The Weird Coincidence Of The Yukon Gold Rush

I'm sure there were lots of tales from the Yukon territory, the gold rush and the 'trail of '98' but this is perhaps one of the weirdest - and features a remarkable coincidence

The story is of Simon and John Turner, known to thousands of old time sourdoughs as the Two Apostles and also the Gold Dust Twins.

Simon and John were twins. Everything one wanted to do, the other also wanted to do. If one had a pain, the other felt it: they had a bond that shared everything.

The twins followed the trail to Yukon gold. Eventually, in the vicinity of the Lake La Barge region they located a paying claim. John started for Skagway with a large bag of gold nuggets. Simon stayed to work the claim.

Weeks and then months passed, but there was no sign of John returning. Simon felt a strange foreboding. He decided to close his claim and set off to Skagway himself.

There was no trace of John, so in 1900 Simon took up the search for his missing twin. His search continued for 32 years travelling over all of the possible routes John may have taken.

He became a famous figure. In Skagway, at Dyea amd Lake Bennet men told of his seeking. Many thought him a little mad. Others did not accept his story of a search for a long lost twin brother, but credited his search to some hidden cache, or pay streak and regarded his story as a cunning dissimulation on his part to hide his true endeavour.

The years rolled by, Simon grew bent and developed a dry, hacking cough. Many tried to persuade him to give up his search but his reply was always the same: "Identical twins we were. Everything one did the other had to do, you can't separate that kind. I've got to find him. We came into this world together and together we gotta be when the last trumpet sounds."

When he reached 70 years of age Simon moved to a wilderness almost devoid of men.

Two prospectors working out from White Horse came upon Simon lying at the base of a precipice, about 100 yards off the old Lake La Barge trail. Though the old man's neck was broken from a fall his face wore a look of perfect serenity. He had not been dead for very long.

The two prospectors decided it best to bury him where he lay. They dug down a little way when they turned up a skeleton. Mingled with the bones was an ancient wallet and some 32 year old papers, well preserved where the frost line lies close to the surface.

The papers bore witness that the skeleton was that of John, his long sought identical twin! By grim irony Simon had located his brother too late to know it in this conscious world.

Perhaps all of this was simply a coincidence, or maybe there's something more in this sympathy existing between twins, that is more powerful than man can know.

The two men were finally buried together and over their grave stands a simple headstone which reads:

In Death They Were Not Divided.

Twins Reunited By Coincidence After 32 Years

For illustration only

Over the years I have published various stories of twins being reunited by a coincidence. Here is another one I came across yesterday.

Paramus N.J: Identical twins who were separated at birth both grew up to become volunteer firefighters in New Jersey - a coincidence that led to their reunion nearly 32 years later.

Five days after their birth at a Bronx, NY, hospital, Mark Newman and Gerald Levy were adopted by different parents.

They grew up 30 kilometres from each other, played high school basketball, became avid hunters and fishermen, and took jobs in landscaping and then in safety installation services.

Both have grown handlebar moustaches in the summer and beards in the winter, Each has developed the same bald spot.

The twins even attended the same firefighters convention in southern New Jersey, but missed each other.

It wasn't until another convention, that a friend of Newman's saw Levey, noticed the resemblance between the two and brought them together.

The twins, both fire captains, were introduced, shook hands, but nothing else happened. After a few minutes, a friend Jim Tedesco told Newman, "Look at Jerry, doesn't he look like someone you know?"

"I thought to myself: he wears glasses like me, he's got a nose like me," recalled Newman. "Then he took off his hat."

The same bald spot did the convincing!

After the reunion, Levey called his parents to confirm he had a twin, and the men have seen each other just about every week since.

Newman said he believes that although there are many things he doesn't know about his twin, "I really don't have to get to know him. He's me and I'm him."

Other Random Twin Posts:

Identical Twins Meet By Coincidence After 21 Years
Mirror Twins And The Identical Exam Results Coincidence
The Coincidences Of Twins Growing Up Separately
By Coincidence The Retired Doctor Met The Twins He Had Delivered
After 28 Years She Met Her Unknown Twin In Sweden

Identical Twins Meet By Coincidence After 21 Years

Mistaken identity led George Cain to meet Brent Tremblay, his identical twin brother after being separated for 21 years.

George and Brent met at Carleton University in Ottawa where the other students repeatedly confused them, calling them mirror images of each other,

After becoming good friends, they decided there must be some sort of connection. Blood tests revealed they were long-separated twins.

