The Odd Tale of Pauline Taylor and Her Non-Biological Twin

MY STRANGE DAY began when I was around 10 years old and pilfering through my parents’ things in their bedroom.

I came across a shoe box with old newspaper clippings featuring my mother and another woman who looked like her. I read the articles with their big headlines: What Are The Odds? Unbelievable! How Is This Possible?

To my amazement, my mother had what the articles called a non-biological twin. This was news to me as I had never heard my parents or my older sisters talking about it. But it was even more than that.

Basically, what I learned was:

When my mother was going to Southeastern High School in Detroit, Michigan, she repeatedly had school papers returned to her that belonged to another student. She complained to her teachers but they brushed it off as a high school student’s idea of a joke – a way not to accept responsibility for bad grades.

Then one day in the hallway, another student walked up to my mother and said:

“I believe this is yours.”

She handed my mother a paper that was indeed hers.

My mother was stunned – for a couple of reasons. Looking at the other student standing before her was like seeing her own reflection. Both girls were the same height, same weight, same freckled milky skin, matching brown eyes, and red hair worn in the style of the day of curls and finger waves. They even wore similar clothes.

The other student extended her hand and introduced herself:

“My name is Pauline.

“That’s my name, too,” my mother said.

“Pauline Taylor.”

“Yes, that’s my name as well.”

Now giglish, my mother reached into her notebook and pulled out a paper that belonged to the other Pauline Taylor.

“Looks like we’ve been getting each other’s test results,” my mother said.

“Yes,” the other said. “Isn’t that weird?”

It got weirder.

The two look-alike Pauline Taylors quickly became friends. And what they discovered about each other made headlines.

Not only did they have the same names and look alike, they were also born the same day at the same time. Their parents also had the same names as did their grandparents. Additionally they lived at the same address on different streets.

A local Detroit paper picked up the story, then The Associated Press. Soon the odd tale of Pauline Taylor and her non-biological twin was spread around the world. In other words, the story went viral long before viral was a thing.

At the time, the odds given for having a non-biological twin was one in 40 million. However, that doesn’t take into account actually meeting your non-biological twin or the other familial similarities. One statistician said there are no numbers high enough to give the odds of something like this happening.

The Pauline Taylors became famous. They appeared in a Ripley’s Believe or Not! article and also made a guest appearance on the Ripley’s Believe it or Not! radio program in New York City. Advertisers also got onboard hiring the non-biological twins to dance at trade shows and hawk popular products such as Classic White Wonder Bread.

They even received a screen test by legendary film director Cecil B. DeMille.

Of course it was a relatively short-lived fame. The public soon grew tired of this synchronicity and focused attention on new oddities such as two-headed cows, cats with glowing teeth and the extraterrestrials of Roswell, New Mexico.

It also didn’t help that both Pauline Taylors got married a few months apart shortly after high school. As their last names changed, so did the public’s curiously about them.

My mother and her non-biological twin remained friends for several years then went on with their separate lives, which tuned out to be rather ordinary, and, in the case of my mother –often difficult.

Her first husband was an alcoholic artist who put a shotgun to her head. The second husband, my father, Earl Ropp, was a World War II hero who died during the great Battle of the Bulge, but didn’t know it. His body went on to live another 40 years while his mind and soul were tormented from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an illness that received little recognition during his lifetime.

Can Non-Ordinary Experiences Be Inherited?

Given my own non-ordinary experiences throughout my life, the big question churned up by my mother’s odds defying encounter is this: Are synchronicities and even brushes with the paranormal inherited?

Synchronicity is a word coined by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung to describe temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events. Jung, a believer in the paranormal, felt that the principle of synchronicity compassed his concept of the collective unconscious – but possibly additionally collective among family members?

While it has long been known that psychic tendencies run in families (often skipping a generation), there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that experiencing odds defying synchronicities is passed on genetically.

That said, being highly sensitive is a trait passed on from generation to generation. In fact, a Denmark study found an association between sensitivity and the short allele of the serotonin transporter gene. Allele is another word for a gene’s variations – something like the variation of left and right handedness.

Another study examined all the genes with alleles that affect the dopamine system. Dopamine is the other major neurotransmitter besides serotonin. Researchers found a surprisingly large number of dopamine alleles associated with the trait of being a highly sensitive person. In all, a set of 10 genes predicted a medium to high chance of being highly sensitive. Other genetic studies of other personality traits have not found anything close to that, which suggests sensitivity comes much closer to being a trait that is actually inherited.

