Weasel says it can talk.
But people won’t believe it.
Farm noises.
From our own correspondent. Peel (Isle of Man), Sunday.
Peel, Isle of Man, has been divided into two camps – by a 100 per cent. all-talking weasel. One half of the population in and around the town believes that the weasel talks, and the remainder either believe that somebody is “doubling” for it and practising ventriloquism, or else they mutter things about “spooks” and witchcraft.
This is no one-topic animal, this weasel of Mr James T Irving, who lives with his wife and his 14-year-old daughter at Doarlish Cashen, an isolated farmstead near Glen May. Up to the moment it has – Christened itself, Tipped Sir Lindsay for the Grand National, Sung hymns, Talked in seven languages, Barked like a dog, Mewed like a cat, Imitated a threshing mill, Talked about the neighbours, and Given a lot of cheek.
I went to hear this animal go through its performance today, and if it were not the weasel speaking, the sounds I heard weremade by no human being. Mr Irving told me that “Jack” lives behind the wainscotting, and after hearing a strange high voice coming from a wood near by singing songs and hymns and repeating odd words, his daughter attributed the noises to the animal. “I managed to get it to repeat sentences after me,” said Mr Irving. “I have got it to repeat sentences in English, French, German, Yiddish, Spanish, Fleming and Hebrew.” It followed this up with its imitations.
“Lately it has been reporting conversations about racing in which it has heard workmen indulging, and has said that Sir Lindsay was a good tip for the National,” Mr Irving went on. “The other day it decided it did not like the name ‘Jack,’ and insisted in the future in being called “Jeff,” which it had spelt out ‘Gef.’ When I asked it once what it ate it said ‘Air.’ When we mention rabbits however, it makes a sound of smacking lips.”
Walter Graham, the grandson of the neighbouring farmer entered the farmhouse, and said that a week yesterday he had heard the animal singing tunes which he did not know while he was in the house talking to the Irvings. He had also heard it say “shut up” while he was talking, and when Mrs Irving asked it to sing it said “I won’t.” It had also said something about one of the neighbours.
After I had left the farm and had got some way down the lane Mr Graham came running after me and shouted, “It’s started.” I tip-toed silently to the open door. A peculiar voice pitched more than an octave above the highest human voice, like the sound of a weasel’s scream, commenced to speak. Mrs Irving said, “The gentleman has gone now.” A voice replied in an eerie shriek, “He has not.” Mrs Irving said, “He has.” The voice replied, “I can hear him whispering.” I was actually whispering to Mr Irving when the voice went on, “I won’t talk for these people. They are all liars.” Then it said, “I can see his shadow.”
Mrs Irving said she had heard the animal repeat my name, which I had told her. Mr Irving was indignant at the suggestion which has been made in the locality that he is playing a strange trick, and pointed out that the story was ruining his chance of selling the farm.
Sheffield Independent, 22nd February 1932.
“Familiar”: Fraud or Fantasy?
Review of ‘The Haunting of Cashen’s Gap’ by Harry Price and R.S. Lambert, by H.F. Prevost Battersby.
In his Confessions of a Ghost-hunter, reviewed in ‘Light’ of March 12th, Mr Harry Price devoted a chapter to “The Talking Mongoose,” which concluded with the somewhat supercilious conjecture that he was afraid the Mongoose was “still impressing a number of rather credulous people.” Yet now we have an entire volume by himself and Mr Lambert devoted to the little animal, which makes one wonder whether Mr Price has joined the ranks of the “rather credulous people.” He has at any rate treated this “modern miracle” with an impartial scrutiny, with no attempt to enforce a conclusion, if he has one, on his readers.
Doarlish Cashen is a lonely farmhouse on a high bleak moorland, some arduous miles from Peel, in the Isle of Man. It was occupied in September, 1931 (when the mongoose, known later as Gef, put in an appearance), by Mr and Mrs Irving, alert, intelligent people, something over middle age, their daughter Voirrey, thirteen years old, and her sheepdog Mona. They had made a scant hard living out of sheep and poultry for sixteen years before Gef’s arrival.
He was first seen in the farmyard, in shape between a stoat and a ferret, but smaller and with a bushy tail. He signalled his entry to the house by a loud thumping on the stained match-boarding with which all its rooms are panelled, and continued this means of attracting attention, often to excess, during his stay. Though at first shy, especially of being seen, he rapidly improved an acquaintanceship with the family, even to the point of an ill-mannered familiarity; and once, owing to his threatening attitude, Voirrey was obliged to sleep in her parents’ room.
In the following May he allowed Mrs Irving to stroke him – indeed, he bit her, and for a week he was visible every evening. So he came to be accepted as an occupant as might a stray cat, and began rapidly to develop his linguistic abilities. These were, at first, mere growlings and barkings; then imitation of farmyard noises, made by Mr Irving; the repetition of nursery rhymes; expanding finally into a vocabulary which was by no means altogether derived from his hosts. He can sing in Manx, English, Welsh, Spanish, say a prayer in Hebrew and a long peroration in Flemish, and used to practise the Tonic Sol-fa scale. His musical repertory included songs unknown to the Irvings, supposed to have been acquired on his wanderings which led him, so he said, as far as Peel, and the Ramsay Cattle and Castletown Shows. He can calculate, requiring only a second or two to give the number of pence in a guinea, was able to read, even newspaper print, from a distance, understood the deaf and dumb language, and seems to have a sort of clairvoyant intuition.
