during this strike season? It's well. God be praised! Welcome to my world. Please settle down and relax your minds for another HiveNiaja exclusive episode of;
I BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW THIS!
Okay, so today's subject takes us back to the 20th century. Reading about this about two months ago for the first time literally gave me goosebumps. Have you heard about "The Silent Twins"?
June and Jennifer Gibbons were identical twin (black skinned) girls of Caribbean origin born in Aden, Yamen in the Middle East on April 11, 1963. In 1974, when they were 11 years old, their family relocated to Wales in the United Kingdom. These twins attended school there and were very much inseparable. In addition to that, they spoke only to each other in Bajan Croele (which is a kind of pidgin English for the Caribbeans).
Their school mates made fun of them and their siblings because they were the only blacks in the school. This made the twins to become more detached from others. They then created their own secret language and began to form synchronized gestures so nobody else would understand what they were saying. Soon enough, the twins stopped speaking to everyone else entirely apart from themselves. The only exception was their little sister, Rosie. This caused their parents a lot of worries, so they enrolled them for several therapy sessions, all of which proved futile. So, they decided to send each of them to separate boarding schools. That was a big mistake though as it made everything much worse. The girls were completely antisocial and even behaved more strangely, making people stay away from them.
June and Jennifer were reunited afterwards and they both spent years alone, segregated in their bedrooms where they would play with dolls. They soon began to write fictional stories, all of which contained themes on murder, sex, drug addiction, violence and the likes. These girls also kept diaries. Strange thing about it is what they wrote in their diaries. More on that later.
In their late teens, June and Jennifer began to take drugs and alcohol. They involved themselves in theft and arson. They once burned down a tractor store in 1981 and caused $200,000 worth of damage. These twins were no joke! They even tried to kill each other at times by. One report says that once June wanted to kill Jennifer by drowning, and another time Jennifer wanted to strangle June with a radio cord. The girls were arrested and tried. Even in the questioning room and court room, they both just sat and looked without emotion and even moved at times in a synchronized manner, as though they were puppets. The court sent them to Britain's most secure mental health hospital, Broadmoor Mental Health Facility.
Majorie Wallace, a journalist followed up their story and visited the girls in the hospital almost every weekend, and she began to connect with them. Picking up their diaries, she read some quite disturbing things. They each expressed how the relationship with the other has caused so much mental and emotional damage to themselves. June's diary had these words written in them;
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. Source
Jennifer wrote;
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. Source
The twins stayed in Broadmoor for eleven whole years, receiving high doses of medication regularly. They both decided that one of them would have to die for the other to be free. On the day before the day they were meant to be transferred to Caswell mental health center, Majorie Wallace sat and had tea with them. Jennifer then told her that the both of them had decided that she was the one that was meant to die so June could live a normal life. This raised so much concern for Wallace, but the hospital promised to keep an eye on them.
On the way to the clinic, Jennifer laid on June's shoulder with her eyes open. On reaching the hospital, Jennifer would not wake up. She was rushed to the hospital bed where she was confirmed dead. June then came into the room and dropped a rose over her.
Jennifer's death was caused by inflammation of her heart. There was no evidence as to what might have caused the inflammation. After tests upon tests, the cause was unknown and is unknown till now. After then, June began to speak and say that Jennifer had sacrificed her life so that she could live for the both of them. She described it as a kind of sin cleansing.
Now June (59) lives a normal life and has decided to put the past behind her.
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