The mystery of the Eller twins at Broughton Hospital

In April of 1962, amid the quiet corridors of Broughton Hospital in Morganton, two identical sisters — Betty Jo and Bobbie Jean Eller, age 31 — died within minutes of each other in separate wards.

There were no signs of violence, no evidence of poisoning, and no medical explanation ever found. To this day, their story remains one of the strangest and most poignant mysteries ever to emerge from Burke County.

Born as Three, Lived as Two

The Eller sisters were born in the mountain community of Purlear, near North Wilkesboro, to the Rev. and Mrs. A.W. Eller. They were triplets, though their brother died shortly after birth.

What remained were two girls so alike that even family and friends struggled to tell them apart. Their resemblance, according to contemporary accounts, ran deeper than appearance — it seemed to reach into their very minds.

Neighbors told reporters that the twins “had the same thoughts, the same feelings, and the same illnesses.” When one had a toothache, the other soon complained of pain in the exact same tooth.

They dressed alike, sang together in the church choir, and were rarely apart. A friend recalled, “They were uncanny in their likeness.”

Shadows on the Mind

By their late twenties, the sisters’ lives had grown quieter and increasingly inward. Both developed mental health issues — diagnosed at the time as schizophrenia, a condition then poorly understood and often treated with heavy medication and isolation.

They were first admitted to Broughton State Hospital in 1961, released for periods of apparent recovery, and finally re-admitted on April 1, 1962.

Dr. John C. Reece, the Burke County coroner and pathologist at Grace Hospital, would later note that both were petite — around five feet tall, just over a hundred pounds — and “very neat in appearance.”

Hospital staff, recognizing how dependent the sisters were on one another, kept them together at first. But after observing that one appeared to “dominate” the other, doctors made the fateful decision to separate them into different wards on April 11. They begged not to be parted.

‘A Wish Not to Live’

Shortly after midnight, at 12:55 a.m. on April 12, a night attendant found Bobbie Jean Eller dead in her bed. There were no wounds, no signs of struggle. The attendant rushed to the other ward. There, Betty Jo Eller was also dead. Both had passed within an hour — possibly even at the same instant.

Dr. Reece found “no demonstrable anatomical cause of death.” Blood and tissue samples were sent to the State Bureau of Investigation and later to the FBI for toxicology, but the tests found nothing. The sisters had been on standard medications, with no evidence of overdose.

In the days that followed, Dr. Reece told reporters, “There are more cases than people realize when an exact cause of death cannot be determined … The psychiatrists tell me that some psychotics, especially schizophrenics, have a will not to live.”

The press seized on his words. Headlines from the Winston-Salem Journal to the Sunday News asked the question that has echoed for more than 60 years: “Did the twins will themselves to die?”

Morganton’s Mystery

The Eller twins’ story made national news. Morganton, long familiar with the solemn presence of Broughton Hospital, found itself at the center of an almost metaphysical puzzle — one that seemed to bridge science, faith, and the unexplainable.

They were buried side by side in the Arbor Grove Methodist Church Cemetery, near their family home in Purlear. Their death certificates listed only an “ill-defined and unknown cause.”

Even now, their case sits at the edge of medical possibility and spiritual wonder. Was it coincidence? Psychosomatic connection? Or an act of will so profound that one could not continue without the other?

A Quiet Echo

Broughton Hospital, established in 1883, has long carried its share of legends — some tragic, some misunderstood. But among all its stories, the Ellers’ remains singular. It is not a ghost tale or a horror story, but something more delicate and deeply human: a study in the unbreakable bond between two souls who may have shared not just a lifetime, but a single heartbeat.

When the news broke that spring, their father — the Rev. A.W. Eller — preached their funeral from the Book of Ruth: “Whither thou goest, I will go … the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.”

For Betty Jo and Bobbie Jean Eller, perhaps even death could not.