Separated at Birth Living Parallel Lives - The Jim Twins | Our Life

[Music] good evening tonight we examine the links seen and unseen between Twins Chang and en were the original siamese twins they were born in 1811 and although they were never actually separated they LED active lives they married two American sisters and ran two family homes spending a few days in each one had 10 children the other 12 Chang took to drink and Ang had to share the hangovers they were joined together by a fibrous band at the chest nowadays they could easily have been separated but is there another link between identical twins a telepathic link that can never be broken welcome to Twinsburg 1995 [Music] happy Twins Day once a year over 4,000 sets of twins descend on the town of Twinsburg Ohio it's the Twins Day Festival and they all arrive 2 by two our husbands do know us the part they do we're not going to we're going to disappoint the public but they do know as the par I'm a little more outgoing in I'm more quiet I'll dress up more than him things like that we were born on April Fool's Day you know the womb room me first no me and the last one out it's the rout EG and we just switch on our dates and they' never know it oh we and we switched in classes we did all those tricks that twins's do to The Observer identical twins hold a particular Fascination the exact physical likeness the same Hobbies the same tastes in fact there's one restaurant owned by twins that will only employ twins as waiters but they have to work time in the same shift they have to work together they screw up and blame it on the other they switch their name tags they wear name tags I'm not shenita Char not darling so and our motto in the restaurant is you can only make a first impression once we make it twice but do twins share more than just physical characteristics some twins believe they have a closeness that even conventional science can't explain we call it twinship or twin Insight we've experienced it several times we've been tested to have a high degree of ESP among each one of us one of the most outstanding one that we had was when I was in a Col accident and I was able to direct help to her without knowing where she was I was visualizing it in my mind as it was happening there be times that I'll answer the telephone and say Jeff what do you want and I'm not sure it's him but I can tell by the ring or something that it's Jeff I mean it's amazing my first baby she was down the shore vacationing she wasn't due yet I was doesn't do for the baby she gets up in the morning at 7:30 which she doesn't do on vacation at all never and she couldn't walk couldn't walk I could not get out of bed I got out of bed and fell on the floor I was with my older sister and she's like what's with you and I go must have been a bad mattress now I'm walking like this we get now now we call I go something's wrong so we call her husband and he goes Jill had the baby I'm like she didn't have the baby she's not du yet and he goes yes she did and she never told me this story she was in she felt my labor pained yeah never told me this story no the second time I got pregnant I said I'm pregnant and she looked at me and she goes not again for identical twins this is the moment of creation the egg splits and two separate fetuses begin to form two individuals but with identical sets of genes science maintains that at the moment of Separation all links with the other half are broken but does an invisible connection remain Dr Susan Blackmore who studied twin Behavior Remains unconvinced by Tales of twin telepathy if they're identical twins they are genetically the same so their brains are much more similar than most people's pairs of people's brains would be and so they think in similar ways then there are all the things where twins are brought up together in their own background and all these things can lead to what appear like the most extraordinary coincidences but actually they spring from their lives together but what if twins had never lived together what if they were separated at Birth it's from this group that some of the most incredible stories have emerged on the 19th of August 1939 a woman gave birth to identical twin boys in Bradford Ohio due to family pressure she was unable to keep them and she agreed to put them both up for [Music] adoption 4 Weeks Later nnest Springer a main maintenance engineer and his wife Sarah adopted one of the boys 2 weeks after that Jess Lewis a boilerman and his wife Lucille took the other child away there was nothing unusual about the adoptions except for one small coincidence both families decided to call their sons James the twins it seemed have been separated for good identical in every way but destined to be strangers for the rest of their Liv lives over half a century later James Lewis is now living in Lia Ohio he was six before he learned he had a twin brother it would take over 33 years of searching to track him down I took the adoption paper at the court where the adoption took place and I told the judge what I wanted to do and he said well I'll see what I can do for you Jim Lewis's twin brother Jim Springer was also living in Ohio when he received a letter from the adoption agency it gave him quite a shock for 39 years he' believed that his twin had died at Birth I was very surprised and everything I didn't know what to make of it didn't know you know whether was true or was a hoax or I always kind of had a feeling that you know he wasn't dead but yet you know all the proofers said that he were so Jim Springer decided to phone Lewis it was the first time the brothers had spoken strange very strange we didn't know what to say it was short it was short he uh introduced himself to me and he told me what he wanted to see me about and everything but I do remember