Crypto Corner: The Talking Mongoose???

 

For Halloween, I decided to dust off a project I was working on when I first started this blog, covering something I’ve wanted to do a very long time. It’s a case that has intrigued me despite or because of being one of the most obviously preposterous and humbug-riddled on record: Gef the Mongoose.

To tell an overlong and convoluted story very briefly, in a very isolated English farmhouse in the 1930s, a man named James Irving, his wife Margaret and particularly their adolescent daughter Voirrey began to here strange noises that seemed to come from an animal behind the walls, including cries that appeared to imitate human speech. They also began to get glimpses of a very small animal, about a foot long including a bushy tail, as well as certain unusual cats that were observed but never caught and in some cases not seen by other witnesses present. Over time, the noises developed into an intelligible voice that claimed to belong to Gef, an “extra clever mongoose” with the gift of speech. Gef would soon begin telling them of both his own exploits and the happenings around them. The family even began leaving food and toys in the rafters for Gef, who occasionally reciprocated with the somewhat ominous “gift” of freshly killed rabbits at their door.

Soon enough, the bizarre story reached reporters and paranormal investigators, mostly through James and certain neighbors who had witnessed Gef’s manifestations. Unfortunately, sporadic investigations failed to reveal any conclusive evidence of Gef beyond hair, footprints and a few brief “sightings” easily discounted as either traces of ordinary animals or human fabrications. Meanwhile, the family’s interactions with Gef oscillated with his manifested personality, which routinely made him a nuisance and worse. His tales of his wanderings came to include hurtful gossip that made neighbors all the more suspicious of the family. The quaint exchanges of gifts alternated with terrifying poltergeist-like manifestations that drove the family to try to bar him from their presence. He also was evasive about his true form, notably identifying himself with one of the errant cats, and at other times identifying himself as a spirit or “the holy ghost”. As the family’s fortunes declined, Gef finally began to fade away. By the start of the 1940s, he had ceased to speak, and seemed to disappear entirely after the death of James and the departure of the remaining family in 1945. In 1947, the media declared Gef dead after the new tenant killed a large “polecat” and ignored the matter thereafter, leaving only the occasional anomalist wondering what if anything Gef really was.

In hindsight, what Gef represents first and foremost is a relatively modern and rather egregious example of “fairylore”, all the way down to the Old World setting.  The most noteworthy parallel is that the posited entity of Gef always verged on the supernatural , but never toward the wholly immaterial realm in the manner of a ghost or demon. This is further driven home by the prominent exchanges of “gifts” between the family and Gef, perfectly reenacting any number of tales of the Fey Folk. However, such comparisons do more to emphasize the more dubious aspects of the lore as a whole than to improve the case for “Gef”. When the obvious factors of isolation, primitive conditions, personal conflicts without outlet, and sheer, simple boredom are taken into account, it is all too easy to believe that fairy beliefs were kept alive by incidents of no more substance. It becomes all the more surprising that nobody has cut the Gordian knot in the manner of materialistic “pygmy” theorists and suggested that  Gef was at least initially the work of an ordinary transient taking advantage of the family.

On this vein, the most prevalent hypothesis has been a flat hoax by Voirrey. These suspicions invariably focus on Voirrey’s efforts to gather the above-mentioned proofs of Gef’s corporeal existence (despite his own evasive pronouncements!), easily the most pitiful aspect of the tale. In fact, the evidence thus gathered was so unconvincing that many supposed she had taken hairs from the family dog. On further consideration, however, this would have been an unaccountably lazy approach in an area that had abundant wildlife. One can further take into account the ready acceptance of the animal caught later, as well as the cryptozoologists’ common complaint that searches for cryptids often reveal the presence of unexpected but classifiable animal life with no obvious connection to the original “sightings”. On a more fundamental level, Voirrey made many convincing protests that she was embarrassed and frequently terrified by the affair, to the point that it seems conceivable she might at certain times have tried to discredit “Gef” just to be left alone.