And although there are no studies showing synchronicities running along family lines, “sensitives” which do have a familiar connection are often more intuitive and tend to experience many more “coincidences” than non-sensitives.

While I have never had a synchronicity on the scale of my mother’s, I have had my share as well as encounters with ghosts and UFOs – including a possible alien abduction in a Costa Rican rainforest. Both of my sisters, who have studied astrology, have also seen ghosts.

But it’s also pretty clear that your mother doesn’t have to be featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in order to be sensitive and experience synchronicities and/or the paranormal.

It’s believed by many that synchronicities happen to people who are mindful and notice things. Also, by simply treating the topic with respect and thinking about it, can also help connect with wild coincidence. This happened with me when I was writing a column for the Arizona Republic called Offramp, which recalled reader experiences with synchronicities. The more I thought about the topic, the more synchronicities occurred in my own life.

For example, I might be at my cubicle writing a story when a co-worker would interrupt me and I would stop writing after the word Indiana. The co-worker might then start talking to me about Indiana.

This synchronistic energy also spilled out beyond my cubicle where other reporters were also experiencing odd coincidences. I wrote the column for three years. When I stopped writing it and stopped thinking about synchronicities every day, the synchronicities also stopped – for me and those sitting near me.

Why do synchronicities happen and what good are they? Many people who write about metaphysics believe a synchronicity is something positive – that it’s a sign you’re on the right path – and that it’s more important to concentrate on the meaning of the synchronicity rather than the probabilities of it occurring.

Others feel synchronicities are messages from sub-atomic beings like angels and the like, especially when the synchronicity involves numbers such as the 11:11 synchronicity (which I have also experienced).

While there are a lot of ideas out there, I suspect no one has the answer. For me, the most curious thing is how synchronicities come to those who just “think about” the topic and treat the topic with respect. It’s a little like people who take their dreams seriously and even keep journals by their beds so they can write down their dreams when they wake before they forget them. People who keep dream journals report that the more attention they give their dreams, the more vivid they become in both detail and meaning.

Becoming “attached” to your dream cycle can also help solve problems. Much has been written on this topic, including a recent book by psychiatrist Dr. Judith Orloff, author of Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself from Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life, where she talks about dreams guiding you in everything from personal issues to career paths or problems at work.

Some of the most notable incidents of dream weaving include:

• The song “Yesterday” came to Paul McCartney in a dream
• Producer Gene Roddenberry first “saw” the idea for “Star Trek” in a dream
• The sewing machine was invented in a dream
• John Lennon’s “#9 Dream”
• Stephen King’s “Dreamcatcher”
• The poetry of Edgar Allen Poe

When I was a teenager I also kept a dream journal. At this stage of my life I was more interested in inventing things than girls (that changed rather dramatically later on). I used to combine my love of baseball with the building of model baseball stadiums. At one point I was trying to design a baseball game that relied on an automatic pitcher. But no matter how much I thought about it I couldn’t get the pitching mechanism correct.

I read about techniques used to help solve problems with dreaming. So before going to sleep I visualized the pitcher issue and politely asked for guidance on resolving this design conundrum. Sure enough, a couple dreams later, there it was. Very clearly I dreamed of a launch mechanism that had never occurred to me before. Applying the idea to my baseball game, it worked perfectly.

Like dreaming, synchronicities might also be useful if cultivated. A mathematician named David Hand has even written a book The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day, in which he details how to boost your synchronicities. Some of the strategies he suggests, include:

• Paying attention because synchronicities happen to people who are mindful and notice things
• Don’t be afraid to talk to people you don’t know
• Seek meaning regardless of how big or small the synchronicity (thinking of someone then they call, thinking of a song then there it is on the radio, meaningful numbers on a license plate, etc.)
• Keep a log (like dreaming) of the synchronicities that happen to you

Above all, always keep in mind that just because we can’t see what the cat sees, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

A Life Hidden in a Shoe Box

My mother died in 1994. She never talked about her Ripley’s Believe It or Not! fame with me or my sisters. Perhaps there was a reason she kept that chapter of her life hidden in a shoe box.

However, in the 1970s she did enroll in a Silva Mind Control course, which focused on awakening the hidden power of your mind. She used her training to undergo dental surgery without anesthesia – just to see if she could.

She could.

My mother was not the most communicative person. I would like to have known what she was thinking in the time before she met the other Pauline Taylor. Was she lonely? In need of a friend? Did she wish – real hard – for someone just like her?

We’ll never know …