Talk:Edward Mordake

Mordake, not Mordrake

According to source of this legend, he was Edward Mordake - not Mordrake: So, could someone move the page to 'Edward Mordake'? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.72.77.116 (talk) 05:00, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

For some reason this article is Edward Mordake, and in the lead it is spelt Mordrake, and uses the displaytitle template so the title appears as Edward Mordrake. Can someone explain this? I assume it is just something that was overlooked. Now there is a television episode at Edward Mordrake, which is based on the subject of this article. I'd say this article is the primary topic, and should definitely be moved, or at least moved so his surname is correct. Melonkelon (talk) 03:09, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

This is still wrong and inconsistent, two years later. Can it be fixed? Equinox ◑ 16:43, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Inconsistencies still exist throughout the article. The article title is Mordake, yet Mordrake (emphasis on the r) is used throughout the article. It needs to be one or the other. I'd suggest either moving this article to Edward Mordrake, or changing all instances of the surname to Mordake. The Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine source spells it Mordake. Melonkelon (talk) 06:07, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

I just changed all the prose instances of "Mordrake" to "Mordake" as "Mordake" is the earliest spelling. I've left alone the URLs and article titles "for obvious reasons" and any quotes. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 06:14, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

More sources

It needs them. --V2Blast (talk) 06:50, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

"He also had a third testicle, which is recorded on his first YouTube channel." --removed this as it makes no sense at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.9.222.208 (talk) 14:13, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

I think the article should not be removed. Even if something is related to rumors, let it be there with a tag that it is not proved.. or from unreliable sources or something like that. (G10sinha (talk) 17:29, 25 August 2012 (UTC))

Contradictory things

The article states his extra face "could neither eat nor speak" but it "it whispered horrible things." 76.121.211.59 (talk) 03:44, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Me thinks that this article has served to advance an urban legend. 99.191.160.107 (talk) 22:32, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Siamese twins that share the same cranium can hear each other's thoughts. Even if the second face cannot speak because it lacks access to the lungs and vocal chords, it can still share its thoughts with the real head, whispering horrible things and such. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.15.156.36 (talk) 14:53, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Further contradiction

"...and also frequently ask for a cigarette." While the second face whispering in the night may be a colourful term from the rather tormented Mr Mordake, the face that could not speak would clearly not be asking for a cigarette. The external link (http://thehumanmarvels.com/?p=125) presents quite a balanced account detailing what seem to be very few solid facts, but does state "While no voice was ever audible..." --Prodromoi (talk) 18:51, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

There is also the case of extra head's eyes that could not see but there is an account that states they can follow the motions of anyone in the room. Darwin Naz (talk) 03:11, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Pasqual pinon didn't actually have any condition such as this. He had a large tumor or cyst on his head that he painted a wax face on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.238.220.168 (talk) 07:36, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

References

Tagged for verifiability

The primary reference (Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine) is not adequate to support the statements in the article.Mjpresson (talk) 01:22, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm questioning the veracity of the photo on this page. I understand that doing a google image search for "Edward Mordrake" yields multiple copies of this image, but doing a google search for "Barack Hussein Obama" will tell you that he is the anti-Christ and a socialist, so that's not good enough for me. There are a number of hurdles in my mind to this photo being legitimate:

• The photo is of a higher quality than I would expect of a late 19th century photo, even of a wealthy individual.
• The primary source describes him as being incredibly private. I find it unlikely that he would consent to having a photo taken.
• If the photo were taken for technical reasons by -for instance- a surgeon who wished to explore the possibility of removing the face, there should be more of them, or at least it should have been taken from better angles than this.
• The hairstyle in the photo is one which would fit better with the 1960's or early 1970's than with the late 1800's.

Also, the primary source doesn't give any concrete information except for a cause of death and a name. The sources describes the face as being that of a beautiful woman, which is highly unlikely for a parasitic twin. The descriptions of the face smiling, sneering and 'gibbering without ceasing' are also highly suspect. They simply don't fit with what we know of parasitic twins. I could buy that there was a man by the name of Edward Mordake, who had a parasitic twin face, was schizophrenic and committed suicide at 23 years old, but that's about it, and that's not even close to being enough for an article. Since this article has already integrated the best sources available on the internet, the only way to really verify it would be for an investigator to look into it. Birth and death records, contemporary descriptions, medical reports, etc should all be available if the story is true. Until then, I think it's false and that this article should be deleted. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 15:21, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Yep, I agree. The picture is obviously fake. It looks like a still from a crappy movie. However, the article has already passed AfD; it's reasonable to conclude that even if the story is false, the story itself is notable. Just my opinion, though.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:30, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

The story may be notable (In fact, I think it is), but the article presents it as being factual, which is a major problem for me. I would be happy with a re-write to make it clear that it's apocryphal. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 17:28, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

It actually didn't used to be like that. It probably just needs a deep revert to somewhere around when the AfD was. I've lost track of it until it started popping up on my watchlist recently and haven't cared enough to figure out where to revert it to. I'm all in favor if you'd like to do it, or I'll get around to it at some point.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 17:44, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

