Edward Mordake

Edward Mordake (sometimes spelled 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.

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."

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.

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.The first known description of Mordake is found in an 1895 article in The Boston Post authored by fiction writer Charles Lotin Hildreth.

[8] The 1896 medical encyclopedia Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, co-authored by Dr. George M. Gould and Dr. David L. Pyle, included an account of Mordake.