r/UnchainedMelancholy • u/metalnxrd • 16d ago
Historical Edward Mordrake is the apocryphal subject of an urban legend who was born in the 19th century as the heir to an English peerage with a face at the back of his head.
According to legend, the face could whisper, laugh or cry. Edward repeatedly begged doctors to remove it, claiming it whispered bad things to him at night. Edward died by suicide at the age of 23.
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u/Wide_Butterscotch996 11d ago edited 11d ago
This story was published in a newspaper article featuring macabre stories, an extremely popular form of entertainment in the second half of the 19th century. It was wrongly published in some medical journals most likely with tongue in cheek or possibly just as an entertaining way to expose Heteropagus to colleagues. While cases of Heteropagus were known to medicine they were easily looked at as divine punishment more readily than a birth defect to the common witness. Low-hanging fruit to any author riding Poe's coattails writing spooky tales for a superstitious public. Whether they were April Fool's issues or Halloween specials confused with real medicine is a toss-up. Either way, this man never existed.
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u/metalnxrd 16d ago edited 16d ago
"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" —Edward Mordrake
An account described Edward's figure as one with "remarkable grace" and with a face similar to that of an Antinous. The second face on the back of Edward's head — supposedly female — reportedly had a pair of eyes and a mouth that drooled. The duplicate face could not see, eat, or speak, but was said to "sneer while Edward was happy" and "smile while Edward was weeping." According to legend, Edward repeatedly begged doctors to have his "demon face" removed, claiming that at night it whispered things that "one would only speak about in Hell", but no doctor would attempt it. This then led to Edward secluding himself in a room before deciding to take his own life at the age of 23.
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.