A lawyer, Garry Watanabe, representing the mother of the twins said, "It's a pretty interesting coincidence, even that they ever met."

When the boys were infants their mother, Laura Cain, temporarily placed her twins in foster care,when she had some difficulties to work through.

Two months later she married the boys' father, Randy Holmes, and asked for her children back. She got one of her babies, George, but incredibly was also given another child, instead of her other twin, she had named Marcus.

Following blood tests it was shown that Marcus was not related to Randy Holmes, and established that Brent and George were in fact the real twins.

Brent was mistakenly adopted and raised by Carol and Jim Tremblay.

The twins must have been fated to meet up again.

More Twins Posts:
Mirror Twins And The Identical Exam Results Coincidence
The Coincidences Of Twins Growing Up Separately
By Coincidence The Retired Doctor Met The Twins He Had Delivered

The Twins Reunion Became A Triplet Reunion

Further to my previous post Coincidence Leads To Twins Reunion there is more to this story than I first thought. Several people contacted me about this. It appears that the coincidence is well known on the US and has been reported on television. Peter Shafran directed me to more information.

After the two 'twins' Robert Shafran and Eddy Galland re-united this made headlines in some newspapers. So much so that a David Kellman, a student at Queens College, contacted Shafran and Galland telling them that he also looked very much like them. This became quite a story as this had now become a reuniting of triplets.

According to Newsday the triplets had a natural sense of humour and started making the television talk-show rounds 'and even landed bit parts in the movie Desperately Seeking Susan' and on the TV show, Cheers.

Sadly though 'the laugh track went silent in 1995, when Galland committed suicide at his Maplewood, N.J., home.'

My thanks to all, mostly through Google+, who got in touch with me about the story.

Coincidence Leads To Twins Reunion

Robert Shafran, a new student, was puzzled when he arrived at Sullivan County Community College and was greeted by men who patted him on the back and women who hugged and kissed him.

"Hi, Eddy," they said.

"I'm not Eddy," Shafran replied. He was startled when one woman did not believe him and told him of a birthmark on his body!

Shafran found Eddy, with the help of Michael Domnitz, who saw an uncanny resemblance between Shafran and Eddy Galland, a former student at the school.

With Domitz' encouragement, Shafran called Galland.

"Eddy," Shafran recalled saying, "My name is Bob Shafran. You won't believe this, but I think you're my twin brother.

The two traded statistics. They were born within 27 minutes of each other on July 12th at Long Island Jewish Hospital Medical Center; both were adopted through the same agency within  six months after birth; both were 5 foot 9"; and both had brown eyes and curly brown hair.

Shafran and Domnitz went to Galland's home, where Shafran and Galland stared at each other and scratched their heads and in unison said, "Oh, my God!"

They spent the next three days recalling their lives. There was one difference between them Galland is right handed and Shafran is left handed (so perhaps they are mirror twins).

Neither knows who his biological mother and father are. Galland told the Lawrence Journal, "I think the whole thing is beautiful, but it's also a little spooky to know there is somebody exactly like you.

Other Random Posts:
67 Years After The D-Day Landings They Meet By Coincidence
White Feathers As Messages From The Deceased
Her Front Door Key Returned By Coincidence

The Coincidence Of Twins

Taunton to Minehead Road A 358 - Photo: Martin Bodman

A short coincidence story that emphasises the closeness of identical twins.

Frank Clatworthy and his brother, Jack, are identical twins. They were injured within an hour of each other in separate traffic accidents on the same road near Taunton.

The 20 year old brothers were returning to their homes in separate automobiles when Frank's car overturned and Jack's car crashed through a hedge - both on the Taunton to Minehead road.

The twins who suffered cuts and concussion, did not know of the coincidence until they woke up in hospital - in adjacent beds!

Other Twin Posts:
The Coincidences Of Twins Growing Up Separately
Twins Clairvoyance And A Dream
By Coincidence The Retired Doctor Met The Twins He Had Delivered

Mirror Twins And The Identical Exam Results Coincidence

It's recently been the time when UK students - aged between 14 and 16 - get their GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) results. They are graded A to G or U if ungraded. There is also an A* grade (called A-star) for an exceptional standard.

Mirror twin brothers, Charles and Cammie Stewart-Syme from the Manchester Grammar School, have just got their results. In what has been described as an astonishing coincidence they achieved identical results of seven A* grades and three A grades.

