ou may be thinking that this is another legend or folklore story, but as we keep on dwelling on history, we discover that more stories such as Edward Mordrake’s are in fact closer to reality than we thought. As presented before, there are many people that are born with deformities, but some are very unique, so unique that they radically changed the person’s life, just like Edward Mordrake’s “Devil Twin” did.

Living with two faces

Mordrake was born in a British noble family and even from a very young age, he was an aspiring musician, as he had what many described at the time as a rare talent. He was a highly intelligent gentleman of the 19th century who had to burden a curse since his birth: he had to live his life with a second (deformed) face at the back of his head.

Many described this second face as of a horrific girl that was “lovely as a dream and hideous as a devil”. Even if the second face was deformed and devilish looking, it possessed a weird sense of intelligence that was connected to Mordrake’s consciousness. It is said that “whenever Mordrake cried, the second face would smile and sneer”. As if the second face was resentful of being “second” and mostly hidden by hair.

Imagine having a voice that whispers to you every time making think that you are going mad. Well, for Mordrake those whispers were created by his “Devil Twin” which loved to talk at night, whenever Mordrake went to sleep. This is why people actually started to consider Mordrake quite insane later on in his life, as he had built a tendency to constantly talk with his second face as if it was a separate entity.

There isn’t much information on Mordrake’s bizarre life due to this deformity, which may be the same reason why many people think it may be just a fictional story, however, we will get to that part in just a bit.

A model of Mordrake’s skull (Source: The Gemini Company)

It is said that due to his “Devil Twin” always nagging him in his sleep and literally making him go insane, he decided to take his own life as he could not live such a life anymore.

“For some unforgiven wickedness of my forefathers I am knit to this fiend.” — Edward Mordrake

Such were the words of the hapless Mordrake to Manvers and Treadwell, his physicians. One night, when things became unbearable, he decided to take a sip of poison, but not before leaving a letter requesting that the “demon face” be destroyed before his burial, “lest it continues its dreadful whisperings in my grave.”

Legend or Reality?

At this time I know that many of you may think that this story is fiction. Whilst I don’t have any hard evidence to justify its validity, I can mention that Mordrake’s case has been talked about as being true in an article published by Boston Sunday, titled “The Wonders of Modern Science”. In this article, reports from the Royal Scientific Society were presented to justify the truth behind Edward Mordrake’s second face.

As mentioned before, many saw Mordrake as insane, thinking that the face may have only been in his mind, whilst others (such as the Royal Scientific Society) claim that they have seen and even investigated the second face. Nevertheless, we can assume that the Royal Scientific Society was only in the search for attention with such a story. However, I doubt that a “Royal” society would make such misleading claims if the story was only fiction.