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 not bad novels. Later, after many years in a mental institution, June and Jennifer decided that one of them should disappear - and soon, under very strange circumstances, Jennifer died of a heart attack. After that, June became more sociable, was able to socialize and continue to live.
June and Jennifer Gibbons were born on the same day and one hour in 1963 and grew up in Wales. Their parents - Gloria and Aubrey Gibbons (Gloria and Aubrey Gibbons) were from the Caribbean, and in addition to the twins, their younger sister, Rose, appeared in the family. June and Jennifer behaved very strangely from early childhood - they did not speak at all, but they communicated well with each other. Soon they had a certain speech defect, but this did not seem to be the reason for their silence - the parents were surprised to note that the whole huge world around did not seem to exist at all for the twins - they closed on themselves and were completely satisfied only with each other's company.
As time went on, June and Jennifer remained silent. However, they spoke to each other perfectly - 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 June and Jennifer were decided to separate - they were sent to different boarding schools so that far from each other they could socialize and begin to perceive the world around them. Alas, each of the sisters became even more self-contained, and soon they had to admit that this experiment had failed. However, there was only one person in the world with whom June and Jennifer communicated normally - their younger sister Rose, whom the girls simply adored and devoted all their games to her, and later the stories that they began to write together.
After the boarding idea failed, June and Jennifer locked themselves in their room for a couple of years, during which time they began writing books. Their stories were very entertaining, plot, but somewhat strange, with unexpected turns and characters. So, they wrote several novels, and also read something on a dictaphone, dedicating it to the same Rose.
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Alas, the sisters could not 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 petty crimes like 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 altogether. It is known that after the asylum, Jennifer began to suffer from a mental disorder.
It turned out that there was an agreement between the sisters for a long time that if one of them dies, then for the other it will be a signal to start talking and live a normal life. And in the end, after many years of the hospital, the sisters came to the conclusion that one of them should leave. Jennifer volunteered herself, June agreed.
Soon an event occurred that still baffles medicine - in 1993, Jennifer suddenly died of acute myocarditis, which seemed to have arisen from nothing. It was strange and inexplicable, but there were no signs of violent death or suicide - it really looked like death due to a sick 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 by 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 got used to 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 books again.
The case of the Silent Twins has forever remained a mystery to psychiatrists, psychologists and linguists, as well as speech therapists and pediatricians.
Polina Chelpanova