Twin Telepathy

Telepathy, also known as mental telepathy, is defined as the (supposed) communication between minds through means aside from sensory perception.  This means that none of our five senses; taste, touch, sight, smell, and hearing; are involved in processing the information received by our brains.  Telepathic communication is purely based, and dependent, on the mind and thought alone and nothing else.  Frederic William Henry Myers (1843-1901) was a scientist of sorts, but mainly a brilliant-minded theorist and intellectual who was obsessed with the human brain.  He coined the term "Telepathy" in 1882, and since then, the subject has always been of great interest to many people, including myself.  Twin telepathy is what intrigues me most.  Being that there is a physical bond between twins that no other siblings or relatives share,  it seems that if telepathy did exist, twins would be most likely to experience this strange phenomenon and be able to wield the ability.  I am also a twin, and may or may not have had an encounter or two of my own between my brother Taylor and I.  

A recent, and somewhat famous, example of a possible telepathic experience between twins occurred in March of 2009, involving sisters Gemma and Leanna Houghton.  Leanna is epileptic, meaning she has random fits of seizures which cause her to become unconscious at times.  If aid and care is not given to a person during an epileptic bout, the risk of stroke and brain damage is serious.  In this case, Leanna was taking a bath when her seizure attacked.  Both 15 years old at the time, Gemma had the strongest feeling that her sister was in grave danger. She claimed a voice was telling her, "Your sister needs you!"  Sure enough, Gemma walked into the bathroom to find Leanna submerged underwater in the tub, drowning.  Telepathy between these twins saved a life, supposedly.  

Some stories are voodoo-esque, such as when one twin is injured or afflicted in some way, and the other twin experiences the same symptoms and/or pain even though no physical damage had been done to both parties, the twins are separated by great distances, and no knowledge of the incident is confirmed by the twin experiencing the phenomenon.  Other instances of twin telepathy include that of physical skill, such as playing an instrument, or ballet dancing.  One twin would be trained in such a skill over a long period of time, sometimes decades.  Subsequently, the other twin would either know the skill very well without any previous training in that particular area, or learn in record time.

My experiences are not as remarkable as some of the examples listed above.  At a younger age, my brother and I noticed that we could sense each other's feelings to an extent.  Even if we hadn't talked or had any sort of contact throughout the day, I found myself getting these mysterious urges to contact my twin brother to see if something was troubling him.  More often than not, I learned that he was upset; either extremely angry or dismayed to a degree.  I could never explain how it felt, or why it happened.  To be honest, I figured it was sheer coincidence and never really thought anything of the occurrences. 

Below is a very informative and interesting video from an ABC News broadcast on the topic of telepathy between twin siblings: 

So, there you have it.  I'll let you be the judge.  The idea of telepathy has been glorified and explored through entertainment media, and the study of early psychologists and their work concerning the subject.  Great interest in this field still remains.  Scientists and theorists alike have tried to experiment and research telepathic abilities, however no conclusive evidence, other than extreme coincidence, has been collected and verified to give telepathy a legitimate place in the fields of neuroscience or communication.  It remains to be a paranormal phenomenon that can not yet be explained through scientific means.