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Suicidal Swedish Super-Strength Sisters (Eriksson Twins)

skinny said:
Your point is well made, Mythopoeika. Put me in mind of a certain High-Warden of the White Tower:
patriotgames3.jpg

This is terribly off-topic, so by all means put me before a firing squad at dawn. But I genuinely thought that was a photo of David Bowie before I 'got' the reference and realised it was actually Sean Bean. Have they ever been seen in the same room together, I wonder...?
 
The BBC has a follow up documentary to the whole case scheduled for some time in June I believe and have managed to persuade the Irish family the sisters were briefly part of to talk.
 
Kellydandodi said:
The BBC has a follow up documentary to the whole case scheduled for some time in June I believe and have managed to persuade the Irish family the sisters were briefly part of to talk.

That'll be interesting if it happens. IMO the weirdest thing by far about this is the fact the sisters were hit by traffic multiple times and didn't just survive, were relatively unscathed. As the blog points out, the human body hit at speed by a large lorry should simply be turned to mush. Survival rates would be zero. And even being hit by a family car at speeds over about 40 would usually result in fatality or very serious, disabling injury. How these women managed to be knocked down and then just get up again is almost impossible to explain.
 
What's the betting that the UK government sprang Sabina from prison early and handed her over to the secret services? She is probably being studied in a lab right now.

Me, just speculating (again). :)
 
Mythopoeika said:
What's the betting that the UK government sprang Sabina from prison early and handed her over to the secret services? She is probably being studied in a lab right now.

Me, just speculating (again). :)

Shes probably good at putting people in bags ...
 
This was written one night a few weeks back while suffering from insomnia; I tend to get like a dog with a bone when this happens - apologies if it reads like it was written by one.

AngelAlice said:
Vid on Youtube. Apparently after stabbing the guy the twin jumped off a motorway bridge into traffic - and was unhurt...

This isn't right. On jumping from the bridge Sabina Eriksson sustained broken ankles and skull fractures (here and here, etc) - pretty much what you might expect with a fall from height. She was arrested in hospital on June 6th, and charged with murder on September 11th, the day she left hospital. She was still in a wheelchair when she appeared in court again in late September (here). So, far from being unhurt, she was hospitalised for over sixteen weeks, and was still using a wheelchair after that period: sixteen weeks doesn't sound indicative of minor injuries (relatively or otherwise) to me. You could argue that she was lucky to have escaped even more serious injury, but then you could probably argue this in any case where someone recovers from a violent incident.

This was undeniably an incredible series of events - however, on many of the blogs, websites and discussion boards that cover the subject, there's a growing orthodoxy, which seems in many cases to have become a 'truth' via repetition, that neither twin was seriously injured - which is simply inaccurate - or was somehow not injured enough. This latter is a slippery one, because in any scenario where the potential for death is so strong, then any outcome other than mortal injury could be interpreted as 'relatively' uninjured, however serious the actual injuries are; it's a self-serving argument which relies on the proposer arbitrarily fixing a floating datum themselves and then continuing as if it represented a self-evident truth - and it's very common in subjects like this.

For example: with regard to this story you will find many people claiming - as has happened on this thread - that being run over by an articulated lorry will without question result in only one outcome (i.e. death) and that therefore any other result is unquestionably suspect. Sounds reasonable at first - and I certainly wouldn't recommend tangling with an artic - however, it's not true:

Bromley cyclist’s leg crushed by lorry in hit-and-run.

Lorry 'ran over driver's legs'.

Pensioner gets trapped under truck.

Motorcyclist run over by semi.

Teenage cyclist run over by lorry says thank-you to his rescuer.

Cyclist run over by semi-trailer, survives.

The conclusion therefore has to be that either it is possible for a person to get run over by an articulated lorry and survive (sometiems 'relatively' uninjured), or that there are a lot more graphene boned super-soldiers than we think - including at least one Scottish pensioner. (I should point out that I've deliberately chosen stories where the victim has actually gone under the vehicle.)

There are inevitably going to be many variables in the circumstances of each individual incident, and I have no doubt that someone is going to counter the examples provided by claiming that this incident was somehow more serious than them - however, on the information provided no-one can possibly know this.

And I think this leads to another problem with the whole story: I suspect that the undeniable drama of the footage, and the constant repetition of the same two segments makes us believe we have seen a lot more than we actually have, and are better informed than we actually are - this goes for the earlier, much less clear footage of them running into traffic before the main incident.

For instance, the footage of Ursula Anderson running into the lorry makes it pretty obvious what is happening, but we don't actually see much of it. She obviously runs into the side of the trailer (which I suspect is an important factor) and is then carried along the road for something like one and a half times the length of the unit. However, we don't know if she's actually been dragged between the wheels or if she's been caught up on the landing gear or in the ramp racking (the latter scenarios might be what saved her life, as might have the reactions of the driver, which were very quick - possibly a case where rubbernecking saved someone's life).

