Creepy Twins - Part 2! The Eriksson Twins

Warning: Video footage below contains elements that may be disturbing.  View with caution.

Way back in January, I did the first installment of Creepy Twins with the Gibbons sisters.  Today I bring you part two, the even creepier, definitely more insane, Eriksson twins, Ursula and Sabina.  The documentary above "Madness in the Fast Lane" details the events that took place on May 17th, 2008 when Sabina and Ursula flung themselves into the busy traffic of the MG motorway.  Police were alerted when witnesses saw the sisters attempting to cross the motorway, acting strangely and erraticly.  Once stopped on the side of the road by officers, the twins spoke briefly to the police before Ursula, without warning, dashed and ran into the side of a 40 ton truck traveling 56 miles per hour.

Moments later, Sabina ran into traffic and was hit by a Volkswagen.  Amazingly, both women survived.  Ursula was immobilized as her legs had been crushed but after being unconcious for 15 minutes, Sabina began to fight paramedics and police officers screaming, "They're going to steal your organs" and "I recognize you - I know you're not real."  Sabina punched a female officer and ran into traffic again on the other side of the motorway.  She was finally caught and restrained by emergency workers and sedated in an ambulance.

This story takes a more ugly and disturbing turn a day later.  Sabina was released from police custody without a full psych evaluation.  She began to wander the streets of England before being stopped by two men, one of which was Glenn Hollinshead.  Sabina stopped to pet their dog and they had a brief conversation.  Although noticing her odd behavior, Hollinshead offered Sabina a room for the night.  Sadly, the next morning, Sabina stabbed Hollinshead five times and killed him.  Sabina then ran out of the house with a hammer, hitting herself in the head repeatedly.  The police were notified and Sabina was again chased before jumping off of a 40 foot bridge, breaking several bones in the fall.  She was charged with murder and gave no explanation for her behavior despite repeated questioning.

Folie a deux is a French term for "A madness shared by two."  In other words, a shared psychosis, a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another.  The defense council in Sabina's trail claimed that she was a secondary sufferer of folie a deux, influenced by the presence of her sister Ursula, the primary sufferer.  The defense claimed Ursula had a history of mental illness which then transferred to the weaker personality of Sabina.  The defense also tried to assert that Sabina suffered a case of bouffe delirante or "puff of madness" where a perfectly sane person will lose their mind for a small time and then return to normal.  Sabina was sentenced to five years in prison on the plea of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

The most recent updates on the Eriksson twins is that Sabina was released from prison but her current whereabouts are unknown.  Ursula is thought to be living in America looking after Sabina's two children.  Ursula also underwent an exorcism at her local church to help drive away the demons that forced her onto the motorway back in 2008.

As strange and horrific as their actions were, we will never know the true reason the Eriksson twins ran across that motorway, what possessed them to fling their bodies into oncoming traffic, one right after the other.  Were they possessed by supernatural forces?  Did they suffer from undiagnosed mental illness?  Are folie a deux and bouffe delirante plausible excuses?  If Ursula's legs had not been crushed resulting in a multiple week hospital stay, would she have joined her sister in killing even more people?  If Sabina were truly suicidal, why did she not turn the knife on herself instead of killing an innocent man?  There are too many questions unanswered that I don't even believe Sabina and Ursula would be able to clarify themselves.  Unfortunately an innocent life was lost in this tragic and confusing story and Sabina and Ursula are both still out in the world today.  There have been no further widely known reports of criminal activity from the Eriksson twins, so perhaps they truly have been exorcised or healed of their psychosis.  Maybe a "puff of madness" truly can make an average day take a horrific turn.

-Amanda

The Silent Twins - June and Jennifer Gibbons

This is perhaps one of my favorite instances of real life creepy that I have come across in a long time, simply because there's no true way to know exactly what was going on in the psyche of these girls and what drove their actions.

June and Jennifer Gibbons were born in Wales in 1963.  Being the only African-American students in school, the girls were bullied from a young age.  After a while, they were so ostracized and traumatized, that they only communicated with each other, using a form of cryptophasia, a language developed by twins that only they can understand.  At the age of 14, the sisters were sent to separate schools in an attempt to "regulate their behavior" but this proved to be even more damaging, causing them to become completely catatonic and entirely withdrawn from others.

As the girls got older, they turned their interests towards creative writing, filling tons of journals and attempting to sell their short stories to several magazines but proved unsuccessful.  They did publish several books set in the United States through a self-publishing press, New Horizons, entitled Pepsi-Cola Addict and The Taxi-Driver's Son to name a few.  In the '80s, in their late teens, the twins' behavior started to take a turn, attacking each other physically, drinking heavily, smoking marijuana, and committing a string of crimes including arson and petty theft, resulting in their admittance to a high-security mental health hospital.  There, they lost all interest in creative writing and were placed on high doses of anti-psychotic medicine.

The girls had a longstanding agreement that if one were to die, the other would go on to live a normal life and resume speaking again.  They decided that while in the mental hospital, it was necessary for one of them to die.  Jennifer was decided to be the sacrifice.  In fact, she even told their only friend at the time, a journalist named Margie Wallace, simply "I'm going to die.  We've decided."  The girls were in the process of being transferred from one hospital to another when Jennifer fell unconscious.  In the hospital, she died of an acute myocarditis, inflammation of the heart.

After Jennifer's death, June gave interviews to several magazines and stated that she felt free at last and liberated.  She now lives a normal life, no longer needs psychiatric services, and is accepted by her community.

People say twins have an unspoken connection, a bond that no other set of siblings could imagine, a sharing of one soul in two bodies.  In some cases, this can be as innocent as finishing each other's sentences or wearing matching clothes.  In other cases, it can escalate to the withdrawn and odd behavior of the Gibbons sisters or even the violently dangerous behavior of the Eriksson twins, Ursula and Sabina, whose story is also highly intense and interesting.  (Note to self: May have to write blog post on them in the future.)

If you have time, I definitely recommend reading up more on this case, as there are far more twisted details than I include in this post.  All said and done, this is both a tragic story and a story of freedom rolled into one, leaving everyone who reads about it with a feeling of intense fascination but also an unsettling sadness.

-Amanda