For several years now, information about the person who lived in the 19th century has been distributed in social networks, who had a second person on the back of his head with his own facial expressions. We checked the reliability of such messages.

Internet users say that Edward Mordoreck (according to a different version-muzzle) was the heir to a noble family and suffered from an unusual anomaly: he had a second person on his back of his head, who skillfully open and turn his eyes and move his lips, although it did not make sounds. The Mordrack himself, however, allegedly claimed that at night this face whispered to him “terrible things”. The 19th century medicine could not help the young man, and at 23 he committed suicide.

Posts on this topic are often accompanied by photographs - some of them depict a man with a face on the back of the head (it is assumed that this is a Mordereik), on others - a human skull with two faces. This story is especially popular on VKontakte, where similar publications Get thousands And even tens of thousands reposts. In addition, it can be found in Facebook, Instagram And on entertainment sites.

Screenshot of the viral post. Source: VKontakte

The story of Edward Mordoreka has become widely known thanks to the popular culture - it became a hero songs And TV shows. The primary source of information about this unusual person is called the book of doctors George Guld and Walter Pyle published in 1896 in the United States.Anomalies and couries of medicine". However, in their work they mention that this story is taken from unreliable sources. Historian Alex Bowz, creator of the online museum of the hoax, discovered The same “unreliable source” - it turned out to be an article “Miracles of modern science”, published in the newspaper Boston Sunday Post on December 14, 1895 (soon it was reprinted by many other American newspapers).

The title of the article in the Boston Sunday Post: “Miracles of modern science. Some monsters are once considered the Fights of the Devil. Almost incredible miracles - their existence was confirmed by evidence that the members of the Royal Scientific Society recognized as satisfactory. ” Source: Screenshot Hoaxes.org

In addition to Mordoreka, the article told about the woman-fish, a half-man, a person, a man with four eyes and Spider-Man. Obviously, these stories seemed to the authors of “anomalies and curios of medicine” too fantastic, so they did not include them in their book, but part of the Morderek was retold almost literally.

The author of the article Charles Lotin Hildret referred to the reports of the British Royal Scientific Society, but in the UK there was no institution with that name. The British Academy of Sciences is called Royal Society of London (Royal Society of London), or, abbreviated, royal society. However, if information about the Mordoreka and other Heroes of the Hildret article was indeed given in his reports, they would be mentioned in some scientific work. But such examples did not find such examples, and the article in the Boston Sunday Post remains the earliest mention of these unusual people. Charles himself Lorin Hildret himself was known as a poet and Fantast writerSo, apparently, I simply invented the stories told in the article.

As for the photographs that are usually accompanied by posts about Mordoreka, one of them is not a portrait of a living person, but a picture of a wax figure, an exhibit of the Hamburg Museum Panoptikum. It was not possible to establish the origin of the second picture of “verified”, but, apparently, this is also a waxy figure (portraits of a muzzle are often found in expositions Museums And touring exhibitions). Wax figures renew from time to time, change their clothes and hairstyles, which makes it difficult to identify. In addition, this picture was used in the film trailer "Edward Mordrack", Whose author tried to find funds for filming with crowdfunding, but did not succeed, the film was never shot. And the skull is not an anatomical drug, but the work of the sculptor Tom Kyubler "Edward Mordoreka skull". He created several of these sculptures, the first - in 2019.

The wax figure of Edward Mordoreka in the Panoptikum Museum. Source: YouTube screenshot

Some publications specify that Mordoreck suffered from parasitic craniopagia. This is the name of a special form of fusion of Siamese twins, in which the head of his twin grows to the child’s head, which has no his own body. Siamese twins are extremely rarely born, and people with parasitic craniopagia are even less common. At the moment, only four cases are reliably known when such children were born alive: in the XVIII century in India (perhaps this is the very well -known story that served as inspiration for Hildret) and today in Dominicanist, Romania And Egypt. None of these children lived for more than several years.

Thus, the story of a person with two persons is based on a newspaper article written at the end of the 19th century by a fantasy writer. There are no documentary evidence of Edward Mordoreka. The pictures of this person and his skull used as evidence are actually photographs of a wax figure and an art object inspired by pop culture.

Photo on the cover: YouTube screenshot