Some urban legends never seem to die, and perhaps some don’t work for a good reason.
Others, like the legend that you can tip a cow on its side so it cannot get up on its own, or that calling the police in the UK charges the batteries of your phone, have been disproved.
Still, people keep repeating them because, let’s face it, it’s not easy to convince someone that something doesn’t work until they try it themselves.
One story like these is that of Edward Mordrake, the purported nineteenth-century son of a British peer who, of all possible curses, was burdened with one of the most sinister: to have in the back of his head another face; that of an evil twin that whispered to him the most depraved and disgusting things imaginable.
It’s a story almost too dramatic not to believe it. Let’s check again.
10 /10 A Man Of Talent
The story goes as follows: Edward Mordrake was a handsome young noble in 19th century England, with a face equal to that of Antinous (the young lover of Roman Emperor Hadrian, famous for his beauty); “a young man of fine attainments, a profound scholar, and a musician of rare ability,” according to the severe first telling of the tale in an 1896 medical encyclopedia, entitled Anomalies, and Curiosities of Medicine.
Of course, he was also the right person who was horrified at the things he heard when he lay in bed at night as he tried to sleep.
9 /10 The Darkest Secret
Such things were his darkest secret, which he tried to hide from the world.
He “lived in complete seclusion, refusing the visits even of the members of his own family,” and we must suppose that only the closest friends of this troubled young man came to know of his secret (otherwise, how do we know of it?).
This secret was so horrible, so disgusting, that he would ask his doctors to “crush it out of human semblance, even if I die for it.” This secret was a second face, usually hidden behind his head.