Paranormal Activity

True stories and fascinating experiments that reveal the telepathic connection between twins

One spring day in 2009, 15-year-old Gemma Houghton was suddenly struck with the strong feeling that her twin sister Leanne was in trouble. Gemma hurried to the bathroom, where she knew Leanne was taking a bath and found her sister submerged, unconscious and turning blue. Leanna is an epileptic and had suffered a seizure in the tub. Gemma pulled her sister from the tub, administered CPR and revived her, saving her life. “I got this sudden feeling to check on her. It was like a voice telling me ‘your sister needs you’,” Gemma later told reporters. “She was under the water. At first I thought she was washing her hair or playing a trick, but when I lifted her head out I saw she had turned blue. I knew she’d had a fit.” Had Gemma not been compelled by that feeling to check on her sister, Leanne almost certainly would have drowned.

This story of the telepathic Houghton twins made news in March, 2009, and it’s one more anecdotal account of the psychic connection that is said to exist between many twins, especially identical twins. The Houghton sisters happen to be fraternal twins, but their mother says they are “inseparable and share an uncanny bond.” A survey conducted by Dr. Lynne Cherkas, a genetic analyst at the department for twin research at King’s College London, showed that one in five identical twins said they had experience some form of telepathy, and one in ten fraternal twins reported the phenomenon.

Although a telepathic connection between twins is not universal, as Dr. Cherkas’ survey reveals, it is common enough to serve as some of the best evidence for the reality of telepathy among humans, and has provided researchers with a good way to study the phenomenon.

Guy Lyon Playfair has done extensive research in the field of twin telepathy, and has much of his work in his book Twin Telepathy: The Psychic Connection. In an article for Paranormalia, Playfair comments that the Houghton event is certainly not the first time that twin telepathy may have saved a life. “I know of at least three other examples, one of which I investigated at first-hand,” he says. “This would suggest that the scientific community should take rather more interest in it than it yet has.”

STORIES OF TWIN TELEPATHY AND PSYCHIC CONNECTION

Much of the information we have about twin telepathy comes from the spontaneous experiences reported by the twins themselves. The article Twin Telepathy provides these anecdotes:

* Two male twins had different areas of interest: one played soccer and the other took guitar lessons. After a few months, however, the soccer-playing twin could play the guitar nearly as well as his brother without ever having taken a lesson. A study of the boys also said that they had had “limited interaction” with each other during the time they were pursuing these interests.
* While shopping, a man in Texas was forced to sit down due to a stabbing pain in his chest. He later learned that his twin brother in New York was having a heart attack at the same time.
* A young girl had an accident with her bicycle and broke her ankle. Her twin sister developed swelling in the same uninjured ankle.

In some cases, one twin will know about something that happened to the other twin when such knowledge was clearly impossible.

* Paula Wombwell, a teacher and mother of identical twin girls recounts an unexplained event when they were about four years old. One twin, Heather was with Paula in the classroom while the other twin, Catherine was in the gymnasium on another floor. Suddenly, Paula heard Catherine crying downstairs, and Heather declared that it was because a certain person had just run over her with a scooter. There was no way Heather could have seen what happened. Sure enough, when Paula asked Catherine about what had happened she confirmed that that certain person had run over her with a scooter.
* At Twin Connections, a website that celebrates “the mysterious bond between twins” and collects stories from twins, we find this experience: “I am a mother of identical twin boys,” writes Aiya. “Gabriel and Ethan just turned 5 this year and are in kindergarten. My twin story happened when they were 4. My mother wanted to spend some time with them, but she was never able to handle both of them at the same time. We decided to let Gabriel go for a visit for three days and then Ethan would go for three days. Ethan and I were driving in the car on our way to make the switch; he was sitting in his car seat as quiet as can be just looking out the window, when he tells me, ‘Mom, tell Gabriel to get his clothes on.’ I looked at him and told him Gabriel was with grandma and he wasn’t here. He told me, ‘Just tell him mom. He needs to get his clothes on.’ So I called my mom out of curiosity and asked her if she was having a hard time getting Gabriel dressed, and she said yes, they were having an argument because Gabriel didn’t want to get dressed because it was too cold and he wanted to stay in his jammies.”

