You’ve probably heard of the famous twins named “Jim.” They were raised apart from the age of four weeks and were finally reunited at the age of thirty-nine. When Jim Lewis and Jim Springer reunited, they discovered some amazing similarities: they had both been named “James” by their adoptive families who did not know each other; they had both had dogs named Troy; and they had both been married twice – their first wives were both named Linda and their second wives were both named Betty. They also both suffered from tension headaches, smoked the same brand of cigarettes, drove the same car, and vacationed at the same beach in Florida.

Cool, right?

But these stories of uncanny cotwincidences (see what I did there?) are not as rare as you might think. From my interviews, twins shared some similarly mysterious anecdotes. Like Anne, who describes an incident in which she was a teenager and was shopping with her mother when she just intuited that something was wrong with her twin brother Sal, who was out with a friend. She urged her mother that they had to stop shopping immediately and return to the house. When they got there, a message from the police was waiting for them: Sal had been in a serious car accident.

In a less upsetting example, another twin interviewee Samantha was taken by her father to the department store to buy a winter coat while her twin sister was taken to a different store with her mother. When they reconvened at home, they discovered that they each picked out the same exact winter coat.

Obviously, twins do have telepathic powers – or do they? Many scientists decline to subscribe to the supernatural phenomenon. They opine that rather than an actual psychic connection, the twins are simply the product of similar thinking patterns. Besides, the scientists note, there are finite pools of significant characteristics in our lives. There are, for example, only so many brands of cigarettes and a limited number of different foods on the market. All of these chattels which twins might choose in common could also lead to other similarities that they manifest: for instance, lung cancer or obesity.

And while American male twins in their 40s are more likely to marry a woman named Jennifer than a woman with any other name, American male non-twins are just as likely to marry a Jennifer. Also, there are an estimated 100 million sets of twins worldwide. Based on the documented stories of these mysterious twin connections, it would appear that more than 99 percent of sets of twins have not experienced these notable connections.

What do you think: twin telepathy — or just cotwincidence?