They will now go on to study identical A Levels (a higher level than GCSE's) in Biology, Chemistry, Maths and History.

Their mother says that because the pair are mirror twins they have had an incredible number of coincidences throughout their lives.

The twins hope that following completion of their A Levels they can go on and study at an American university.

So what are Mirror Twins? This is Wikipedia's definition:

"Mirror Image Twins result when a fertilized egg splits later in the embryonic stage than normal timing, around day 9-12. This type of twinning could exhibit characteristics with reversed asymmetry, such as opposite dominant handedness, dental structure, even personality traits connected to right-brain or left-brain dominant individuals. If the split occurs later than this time period, the twins risk being conjoined."

I have also read that 'Mirror Twins are genetically identical and this means they have the exact same DNA.'

Identical DNA can prove a problem if a crime has been committed, such as with the recent case in the UK of the twins Mohammed and Aftab Asghar. They have the same DNA and have both appeared in court charged over the rape of a woman.

In February there was a similar problem when 24-year-old twin brothers were held in Marseille, France, by police hunting a rapist. Their genetic codes were so similar that normal DNA tests could not tell them apart.

But I've strayed from Charles and Cammie's achievements. Well done to them and others who have had good GSCE results.

Other Twin Story Posts:
The Coincidences Of Twins Growing Up Separately
The Twinless Twin Mystery
After 28 Years She Met Her Unknown Twin In Sweden

The Coincidences Of Twins Growing Up Separately

If you are into coincidences and synchronicity you may well have heard of the following, as it's now considered a classic.

It's a story of twins who were adopted while babies to different families. They never knew each other while growing up but finally, on February 9, 1979 after 39 years, they were re-united. It was then that the coincidences were discovered. It was as if they had been living parallel lives.

James Lewis, one of the twins, an Ohio resident, was married to a woman called Betty with whom he had a son James Alan. He had previously been married to someone called Linda.

James Springer, the other twin (note they both had the same first names) also married a woman called Linda but they got divorced. He, in turn, met a woman also named Betty who became his second wife and, yes, they had a son named James Allan.

These coincidences alone would have been amazing enough but there was much more:

# Though named James they were both known as Jim.

# Both had dogs named Toy as children.

# They both liked carpentry and maths while at school, but hated spelling.

# They both had law enforcement style occupations: James Lewis was a security guard while his brother was a deputy sheriff.

# They both suffered migraine headaches at the same time of day.

# Both drank Miller Lite beer.

# They both both had high blood pressure.

# Both had undergone vasectomies.

# They both disliked baseball.

# Both chain-smoked.

# They both favoured St.Petersburg in Florida as a vacation beach ...

... and so it went on.

Dr. Thomas Bouchard of University of Minnesota got in touch with the twins to study the similarities in twins while growing up separately. This was as part of the Minnesota Twin Family Study.

Bouchard studied the personalities and attitudes of the twins, and the resulting similarities were again astonishing. In one test which measured personality variables (tolorance, conformity, flexibility), the twins' scores were so close that they approximated the averaging of the totals of one person taking the test twice.

Brain wave tests produced skyline-like graphs looking like two views of the same city. Intelligence tests, mental abilities, gestures, voice tones, likes and dislikes, were similar as well.

It does seem that some twins have a very special connection, as there are many similar stories:

After 28 Years She Met Her Unknown Twin In Sweden
The Telepathy Of Twin Coincidences
Twin Deaths And Other Twin Coincidences

After 28 Years She Met Her Unknown Twin In Sweden

This is quite an amazing coincidence story of how Indonesian twins, separated when eight months old, find each other again after 28 years - living just 60 kilometres from each other in Sweden! Bizarrely there are other coincidences as well.

Completely out of the blue Lin Backland received a message on Facebook from someone claiming to be her twin - she didn't even know she had one! She thought the message was from a crazy person but mentioned it to her Swedish parents, who had adopted her in Indonesia when she was an eight month old baby.

There was nothing on the adoption papers to say that she was a twin. Even so she decided to answer the Facebook message, which was from Emilie Falk.

To cut a long story short, they eventually met up but didn't look alike. Lin said that, even so, "It felt like we’d known each other for a long, long time, even though we hadn't."

More meetings followed and because they both felt a strong connection they decided to have DNA tests to decide once and for all if they were related. The tests came back and, sure enough, it was proven that they were sisters and were therefore twins, both born March 18th, 1983.

