​Watching 2011’s American Horror Story: Freak Show the other evening, my attention was drawn to the peculiar character of Edward Mordake, played by Wes Bentley.

​Edward Mordake or Mordrake* was said to have been born sometime in the latter half of the 19th century, the heir to a wealthy English peerage with a life of ease and/or adventure in front of him. However, he was afflicted with a ‘devilish’ female face at the back of his head, which would whisper, simper, giggle or weep, contrary to Mordake’s own prevailing moods. Mordake pleaded with physicians to remove the face, claiming it whispered bad things to him at night. Mordake died by suicide at the age of 23. Can’t really blame him, to be absolutely honest.

* Mordrake is pop culture spelling

Illustrazione di Edward Mordake sul Boston Sunday Post, 1889

​George Gould and Walter Pyle wrote about Mordake in their 1896 book Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine. Contained within is the story of Edward Mordake, supposedly taken from lay sources:

“One of the weirdest as well as most melancholy stories of human deformity is that of Edward Mordake, said to have been heir to one of the noblest peerages in England. He never claimed the title, however, and committed suicide in his twenty-third year. He lived in complete seclusion, refusing the visits even of the members of his own family. He was a young man of fine attainments, a profound scholar, and a musician of rare ability. His figure was remarkable for its grace, and his face—that is to say, his natural face—was that of an Antinous (the lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian).

But upon the back of his head was another face, that of a beautiful girl, ‘lovely as a dream, hideous as a devil.’ The female face was a mere mask, ‘occupying only a small portion of the posterior part of the skull, yet exhibiting every sign of intelligence, of a malignant sort, however.’ It would be seen to smile and sneer while Mordake was weeping. The eyes would follow the movements of the spectator, and the lips would ‘gibber without ceasing.’ No voice was audible, but Mordake avers that he was kept from his rest at night by the hateful whispers of his ‘devil twin,’ as he called it, ‘which never sleeps, but talks to me forever of such things as they only speak of in hell. No imagination can conceive the dreadful temptations it sets before me. For some unforgiven wickedness of my forefathers I am knit to this fiend—for a fiend it surely is. I beg and beseech you to crush it out of human semblance, even if I die for it.’

Such were the words of the hapless Mordake to Manvers and Treadwell, his physicians. In spite of careful watching he managed to procure poison, whereof he died, leaving a letter requesting that the ‘demon face’ might be destroyed before his burial, ‘lest it continues its dreadful whisperings in my grave.’ At his own request he was interred in a waste place, without stone or legend to mark his grave.”

​However, the story of Mordake actually first appeared in an 1895 article by fiction writer Charles Lotin Hildreth, which was published in the Boston Sunday Post. Hildreth created references to a non-existent ‘Royal Scientific Society’ to make his fictional horror story appear real.​ Gould and Pyle were either in on the hoax, or were suckered by Hildreth, who didn't live to see the success of his creation. He died in August 1896, at the age of 39, just before the publication of Gould and Pyle's Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine.

Many were introduced to the story of Mordake by an old photograph that circulated online for many years. It's in reality a photo of a wax replica created by an artist to demonstrate what Mordake could have looked like.

​Besides American Horror Story: Freak Show, Mordake has also appeared in contemporary popular culture as the subject of the song, “Chained Together For Life” aka “Poor Edward” by Tom Waits and the opera Mordake by Erling Wold.

​Tom Waits – Chained Together For Life

​Mordake by Erling Wold

Medically, it’s not impossible, as the phenomenon of Craniopagus Parasiticus, happens when "a parasitic twin head with an undeveloped body is attached to the head of a developed twin." Mordake if he existed could also possibly have been a case of Diprosopus, known as craniofacial duplication, resulting from abnormal protein activity. In 2008, Lali Singh, a female child with two faces, was born in India and survived for six weeks (see Sources for further details),

Anyway, with regard to Mordake, cases of craniopagus parasiticus always involve monozygotic (or identical) twins, which means the pair are always of the same sex. Mordake could not have had the face of a female on the back of his head.