He has described himself as a “tree mongoose,” a “marsh mongoose” and an “earth bound spirit”; and declared that he was born 7th June, 1852, in Delhi, and had been shot at and chased by natives. The Indian mongoose is nearly omnivorous in its appetite, and to Gef nothing seems to come amiss in the family larder, chocolates and cream buns being special favourites. He contributes to the catering by catching rabbits, which he deposits in a described spot near the house.
This account by no means exhausts Gef’s accomplishments, but it at least suggests a certain inconsistency with what is known of mongoose character, and prompted Mr Harry Price to despatch Captain Macdonald to investigate. That gentleman paid three visits to Doarlish Cashen. On the first, February, 1932, he heard Gef’s voice, but only when both the women were out of the room. On the second, May, 1935, Gef gave a notable performance, screaming, shouting, banging, apparently from all parts of the house, while Voirrey was in bed, upstairs, her door fastened on the outside; the demonstration concluding with a shower of gravel against the windows.
Another independent observer was Mr Charles Northwood, an old friend of Mr Irving, who in March, 1932, was much impressed by Gef’s varied powers; but he does not mention if Mr Irving and Voirrey were both in the room when Gef was speaking. Mr Northwood’s sisters-in-law, and his two nieces, on other occasions, also heard the voice. He was an entire believer in the Irvings’ good faith, and laughed at the suggestion that Voirrey could have ventriloquised the voices.
Mr Price and Mr Lambert paid a visit to the farm in August, 1935, but Gef was absent, though afterwards he repeated a conversation he had heard between the two men when in the farm yard. Later in that month a photograph, taken by Voirrey, shows Gef but indistinctly, on the top of a sod hedge.
There, roughly, is the available evidence about the animal. That of the Irvings is surprisingly consistent seeing that it covers a period of four years. In his review Mr Price offers as alternatives: “1. That Gef exists and haunts Doarlish Cashen, substantially as the Irvings say he does. 2. That Gef is a product of hallucination, or fantasy. 3. That Gef is a product of conscious deception.”
The second and third conclusions are not, according to the authors, exclusive of each other; but a conscious deception which turns into a collective hallucination must be almost as great a curiosity as a talking mongoose; and hallucination which continues for four years, and becomes such a nuisance as almost to drive you out of your home must also be something of a rarity. Also an hallucination that is first seen, then heard, then felt; which can throw crockery and furniture about, engage in social banter and unfamiliar song, eat hearty meals, retrieve lost sheep and hidden eggs, and produce over a hundred rabbits for the larder, must strain even the eager appetites of the hallucinationists.
Against the idea of conscious deception must be set the character of the Irvings, the utter inadequacy of any motive – such people are anything but exhibitionists; unexpected elements in the narration, such as the poisoning of Gef, and his unsanitary practices – witnessed also by Captain Macdonald; and finally the evidence of two level-headed investigators. But after such a clearance are we any nearer a solution? If Gef is, what is he?
Voirrey’s age when he first appeared would seem to suggest a Poltergeist character, but the most marked characteristic of the Poltergiest is its invisibility. The entity at Epworth Vicarage, which curiously enough was known as Jeffery, was described by Hetty Wesley as having the body of a badger, but she was the only one who saw it. Gef, who, likewise, was in some way allied to the girl of the family, was a far more advanced specimen, for not only is the voice unusual, but the very remarkable mental equipment. The Saragossa Ghost could also speak and had a sense of humour, but there, apart from Maria Pascuela, the likeness ends.
The authors, working at the hallucination theory, suggest that Voirrey invented Gef, and persuaded her parents to accept his reality. But seeing that Mrs Irving was actually bitten by the hallucination, that on various occasions it provided information unknown to any of the household, and that it developed an unpleasant and even terrifying personality, the guess does not seem a good one.
In an appendix there is a reminder that Gef’s parentage might be sought among the “familiars” with which witches were always furnished. Squirrels, ferrets, polecats, and rabbits all served the purpose, were often credited with speech, lived in the cracks of their owner’s cottage, were treated as domestic pets, and fed with the family. Occasionally they lived to a great age.
Gef is reported to have amazing strength, an extraordinary and quite unhuman acuteness of hearing, an uncanny gift of speed, a capacity for changing his appearance, and even, it is suspected, of rendering himself invisible; so that even as an animal he is far from normal.
The book ought to have many readers, and may inspire some of them to unearth the elusive meaning of this “modern miracle.”
Light, April 2nd, 1936.
The Talking Mongoose.