one thing funny he asked me what kind of beer I drink and of course we both like Miller's light and pretty soon uh I just blured out and asked Jim for my brother what did he say yes it seemed a cruel twist of fate but the twins discovered they'd spent most of their lives living only 40 m apart after the initial phone call they arranged their first meeting it was February 1979 was like standing there looking at myself I felt very close to him from the beginning he wasn't a stranger wasn't a stranger at all from the very very moment I saw him it wouldn't like meeting somebody you know for the first time did like I knew him the story might have ended there two brothers separated at Birth happily reunited in middle age but as the two men began to discuss their lives apart an extraordinary series of events were revealed good sorry got it for nearly 40 years it seemed the two men have been living parallel lives the coincidences began in childhood at school for example I know like spelling and I never and I liked math math we we liked math we didn't like spelling back home both boys came up with unusual names for their dogs toy to your why I call it toy now where why I were named it that I don't know that's the name I gave the dog the twins left school and there were more coincidences they discovered they both enrolled as police officers Jim worked for Miami County I think Police Department I work for sha e Township Police Department uh we were both doing the same job at the same time the two gyms went on to marry and become fathers again their lives seem to be running in parallel my first wife was named uh Linda and my second wife was named Betty okay first one was was Linda and then my second wife was Betty Betty and I have a son we need him named him James Allen I was married to Betty we had a her first son was named James Allen in their spare time the two men continue to mirror each other's Behavior both men like to unwind after work by smoking the same brand of cigarettes and drinking the same make of beer they both enjoyed Woodwork and built basement workshops in their houses outside they had white benches built around the trunk of a tree in their Gardens where Jim Lewis's remains to this day one of the more astonishing coincidences occurred over holiday plans there's nothing unusual in going to Florida every year but Florida has thousands of miles of beaches and every year Jim Lewis and Jim Springer would go to exactly the same stretch of beach several times I've been to uh St Petersburg beach at a particular spot about 1 mile long and it's got water around it I got a canal on one side and and of course the golf on the other it was very amazing that we were never ran across one another because we had vacation there a couple times about the same time wives with the same names same jobs same Hobbies even the same holiday destination but one of the biggest surprises came after they met they were invited to the Minnesota Center for twins research where they took a battery of tests the results were so similar the researchers made them take the tests again some of the test that Jim I took on the multile choice they had to do over again because Jim and I answered almost the same identical questions the same answer the lives of the gim twins seem so incredible because until very late in life they'd never even met were the similarities coincidences or some form of telepathic communication their identical genetic makeup would account for some of these similarities but the names of their wives sons and even dogs Skeptics argue that it's easy to be deceived we start looking for for certain types of coincidence what you don't do is ask well what sort of car have they got what sort of animals have they got what sort of music do they like you don't ask those other questions which will come not to be coincidences you just conveniently forget about those so the process of selection produces an awful lot of amazing looking coincidences that really aren't the gym twins admit their lives aren't perfect mirrors Jim Lewis divorced Betty and is now married to Sandy while Jim Springer is still married to his bet there is a joke about it my wife's very afraid I'll meet a woman named Sandy one these days but can the twin story really be put down to a quirk of Fate a series of bizarre coincidences the chance happenings in the twins lives seem so unbelievable and so numerous that it's hard not to consider another possibility that the two men were never completely separated back in 1939 and somehow maintained a telepathic link for the rest of their lives researchers have now studied the lives of hundreds of identical twins who were separated at Birth but none of them can match the astonishing series of coincidences shown by the gy twins according to a recent survey nearly half the people in this country believe in ghosts and one in seven actually claims to have seen one if you're among that number then you may not find tonight's eyewitness account all that's surprising but reports of independent Witnesses all seeing the same ghost over a short period of time are rare and a further mystery remains why was this ghost more upset than the people who spotted [Music] her ftic Manor has stood in the heart of the bed pure Countryside for 300 years for over half its life it was the ancestral home of the Brooks [Music] family but at the end of last year Builders moved in to renovate The Manor it's now a hotel they stumbled upon a secret room in the roof which had Lin undisturbed for decades we came up to start work on the roof and remove the start to remove the tiles and then remove the brick work we found a small doorway then we found the evidence of a frame in the end of the roof which indicated that sometime there was a there some sort of attic room here after that things