In 1895, readers of The Boston Post encountered a story unlike any other. It described Edward Mordake, a young English nobleman said to have been born with a second face on the back of his head. According to the account, this face could whisper, laugh, and cry, tormenting Mordake until his death at 23. Over time, this story was reprinted, analyzed, and debated, eventually becoming one of the most persistent medical urban legends in modern history.
The Original Account
The earliest known description of Mordake appeared in an article by writer Charles Lotin Hildreth. He presented Mordake’s case alongside other supposed “human freaks,” such as a man with the body of a spider and a woman with a fish tail. Hildreth claimed to have sourced these stories from the “Royal Scientific Society,” but no such records exist predating 1970.
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
In 1896, the medical encyclopedia Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, by Dr. George M. Gould and Dr. David L. Pyle, reprinted the Mordake story nearly verbatim from Hildreth’s article. It described Mordake as handsome from the front, but with a female-appearing second face on the back of his head. This face reportedly sneered when he was happy and smiled when he wept. Mordake allegedly begged doctors to remove it, saying it whispered at night.
The Legend Grows
The encyclopedia’s inclusion gave the story a sense of medical legitimacy. Newspapers and magazines repeated the tale throughout the 20th century. Later explanations proposed that, if real, the deformity might have been caused by conditions like craniopagus parasiticus or diprosopus, but no documented medical case of Mordake exists.
Origins of a Myth
No contemporary medical records or peerage listings confirm Edward Mordake’s existence. Researchers traced every known version back to Hildreth’s 1895 article, which mixed fantastical cases without sources. Despite this, the story spread widely, appearing in books, media, and even modern television. Today, Edward Mordake endures as a historical urban legend born from a single newspaper article that blurred the line between fact and fiction.
In Victorian England, whispers spread of a young heir who hid a disturbing secret.
At night, something spoke to him in the dark, words no one else could hear.
He begged doctors for help.
They refused.
His story became one of the strangest legends of the century…🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/S5iM6Wt3MY
— Fascinating True Stories (@FascinatingTrue) October 3, 2025