The attempt made some few months back to broadcast a spook from a lonely house near Meopham, Kent, was not attended by any striking success. It is not too much to suppose that this negative result has rather queered the pitch for any further experiments of the same nature. But if “Gef”, the mongoose of Cashen’s Gap, could be induced to give an exhibition of his conversational powers in a way that could be utilised by the BBC, there is little doubt that he would have a record audience of listeners. One of the strangest of the many anomalies which we encounter in the descriptions of poltergeist phenomena and other similar manifestations is the fact that while the mysterious agency professes to be entirely bent on proving its reality, it is apt to be very shy when invitedto demonstrate. The presence of doubters is resented and in fact seems to reduce it to impotence. Taken by itself this is a very suspicious feature, and one wonders how an intelligence which otherwise gives many indications of exceptional keenness can remain blind to the bad impression thus created.
But it is possible that many of my readers have not heard of the mongoose of Cashen’s Gap, and before going further I must try to give some account of what is alleged to have happened. Doarlish Cashen (rendered as Cashen’s Gap) is a lonely farmstead on the west coast of the Isle of Man, some four miles from the town of Peel. It stands on very high ground and there is no proper road to it. The small two-storied house which stands there has been roughly built of slate slabs joined with concrete and faced with cement. Inside it has been panelled throughout with match-boarding which does not fit very close to the surface of the wall. Since about 1915 this dwelling has been occupied by a Mr James T. Irving, who has living with him his wife and a daughter “Voirrey” (the name Voirrey being the Manx form of Mary) who is at present eighteen years of age. (The fullest account which I have met with is contained in the volume of Messrs. Harry Price and R. S. Lambert (editor of ‘The Listener’) called ‘The Haunting of Cashen’s Gap,’ Methuen, 1936. To this I am much indebted in the present article.)
Mr Irving is the owner of some forty-five acres of very rough land, now no longer used for any sort of crops, but serving as pasture for a score or two of sheep and a few goats. In the autumn of the year 1931 certain extraordinary happenings at the farm seem first of all to have been reported locally, but very soon attracted the attention of some of the London dailies. It was announced that a “weasel” had been disturbing the peace of the inmates of the homestead by growling animal noises, by banging loudly against the wainscoting, by throwing small objects about, and eventually by speaking in a very high-pitched human voice. Owing to the space left behind the boarding, the little creature could pass everywhere unperceived and peer through the crannies.
From an account which Mr Irving furnished in answer to a request for information addressed to him by Mr Harry Price, we learn that from September, 1931, when the family first became conscious of Gef’s existence, down to February, 1932, the animal was seen but rarely. They heard it, however, barking, spitting and blowing; and then Mr Irving was led to give imitations of various calls of birds or beasts, which the “weasel” at once imitated perfectly. I may notice that it is not very clear why they identified these sounds as coming from the creature’s throat. Apparently they have never on any occasion seen it uttering these cries. The cries were heard when it was itself invisible, though they had reason to believe that it was somewhere in the neighbourhood. After the farmer had elicited these imitations of animal calls, Voirrey, then a child of thirteen, tried it with nursery rhymes. These also it echoed perfectly, but in exceedingly shrill tones.
At what date the creature began to embark on independent conversation we are not told, but when writing to Mr Price on February 22, 1932, Irving states: “It announces its presence by calling either myself or my wife by our Christian names. It apparently can see in the dark and describe (sic) the movements of my hand.” When “Captain Macdonald,” acting as representative of “The National Laboratory of Psychical Research,” visited Cashen’s Gap a few days later, i.e., on February 27, 1932, he heard “a very shrill voice from inside scream out: ‘Go away. Who is that man?'” And the next day, as he tells us, “a very shrill voice started talking in the bedroom and kept on talking to Mrs Irving for fifteen minutes. I then shouted that as I believed in the animal, would it come down? I received a shrill reply: ‘No, I don’t mean to stay long as I don’t like you.'”
From this alone it would be clear that, assuming these reports to be reliable, the speeches heard are those of an intelligent agent. They are not mere parrot cries. At the same early stage the record informs us that when remostrated with for his diabolical screeching which kept them all awake, Gef (this was the name the creature answered to) replied: “I did it for devilment”; and when they threatened to leave the house altogether, he used to answer: “I am a ghost in the form of a weasel, and I will haunt you.” There is nothing particularly brilliant recorded of Gef’s conversations with the Irving family. His language is apt to be jeering and ribald. When a visitor who had heard him behind the panelling invited him to show himself, he replied: “No damned fear, you’ll put me in a bottle.” When Mr Irving was complaining of some minor ailment, Gef scoffed, and said to the sufferer: “Hey, Jim, I’ve got joint-evil in my tail.” When Mrs Irving, startled apparently at some coarse parody of a song, called out: “You know, Gef, you are no animal!”, he at once replied: “Of course I am not! I am the Holy Ghost!” On another occasion he declared: “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.” When Gef, returning from one of his absences, found no food awaiting him, he made a terrific din to awaken the farmer, who pretended at first to take no notice, but at last spoke to him. Whereupon Gef shrieked out: “You devil, you heard me before!,” andd then proceeded to inquire: “What about my chukko?” (grub).