Fraternal twins can also experience these psychic sympathy symptoms:

* “I am a fraternal twin,” says Katie. “I always get a feeling when something isn’t right with my sister. When my sis was in labor with her first, I started getting really bad cramps while she had contractions. It was really crazy! I also knew something wasn’t right when she was in a car wreck, too.

We have all heard the stories about twins who, even though they are separated by great distances (and in some cases were separated at birth and don’t even know each other), have eerily similar lives, right down to making many identical choices.

* Pamela Prindle Fierro, the About.com Guide to Twins & Multiples, relates an incident told to her by a friend who has an identical twin. While chatting online one day, the sisters discovered that “they had purchased the exact same pair of pants, in the same color, from the same store, on the same day. Her sister lives in Belgium, while she lives in the United States.”

Is this a case of two people who share very similar genetics simply making similar choices? Or is there truly a psychic connection that transcends distance?

Most scientists are naturally skeptical of such anecdotes as evidence of telepathic communication. “We do hear of things like this happening between identical twins more often than fraternal, but it isn’t telepathy,” says Dr. Nancy Segal, professor of psychology and director of the Twin Studies Center at California State University in an article for Lawrence Journal-World. “They’re merely coincidences that occur when two people are so much alike in the first place. It’s nature and nurture – same heredity, same environment. [Identical twins] come from the same egg, and they tend to have the same general thought patterns, intelligence levels, likes and dislikes.”

Coincidence doesn’t explain the effects documented in several interesting experiments, however.

EXPERIMENTS

Guy Lyon Playfair, in addition to his book research, has conducted informal experiments of his own to test the psychic connection between twins. These are some of the results:

* For a television show in 2003, Playfair set up a test for twins Richard and Damien Powles. Richard was placed in a sound-proof booth with a bucket of ice water while Damien was some distance away in another studio hooked up to a polygraph machine (a “lie detector” machine that measures respiration, muscle and skin response. When Richard plunged his hand into the ice water and let out a gasp, there was an obvious blip on Damien’s polygraph that measured his respiration, as if he too had let out a gasp.
* During the same experiment, Richard was instructed to open a cardboard box, from which he expected a nice surprise. Instead, a rubber snake popped out, startling him. At that exact moment, the polygraph recorded a jump in Damien’s pulse rate, as if he was having the same experience.
* In a similar experiment before a live TV audience in 1997, twin teenagers Elaine and Evelyn Dove were likewise separated. Elaine was in the sound-proof booth with a pyramid-shaped box while Evelyn was sequestered in another room with the polygraph. When Elaine was sitting relaxed, suddenly the box exploded in a harmless but shocking pop of sparks, flashes and colored smoke. Evelyn’s polygraph recorded her psychic reaction at the same moment, with one of the needles running right off the edge of the paper.

Playfair is quick to admit that these were not experiments conducted with the strictest scientific protocols, yet it is difficult to explain their outcomes.

And there was a reason that Playfair used cold water and the element of surprise in his experiments rather than having the twins try to communicate the number and suit of a specific playing card or other such thing. The physical and emotional response could be the key to making it work. “Telepathy tends to work best when it is needed,” he says, “and when sender and receiver are strongly bonded, as with mothers and babies, dogs and their owners, and those with the strongest bond of all – twins.”

While returning from a deep-space mission, the crew of the commercial spaceship Nostromo is awakened by a supposed SOS call from a system they are passing through. Descending to the planet’s surface, they discover a strange derelict spaceship – the apparent source of the transmission – and one of the crew descends into the hold. What he finds are thousands of strange alien eggs. While examining one of the eggs, it hatches and the parasite inside attacks him. After returning to the Nostromo the crew takes off again to head for Earth. The alien parasite subsequently dies and all seems well again. But what no one knows is that another alien is quietly forming within its host – and when it emerges, the crew finds itself in serious trouble…

Who were you in a previous life? This question is now so popular that many westerners accept that they must have lived before. Believing in the phenomenon of Reincarnation, it is almost a spiritual system in itself. But what is the reality to reincarnation? I don’t know. Maybe it is exactly what people believe. But it is also possible to place other mechanisms upon the subject, and even place it in a totally new paradigm.

