Tag Archives: Edward Mordrake

Edward Mordrake and Pasqual Pinon: The Original Two-Faces

Born in the 19th century, Edward Mordrake was a man of many faces, literally. According to pictures and various accounts, Edward Mordrake had an extra face on the back of his head. The face could not talk or speak, but it could cry and laugh. Edward went to doctors, begging for them to remove his second face what he called his demon head – because it would whisper horrible things to him as he tried to sleep. Unfortunately, no doctor helped Edward Mordrake, who committed suicide at the age of 23.

edward mordrake
Edward Mordrake.

Pasqual Pinon, known as The Two-Headed Mexican, worked in a freak show circus in the early 1900s. Before his work in the circus, he was a railroad worker in Texas. A sideshow promoter noticed that Pasqual suffered from a large benign tumor on the top of his head. The promoter convinced Pasqual to join the freak show circus and had a fake face made of wax placed on Pasqual’s tumor. (There are some reports that the fake face was made of silver, which was surgically placed under the skin of the tumor.) Year later, the manager of the circus paid for the operation to have the tumor removed, and Pasqual moved back to Texas.

pasqual pinon
Pasqual Pinon.

While Edward Mordrake’s story is horrifying and depressing, I cannot help but love Pasqual Pinon. Someone comes along, gawks at his enlarged cranium, then, basically, asks to stick Halloween prosthetics on it possibly in it, depending on which account is true. What does Pasqual do? Leaves his life behind to become the focal point of a freak show. That’s looking on the bright side of things.