The family do not seem to have been previously interested in Spiritualism or anything of that nature, though Mr Irving is an educated man who has travelled a good deal and knows something of foreign languages. But, whether from visitors or from correspondence in the newspapers which have discussed the case, the Irvings later on formed the idea that their daughter Voirrey serves as a medium to some poltergeist agency, which draws power from her, but camouflages itself in animal form. As already mentioned, Gef was at first supposed to be a weasel, but in March, 1932, Irving wrote to “Captain Macdonald”: “I have recently discovered it to be an Indian mongoose.” He had, in fact, learnt that a previous occupant of the farm had imported several of these little creatures to keep down the vermin. Gef himself, later on, declared in one of his conversations that he was born in India in 1852, but there is no reason for supposing that the freakish intelligence, which manifests in any poltergeist, scruples to invent whatever, for the moment, suits its mocking purpose. As we may see in such an example as the Dagg case (See ‘The Month’, January 1936, pp. 52-62), that purpose, though sometimes spiteful and shameless, is not always consistently malevolent. Gef, though he is apt to behave very badly, seems to show a certain affection for the Irvings and especially for Voirrey.
The curious feature in the Cashen’s Gap story is that Gef in return for a diet of chocolates, bananas, biscuits, lean bacon, sausages, etc., which are left out for him in a convenient spot overnight, contributes substantially to the family larder by killing rabbits for his hosts. These he apparently strangles with his forepaws, turns them upon their backs and then coming home tells Mr Irving where he will find them. We are told that by the end of 1935 his total kill of rabbits was 118. But he respected the close season, and then busied himself in finding the eggs which the ducks had laid in out-of-the-way places, reporting the precise situation where they were hidden. He also plays with a ball, and is heard occasionally dancing to the gramophone. There are some other curious feats of his which are of rarer occurrence; for example, we are told of his bringing to the house strange objects which he has found, of his extracting biscuits from a locked cupboard, of his reports of incidents, including conversations, which have taken place at a distance, and strangest of all, of one particular occasion on which Gef, in the belief of Mr Irving, transformed himself into a cat.
Most of these more remarkable tricks are recounted only upon the evidence of the Irvings, and I am deferring for the moment any discussion of the confirmation they receive from the statements of other visitors. In the meantime attention may be directed to the parallels of these extraordinary happenings which are furnished by the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At that period, of course, it was universally taken for granted that all weird phenomena were the work of demons, and in particular that communications in a human voice must be ascribed to this source. The well-known treatise of Nicholas Remy called “Demonolatria” has a good deal to say on the subject:
“It has {he declares} already been shown that the Devil often manifests himself to man in human shape. It will be no less easy to believe that he also holds vocal intercourse with men… To this day witches affirm that their Little Masters speak to them in their own tongue as naturally and idiomatically as one who has never left his native country, and that they even take upon themselves names in common use in the vernacular speech. {After giving examples in German from Lorraine, he adds}: But just as they can never so completely adopt a human appearance but that there remains something to expose the fraud and deception, so they cannot so perfectly imitate the human voice that the falsity and pretence of it is not easily perceived by their hearers. Nicola Ganater, Jana Schwartz and many other women said that their demons spoke as if their mouths were in a jar or cracked pitcher, and on that account it is always their wont when speaking to hold their heads down, as do those who speak in shame being conscious of guilt.”
But the witch confessions not only attribute the gift of speech to the demons who assume human shape, but also to the “familiars” who, in the guise of small animals, were alleged to take up their abode with these beldames. Among many examples one of special interest is that of Elizabeth Francis and Agnes Waterhouse of Chelmsford. The familiar in this case was a white cat which Elizabeth called “Sathan,” and of which we are told in Elizabeth’s confession that when she begged that she might grow rich and have goods, Sathan assented –
“asking her what she would have, and she said sheep (for this cat spoke to her, as she confessed, in a strange hollow voice but such as she understood by use) and this cat forthwith brought sheep into her pasture to the number of eighteen, black and white, which continued with her for a time, but in the end did all wear away, she knew not how.”
After remaining with Elizabeth Francis for some eighteen years, during which time it killed at her request first her husband and then her child, the white cat Sathan passed to Agnes Waterhouse by whom it was incited to kill her husband and other persons, changing at one time into the shape of a toad. This Agnes, before she was hanged on July 29, 1566 – the legal indictment with its endorsement is still preserved – made a confession that she “had been a witch and used such execrable sorcery the space of fifteen years.” Further –
“And being demanded of the by-standers, she confessed that she had sent her Sathan to one Wardol a neighbour of hers, being a tailor (with whom she was offended) to hurt and destroy him and his goods… And being demanded whether she was accustomed to go to church to the common prayer or divine service, she said yea, and being required what she did there, she said she did as other women do and prayed right heartily there; and when she was demanded what prayer she said, she answered: “the Lord’s prayer, the Ave Maria and the Belief.” And then they demanded whether in Latin or in English, and she said in Latin. And they demanded why she said it not in English but in Latin, seeing that it was set out by public authority and according to God’s word that all men should pray in the English and mother tongue that they best understood, and she said that Sathan would at no time suffer her to say it in English, but at all times in Latin.” (C.L’Estrange Ewen, ‘Witch Hunting and Witch Trials’, 1929, pp. 317-24.)