Regarding the earlier incident, what we actually see is one of the women hit the side of a moving vehicle and the other walk across the road apparently oblivious to the traffic, but untouched by it. I related once on the FTMB how I was shoved (accidentally) into the side of a fast moving vehicle and came away nothing but pretty angry - I've also been standing next to a guy who absent-mindedly stepped onto the road and directly into the side of a fast moving sprinter van (okay, it was in Italy - I don't think they have a translation for road-safety) the end result being a comically dazed expression and one of the loudest bangs I've ever heard. So, I'm quite impressed, but not that much.

Ursula Eriksson, the twin who tangled with the lorry, was reportedly taken to hospital in a critical condition (e.g. here at 15:07 - this is actually mentioned in several other sources, although you wouldn't guess that from reading much of the internet chatter on the subject) with severe leg injuries, (leg injuries seem to be a fairly consistent factor in the incidents mentioned above) but it's difficult to find precise details and the amount of time she was hospitalised. There appears to have been a lot less media interest in Ursula - very likely because she was not involved in the later incident; this English language Swedish news site suggests she was hospitalised in the UK for seven weeks - I am pretty sure that I've read that she was then transferred to a hospital overseas - possibly in Sweden - but cannot now find a source for this.

There's absolutely no denying that Sabina Eriksson was extremely lucky indeed in the motorway incident. However, she was what I believe some emergency service workers (according to my lodger who is a paramedic and has seen the footage) call a 'bouncer' - that is, she hit the windscreen of the car and was thrown forward. Bouncers are often killed by being knocked into the path of other cars, or static objects, or by being run over by the car they bounced off, if it does not stop in time. However, if none of these things occur then it's not unheard of for a bouncer to get up and walk away. If they are lucky. And therein lies the rub - Is luck in this instance evidence of superhuman abilities or sinister government programs, or is it a consequence of the fickle nature of circumstance and the contradictory mix of fragility and resilience which is the human body (combined, in this case with a violent paranoia, an apparently psychotic determination, and, one presumes, huge doses of adrenalin)?

To my mind what we have here is a very strange and interesting story, which is fascinating in its own right and as it stands - I can't help thinking that the addition of sometimes utterly ridiculous conjecture only really serves to obscure that fact: it's like finding a Siberian tiger in your garden and saying - no man, that's too weird, it must be a unicorn in a skin.

(As to the press not being informed of Sabina Eriksson's release, well - and I'll stand correcting - I'm pretty sure there is no onus on the prison authorities to inform the press of the release dates of particular individuals - in fact I strongly suspect it's actively discouraged, especially if the original crime was the subject of a high level of media attention.

And as to her looking a bit masculine - Well...please?)
 
The thing about these women is not they weren't injured, but they ought to have been a lot more injured than they were.

Yes, people survive impacts with cars, as you say, but it's all about speed. In the other instances you quote the vehicles were all either approaching junctions, stopped at junctions, turning corners or driving through urban streets that probably have a low speed limit. Remember - A person hit by a vehicle going about 20mph has about a 40% chance of survival . A person hit at 40mph has about 1% chance of survival. Both Ursula and Sabina survived impacts with vehicles in the fast lane of a motorway, that must have been traveling 40+ mph. Sabina had no injuries at all, and Ursula had no injuries from the impact, but was crushed by the wheels running over her. And even after this happened she was still struggling to get up! That is almost impossible.

And, nooo - broken ankles and a cracked skull is not 'pretty much what you'd expect' from jumping off a forty foot bridge. I'd 'expect' critical injury or death. (Actually I'm not sure if it was the jump that cracked her skull or the mallet she'd been smashing over her head just before she leaped :shock: )

I'm not suggesting they're made of adamantine or something - just trying to put the weirdness of what happened in true perspective.
 
AngelAlice said:
In the other instances you quote the vehicles were all either approaching junctions, stopped at junctions, turning corners or driving through urban streets that probably have a low speed limit.

As I pointed out, these example are about people going under the wheels of a vehicle, I suspect in most cases from the side - which seems to reflect most closely what happened in Ursula Eriksson's case: she hit the side of the vehicle and was therefore not subject to the full potential of it's forward trajectory. To my mind, in these instances, it's not so much the speed of the vehicle as what happened under the unit that is the crucial factor. Also, I doubt very much that the articulated lorry which Ursula Eriksson hit would have managed to stop in such a short space of time if it had been travelling at the maximum speed limit.

