Gef

In September 1931, the Irving family, consisting of James, Margaret, and a 13-year-old daughter named Voirrey, claimed they heard persistent scratching, rustling, and vocal noises behind their farmhouse's wooden wall panels that variously resembled a ferret, a dog, or a baby. According to the Irvings, a creature named Gef introduced itself and told them it was a mongoose born in New Delhi, India, in 1852. According to Voirrey, Gef was the size of a small rat with yellowish fur and a large bushy tail. The Irvings claimed that Gef had communicated to them that he was "an extra extra clever mongoose", an "Earthbound spirit" and "a ghost in the form of a weasel" and once said, "I am a freak. I have hands and I have feet, and if you saw me you'd faint, you'd be petrified, mummified, turned into stone or a pillar of salt!" Many other people, both locals and visitors, claimed to have heard Gef's voice, but only a handful claimed to have seen it. When Arthur Morrison visited the Irving home, he claimed that when Gef spoke to him from under the bed he slept in at the home, he could see a pair of yellow eyes. Two teenagers named Will Cubbon and Henry Hall claimed to see Gef in Cubbon's own yard and described him as yellow with a black spot on his tail. However, physical evidence was lacking. Footprints, stains on the wall, and hair samples claimed to be evidence of Gef were identified as belonging to the Irvings' sheepdog, as were several photos which were claimed by the Irvings to depict Gef. ==Psychic investigations==

Harry Price In July 1935, the editor of The Listener, Richard S. Lambert (known as "Rex"), and his friend, paranormal investigator Harry Price, went to the Isle of Man to investigate the case and produced the book ''The Haunting of Cashen's Gap'' (1936). They avoided saying that they believed the story but were careful to report it objectively. The book reports how a hair from the alleged mongoose was sent to Julian Huxley, who then sent it to naturalist F. Martin Duncan, who identified it as a dog hair. Price suspected the hair belonged to the Irvings' sheepdog, Mona. Price asked Reginald Pocock of the Natural History Museum to evaluate pawprints allegedly made by Gef in plasticene together with an impression of his supposed tooth marks. Pocock could not match them to any known animal, though he conceded that one of them might have been "conceivably made by a dog". He did state that none of the markings had been made by a mongoose. The diaries of James Irving, along with reports about the case, are in Harry Price's archives in the Senate House Library, University of London. Upon visiting the Irvings, Price observed double walls of wooden panelling covering the interior rooms of the old stone farmhouse which featured considerable interior air space between stone, as well as walls, also made of wood, that "[made] the whole house one great speaking-tube, with walls like sound boards. By speaking into one of the many apertures in the panels, it should be possible to convey the voice to various parts of the house." According to Richard Wiseman, "Price and Lambert were less than enthusiastic about the case, concluding that only the most credulous of individuals would be impressed with the evidence for Gef." ==Critical reception==

Although some psychic investigators thought that Gef was a poltergeist or another type of ghost, sceptics, including residents of the Isle of Man, believed the Irving family had colluded to perpetuate a hoax that was originated by daughter Voirrey. An Isle of Man Examiner reporter wrote that when he caught the girl making noises, her father tried to convince him the sound came from somewhere else. According to Joe Nickell, researchers have suspected Voirrey used ventriloquism and other tricks "the effects of which were hyped by family members, reporters in search of a story, and credulous paranormalists." Contemporary media scholar Jeffrey Sconce writes that the most likely explanation is that "this extra extra clever mongoose was an imaginary companion created by the Irvings' extra extra clever daughter." ==Lambert slander case==

In 1937, Lambert brought an action for slander against Sir Cecil Levita, after Levita suggested to a friend that Lambert was unfit to be on the board of the British Film Institute. Levita said that Lambert was "off his head" because he had believed in the talking mongoose and the evil eye. Lambert was pressured to abandon his action by Sir Stephen Tallents; he persisted and won, receiving £7,600 in damages. It was an exceptional figure for a slander case, awarded because Lambert's counsel managed to introduce a BBC memo that showed Lambert's career had been threatened if he persisted with the action; it later became known as "the Mongoose Case". ==Gallery==

Image:Gef foot tracks and teeth marks.jpg|Alleged foot tracks and teeth marks from Gef Image:Mona the sheep dog.jpg|Mona, the Irvings' sheep dog Image:Mr and Mrs Voirrey Irving.jpg|Mr. James Irving and daughter Voirrey at their house ==In media==

• Lemon Demon's 2009 song "Eighth Wonder", is written about Gef and contains many of Gef's alleged statements. The original song was 5:10 long, however, an alternative abridged mix of the song was released on the 2016 album Spirit Phone. • Gef! The Strange Tale of an Extra-Special Talking Mongoose (), by Christopher Josiffe, a nonfiction account of the case, was published by Strange Attractor Press in 2017. • The Last Podcast on the Left covered Gef in episode 409. • Gef was covered in an episode of the podcast Loremen. • Gef’s case was examined in an episode of the podcast This Paranormal Life. • Gef and Fodor's investigation are core to the plot of the audio drama "The Dalby Spook", released as a part of Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Adventures: What Lies Inside? (), by Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle, and published by Big Finish Productions in 2022. • The Fodor investigation into Gef is central in the 2023 film Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose starring Simon Pegg, Minnie Driver and Christopher Lloyd, with Neil Gaiman as the voice of Gef. • The story appeared on the 62nd episode of the Hungarian podcast show Képtelen Krónika in 2026. ==See also==