There is, of course, much reason to doubt whether this confession, which purports to have been made by Agnes Waterhouse after sentence passed – she had previously pleaded guilty – is in any way reliable. It is hard to say how far confidence can be placed in the contemporary chap-book (dated 1566) which is the only available source of information, and the wretched woman may have hoped that by falling in with the prejudices of her judges she might obtain a remission of the death penalty. The whole matter of these witch confessions, where torture was not employed, is extraordinarily perplexing.
More trustworthy, even if still associated with very astounding psychic phenomena, are the rare accounts preserved to us of speaking poltergeists. I have more particularly before my mind the case of M. Francois Perrault, the Huguenot minister of Macon, and that of the Dagg family in Canada. (Of the former of these cases I have written at some length in Studies for June, 1928, pp. 215-228, of the latter here in The Month, January 1936, pp. 52-62.) Lack of space will not allow me here to restate my reasons for thinking well of the evidence, but I may repeat that in neither instance could I easily persuade myself that the whole story of the voice was a pure invention or the trick of a ventriloquist. The witnesses on both these occasions were numerous, and in both, the startling manifestations of the voice which came from nowehre were confirmed by the occurrence of an abundance of psychical phenomena, such as the movement of furniture, utensils, etc., things plainly visible and observed in the daylight. There was also in both these cases a very definitely indicated medium, a young girl who, according to the received theory, provided the “power” utilized by these disturbing agencies whatever their nature may be.
If anything would induce me to give serious consideration to the somewhat conflicting evidence produced in Messrs. Price and Lambert’s account of “The Haunting of Cashen’s Gap,” it would be the analogies which one finds in the Macon story. At Macon, it is true, the spirit was not visible, but it offered to make itself visible. M. Perrault tells us expressly:
“He would try us also by curiosity, saying that if we had a mind to see him in any shape of man, woman, lion, bear, dog, cat, etc., he would give us the sport of it. Which motion we did much abhor and reject, saying that we were so far from desiring to see him in any of these shapes or any other, that we were desirous, if it might be God’s pleasure, never to hear him.”
There is also a certain resemblance in the circumstances under which the human voice manifested itself. The poltergeist at Macon first gave evidence of its presence by raising an unearthly din, pulling away bedclothes, moving furniture, etc. Speaking of the visitors who came to his house when the news of these disturbances began to be bruited abroad, M. Perrault writes:
“The first night that they came and some other following nights, the wicked spirit kept himself from making any noise or stir in their presence, as not willing to be known to them. But in the end, upon the 20th of September {the visitation had begun September 14th} about 9 o’clock, he made himself openly known for such as he was. For in the presence of us all, Mr Tornus {not only a devout Catholic, but a ‘royal notary’ and a man of position} being one of the company, he began to whistle three or four times with a very loud and shrill tone, and presently to frame an articulate and intelligible voice, though somewhat hoarse, which seemed to be about three or four steps from us. He pronounced these first words singing ‘vingt-deux deniers,’ a little tune of five notes which whistling birds are taught to sing. After that he said and repeated many times this word, “Minister, Minister.” Because that voice was very terrible to us at the first, I was long before I would answer anything to that word, but only, “Get thee from me, Satan, the Lord rebuke thee.” But he was again repeating very often that word “Minister,” thinking, belike, thereby to grieve me much, I was provoked to tell him, “Yes, I am indeed a Minister, a servant of the living God, before whose Majesty thou tremblest.” To which he answered: “I say nothing to the contrary”; and I replied: “I have no need of thy testimony.” Yet he continued to say the same, as if he would win us to a favourable opinion of him.”
This old translation – I have not troubled to reproduce the spelling – raises one or two points of interest. In the first place the French printed text of 1653, as well as a modern edition of the same, describes this scene as occurring on November 20th (not September), more than two months after the first manifestations. This would suggest that the spook took a long time learning to speak. So in the Dagg household the poltergeist trouble had been going on for two months before the voice was heard, and then at first only indistinctly. I may add that where we have an account of the development of the direct voice phenomena among psychics, the gift seems generally to be acquired slowly, the spirit is shy of strangers, and speech is at first hoarse and indistinct.
Further, the French original of the passage quoted leaves a stronger impression than does the English version that the spirit’s talk at first was halting and laboured. He did not sing a song, but just five notes, more than once repeated, and afterwards on that first evening he was able to achieve little more than to utter provocatively and tauntingly the word “Minister” many times over in a very hoarse voice. Facility came later, and before the end the spirit seems to have conversed fluently (just as the Dagg spirit also did), and even to have given imitations of the speech of people not present, imitations which were at once recognized as life-like.
But the most striking point of resemblance between the Macon and Cashen’s Gap manifestations is the ribald, mocking, but not unfriendly, character of the unseen agent in both cases. There are the same occasional outbursts of temper, as when M. Perrault tells us that the demon “after indignantly denying that he was accursed, went on to tell me in great wrath that he would do this and that to me. Among other things he said that he would come and pull off my blankets and drag me out of bed by the feet.” He was guilty also of unblushing deceptions and “he sang profane and bawdy songs.” On one occasion when a party of visitors had gathered in M. Perrault’s house and the spook was carrying on with his usual mockeries, we are told that –
“One Simeon Meissonier, that used to resort often to my house upon that occasion, rushed suddenly to the place whence the voice seemed to come, and having searched it again and again, as others had done before him, and found nothing, he returned to the place where we all were, bringing with him several things from the place where the voice sounded, among other things, a small bottle. At which the demon fell a-laughing, and said to him: “I was told long ago that thou wert a fool, and I see now that thou art one indeed, to believe that I am in that bottle. I should be a fool myself to get into it, for one might take me by stopping the bottle with his finger.”