And, nooo - broken ankles and a cracked skull is not 'pretty much what you'd expect' from jumping off a forty foot bridge. I'd 'expect' critical injury or death. (Actually I'm not sure if it was the jump that cracked her skull or the mallet she'd been smashing over her head just before she leaped :shock: )...

I was a climber for twenty years (as a pastime, not professional) - I also regularly work at height (which is really a different discipline), I trained in Mountaincraft and Leadership and exercised with Mountain Rescue, and I've been at the site of serious falls - and although there's no argument that critical injury and death certainly are within the spectrum of injuries you might expect (even for lesser falls), so are broken ankles and cracked skulls (I didn't intend to suggest that they were necessarily all you'd find).* There's a whole load of things that could happen to your body as the result of a fall - but you really don't have to suffer from all of them. It's also worth pointing out that some sources put the bridge at 30 foot. (Also, isn't maybe 16 weeks in hospital for broken ankles and skull fractures a little long - might it not suggest other injuries not mentioned in the press reports? That's a genuine question, by the way, I'm not being rhetorical.)

Having said all that, it's largely a distraction, because...

I'm not suggesting they're made of adamantine or something - just trying to put the weirdness of what happened in true perspective.

...this I have no problem with at all, and I wonder if you're misunderstanding my motives. It was, as I suggested, a truly bizarre and exceptional series of events and that's really what drives me to address those who wish to imply outside forces being at work. In a way I feel many people who see conspiracy in an event like this are actually trying to domesticate the inherent weirdness of the subject by applying it to a framework which they can more easily understand and believe in; in this way they're really being more sceptical than those people they very probably call sceptics.

I'm not for one moment trying to suggest this was not an extraordinary series of events - it certainly belongs in the Fortean canon. What I do believe is that automatically assuming a conspiracy because of its strangeness (which is what has happened across vast swathes of internetland - I'm not specifically addressing this particular thread) is really doing that very strangeness a disservice. As I suggested, I'm more than happy to marvel at a Siberian tiger - it just irritates me that some people seem to feel an irresistable need to turn it into something else, as if extraordinary is just not extraordinary enough.


*Edit. On a slight tangent, my grandfather was knocked off a crane he was maintaining while working for ICI in the late 60's. He fell 70 feet, :shock: but was lucky enough to hit the roof of a prefabricated building, which broke his fall. The building was constructed from asbestos sheet, and collapsed around him. He always joked that what saved his life might end up killing him, but he died only quite recently, four months shy of his 100th birthday.
 
Hi -a very rare post from me, but I lurk lots!
I watched the documentary and it's very interesting. I watched the clip of the sister (Sabina?) being hit by the HGV and if you look closely, you'll see she's not actually hit by the lorry, but somehow manages to get behind and under the cab and trailer -meaning that she was apparently knocked off her feet, but did not have the lorry hit her a 70mph, nor did she go under the wheels.

I'd put it down to (almost) unbelievable luck that she was not more seriously injured rather than anything superhuman. Especially as we know that she was not immune to being bashed over the head with mallet or jumping off an overpass.

Incredible story though.
 
wendytorrance said:
...I watched the documentary and it's very interesting. I watched the clip of the sister (Sabina?) being hit by the HGV ...

It was actually Ursula who hit the HGV - she appears to hit the side of the vehicle, after that point it's hard to tell precisely what happened. You're right though - she wasn't hit head on.

..I'd put it down to (almost) unbelievable luck that she was not more seriously injured rather than anything superhuman....

I'd agree that (almost) unbelievable luck played a part, but...

Especially as we know that she was not immune to being bashed over the head with mallet or jumping off an overpass.

... this was Sabina.

...Incredible story though.

Absolutely no denying that.
 
Spookdaddy said:
However, she was what I believe some emergency service workers (according to my lodger who is a paramedic and has seen the footage) call a 'bouncer' - that is, she hit the windscreen of the car and was thrown forward. Bouncers are often killed by being knocked into the path of other cars, or static objects, or by being run over by the car they bounced off, if it does not stop in time. However, if none of these things occur then it's not unheard of for a bouncer to get up and walk away.

Amusingly enough (for a given value of amusing), within a day of reading this post I was hit by a car in exactly the manner described and did indeed bounce. Off the car anyway. I kind of splatted when I hit the road. :D
But to back up Spook's point, dispite being hit at about 40mph by some twat who didnt even stop, may their genitals rot and drop off, I walked away with two stitches and some bruising. I've injured myself worse slipping over in the kitchen.
 