A CASE STUDY

To understand the subject in western terms, we need to know just what ‘evidence’ there is for it. Well, very little really. But we do have case studies. Here is a typical one. Nicola Peart shocked her mother when, as a little girl, she was given a dog. Calling it Muff, she said it was the name of her other dog, yet Nicola had never had a dog before. Questioning her about this, Nicola suddenly wanted to know why she was a girl this time. It seems Nicola used to be a boy, whose mother, Elsie Benson, lived in a grey stone house in nearby Howarth and her father had worked on the railways . Nicola was later taken to Howarth, where she recognised the house, and parish records showed that a John Benson had been born there in 1875 to a railwayman and his family.

WHAT IS REINCARNATION?

The above is a classic case of supposed reincarnation – the idea that when we die our soul is reborn into another body. As old as history, the idea is fundamental to many religions, most notably Hinduism, which is steeped in the Samsara, or wheel of rebirth. Whether a person is reborn to a lower or higher form is dependent upon karma, a principle which states that deeds in this life decide your place in the next.
It is easy to dismiss reincarnation as impossible, but recent polls in the west show that between 25 and 40% of people believe they have been born before. One of the most famous believers is the Dalai Lama of Tibet. He has to believe for he is the thirteenth incarnation of the original Dalai Lama who came to the Lion Throne in 1391.

MORE REINCARNATED CHILDREN

A typical case of reincarnation is that of twins, Jennifer and Gillian Pollock, born in 1958 in Hexham, England. The previous year, their mother’s two children had been killed in a car crash. Moving to Whitley Bay in the early sixties, Mrs Pollock re-visited Hexham and the twins seemed to recognise the place. Later, sorting out some old toys, the twins recognised and named their dead sister’s dolls . It wasn’t long before they began discussing the crash – an event they supposedly knew nothing about.
Equally puzzling is the case of Jonathan Pike, who, at the age of three, began talking about his wife, Angela, following a family move from Hull to Southend. On a bus in the town, he pointed to a house he lived in with Angela, and also the garage where he used to work . On a later trip he burst into tears, recognising the location where his daughter had been killed in a car crash. A long serving policeman remembered the case of the little girl being knocked down at that very location. Sometimes such remembrances can have life changing effects. Consider the case of Dorothy Eady. When she was three she was knocked unconscious. Following this she began to have dreams featuring a temple and gardens in ancient Egypt. She eventually became convinced she was the lover of the Pharoah, Sety. So all consuming was the feeling that Dorothy moved to Egypt, spending her life, right up to her death in 1981, in a primitive village close to Sety’s temple. One of the most convincing cases of supposed reincarnation concerned Mary Lurancy Vennum, a thirteen year old girl who lived in Watseka, Illinois in 1877. Having an epileptic fit she became unconscious for five days. Coming round, she claimed to have met her dead sister. Describing her, a family friend recognised the girl as his dead daughter Mary Roff. Soon after this, Mary was hypnotised by a Dr Stevens. The day following, Mary became Mary Roff, and remained so for four months.

DR IAN STEVENSON

Several researchers have studied reincarnation in minute detail. Principal among them is Dr Ian Stevenson, whose 1966 book ‘Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation’ is a classic. Researching some fascinating cases, he noted that often, any addiction such as alcoholism in a past life could reflect itself in the present. In some two hundred cases he noted birthmarks in the same place as wounds in previous lives. Such evidence led Stevenson to conclude that human personality may go ‘… much further back in time than conception and birth.’

FROM INDIA WITH LOVE

Many cases came from the east, such as Kumari Shanti Devi, born in Delhi in 1926. At four she claimed to be the wife of Kedar Nath Chaubey from Muttra, one hundred miles away, who had died ten years ago. Eventually, Kedar Nath visited her. She flung her arms around him. On a visit to Muttra she knew other relations, even knowing where his wife had kept her precious things. Jasbir Lal Jat, a three year old Indian boy, offers similar evidence. Nearly dying of smallpox, when he came round from unconsciousness his personality had changed, claiming to have previously lived in Vehedi. He had died when he fell off a cart and fractured his skull. In 1957 a Brahmin lady from the town visited his village. He recognised her as his aunt. Knowledge of his past life came out, including his name, Sobha Ram.

GETTING TO GRIPS

The most convincing cases come from the east, except for one damning problem. Steeped in belief in reincarnation, such cases come from societies which practice the caste system, where a person is condemned to always remain in their class. Interestingly, most cases of reincarnation, here, involve a past life from a higher caste, offering incentive for collusion. Should we accept the above cases as proof of reincarnation, or could other factors be involved? Perhaps, rather than speak of reincarnation per se we should think in terms of the person being somehow possessed.

PSYCHOLOGICAL MECHANISMS

If we do so, we can place psychological ‘mechanisms’ upon the phenomenon. I won’t go into great detail of these mechanisms, here, as I’ve written about them elsewhere on this blog. But basically, they are thus: There is an ability of the mind to retrieve information of books and other media from the unconscious that the person has forgotten. It is known as cryptomnesia. Often including historical detail, it can be mistakenly seen as coming from a previous life. A further phenomenon is multiple personality, where the mind can seem to fragment into many separate characters, taking it in turn to ‘occupy’ the host. If such a phenomenon attaches to the idea of reincarnation, characters can appear to come from a previous life.

BIRTH OF THE SOUL

I have quickly skirted over these ‘mechanisms’ because they are not the central purpose of this essay. Rather, bearing in mind that these mind-functions can occur, I want to analyse past culture and mind anomalies to try to grasp where the idea of reincarnation came from. Early spiritual expression seemed to revolve around two central ideas. The first was animism, where the world was perceived as being split into a physical world, and a spiritual world existing parallel to it. Through the spiritual world, everything in the world had a ‘spirit’, thus animating the physical. The most likely cause of this belief was the ability of the prehistoric human mind to easily hallucinate, literally living their dreams as technology had not yet occupied the mind to an extent it later did. But regardless of this, the idea gave our early ancestors the idea that supernatural spirits existed, including the existence of a spirit reflection of man in the soul.

MYTHS OF ANCESTORS

The second thread of spiritual expression was that of ancestor worship. For instance, we can imagine that, if early man experienced his dreams more easily, and mistook them for evidence of the supernatural, then he would easily dream, and possibly see, his dead ancestors about him. In this way, a specific form of ancestor worship was birthed. In effect, the dead became early gods to ancient peoples. But they also became much more than this. The residue of ancestor worship is with us today, in the way we remember, and try to emulate, figures from the past. So we can imagine that, in early times, this reverence for the ancestors would give the impression that those ancestors lived on in those alive. From here, it is a small step for an acceptance that the soul survived death, and was reborn in another person, confirming that the ancestors are with us still.

SHARED PSYCHOLOGY

We must now turn to the human mind. We like to think of ourselves as individuals, yet the more I look into human behaviour, the more it becomes obvious that we are not. Rather, we seem to be an amalgam of three types of influence. These are the archetypal, emotional and situational. Jung was one of the central theorizers of the archetypal. He noted that we seemed to have a collective unconscious which held within it universal shared symbols. In terms of personality, these included the child, sage, trickster, hero, mother and various other character archetypes.
In effect, these are the various stages and character influences of the human mind. We can therefore argue that ‘personality’ is not specific to the individual, but is an inevitability of shared psychology. Emotions work in a similar way. We can exhibit various emotions by degrees and to specific responses, but the emotion, once exhibited, is not so much personal as shared by all. It is as if we exhibit emotion as individuals, but in doing so, we dip into a communal pool of exact emotions.
The situations we find ourselves in can also have a communality about them, rather than individuality. This can be understood by reading a great storyteller such as Shakespeare. The beauty of the Shakespearean tale is that it outs the ideosyncracies of the human mind, rather than place. His plays can, quite literally, apply equally to any culture at any time. This is because there are only a certain number of situations a person can find himself in. The individual or cultural expression may vary, but the basic influence of a situation does not.

A NEW MODEL OF THE INDIVIDUAL

The crux of what I am saying is that what we call individuality is not personal, as such, but a specific mix of particular archetypal, emotional and situational influences that are inherently communal. A classic case is falling in love. The situation is boy meets girl. The emotion is love. The archetypes involved will invariably revolve around the hero and seductress. This situation is common to most people in all times. It is only personal to the individuals involved. The actual amalgam of influences is communal to the species.

VALIDATING REINCARNATION

If the above model of the individual can be seen as possible, then we can look to reincarnation in a new way. We can argue that an ‘individual’ is a basically false concept, and people through all time have reflected the influences you have in your life today. The attractiveness of the idea is that you are, therefore, not that much different from a person from the past, so in effect, just a small change in your psychology could, metaphorically speaking, turn you into that person from the past. If this is so, all that is needed is a tiny snippet of information, had through cryptomnesia, to turn even a child into an ‘entity’ from another time – in a psychological sense, at least. So okay, this isn’t reincarnation as popularly believed, but if the amalgam of influences is correct, then it can be seen as a universal soul within everyone. And a vehicle through which ‘characterisations’ from the past can find expression in the present. So tell me, who do you want to be today?

The Capuchin Crypt is a small space comprising several tiny chapels located beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini on the Via Veneto near Piazza Barberini in Rome, Italy.

It is the final resting place for over 4,000 Capuchin friars, who died between 1528 and 1870, as well as several poor Romans. The soil in the crypt was brought from Jerusalem. Large numbers of the bones are nailed to the walls in intricate patterns, many are piled high among countless others, some hang from the ceiling as working light fixtures. There are six total rooms in the crypt, all but one featuring a unique display of human bones.

1. Crypt of the Resurrection, featuring a picture of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, framed by various parts of the human skeleton. The key to interpreting the crypt’s displays of funereal art lies in the Christian belief in the Resurrection of the body and everlasting life .
2. The Mass Chapel, as an area used to celebrate Mass, does not contain bones. In the altar-piece, Jesus and Mary exhort St. Felix of Cantalice, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Anthony of Padua to free souls from Purgatory. The heart of Maria Felice Peretti, the grandniece of Pope Sixtus V, is also preserved in this room, at her request. The chapel also contains the tomb of the Papal Zouaves who died defending the Papal States at the battle of Porta Pia.
3. Crypt of the Skulls
4. Crypt of the Pelvises
5. Crypt of the Leg Bones and Thigh Bones
6. Crypt of the Three Skeletons The center skeleton is enclosed in an oval, the symbol of life coming to birth. In its right hand it holds a scythe, symbol of death which cuts down everyone, like grass in a field, while its left hand holds the scales, symbolizing the good and evil deeds weighed by God when he judges the human soul. A placard in five languages declares

There are certain haunted places where the restless spirits of the night linger. They manifest as eerie voices and strange perfumes; they move things about; they creep out of the shadows as apparitions. Sometimes they even attack.

These are the places, through years of experiences and unnerving reputation, that are considered the most haunted places in the world.

Built in 1796 by General David Bradford, this stately old home on Myrtles Plantation is said to be haunted be several restless ghosts. Some researchers say as many as ten murders have been committed there, but others, such as Troy Taylor and David Wisehart, have only been able to confirm one murder at Myrtles. (Those two authors provide a very good history of the house in their article, The Legends, Lore & Lies of The Myrtles Plantation).

Even they agree, however, that the place is seriously haunted and easily qualifies as one of the “most haunted.” These are some of the ghosts that allegedly haunt the house:

• Cleo – a former slave who was allegedly hung on the premises for killing two little girls. (Those murders and even the existence of Cleo are in question.)
• The ghosts of the two murdered children have been seen playing on the veranda.
• William Drew Winter – an attorney who lived at Myrtles from 1860 to 1871. He was shot on the side porch of the house by a stranger. With his life’s blood pouring from his body, Winter staggered into the house and began to climb the stairs to the second floor… but didn’t make it. He collapsed and died on the 17th step. It is his last dying footsteps that can still be heard on the staircase to this day. (Winter’s murder is the only one that has been verified.)
• The ghosts of other slaves allegedly occasionally show up to ask if they can do any chores.
• The grand piano has often been heard to play by itself, repeating one haunting chord.

