Edward Mordake : The Original Malignant

 So everyone’s been into the new movie malignant and once the reveal moments happen its legit Edward Mordake, sometimes Mordrake,  for the modern age, even though he did briefly appear on American Horror Story: Freakshow

So who was Edward Mordake? 

Well, he is still essentially a legend. It’s not clear if he ever did in fact exist, and the photo of him that makes rounds on the internet is not a really photo. Scary, and believable, but not real. 

He was born in the 19th century and had a face on the back of his head. And that face would terrorize him until he committed suicide at the age of 23. It would do all of the classic things that back of the head faces do - whispering bad thoughts, telling him to hurt people, freaking out everyone around him, etc. 

In line with malignant, the face on the back of his head was supposedly female. In the movie, Madison’s back of the dome evil twin was male. Little switch a roo there.

Origin 

The first known description of him was in an 1895 article published by the boston post. This post was authored by Charles Lotin Hildreth, who was a fiction writer. Hmm. That’s suspicious. That’s weird… Moving on. 

Here’s a little bit from Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine:

One of the weirdest, as well as the 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. 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.

Now this was done after the initial story from the fiction writer and the person they credited for the info was not named, just referred to  as a lay person.

So this guy probably didn’t exist, or if he did, the face on the back of his head is fake or not anywhere near the amount of freaky it’s supposed to be. Ye olde creepy pasta.

The Actual Condition

So there is such a thing as parasitic twins being connected by the head, and it is called Craniopagus parasiticus.

Parasitic twins in general happen when an embryo had plans to split into two to male two babies, but it doesn’t complete the action so you end up with one baby and then one parasitic fun bundle on the side. The difference between this and conjoined twins is both twins continue to develop despite being attached, while the parasitic type stops developing and just sort of hangs on.

Apparently only 10 cases of the condition have been examined and documented in research literature, with only 4 surviving birth.

So this is extremely rare and the chance of them making it to adult hood is low. So being influenced by the parasitic twin to go and kill people, or yourself is very very low. So you can stop checking the back of your head now for your buddy.