The Strange Tale of Edward Mordrake
He was first mentioned in the December 8, 1895 edition of the Boston Sunday Post, in a report from the Royal Scientific Society. Mordrake (also spelled Mordake) was an Englishman who lived in seclusion due to his odd…affliction. His story is also detailed in 1896’s Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, authored by American ophthalmologists George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle.
The Post described Mordrake as possessing “rare musical abilities” and being exceptionally handsome. His countenance was said to be similar to that of Antinous, lover of Roman Emperor Hadrian. Despite these attributes, Mordrake was miserable, and that was due to the sinister second face he had on the back of his neck.
The face, which appeared to be that of a young woman, was said to be “lovely as a dream, hideous as a devil.” Though it could not eat or speak, Mordrake claimed that his “devil twin” tormented him and kept him up at night by whispering terrible things that “they only speak of in hell,” and that the face would smile and sneer as he wept for release. He was the only one who could hear the face’s words, though others could see its lips constantly moving.
This incessant torture eventually drove Mordrake to take his own life at the age of 23, though the method is disputed. Some accounts say poison, while others claim he met his end by gun. Both versions claim that he left behind a note, begging for the face to be destroyed, “lest it continues its dreadful whispering in my grave.”
Though Edward Mordrake’s story is fascinating, it’s also 100% a hoax. The author of the Post article is Charles Lotin Hildreth, a poet and science fiction writer, and Mordrake is a product of his very active imagination. The piece was also published at a time when yellow journalism was rampant, and standards were even more lax. Gould and Pyle then directly copied the article and included it in Anomalies and Curiosities. There was also no “Royal Scientific Society” in the 19th century, and there is no record that Mordrake’s alleged doctors, Manvers and Treadwell ever existed.
Still, the legend endures, and continues to capture the attention of macabre enthusiasts. A viral image purported to be of Mordrake’s mummified head began to circulate in 2018, though it was actually a papier-mâche model created by artist Ewart Schindler. A wax figure which is supposedly a photo of Mordrake has been shared hundreds of thousands of times, and is the most famous. Fans of FX’s American Horror Story will remember Mordrake from Freak Show, its fourth season. The series aired in 2014, with Wes Bentley taking on the role.
While the story itself is false, there are pockets of truth, and genuine medical conditions with similar physical symptoms do exist. One is craniofacial duplication (or diprosopus), in which abnormal protein expression can cause facial features to be duplicated. Another is craniopagus parasiticus, which is an extremely rare type of parasitic twinning, and occurs in 2 to 3 out of every 5 million births.
This condition causes a parasitic twin head and undeveloped body to attach to the head of the developed twin. Fewer than a dozen cases have ever been documented.
It should be noted that both conditions are usually fatal, and those with them rarely live past infancy.
