Edward Mordake was a bighearted English blue blood bear into wealth and privilege , but also with a terriblecurse , accord to an1895 paper articlepublished in the Boston Sunday Post . As reported by the Royal Scientific Society , Mordake stomach from the rare of congenital defect — a shrunken second face on the back of his head that smiled and sneered when Mordake wept and whispered " terrible temptations " into Mordake ’s ear .
The unseasoned man was so ashamed of his term that he isolated himself from family and supporter , and was so excruciate by his " devil twin , " as he called it , that he tragically took his own life at just 23 years old .
Or so the legend goes .
More than a century after the macabre fib of Edward Mordake was first published , it still captures the public ’s imagination . The musician Tom Waits wrote a song about him called " Poor Edward . " There was a full - length opera house address " Mordake . " And in 2014 , a character named Edward Mordrake ( with an superfluous " radius " ) look on two Halloween episodes of " American Horror Story : Freak Show , " where he played a murderer with a minatory second face .
More recently , aFacebook postfrom 2020 allegedly contain pic of Mordake ’s 2d face and even his preserved skull was share more than 260,000 times , prompting expressions of understanding for the tortured untested human being .
But while there isa very yet rare aesculapian conditionthat can result in infant born with two faces , Mordake himself was a work of fiction masquerade as fact .
Fish Women, Crab Men and Poor Old Mordake
Back in 1895 , paper like the Boston Sunday Post were the 19th - century reading of the National Enquirer . In fact , the later 1890s were the heyday of " yellow journalism , " in which newspaper publishers compete for proofreader with progressively hyperbolic headline and salacious stories .
The narration of Edward Mordake appeared under the newspaper headline " The Wonders of Modern Science " with the tantalizing tormentor " Some Half Human Monsters Once Thought to Be of the Devil ’s Brood . " Among the other " grounds " of human hybrids report by the Royal Scientific Society were :
If the side - show description were n’t colorful enough , the newspaper tarradiddle was accompanied by illustrations of these unfortunate characters , as well as one of " Mordake and His ' Devil Twin ' " in which the sombre young man sit at a table with his ( front ) brass buried in his hands and the hellish 2d boldness gaze back at the reader .
Credit for disclose the original 1895 newspaper clause goes to Alex Boese ofThe Museum of Hoaxes , who also line up that the " journalist " who compose it was an author of notional fiction . Charles Lotin Hildreth was a poet and novelist who wrote books like " The Mysterious City of OO : Adventures in Orbello Land " and the Edgar Allen Poe - inspired anthology " The Masque of Death and Other Poems . "
The Second Face Was a ‘Beautiful Girl’
Hildreth had a rich and non-white imagination , which he used to fabricate captivating details for his fictional newspaper publisher account of Edward Mordake .
For starters , he described Mordake as " a young man of fine skill , a profound assimilator , and a instrumentalist of rarefied ability . " Mordake was also strikingly handsome and graceful . " [ H]is face — that is to say , his natural aspect — was that of Antinous , " wrote Hildreth , referring to the Greek young beloved by the Emperor Hadrian .
Mordake ’s second face , interestingly , was female . Hildreth describes the " mask"-like aspect on the back of Mordake ’s head as " a beautiful girl , ' lovely as a dream , hideous as a devil . ' " This second face was n’t lifeless , but exhibited " every mansion of intelligence , of a malignant sort , however . "
If a visitor caught a glimpse of the 2d look , its eyes would take after them around the way as its mouth " would gibber without ceasing . " Its word were n’t audible to others , but Mordake try every last " mean whisper " of his devil twin .
" [ It ] never sleeps , but talks to me evermore of such matter as they only speak of in Hell , " Mordake allegedly say his physicians . " No imagination can conceptualise the dreadful temptation it sets before me . For some unforgiven loathsomeness of my forefather I am entwine to this devil — for a fiend it surely is . "
agree to Hildreth ’s news report , Mordake became so dire that he begged his physician to " crush " the second expression , even if it be Mordake his life . Ultimately , Mordake carry his fate into his own hands and drank poisonous substance . In a final letter , he ask to be buried in an unnoted secret plan and for the " demon side " to be destroyed " lest it continues its dreadful rustle in my tomb . "
After Hildreth’s Death, a Second Life for Mordake
Hidreth , the author , conk out in 1896 , a year after he penned the paper chronicle about Mordake and other " half human monsters . " But that same year , two American doctor release a Bible called " Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine , " which they claimed was " Derived from an Exhaustive Research of Medical Literature . "
Their first appearance on Edward Mordake , however , was " deduce " by imitate Hildreth ’s paper clause word for Holy Writ . The doctors did n’t name their germ , nor did they handle enough to look up the organization that Hildreth call as his , the Royal Scientific Society . If they had , they would have make that no such society ever existed .
As Alex Boese from The Museum of Hoaxespointed out on his website , the inclusion of Mordake ’s story in a aesculapian textbook belike gave it an undeserved air of credibility and plausibleness that still loaf today . ( The social media picture of his " mummified skull " is really apaper - mâchésculpture by artist Ewart Schindler , Reuters reported . )
Yes, Babies Have Been Born with Two Faces
One of the reasons the legend of Edward Mordake go believable is that there are real ( but extremely rare ) congenital defect that result in human babies being born with two fount .
One experimental condition is address craniofacial duplication or diprosopus ( Hellenic for " two - faced").According to the " Embryo task Encyclopedia"published by the Center for Biology and Society at Arizona State University , there have been fewer than 50 cases worldwide of infants born with diprosopus since 1864 , and most of them were abortive .
Unlike the fictional Mordake , babe bear with diprosopus have one trunk and two faces side by side on the front of the heading , not a smaller 2nd face on the back of the oral sex .
In 2008,a child lady friend in India was born with two distinct facesand was one of the rare case of diprosopus in which the baby seemed otherwise healthy . Born in a humble village outside of New Delhi , the female child was worshiped by some as a renascence of the Hindu goddess Durga , who is depicted with three middle and multiple sleeve . According tosome rootage , the little daughter decease at 2 months previous .
Some the great unwashed compare Mordake ’s fictional condition with an even rarer inborn defect call up craniopagus parasiticus , which occurs in an estimated six out of every 10 million births . Unlike diprosopus , in which only the face is duplicated , baby born with craniopagus parasiticus are marry with an full developing twin ( lack internal organs and limbs ) attach to their pass . In at least three font , surgeons have been able to remove the " leechlike " Twin Falls and save the other child ’s life .
Mordake could not have had craniopagus parasiticus , though , because it only happens with marry identical twins . And as Hildreth so " faithfully " reported , Mordake ’s vicious twin was a girl .