After looking at some of the edits made recently, I think a re-write would work. It would only take a few words here and there to change the tone of the article, and I'm loathe to remove some of the contributions that have been made since then. Even the image. I think it's fake, but it's certainly in the public consciousness as an image of this guy, and thus probably belongs in an article about him.MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 19:50, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

I've done a bit of re-writing to make it more clear. I really really wanted to point out that all of the various sources all seem to point back to the book mentioned in the second paragraph as their primary source, but since that would be WP:OR I didn't. Maybe one day it will make it onto snopes.com and we can say it then, citing snopes as the source. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 20:20, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Nicely done!— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 21:24, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks :) I just did a few final things. I changed categories from 19th century people to urban legends, and removed the tags. I'm convinced that there are enough references, and since the article isn't presenting this guy as a real person, I think those sources are reliable enough.MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 21:59, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

I also agree on the picture being likely fake. At least there are a lot of pictures in color, which were digitally altered for certain. But also the photoforensics of the one that is linked in this article looks fake. Thanks for the rewrite as well! I think it's much better now. --84.73.68.58 (talk) 10:22, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

I was not aware of that site, and that's really cool. I used to work in photographic and video forensics, and the images they generate look just like the ones I used to make to check for composite images. I do kinda hate to say the next bit, however...

Those images aren't composited*. Neither the color nor the b/w one. Both are just low quality jpegs that have been re-saved dozens of times (and the bigger one has been digitally colored). If you look at the images, you will notice that the block size (the size of squares/rectangles of solid color) and the color cycle (the pattern of colors of those blocks) stay the same from the 'real' face to the 'twin' face. There's no point at which the latter face was digitally composited in. That being said, you might have noticed my asterisk up there. That's because analyzing the compression doesn't tell us anything about what might have happened to an original, uncompressed image. It could have been composited as a .psd, .bmp, .png or .tif file from uncompressed images, then saved down to a .jpg, but that's a lot less common than you might think. Also, it could be a physical compositing job, that's been scanned in. That being said, I don't see any of the obvious signs of that, such as light direction or intensity changes.

Finally, let me mention the first thing I noticed about the black and white version: The 'real' face is a constant shade, which is indicative of wearing the sort of makeup one would expect for a film or television actor, while the 'twin' face seems to have darker skin in certain areas, which would be consistent with the sort of makeup work done on a prosthetic. It may be a trick of the lighting, but I highly doubt that. It may be completely natural (not having a parasitic twin myself, I cannot comment on the variations in skin tone one might have), but that seems a bit far-fetched, too. Sorry if I seem a poor sport by disagreeing with someone who thanked me and supported my arguments, but I have a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease. :) MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 14:29, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

You should criticize me! I have no problem with that. I'm just a complete amateur in contrast to you :-) --84.73.68.58 (talk) 15:12, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

If you ever want to do that sort of analysis yourself, a quick way to do it without an internet connection is to take a .jpg, and turn the saturation and lightness (not brightness) all the way up. It works in Photoshop and in the Gimp, and it will do wonders towards highlighting the blocks, color cycles and chrominance variations. Note that almost all methods of analysis like this for .jpg images get less and less reliable as the image is re-saved over and over, and there are ways of deliberately obfuscating it, and even (with enough time and patience), making an image that has been re-saved hundreds of times look new. Still, that site was a great find, and it's in my bookmarks. I think more controversial images on wiki could stand to be run through it. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 16:23, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Group hug all around! It's really nice to see Wikipedia working exactly how it ought to work (for once)!— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 16:25, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Seconded! MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 17:32, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Age of death - self contradictory

The article states that he committed suicide at the age of 23, and then proceeds to quote Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine stating that he committed suicide in his 23rd year, i.e. at the age of 22. - Soulkeeper (talk) 18:21, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I changed the age of 23 part to follow the source. My feeling is that "23rd year" probably means "age 23" in English, whereas something like "1st year" probably does, as you imply, mean "age 0" in English, but I can't find a source and it doesn't matter much anyway, so I think we should just let the source do the talking. Is OK?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 19:15, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

That's your "feeling"? I mean given how much BS that source is giving us I wouldn't be surprised if he was actually age 48 but as it currently stands, the source says "22". --178.202.203.79 (talk) 12:45, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

No, the source says "in his 23rd year." The article used to say that too, until someone changed it.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 13:30, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Possible to add this picture?