Meanwhile, an oddly neglected aspect of the affair is an extensive journal kept by James Irving of Gef’s communications, lengthy and elaborate enough to exasperate the few who attempted to analyze it. The most significant fact to emerge is that Gef’s vocabulary and mannerisms were consistently British and usually specific to the region, with only isolated mentions of vocabulary outside the English language. Knowledgeable anomalists will recognize as a typical feature of texts by those claiming to contact or channel supernatural entities of all types. From what can be known, the annals of Gef’s pronouncements also share with “contactee” lore a tendency toward grandiosity, improbabilities, and a growing volume of contradictions and general nonsense. Considered on this evidence alone, it would be easy to dismiss Gef as a construct of James Irving’s subconscious mind, a possibility hinted at by the psychologically knowledgeable contemporary investigator Fodor, who considered Gef a “split personality” to James.

The one aspect of the affair that has come to dominate discussion, especially among those seeking a “middle ground”, is the contrasting but sometimes complementary personalities of the father and daughter and the degree to which they paralleled Gef’s personality and antics. Voirrey was evidently talented and clearly frustrated by her lot in the isolated farmhouse, but also feared rejection among the outsiders she did interact with, anxieties that became acute as Gef attracted notoriety. James was outwardly ordinary and seemingly unintelligent, but had in fact been a prosperous businessman before various misfortunes drove him to retreat to the farm. There, he continued to show a streak of frustrated ambition and repressed wanderlust, an internal conflict that readily correlated with Gef’s increasingly elaborate adventures. The overall hypothesis that emerges is an extreme and particularly literal case of shared psychosis, with Gef being the gestalt of their unresolved neuroses and conflicts.

Yet, even this is clearly extrapolation from limited and equivocal evidence. By any orthodox model, shared psychosis is primarily a defensive reaction by a submissive personality under prolonged pressure from an unstable dominant partner. While one may wonder about the overall state of the family (particularly Margaret), it is almost impossible to accept this scenario without assuming a major deterioration coinciding with their arrival on the farm. Further problems arise from the evident ability of all parties to manage the house and family affairs, in stark contrast to the disorganized reasoning and behavior of the “classic” schizophrenic. Finally, this is no help at all in explaining occasions when Gef manifested in the presence of visitors, unless their shared neurosis is assumed strong enough to be somehow projected by telepathy or something equally untestable (not far from what Fodor appeared to believe). Again, it would in many ways be easier to suspect a wholly unknown third party, but that scenario carries about as many unknowns and improbabilities as Gef’s straightforward account of himself.

One more oddity to emerge is the history and nature of the house and site, known as Doarlish Cashen or Cashen’s Gap. While it was long supposed that paranormal events were limited to the Irving’s occupation, ample evidence has accumulated that many considered the house and surrounding area haunted well before reports of Gef emerged, on consideration a likely reason that unlucky outsiders like the Irvings were able to acquire the property at all. Further reports have emerged of other residents and visitors hearing noises behind the walls. Then there is one brief account in a recent book that a girl who lived in the house after the family left claimed to have heard the voice of Gef or a similar being. Meanwhile, other researchers have gone the other direction and tried to trace the origins of the house. While no solid account has emerged of its construction, it is dated well before 1800. Intriguingly, it has been further established that it is much larger and more elaborate than an ordinary farmhouse, leading to further speculation that it was built by a noble family, perhaps as an effort to avoid attention.

What the seasoned anomalist will already be wondering about is the name itself, which has correlated with “fairylore” and the paranormal so often it would almost be more disconcerting to find a completely ordinary explanation. By prevailing opinion, Cashen is simply the name of a family known in the area, conceivably descendants of the otherwise forgotten original tenants. Further etymological analysis indicates that it is an Irish name meaning “curly headed”, which is obviously not unusual in itself but has some ties to fairylore. The god Pan was portrayed as curly-haired in antiquity, an attribute repeated in later portrayals of fauns and satyrs. Then there is Heinzelmann, a Germanic fairy said to appear as a curly-haired youth or occasionally as a marten, a member of the weasel family.

In the proverbial light of day, however, the one thing that remains clear is that the mystery of “Gef” is a matter of obfuscation more than the occult. Surely, this is a puzzle of the mind rather than the paranormal realm. Surely, Gef was a “hoax” of some kind, if only of “War of the Worlds” variety. The one suspicion that lingers is that the “hoaxer” was Gef himself.

For links, you can't do better than the Gef blog or the book Gef! by Christopher Josiffe. The rationalwiki page is also worthy of attention s a skeptical take that doesn't neglect the potential role of abnormal psychology.