Many moons ago I read about a most bizarre legend. It told of a young man who was born with the face of his undeveloped conjoined twin on the back of his head. The undeveloped twin was apparently alive and evil, and one stormy night, the ferocious face somehow murdered his mild-mannered host.
This story is pure bunk, of course, but I find it oddly fascinating. I’ve tried searching for the legend online, but I can’t remember the name of the man. Has anyone else heard this story?
By one of those seeming coincidences, I just recently came across a version of this story in one of my Cthulhu books. The man’s name is given as Edward Mordake. The face is said to be female and quite beautiful. The eyes followed people. The lips moved, and Mordake said he could constantly hear the face saying horrible things. He eventually comitted suicide, leaving a note asking that the face be removed lest it continue to torment him in death.
The cite, which may be wholly fictional, is given as Anomalies And Curiosities Of Medicicine by George M Gould and Walter L Pyle.
Can’t say I have any more definitive info on that story, but I did hear it years ago.
I have also visited Tulane medical school’s museum of oddities (sadly, I suspect it may now be under water) and did see a few examples of fused siamese twin infants where there was essentially a face on both sides of the head. Said twins didn’t survive long after birth.
There are also a couple of preserved conjoined infant skeletons at the Mutter in Philadelphia.
Amazing stuff.
Bingo. I was going to post this story when i read the OP, as I immediatley remembered reading this exact tale in The X-Files:Book of the Unexplained 2, like, ten years ago. I looked it up, and it seems to have taken its information from The Anomilies book you mentioned. However, it does offer further information, such as the face having fully functional face and mouth muscles, could cry real tears, and would make gibbering sounds as if trying to speak. This is the bit that stuck in my mind so much that i could remember it ten years later: The face would smile when Mordake would cry. Mordake begged for the face to be removed, but no surgeon would attempt it. He called the face his “Devil Twin”. He comitted Suicide aged just 23.
Thanks for the info, everyone. One of the reasons I took the story to be fictional is that the whole thing sounded a little too Edgar Allen Poe to be real. Another reason is that conjoined twins, as I understand it, cannot be of different sexes. Am I mistaken?
All in all, a bizarre, sad story, real or not. I have a twin brother, and I sure wouldn’t want to hitch a ride on the back of his noggin my whole life.
Could a chimera be of two sexes?
AFAIK, conjoined twins cannot be of two sexes, but I don’t know how one tells the gender of a face anyway. It could have simply had “more feminine” features, and an evil woman on the back of his head makes a better story. This is especially true during that particular time in history where women were viewed in a less than positive light. The story would provide an excellent shudder of sympathy for beleagured husbands who felt overwhelmed and tied to nagging harridans of wives.
There’s also the weird “absorbed twin” thing, which maybe this could have been, and I don’t know whether those have to be the same gender. Can you partially absorb a fraternal twin?
Hmm…I never thought of that, good point. Also, the story says that the face was significantly smaller than normal, so perhaps it was the face of an underdeveloped boy, taken to be female?
After I got offline last night, it occured to me that the very name of the man implied the story’s ficticious nature. Edward Mordrake? He might as well have been named Victor Ian Heroname.
Tom Waits has a song based on this story by the sounds of it, on his excellent album ‘Alice’.
Here’s the lyrics:
http://www.ripcat.free-online.co.uk/waitshtml/pooredwardlyrics.htm
Not that this suggests the story is true or anything…
Sounds a bit like the turbaned Hogwarts professor and Voldemort at the enc of the first “Harry Potter” movie.
Didn’t Stephen King write a book about this, too?
(Side note: Abraham Lincoln was once accused by a political foe of being two-faced. He joked, “If I were two-faced, do you think I’d be wearing this one?”)
I came in to mention Waits’ song “Poor Edward,” which is obviously based on the same individual (or legend), due to the details.