This week, we find ourselves strangely fascinated by some old school paranormal cases So, give that fire another poke, pour another brandy and settle down. Ready? Let's go.
First off is the dubious, but nonetheless interesting case of Gef, the Talking Mongoose. If you've read a lot of paranormal literature, you're probably familiar with the story ol' Gef (also known as The Dalby Spook), a supposed mongoose (what else?) who allegedly lived in the walls of a farmhouse owned by a family called Irving on the Isle of Man in the 1930's. If you don't haunt the paranormal book shelves, you may find yourself strangely fascinated by this well-known and fairly well-documented case just the same.
It all started when members of the Irving family spotted what appeared to be a strange, vaguely weasel-like creature in their garden in the spring of '31. It was described as "yellow in color" with a "bushy tail" and "flat nose." James Irving, the patriarch of the family, expressed surprise at the time that the animal's appearance in the garden did not alarm the chickens. Within a few days, the Irvings saw it in the house as well, and shortly thereafter became aware of odd scratching sounds and muffled grunts within the walls. In a matter of only a few days, the entity developed an actual voice, with which it began to repeat nursery rhymes and, after another brief interval, actually converse with the family. Its voice was described as being high and screechy, yet clear, and a few degrees higher in pitch than a human's.
New reports at the time suggest that the real voice behind Gef was the family's 13-year-old daughter, who one reporter claimed to see covering her lips as the unseen Gef was answering reporters' questions. However, despite such claims, no one could say for certain whether the girl was in fact engaging in trickery. The situation was made even more mysterious when Gef occasionally showed his dark side, hurling stones at family members as they walked to and from the house and shouting invectives if they took too long to bring him food in exchange for the dead rabbits he left for them on the doorstep. Mrs. Irving told reporters that she had at one point stroked Gef's fur through a crack in the wall, only to be bitten in return and then told by Gef to "go and put ointment on (the bite)."
None other than Harry Price, president of the British Society for Psychical Research at the time, visited the Irving farm in 1935 to try to get to the bottom of the mongoose mystery. Unfortunately, Gef declined to make an appearance during Price's visit and impressions of pawprints taken from the property and sent away for analysis could not be identified.
So, was Gef a real talking mongoose, a spirit, or simply the product of a young girl's perfidy? We'll never know, of course. When asked about his origins, Gef replied that he had been born in New Delhi, India and that he was "a little clever, extra clever mongoose", but never explained how he had come to live inside the walls of the Irvings' farmhouse. No one who knew the Irvings personally seemed to think that they were capable of playing a hoax and no member of the family ever confessed that they had done so. Still, it is telling that the subsequent owner of the house claimed not to have ever heard so much as a single word from Gef. For all practical purposes, the strangely fascinating case of Gef, the Talking Mongoose ended when the Irvings sold their farm.
Another case involving Harry Price centered on the infamous Borley Rectory, known as the "Most Haunted House in England" during the 1920s and 30s. Built on the site of an old Benedictine monastery, the house was first occupied by a Rev. Bull and his family until the death of Rev. Bull in 1892, at which time it passed to his father and then to a Rev. Smith. But it was in the 30s, during the five-year tenancy of Rev. L.A. Foyster and his wife, Marianne, that all hell broke loose.
During the 1890s, there had been reports of a ghostly nun who allegedly traipsed through the drafty halls of the rectory, but the Foysters' arrival seemed to prompt an onslaught of paranormal activity which included stones and pebbled being hurled at them from an unknown source, random coins appearing out of nowhere, and strange scribblings on the walls addressed to Marianne, the most notable of which stated, "I am crazy. Help me, Marianne." Unexplained footsteps and phantom knocks also plagued the Foysters, sending the apparently delicate-nerved Marianne into a tailspin that eventually led to the Foysters' departure from the problematic scene.
As seems to have been par for the course when it came to many of his investigations for the SPR, Price's stay at the rectory failed to turn up any definitive or conclusive evidence pointing to the source of the alleged haunting. Once again, the world was left to ponder the question of whether the haunting of Borley Rectory was real, imagined, or fraudulent. Unfortunately, the rectory burned to the ground in the 1940s, leaving the question not only extant, but forever unanswerable.
Our last case has a musical component. In fact, it was all about the music when it came to English pianist Rosemary Brown and her alleged dealings with spirits. The classically trained Brown claimed that throughout her career, she had been aided in composing piano music by the spirits of such deceased classical music luminaries as Franz Lizst, Ludwig von Beethoven and Frederic Chopin. Critics, of course, scoffed at her claims and insisted that the songs composed by Brown were not in the same league as the music made by Beethoven and his ilk when alive.
But Brown held firm in her claims, even sharing a very amusing anecdote in which the spirit of Beethoven, trying to impart musical knowledge, was continually interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. Finally, exasperated, Brown said, the spirit put a hand to his head and exclaimed, "Mein Gott!"
Brown's own version of her story can be found in a series of memoirs, the best of which, Immortals By My Side, was published in 1974 and is still in print. Brown passed into spirit herself in 2001. No word on what the immortals had to say about how well she did their work for them when alive.
Welll, that's all for now, gentle readers. We hope to make another foray into the world of the unknown soon, and in the meantime, remember....when the world gets too mundane, don't get bored, just turn and face the strange. Til next time. xoxoxxoxoxoxoxxox