During all the three and a half months that the Macon visitationi continued, the spook never once showed himself in visible form, though we are told, for example, that on one occasion “he snatched a brass candlestick out of the maid’s grasp, leaving the candle lighted in her hand.” This maid was the medium, whom the spirit seemed often to treat with special consideration, throwing a faggot down to her from time to time when she asked him for wood. One is much reminded of the mongoose’s attitude to Voirrey. M. Perrault’s neighbours, who, like all other people in those days, believed the visitation to be of diabolical origin, were persuaded that the intruder did, at the end, show himself visibly; for we are told:
“Finally after all these words and actions the demon went away the 22 day of December. And the next day a very great viper was seen going out of my house, and was taken with long pincers by some nailers, our neighbours, who carried it all over the town, crying: “Here is the devil that came out of the Minister’s house,” and finally left it at the house of one William Clerc (called Pucelle), an apothecary, where it was found to be a true and natural viper, a serpent rare in that country.”
To return to the question of Cashen’s Gap it seems to me that anyone who admits the reality of poltergeist phenomena cannot well draw the line and refuse on principle to discuss the evidence for what is alleged to have occurred in the Isle of Man. Let me point out that it is by no means necessary to suppose that the intelligence and the voice reside in any sense in the mongoose. There is nothing to prove that the throat of the little creature is the organ by which these articulate sounds, this human language, is produced. Without committing myself to the acceptance of any theory – I regard the point as still altogether sub judice – there is a considerable amount of evidence that the phenomenon of the direct voice does occur in seances with certain mediums. This means that the medium’s organs of speech are not employed, but that sound vibrations, which are audible words, are produced in some mysterious way outside the body. The theory most commonly propounded by spiritualists is that discarnate spirits are able to form out of ectoplasm drawn from the medium all the organs necessary for voice production; though there are also others who hold that at death an etheric or astral body passes into the next world along with the soul and that this is capable, under exceptional circumstances, of producing the same material manifestations which in earth life are effected by man’s physical frame.
Anyhow, if heavy objects can be lifted, projectiles guided in their rapid flight, musical instruments played upon, thundering blows delivered upon doors or tables, sounds like the crowing of cocks, the barking of dogs, the sawing of wood or the whetting of scythes, be accurately imitated without any perceptible human agency, I can see no great difficulty in supposing that the intelligences responsible for these marvels may also be capable of counterfeiting the human voice and taking part in any sort of conversation. Moreover, if some spirit influence can so guide a medium’s pen that it will reproduce the characteristic handwriting and signature of an utter stranger, it would seem a comparatively easy matter to control the movements of such a little animal as a mongoose and to teach it to make itself useful in killing rabbits.
Of course, it is all ultimately a matter of evidence when one comes to the particular case. I have unfortunately not left myself room to attempt any adequate discussion of the materials presented in the book of Messrs. Price and Lambert. Let me only say that if the story of Gef with his speeches and his tricks is all a fairy tale, it seems to me impossible to acquit any member of the Irving family, father, mother or daughter, of connivance in a deliberate imposture. And yet they are people who make a good impression upon all who know them, and it is extremely hard to discover any adequate motive they can have for keeping the deception alive during a period of more than five years. There is no suggestion of pecuniary gain either realised or to be expected.
Undoubtedly, even over and above the stupendous intrinsic improbability, there are several suspicious features in the case and some inconsistencies in the accounts furnished by Mr Irving. The alleged reluctance of Gef to face anything like a critical investigation by experts is obviously a very weak point. On the other hand, “Captain Macdonald,” who, as the representative of “The National Laboratory of Psychical Research,” was sent to inquire into the case, seems to have satisfied himself, after three visits paid, first in 1932, and then in August and October, 1935, that Gef’s manifestations, at some of which he was present, were quite genuine, and that the ventriloquism hypothesis could not be maintained. Mr “Northwood,” {The name ‘Northwood’ I know from a private source to be a pseudonym; with regard to ‘Captain Macdonald’ I have no information. It seems a pity that Messrs. Price and Lambert have not told us which are pseudonyms and which are not.} who heard Gef twice in 1932, is equally convinced that all is above-board, and seems very readily to have submitted himself to cross-examination regarding his experiences. On the other hand, the specimens which purported to be taken from Gef’s fur coat, and the supposed imprint of his claws in plasticine are definitely deceptive, if not fraudulent. The conclusion in sum must be that the case, after five years, remains as ambiguous and unsatisfactory as it was when the problem was first propounded in 1931.
Herbert Thurston.
The Month, May 1936.
A Letter from England
By Dr Nandor Fodor
(Research Officer, International Institute for Psychical Research).
London, February, 1937.
The Truth About The Talking Mongoose.