The twins found that there were other coincidences other than them both now living in Sweden, just 60 kilometres apart.

~ They were both teachers.

~ They were both married on the same day.

~ They both played the song You and Me by Lifehouse at their weddings.

~ They both speak Skånska a Swedish dialect.

Their next hope is to try and see if they can trace any relatives in Indonesia but, says Backland, "We don’t really mind what we find - now that we’ve found each other again."

Further Reading:
They Meet Up Again After 67 Years
The Telepathy Of Twin Coincidences
Woman Donates A Kidney To A Stranger

Twins Clairvoyance And A Dream

This is a personal story that for some reason came to my mind this morning. I'm not sure what triggered the memory. It covers coincidence, clairvoyance, a dream and maybe reincarnation or history repeating itself.

After my wife, Karin, and I went out together for the first time she went with a friend to see a clairvoyant.

At the time both of us had recently come out of other relationships so I don't think either of us thought that we would still be together thirty years later.

The clairvoyant, however, told my wife that she would move away with a new man in her life and that she would have twins.

She didn't tell me this at the time - it might have frightened me away!

Later we did move away together. I was offered a promotion with a company I was working for but it meant I had to move to another part of the country. And to cut a long story short I accepted the offer and we eventually got married.

Eighteen months later Karin was pregnant but sadly had a miscarriage. This was before scans were routine and it was only after we lost the babies that we discovered they were twins.

Needless to say we were both quite upset. The thought of twins stuck in my mind and my own mother told me, at the time, that my grandmother also had twins who died. She went on to have more children as did we.

Years later, after we had our son, Karin had a very vivid and 'real' dream. And it was this dream I remembered this morning.

In the dream Karin said she and I were in the garden with all of our family. It was like a reunion or a party. Amongst those present were two boy twins about five years old. My wife couldn't think who they were in her dream but they were playing happily with our son and other family children.

I mentioned the dream to Karin over breakfast this morning and she said about how, perhaps, they were the twins we had lost.

She then told me her father was one of twins. This was something I hadn't heard before, despite 30+ years of conversations! Probably because I had never met her father as he had died when she was only four years old.

Her father's twin brother died at birth and it was touch and go if he lived. He was seemingly so small that he could fit into the palm of the doctor's hand, but somehow he survived.

And that's the story really. It's strange though, how my grandmother lost twins, Karin and I lost twins and her own father was the survivor of twins. I'm not sure, as yet, what this all means but there must be some sort of link with the dream and also the clairvoyant 'seeing' twins.

I guess we aren't meant to understand everything.

"If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake — Aye, what then?
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge"

The Telepathy Of Twin Coincidences

A couple of 67 Not Out readers coincidence stories about twins, both anonymous. I guess there had to be two of them - but are they really simply coincidences?

Telepathic Twin Message
My twin brother and and I have just turned 20 and people find it weird because he's a guy and I'm a girl. They seem to be amazed at how close we are.

When we were 9 years old my brother went to stay with my grandmother while the rest of the family stayed in the city for a couple of months. My father tells the story of how one night it was very quiet, when suddenly I woke up and wouldn't stop crying. It appeared as if I was choking but I wasn't.

No matter what my parents did they couldn't stop my tears and I kept trying to reach over to my brother's empty cot. My dad felt that something was wrong so he told my mum to ring up my grandmother to check on my brother.

My mum didn't really want to make the call so late at night but she rang my grandmother and my gran found that my brother (who has asthma), was in his cot, almost choking to death.

They rushed him to the hospital and thankfully he recovered. According to my father, it wasn't until my gran said the ambulance was there that I stopped crying.

My brother and I have a bond so strong that nothing can break it, we know what each other is thinking and we know when the other is in trouble. I wouldn't give up being a twin for the world.

The Twin Longing
When I went to junior school there was a friend, Jennifer, who kept on saying how she would have loved to have been a twin. Maybe lots of people think how it would be good to be a twin but Jennifer was obsessed by the thought. Sometimes she even pretended she had a twin and talked to her.

One day, when she was 7 or 8, she told her mother how she always wanted a twin sister. It was then that her mother told her she had actually been a twin, but her sister had died at birth.

Further Reading:
Twin Deaths And Other Twin Coincidences
The White Feather Message From The Dead
7:43 A baby Is Born And Again And Again