Gef, Sometimes Referred To As The Talking Mongoose Or The Dalby Spook, Was A Talking Mongoose Reported

Gef, sometimes referred to as the Talking Mongoose or the Dalby Spook, was a talking mongoose reported to inhabit a farmhouse known as Cashen’s Gap on the Isle of Man.

In September 1931, the Irving family, consisting of James, Margaret and 13 year old daughter Voirrey, heard scratching and rustling noises behind their farmhouse’s wooden wall panels. Initially they thought it was a rat, but then the unseen creature began making different sounds. At times it spat like a ferret, growled like a dog or gurgled like a baby.

The entity soon revealed an ability to speak and introduced itself as Gef, a mongoose. It claimed to have been born in New Delhi India, in 1852. According to Voirrey, the only person to see him properly, Gef was the size of a small rat with yellowish fur and a large bushy tail. (The Indian mongoose is in reality much larger than a rat and does not have a bushy tail). He would never allow anyone but Voirrey to see him, however, and if he didn’t like you, you could count on being insulted, or pelted with pebbles. 

Many researchers suspected that Gef was a poltergeist, and the Irving’s daughter Voirrey was at the right age for that sort of thing. If a poltergeist, Gef was rather a nice one. He often talked and joked with the family, and would occasionally leave small game, mostly rabbits, on their doorstep for dinner.

Gef claimed at times to be “an extra extra clever mongoose”, an “Earthbound spirit” and “a ghost in the form of a mongoose”. He 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!”

The only physical evidence cited in support of Gef’s existence would appear to be a series of footprints,none of which were identified as those of a mongoose, stains on the wall, supposed hair samples which were identified as having belonged to the Irving’s sheepdog, and several photos which were claimed by the Irvings to depict Gef, (such as the one above).

James Irving kept diaries about Gef between 1932 and 1935. These diaries, along with reports about the case, are in Harry Price’s archives in the Senate House Library, University of London.