The phenomenon of twins: science is powerless

Terrible news comes from Finland. Two twin brothers died yesterday under one and the same circumstances, but with the difference of two hours. The tragedy happened 600 kilometers from Helsinki on one of the highways. As the newspaper Izvestia wrote, a 70-year-old man was riding a bicycle on a ice-covered highway. He lost control of the bike and a truck ran over him. The man died that very instant.

Two hours and seventeen minutes later, the same thing happened to his twin brother, who was also riding a bike and died the same way. The brothers died at a distance of 1.5 kilometers from each other.

This horrible accident that happened in Finland is not actually as unique as it may seem. It was earlier reported about the mysterious death of two 73-year-old twin brothers from Greece. One of them was in coma, and he died twenty minutes after the death of the first brother.

The movie The Double Life of Veronica, which was directed by the well-known director Krzystof Kieslowski in 1991, tells the story of two twin brothers who did not know about the existence of each other. A young French girl was a singer. She was rather successful in the society, and she had a lookalike: a girl who lived in Poland. That other girl is Veronica's junior, and she was going to devote her life to art; she wanted to perform on stage.

There are two parallel plotlines in the movie. Two lookalike girls meet each other only once, when one of them (Veronica) comes to the town where another one lives, and she incidentally gets into the picture, which was made by the other girl’s young man. The first girl dies on stage all of a sudden, as she had a weak heart. The other girl feels that she was deprived of something very valuable, and she feels empty inside and can not explain why. She also fears that something similiar could happen to her. Then, she suddenly recognizes her own face in a picture, the photo of the girl who died.

Krzystof Kieslowski did not kill the other girl. Something told her to quit her career as singer. The whole movie is permeated with the idea that fate is something very powerful in the life of a human being, that our lives are predetermined.

Here is another story, a real one. The author of the article &to=http://home1.gte.net/caryl/vantw.htm' target=_blank>The Vanishing Twin Phenomenon received a letter from a girl. In an e-mail she wrote:

Hi My name is Mandi... I am 11. A few years ago I told my mom that I had a twin, and I wanted to know where she was NOW I was kind of kidding but kind of serious. My mom looked at me and said "Um, yes, you had a twin...in my stomach. But she died." I was shocked because she had never told me... Apparently when I was born there was two placentas, but just me.

I haven't told many people about my twin (Lexie, is what I call her because that's what my mom was going to name my brother if he was a girl, and she wanted to name me that, too) Because I told my step brother once (who is a twin, too) and he called me "Baby-eater" and said I ate her...that's why I wanted to find out about Lexie. About the voices in the head... I do talk to myself sometimes, but I never thought of it much until I read your web page.

About the genius thing...I took an online IQ test and I am 178... I am pretty sure that is genius...

I am lonely a lot even with friends.

That's all I have to say. Mandi

Dr. Segal wrote in his book "Entwined Lives": "There is no evidence that twins' similarities are caused by mental communication between them." The scientist believe that people believe this because it is difficult to obtain grants to thoroughly research such things, or perhaps it is because the clinical research setting disturbs the psychic process in some way.

Anyway, there is something behind this all, there is something greater in the tragic lives of the twins than simply a coincidence. But what is it? As people say in such cases, “science is powerless.”

Sergey Stefanov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov