Although I was the first born, I was never an only child as my twin brother joined me in this world eight minutes later. Growing up, my twin brother and I would always have to answer the same two questions; one, are we identical, (which the answer was obviously no as we were opposite genders), and two, can we read each other’s mind or feel the pain that they feel? While my brother and I never looked at ourselves from being much different than everyone else nor do we have anything in common besides our parents and a birthdate, twin telepathy does not fail to come up at least once during a conversation. This question has got me thinking, even though my brother and I are not on the same wave length, can other twins share that ability?
There has not been many studies either proving or disproving the theory of twin telepathy, defined as “the alleged communication of thought from one person to another by means other than the physical senses.” With that being said, the University of Indiana has conducted a study that found the later the fertilized egg split following conception, the higher the chances the identical twins would form a close bond as they aged. That above study may n
ot have explained twin telepathy, it has given a potential reasoning on why some twins may claim to have that power and others do not. There have been some experiments on the subject in the past, but most are not well-respected nor frequently published so evidence relies on anecdotes or personal accounts from twins claiming to have the ability.
An account depicted on describes the story of a twin who awoke in the middle of the night and foresaw a scene of her twin brother lying in a pool of blood with a hole in his side due to an object falling from the sky piercing him. Her vision was clearly depicted and appeared to play
the scene on her bedroom wall. In the morning, she received a telegram confirming that her twin brother was struck with a bomb in his side while in battle during the night in Germany and was injured from the hit. He recovered but the details in her nightmare matched up with reality. Her twin brother confirmed this story on the site as well as adding that as child
ren, him and his sister would lie in bed and create stories from a painting that hung in their bedroom. At the end of the story, they would greet their loved ones that passed at a made-up pond. This was the same wall where his sister watched the vision of his injury unfold.
While one, or two, people’s accounts can not be credited proof that something does or does not exist, there are countless similar stories in which the twins either feel the same pain as their twin without knowing or hear a voice in their head that urges them to check on their sibling. The twin research unit at King’s College in London polled 9,000 sets of twins on the register whether they have ever had the ability to know what was happening to their twin. Out of the 5,513 responses, 54% responded either yes or declaring it was a reasonable possibility. The
poll prompted more research on the topic, which is when a controlled experiment was conducted at the University of Copenhagen. A pair of twins were arranged in two rooms, the one with a polygrapher present, the other without. The twin in the room opposite of the polygrapher was exposed to different scenarios such as an electric shock, ice water, and shattering dishes. The polygrapher was assigned to mark when there was an unusual pattern on the polygraph test that the first twin was hooked up to. The results found that the spots were picked around the accurate times.
The results discovered in the above experiment coincides with the conclusion formed from two ophthalmologists in 1963 when they found the, “alpha brain rhythm was artificially induced in one twin, the brainwave chart (EEG) of the other one showed the same rhythm
t exactly the same time.” A team from Rockland State Hospital received the same results, but the experiment measured blood volume, instead. While the work that has been done has displayed some sort of proof that twin telepathy may be a possibility, there is not enough evidence nor are personal accounts counted as evidence to conclude that it does exist. More time and research could say otherwise, however.
Twins have been subjected to various experiments throughout the years, being looked at as abnormalities in the past yet studies on twin telepathy is very limited and relies on personal accounts rather than scientific evidence. While many will dismiss twin telepathy simply out of an unknown mechanism or doubt that it is possible to hear, see, or physically feel scenarios the opposite twin takes part in, but there have been some experiments in the past that support the theory. It is hard to understand how one may communicate with another miles apart and while majority of twins do not possess that power, there is no reason to dispose of the concept, but rather fund more research on the topic. There was a time, at one point in history, when society believed the earth to be flat and the continents to not hold the
ability to move. It was with years of research that those beliefs were proven wrong. As they say, anything is possible.