I just found this picture on a source site. I know nothing about uploading images to Wikipedia but perhaps someone does. http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/view/83858344/ Photo # 28 or 28. 222.125.0.22 (talk) 15:55, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

It looks like a fake to me, but what do I know?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:29, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Picture

I have to admit that I've considered deleting this picture several times, but now that it's done, I'm having second thoughts. Specifically, I haven't been able to find any other attributions for that image. Basically, while the image may be fake, I think it may also serve a useful purpose as an illustration, similar to illustrations included on the pages of other urban legends, such as Slenderman. Care to discuss? MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 13:30, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't care so much either way, but I think if it's fake, it ought to be labeled as fake, and since we can't find a source either way it seemed better to me to remove it. But if you want it back in I won't argue with you.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 13:45, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm in the same boat: I don't care much one way or the other. I'm convinced the image is fake (not least of all because I'm pretty sure Edward Mordake never existed), but I can't find that image being attributed to literally anything else. Even a tineye.com search shows that it was first picked up by their crawler in 2008, as a purported depiction of Eddy here[1]. So the question is this: Is this image a 'fake' or an 'illustration'? Let me know what you think. I'd like to see if we can get a few opinions on the matter. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 14:58, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Let's do an RfC! How does that seem?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:35, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure what an RfC is. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 20:14, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Oh my God, it's super fun! (some sarcasm there, but not all sarcasm, especially about a low-stakes case such as this one). Read WP:RFC. We figure out a neutral statement of the question, put a template in a section here, a bot spams it all over noticeboards, and then the kind of editors who like that kind of stuff drop by and offer their opinion. I can do the technical part, but we should work out a nice neutral statement of the question that incorporates all elements, like does it matter if it's fake, does it matter that we don't have a provenance, does it have value as an illustration, what can we say about it in the caption given that we don't know where it came from, and so on.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 21:37, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. As far as the specific question goes, I think it's really one of relevance. Does being fake render this image irrelevant to this article, considering that it has no other attribution? MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 13:36, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine seems to be an RS

My concern has nothing to do with the photos of Edward Mordake (Mordrake), all of which are fakes of photos of wax “recreations.”

I'm concerned about the statement that the story of Edward is “apocryphal” (not true). However, at the end of the paragraph—after the part where Edward reportedly committed suicide when he was 23 years old—gives one citation: to the medical encyclopedia ‘Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine’.

Let's examine whether ‘Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine’, by George M. Gould, M.D., is a Reliable Source. According to our own article on Dr. Gould, “[A] collection of papers about his life are held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.” There is not a stitch of information in the article on Dr. Gould calling into question his veracity or the truthfulness of any of his life's work.

Furthermore, even though, the full text of the medical encyclopedia at Archive.org (search on the spelling “Edward Mordake”), states The following well-known story of Edward Mordake, though taken from lay sources… it goes on to also say that “[the story] is of sufficient notoriety and interest to be mentioned here.”

There is no weight to arguments that the story should be called into question just because the parasitic face reportedly had a feminine appearance (which would supposedly be inconsistent with a parasitic twin in the minds of wikipedians who play doctor on Wikipedia); a smaller parasitic face may have all manner of distortions and could have appeared “monster like.”

The current practice of citing ‘Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine’ as an RS and also of writing that the story is “apocryphal” is schizophrenic; it can't be both ways. Given that the document cited is classified as a “medical encyclopedia” and given that one of the two doctors who co-authored it clearly had a respectable career, it is improper to write that the story of Edward Mordake (Mordrake) is an apocryphal one; such an assertion constitutes cherry picking which parts of an RS one prefers to believe and amounts to WP:OR

Let's not confuse faked modern photos with the account itself, as told by what is clearly an RS. I've deleted the bit about the story being apocryphal. Any RS stating otherwise should be every bit as reliable as George M. Gould and the medical encyclopedia he co-authored. Greg L (talk) 19:40, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Category: Fictional English People

The article presents Mordake as real ("...was born in the 18th century"), and apart from the vagueness of the things stated there is nothing in the article to point out that this might not be a real, until you come across the Categories tag (Fictional English People, Urban Legends, etc). Either there is factual evidence to support that Mordake was real, in which case the category tags with fictional should be removed, or there is not, and then this should be made clearer in the article (e.g. "is subject of a popular urban legend and was allegedly born in the 18th century. The story goes on to say that he was born with a second face on the back of his head"). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.234.214.255 (talk) 10:50, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Possibly of interest...

Is this snopes article on Mordake (they spell it "Mordrake") which pronounces the story false. The last paragraph is notable:

What all these “wonders of science” [including the first mention of Mordake] had in common, Boese points out, is that no mention of them is to be found in any previous sources. None. It appears, in other words, that Hildreth simply made them up. Albeit couched as nonfiction, the article was actually a work of speculative fiction in the spirit of other scientific hoaxes of the time, such as the infamous life-on-the-moon hoax of 1835 and the Cardiff Giant hoax of 1869.

ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:34, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Edward Mordrake (television episode)

Duplicates subject. Danrok (talk) 11:23, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I think that subplots of American Horror Story are not notable enough for their own articles, so I'm okay with it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:19, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Note, you might want to post a note to the talk page there: this article is not widely watched, AFAIK. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:19, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

For some reason I thought both articles were about the TV episode. Danrok (talk) 20:35, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Nope! This one is about the urban legend that inspired that one, lol. For what it's worth, I'd be okay with merging that article into this one, but probably not the other way around. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:55, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

it's not a legend

he existed — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oratorio (talk • contribs) 19:01, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Image

I've seen what people think is the only existing image of Edward Mordake. I was wondering if we should add it. (You can find it easily on Google) XInspectrEx (talk) 16:02, 7 June 2019 (UTC)