started to happen at ftic Manor just 3 days later the hotel received an odd complaint from a departing guest as a hotel receptionist I have had some odd complaints but I have to say that I've never had a complaint like this before everything all right for you sir no not really why what happened I think I had a visitor during the night something or someone I don't know what happened I just now I never want to stay in that room again I'm sorry I hadn't a comfortable night um can I get someone to help you with those no that's all right thank you very much bye-bye he seemed slightly nervous then I didn't really know quite what to say and basically didn't really take a lot of notice of it but from then on various members of Staff began to notice that something had changed at ftic [Music] manner Sonia Banks the hotel manager was staying on the second floor one night I had just locked up the hotel and I was retiring to room eight [Music] then I heard footsteps walking across the ceiling and a door slam towards the front of the house where the little room had been discovered I must say I was a bit taken aback and surprised at this because I was the only person in the hotel that [Music] night Sonia is not the only person to have experienced a presence of some kind Chef Duncan poiser also had to sleep at the hotel one night his bedroom was also on the second floor I retired to bed at about 1:00 just lay on my back gently drifting when I tried to turn I couldn't move the bottoms of my legs it was as if someone or something was sitting on them but there was no one there tried again a second time the third time was as if the wave lifted up I was a little bit shocked and startled it was just a really strange uh experience really strange feeling so what could possibly be happening at ftic Manor the first Paranormal Activity came within days of the opening up of the Hidden attic room had the builders released something some Spirit which was now returning to its old Haunting Ground J come on one clue May lie with this man John Lyle is the last direct descendant of the Brooks family to have lived at ftic he's now retired to his farm in Wilshire but 50 years ago John spent his childhood at the Manor my mother used to tell us when we were children that when she lay in bed at night she would hear a ghost knocking on the bedroom door there was also quite a few stories in the village about the fact that atic Manor was haunted those stories have been forgotten in recent times until the hurried departure of that hotel guest John Hines will never never forget his stay at ftic [Music] Manor I detected that there was something in the room with me I got a feeling that uh there was a presence there I can't describe it John Hines had checked into his room at ftic following a business conference he went to bed bed around 1:00 a.m. 5 minutes later something very heavy landed on the foot of the bed fumbled around trying to find the light switch and there was nothing there nothing there at all this is crazy John you know got back to sleep I tried to settle down again uh a few minutes later there's a shuffling at the bottom of the bed there was a silhouette of a person actually sitting at the foot of the the bed I froze I was petrified who are you what do you want no response from her she just sat there gazing out towards the window John spent the rest of the night awake a grown man too scared to turn the lights off I consider myself to be a very skeptical person and I really can't believe that it was a ghost that I saw but I have no other explanation for it is there anything in the history of ftic manner which might explain The Apparition Richard Morgan is another descendant of the Brooks family who lived there throughout the 19th century he has made a detailed study of his family's history the first of the family to live here John Thomas Brooks kept a diary and that describes the life here it's quite clear that the most important event as far as their diarist was concerned was the death of a much loved only daughter Mary an Brooks who was only 26 this is the entry for the 20th of September 1848 I sat by her dying bed watching her with the most intense earnestness and misery and at 7:00 her breathing having gradually become weaker and weaker she gently Drew her last breath on Earth they were all very shocked when the daughter died it was clearly a terrible shock to them all and I think the mother in particular one must pick out as being a tragic figure she outlift her husband by 20 years she died aged 86 of scile Decay and I think one has to say that she is rather a sad figure Could This Woman's personal tragedy be linked to John hine's ghostly sighting or the events which happened happed the very next night Hotel receptionist Lydia dorson had a night she'll never forget my heart was just beating so fast um and I was just begging that she'd go away my heart was thumping the whole time it's I'd just never seen anything like it I came back into the room I found that all the lights were on and I know I hadn't actually put them on myself I think the reason that I was actually so upset was I sensed that she was crying so she was upset which was then causing me to feel upset and at ftic manner the unexplained happenings continue even today whoever she is she's totally harmless and we've just got used to having her around perhaps but the staff don't like to stay over anymore things have now quietened down at the manner but it just goes to show you ought to think twice before getting the builders in I'll be back next week with a special edition of strange but true until then good night [Music] oh

Channel: True Lives

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Id: 3lfDW75VhHc

Length: 23min 10sec (1390 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 09 2024