Now a bed and breakfast, The Myrtles Plantation has opened its doors to guests who often report disturbances in the night. My colleague, Stacey Jones, founder of Central New York Ghost Hunters, reports on her stay there:

“It was a spectacular place to stay, if you keep an open mind. While taking the guided tour, I saw what looked like a heavyset African-American woman wearing an apron walk by the door, on the porch. Thinking it was a worker in period dress, I peeked out and no one was there. We stayed in the children’s bedroom, and my best-friend (who was a non-believer at the time) experienced quite a bit of paranormal phenomena. She was held down in the bed and constantly poked all night. She was unable to move or cry out for help. She didn’t think the stay was as great as I did. They let you ghost hunt on the grounds whenever you like, but you can’t ghost hunt in the main house without an escort. I suggest setting up a video camera in your room and bring a tape recorder to obtain EVP.”

The Tower of London, one of the most famous and well-preserved historical buildings in the world, may also be one of the most haunted. This is due, no doubt, to the scores of executions, murders and tortures that have taken place within its walls over the last 1,000 years. Dozens upon dozens of ghost sightings have been reported in and around the Tower. On one winter day in 1957 at 3 a.m., a guard was disturbed by something striking the top of his guardhouse. When he stepped outside to investigate, he saw a shapeless white figure on top of the tower. It was then realized that on that very same date, February 12, Lady Jane Grey was beheaded in 1554.

Perhaps the most well-known ghostly resident of the Tower is the spirit of Ann Boleyn, one of the wives of Henry VIII, who was also beheaded in the Tower in 1536. Her ghost has been spotted on many occasions, sometimes carrying her head, on Tower Green and in the Tower Chapel Royal.

Other ghosts of the Tower include those of Henry VI, Thomas a Becket and Sir Walter Raleigh. One of the most gruesome ghost stories connected with the Tower of London describes death of the Countess of Salisbury. According to one account, “the Countess was sentenced to death in 1541 following her alleged involvement in criminal activities (although it is now widely believed that she was probably innocent). After being sent struggling to the scaffold, she ran from the block and was pursued until she was hacked to death by the axe man.” Her execution ceremony has been seen re-enacted by spirits on Tower Green.

This grand old ship is quite haunted, according to the many people who have worked on and visited the craft. Once a celebrated luxury ocean liner, when it ended its sailing days the Queen Mary was purchased by the city of Long Beach, California in 1967 and transformed into a hotel.

The most haunted area of the ship is the engine room where a 17-year-old sailor was crushed to death trying to escape a fire. Knocking and banging on the pipes around the door has been heard and recorded by numerous people. In what is now the front desk area of the hotel, visitors have seen the ghost of a “lady in white.”

Ghosts of children are said to haunt the ship’s pool. The spirit of a young girl, who allegedly broke her neck in an accident at the pool, has been heard asking for her mother or her doll. In the hallway of the pool’s changing rooms is an area of unexplained activity. Furniture moves about by itself, people feel the touch of unseen hands and unknown spirits appear. In the front hull of the ship, a specter can sometimes be heard screaming – the pained voice, some believe, of a sailor who was killed when the Queen Mary collided with a smaller ship.

The original Waverly Hills Sanatorium, a two-story wooden structure, was opened in 1910, but the larger brick and concrete structure as it stand today was completed in 1926. The hospital was always dedicated to the treatment of tuberculosis patients, a disease that was fairly common in the early 20th Century.

It is estimated that as many as 63,000 people died as the sanatorium. Those deaths coupled with the reports of severe mistreatment of patients and highly questionable experiments and procedures are ingredients for a haunted location.

Ghost investigators who have ventured into Waverly have reported a host of strange paranormal phenomena, including voices of unknown origin, isolated cold spots and unexplained shadows. Screams have been heard echoing in its now abandoned hallways, and fleeting apparitions have been encountered.

In the article, Those That Linger, by Keith Age, Jay Gravatte and Troy Taylor, you can read more about these investigators’ experiences.