I guess you must be Swedish. :)
 
Spookdaddy said:
It was actually Ursula who hit the HGV - she appears to hit the side of the vehicle, after that point it's hard to tell precisely what happened. You're right though - she wasn't hit head on.
Yes. It was obvious her legs went under the wheels of the trailer, as the cops on scene kept referring to her leg injuries as (here I paraphrase) horrific. Given that the driver of the truck had his brakes on full lock when it happened, her legs likely could have been dragged across the tarmac rather than being rolled over on only. That would have been bad enough but there would very likely have been multiple breaks and bone outside of skin and massive lacerations. No physical way she could stand let alone walk. Ursula's insanity after her impact was confined to attempting to stand up and 'escape' from her tormentors (who she perceived the cops to be) and yelling "help". This incapacitated her against further folly, while Sabina continued on with her bizarre behaviour on the road and then on and off for another two days afterwards. One wonders what Ursula would have tried to do if her legs weren't so shattered.

All I've found on Ursula was that she was treated at hospital after the incident (for how long I don't know) and eventually ended up in the USA. I'm still curious about the lack of info available on either of them. This kind of thing is usually hot in the media.

I wonder if one of our UK based members could tickle the Guardian or the Times about whether there was any follow-up... Guess I could do that from here as easily. Might be bothered.
 
skinny said:
I wonder if one of our UK based members could tickle the Guardian or the Times about whether there was any follow-up... Guess I could do that from here as easily. Might be bothered.

Please do! This is still a very hot topic, and I think we all want to know more.
 
There was meant to have been a BBC "follow up" doc in the offing - may be Autumn before it is broadcast methinks!
 
A book released a few months ago claims Sabina may not have been alone in the Holinshead murder. Seems pretty far-fetched, but there are plenty of truly bizarre elements to this case, why not?
link
And here a link to a video 'review' of the book in question. It is Hollinshead's brother, apparently. He's claiming police are covering up the facts, and the family is apparently demanding an independent investigation.

Anyway, the intrigue deepens. There's still no information as to where Sabina went after her early release from prison a couple of years ago. She's vanished.
 
Absolutely fascinating doc... but felt it should have explained more about what led up to this behaviour...



...were "concerns over their children" even mentioned in the doc? Do we know more about this? (and surely it's only one sister who had concerns - the one living in Ireland?)
A very good question. Still no trace online of anything on either two. I found a doco interviewing an author of a book on the event who seems a bit dodgy himself, but the conversation is intriguing too. It raises such questions and they both seem very convinced this is a police / Scotland Yard cover up, but for what reason they do not know.
[MEDIA=dead link
 
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As someone who knew the barest of details about this story, that's a fascinating doc. The guy's a bit of a geezer but seems to have done his research. Very curious.
 
I once saw a kid run into the path of a car, get knock over six feet in the air in a somersault, land on his head with a sound like a shattering vase then get back up again. The car driver insisted on taking him to hospital but the boy was more interested in going to a youth club. He only started to cry at the idea he would miss the youth club.
Also insanity can give you immense strength.
 
I once saw a kid run into the path of a car, get knock over six feet in the air in a somersault, land on his head with a sound like a shattering vase then get back up again. The car driver insisted on taking him to hospital but the boy was more interested in going to a youth club. He only started to cry at the idea he would miss the youth club.
Also insanity can give you immense strength.
Tough kid.
 
I watched a large lady trying to dodge the traffic near the train station in Preston get hit by a car try to get through a light before it turned red. Even though she was large, she was tossed in the air several feet, doing a full somersault before landing flat on her face. Everyone was convinced she was dead and to be honest I was in a bit of shock. The day's Lancashire Evening Post reported that her injuries were not life threatening.
 
I watched a large lady trying to dodge the traffic near the train station in Preston get hit by a car try to get through a light before it turned red. Even though she was large, she was tossed in the air several feet, doing a full somersault before landing flat on her face. Everyone was convinced she was dead and to be honest I was in a bit of shock. The day's Lancashire Evening Post reported that her injuries were not life threatening.
Large fat deposits can be useful in situations like that.
 
I really wanted to say that she landed on her feet and carried on on her merry way, but i would be lying.
 
So - has anyone found out what happened to the sisters after they were repaired / released?
From memory, one of them died not long after. It's probably recorded in this thread somewhere, but I'm not interested enough to look.
 
From memory, one of them died not long after. It's probably recorded in this thread somewhere, but I'm not interested enough to look.
I did reread most of the thread before asking, and there was no information other than they were maybe in the US. It is a bit odd, you'd have thought they would be news just through the circumstance of being caught up in the original documentary. Not to mention the murder .
 
Large fat deposits can be useful in situations like that.

A friend of mine was stabbed in the stomach during an armed robbery, being a larger lady saved her life as the knife cut into her tummy fat and didnt get to any internal organs. It's just another reason why I like to keep a good layer of blubber on my bones.

Anyhoo, there's a few bits I didn't know about the twins on their Wiki, wish I could find more.
Link to their wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_and_Sabina_Eriksson
 
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