In my January notes I said that the greatest psychic mystery of England is the Talking Mongoose. At that time I was speaking from general knowledge and from a glimpse of the correspondence which passed between Mr James T Irving, the owner of the mongoose-haunted Doarlish Cashen, Isle of Mann, and Mr Northwood, godfather of Voirrey Irving, the farmer’s daughter, commonly suspected as the Poltergeist girl of the case. Since then I have conducted a personal investigation, having spent the first week of February at Mr Irving’s house as his guest.
I was not fortunate enough to hear “Gef” talking. There was some reason to suppose that he was lying low behind the boards. Mr Irving’s family was desperately anxious to coax him into talking. But “Gef” disapproves of strangers, whose presence he associates with unwelcome publicity, and he made no exception in my favor. Nevertheless, my week was well spent. I collected an enormous amount of evidence. I learned to know the Irving family and to adjudge the value of their testimony. I examined a number of witnesses who, in the past five and a half years, had heard “Gef.” I followed the trail which the talking mongoose left behind in his travels of exploration, of which he used to give a detailed story to the Irving family. I checked up on Captain MacDonald’s amazing experience (reported in Mr Harry Price’s book, The Haunting of Cashen’s Gap) by taking photographs of every important position in the drama of the talking mongoose’s descent to the bottom of a dark staircase, at the open door of which Captain MacDonald was sitting with his finger on the trigger of his flashlight. Finally, I analyzed the psychic aspects of the case.
I returned with fifty closely typed pages of notes, and I claim to know more about “Gef,” the talking mongoose, than anyone – with the exception of the Irving family – in this country today. I am ready to re-affirm that the case represents the greatest mystery in all England. This mystery, however, is not a psychic one, at least not in the usual sense of that phrase.
Voirrey Irving, the young girl at Doarlish Cashen, is not victimised by a Poltergiest. While it is quite true that the manifestations of “Gef” commenced before she reached the age of puberty and that a very noticeable affection existed between the mongoose and herself, the explanatino based on these two facts is an erroneous one. Voirrey Irving has long since passed the critical age. “Gef” still persists. Voirrey is no more fascinated by the mystery of the talking animal. “Gef” is fast outgrowing his “childhood” and returns Voirrey’s hostility with indifference and occasional scorn. He shows a certain amount of respect to Mrs Irving, but really he is only fond of the head of the family to whom he is grateful for having taught him to speak.
The Poltergeist theory was supported by “Gef’s” ability to thump on the match-boarding which is built along the walls inside the house, and also by his stone-throwing habits. The story of the Saragossa Ghost, the voice which spoke from a dark flue, is still remembered in England. It was supposed that a combination of the Direct Voice with Poltergeist disturbances might explain the case of the Talking Mongoose.
I found that the match-boarding of Doarlish Cashen possesses remarkable acoustic qualities and that no particularly great effort is required to set up a din. The stones which “Gef” throws are pebbles, gravel and pieces of turf. In only two instances was strength displayed which one would not expect from a small animal. The shower of gravel which Captain MacDonald heard on the window panes outside of the finale of his conversation with “Gef” inside, was not due to supernormal agency. Having searchingly questioned Mr Irving and his family, I established the fact that “Gef” stopped talking before his shower and that he that he must have slipped out of the house through his entrance hole and thrown the gravel in a normal manner.
But how can a mongoose throw things? one may ask. All I can tell is that “Gef” claims to possess hands (three fingers and a thumb) and that he has proved the possession of these appendages to the satisfaction of the Irving family.
I can definitely state that “Gef” is not a Poltergeist, that he is not an earthbound spirit and that he is not a ghost. I am also positive that no psychic contribution on the part of the Irving family is responsible for the extraordinary happenings at Doarlish Cashen. There is but one psychic feature inthe whole gamut of “Gef’s” manifestations: this is his ability to describe the movements of Mr Irving, together with the words which he speaks, to his wife and daughter in the house while the farmer is in the fields out of sight and out of hearing. “Gef” has often been asked how he does it. He answered: “I can’t tell you how I know. I know.”
What, then, is the mystery of the Talking Mongoose? I can only see one explanation which covers all the facts. This is the same which is given by “Gef” himself: that he is an animal, “an extra, extra clever little mongoose,” who for years understood the human language but could not speak it until Mr Irving taught him. [This has to be the single most ridiculous thing I have ever read in my life.] There is a considerable amount of proof in support of “Gef’s” claim and there is nothing, except the absurdity of the claim, against it. He has been seen, he has been heard when all the members of the Irving family were satisfactorily accounted for, he has been photographed. It is true that these photographs are not very successful, Voirrey Irving is a poor photographer and “Gef” is very small and moves like lightning. Just the same, the photographs are good enough to show the presence of a mongoose-like animal.