​American Horror Story Freakshow – Edward Mordrake's Backstory

Other instances of Edward Mordake’s condition include Ashley Barrett’s “Second Face” from The Boys (2019-26)

And further back:

​How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989) – an advertising executive has a nervous breakdown and grows a talking boil on his shoulder, a manifestation of the cynical and unscrupulous side of his personality.

​Futakuchi-onna

Futakuchi-onna (二口女) from the Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (絵本百物語)

In many Japanese stories, the soon-to-be futakuchi-onna (two-mouthed woman) is the spouse of a miser and rarely eats. A second mouth mysteriously appears on the back of the woman's head. This often mumbles spiteful and threatening things to the woman and demands food. If not fed, it screeches obscenities and causes tremendous physical pain. After a while, the woman's hair begins to move like a pair of serpents, allowing the maw to help itself to the woman's meals. While no food passes through her normal lips, the mouth in the back of her head consumes twice what the other one normally would.

In another story, the extra piehole is formed when a stingy woman is ‘accidentally’ hit in the head by her husband's axe whilst chopping wood, and the wound never heals and becomes a extra orifice. Some stories cast the woman as a mother who has let her stepchild die of hunger while keeping her own daughter nourished. The spirit of the waif possesses the stepmother or the surviving child to exact revenge.

​In the folk tales of Japan’s eastern regions, futakuchi onna are most often thought to be shape-changed yama uba (supernatural creatures) posing as young women. In the west of the country they are frequently shape-changed kumo – magical spider monsters. In the other tales they are the result of curses brought about by wicked deeds, a punishment upon a greedy man or woman for evil and extreme parsimony.

​Pasqual Piñón

Pasqual Pinon, 17 August 1917

​Pasqual Piñón (1889–1929), popularly known as Pedro The Two-Headed Mexican, was discovered by a sideshow huckster for the Sells-Floto Circus in the early 1900s, his attention caught by a large benign cyst or tumor at the top of the chap’s noggin. A phony wax face placed on the growth, demonstrating Piñón really had two heads.

​When the circus arrived in Gardner, Massachusetts, Dr. James Waters was called to check on Mr. Pinon, who was unable to leave his bunk on the circus train due to severe headaches. Dr. Waters attended to Piñón, then ordered him to the Henry Heywood Memorial Hospital, where it was decided the tumor had to be severed in order to save the man’s life. During the operation, Piñón remained conscious, numbed by Novocain. He didn’t suffer brain damage, as separate from the tumor. But he did lose his career. After regaining his health, ​Pasqual Piñón returned home to Mexico and retired from the circus.

Rutland Freak Show (1941)

SOURCES

An English noble with two faces, a literary creation: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/22/fact-check-two-faced-edward-mordake-literary-creation/7985429002/

A Mystery Solved: https://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/edward_mordake

​An apocryphal case of craniopagus parasiticus: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00381-014-2581-6

The Man Who Allegedly Had One Head And Two Faces:https://allthatsinteresting.com/edward-mordrake

​The True But False Story of Edward Mordrake: https://www.weirdhistorian.com/edward-mordrake/

​Edward Mordrake, the Two-Faced Hoax: https://www.ripleys.com/stories/edward-mordrake-hoax

​Futakuchi onna: https://yokai.com/futakuchionna/?srsltid=AfmBOor1CBXA_uI-yEbbWGB_fO59t8W6ICSFYpEnlMnqZbZmqA5MKWiq

​PASQUAL PINON – The Two Headed Mexican: https://web.archive.org/web/20130805140701/http://thehumanmarvels.com/39/pasqual-pinon-the-two-headed-mexican/fake-freaks

​Girl with two faces just fine as she is, say parents: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/07/india

​'Miracle baby' is feted in India: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7340091.stm

STEPHEN ARNELL’S NOVEL THE GREAT ONE IS AVAILABLE NOW ON AMAZON KINDLE

SAMPLE:

​Cube – Two Heads Are Better Than One