Bermuda Shorts

This is an interesting story that I heard for the very first time just today when it featured on Quiz Show.

It is apparently quite a well known tale about a very strange and hard to believe coincidental tragedy.

In Bermuda, in the Caribbean in 1975 it was reported that a 17 year old boy was killed while riding his moped.

That is tragic enough as an event but it was further reported that he was killed exactly a year after his 17 year old twin brother was killed while riding the same moped, on the same street, by the same taxi, with the same driver, carrying the same passenger.

I am well aware that this type of tale spreads daily like wildfire through the internet and social media channels as well as gaining credibility from what are supposed to be respected news agencies and broadcasters.

I tend to work on the maxim that if it seems too good to be true then it probably is not.

We are all guilty of unquestioning acceptance, whether through idle gossip, hearsay or taking on board rumour and speculation without corroborating its source or legitimacy.

An essential starting point is to establish where any story came from.

This specific freakish series of events can be traced to  "Phenomena: A Book of Wonders" published in 1977 by Michell and Rickard.

I am not familiar with this particular publication although the title does appear to play on sensationalism and mysticism.

Perhaps a more credible reference was from the mass circulation Reader’s Digest which had featured a story about road deaths including the subject of my investigation  entitled ‘What Are The Odds?’

Their own source was stated as the July 21, 1975 issue of The Royal Gazette newspaper, a reputable Bermuda publication whose front page of that day's edition carried the headline ‘Incredible coincidence in road crash deaths’.

The following account was provided beneath.

"Erskine Ebbin and his brother Neville of Hamilton, Bermuda were killed almost exactly a year apart after being involved in collision with the same taxi, driven by the same driver and carrying the same passenger.Both victims were 17, and both were riding the same moped on the same road. Erskine was killed on the night of July 18, 1975, near the Packwood Home in Sandys; Neville died on July 30, 1974, on the nearby stretch of Middle Road known as Hog Bay Level. Both were reported to have collided with a taxi driven by Willard Manders. According to their father, John Henry Ebbin of Woodlawn Road, Sandys, even the passenger in the taxi was the same in both instances"

It appears that as soon as this type of fantastic story gets into circulation it is picked up and regurgitated by many other parties and this enables it to reach a larger audience, thereby enhancing and perpetuating public fascination and interest.

The 2004 Ripleys Believe it or not! book which is an ever -popular Christmas stocking filler mentioned this story termed as "The coincidental twin tragedy".

The actual accounts across each of these sources did vary and cause some of the facts to be queried.

For example, and perhaps most obviously how could it be that the two brothers, if twins, could both be of 17 years when they died about one year apart.

There was some doubt over whether the Brothers, Neville and Erskine L. Ebbin were twins.

That type of inquisitiveness and interrogation is encouraging.

Taking a strictly logical and clinical look at the story throws up a few issues that individually or together makes the tragedy inevitable rather than a coincidence.

Bermuda  has a limited land mass, around 53 square kilometres.

The capital Hamilton is spread over a small area of just 0.7 square kilometres.

The population in 1974 numbered only in the upper hundreds reflecting its status as one of the smallest capitals in the world.

By definition the number of taxi cabs operating in the area and the people who used them would be even smaller.

It would not too far fetched to suppose that two brothers, if not twins, lived in the same area and that one inherited the moped of his brother.

So the probability that the two brothers would get hit by the same cab, with the same driver, carrying the same passenger, in the same street would not be that small.

It appears that I have convinced myself that it is a fact and not a hoax.....or am I responsible for just perpetuating the whole story?