But could he not be a familiar, a survival from dark mediaeval days? There is much which supports this contention, and in the first five days of my sstay at Doarlish Cashen I strongly leaned towards it. But I had to discard it in the end. “Gef” does perform the services of a familiar. He finds stray sheep, barks home the goats, chases out the rats, scares away the mice, finds lost objects, guards the fire at night, acts as a watch dog, tells the time in the morning from the clock below and pays for his lodgings and his food by catching rabbits for the family. He also acts as newsboy and a defender of the family’s name by throwing stones at those who speak disparagingly of the Irvings, and by killing their poultry. But he cannot penetrate closed doors, he cannot disappear in other than normal manner, he cannot be in two places at once, and he has no supernormal knowledge. He has a Grade A memory, abnormally keen eyesight and hearing, and a capacity for learning which is simply astonishing. But he has no ties with the ghost world and is afraid of spooks.
If we can bring ourselves to the admission of the stupendous fact that an animal can learn to talk like a human being, the mystery of “Gef” immediately evaporates. If the Elberfeld horses could solve complicated mathematical problems, if they could express their own thoughts and ideas by the help of a code; if Rolf, the wonder dog of Mannheim could show the intelligence of a child; if Black Bear, the Briarcliff Pony, could possess powers of clairvoyance; if birds can speak and associate definite ideas with definite words – why not a Talking Mongoose?
The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, March 1937 (v31, issue 3).
Haunting of Cashen’s Gap.
On the Dalby Mountain in the Isle of Man a lonely cottage was suddenly haunted, but by what? A mongoose?
Henry Lewis retells story in traditional vein.
This is the traditional time of the year for telling ghost stories. This story is remembered by many people and possibly ranks as the strangest ghost story ever told. The haunting of Cashen’s Gap began in the winter of 1931. Farmer James Irving was sitting with his wife in their lonely cottage 750ft up Dalby Mountain on the west coast of the Isle of Man, where they had lived peacefully and quietly for 14 years. Their 13-year-old daughter Voirrey (Manx for Mary) was in bed upstairs. Then “Tap, Tap, Tap.” The noise came from the attic which was boarded in. “Must be mice,” said the farmer to his wife. Next day he opened up the ceiling and went into the attic. He found no mice but he did find a little wood carving that had been missing. When dropped on the floor it produced the sort of tap that he had heard the previous night.
That evening the sounds came again. Louder. Then came a running noise. “That’s no mouse,” said Mr Irving to his wife. Then in succession came animal sounds, barks, glows, spitting and hissing, a thump that set pictures on the walls swinging, a noise like a baby starting to talk, more barks – and silence. Mr Irving waited. Nothing happened. He looked at his wife, then made a barking sound himself. Back came a bark. Mr Irving meowed. Back came a meow. And so according to Mr Irving, the Dalby spook came to Cashen’s Gap. The story was to become stranger still.
The “thing” next began to imitate Mr Irving’s voice. And in a matter of weeks was talking like a human, talking in a high-pitched screech. “What in the name of Heaven can he be?” demanded the frightened farmer. “What in the name of Heaven can he be?” came back the mimicking screech from the wall. Then it answered the question: “I am a ghost in the form of a weasel and I shall haunt you with weird noises and clanking chains.” There was a noise like metal clanking. “If you are kind to me, I will bring you good luck. If you are not kind I shall kill all your poultry. I can get them wherever you put them. I am not evil. I could be if I wanted. You don’t know what damage or harm I could do if I were roused. I could kill you all if I liked but I won’t.” And to prove it, the self-described ghost in the form of a weasel began to throw things. Gravel was hurled at the windows from outside. Things were pitched across the rooms indoors.
The farmer put down rat poison and the animal screamed and shook the house with great bumps. He hunted him with a gun and found nothing. The job was difficult because the house had double walls to guard against draughts and keep it warm. There were spaces between the walls and it was from these spaces that the voice generally came.
By now the farmer’s story of the strange happenings at Cashen’s Gap had spread. The first reaction was the obvious one. That the Irvings must be going mad. Yet Mr Irving was known as a healthy, educated man. Mr Charles Northwood, a retired cotton broker and a friend of Irving’s for many years, dashed to the Island to clear up the business. He was greeted by the voice of Gef, as the ghost was now called. “Charlie, my old sport!” Gef went on: “Tell Arthur not to come.” (Arthur was Mr Northwood’s son.) “I’ll blow his brains out with a threepenny cartridge,” Mr Northwood was staggered.
“Captain Macdonald, a racing motorist, also claimed to have heard Gef screaming and knocking and saying “Hello, everybody.” Two boys from Peel, Harry Hall, 19, and Will Cubbon, 15, told of conversations with Gef. According to Harry when he tossed a penny in the porch, Gef called: “Tails,” and was right. He tossed again and Gef again called correctly. He muffed the next one and Gef screamed: “You didn’t turn the penny.” Gef asked Will: “Can you drive a steam-roller?”Captain Macdonald, a racing motorist, also claimed to have heard Gef screaming and knocking and saying “Hello, everybody.” Two boys from Peel, Harry Hall, 19, and Will Cubbon, 15, told of conversations with Gef. According to Harry when he tossed a penny in the porch, Gef called: “Tails,” and was right. He tossed again and Gef again called correctly. He muffed the next one and Gef screamed: “You didn’t turn the penny.” Gef asked Will: “Can you drive a steam-roller?” “Yes,” said Will. “You young rascal,” said Gef. “You would put it over a hedge.”
Reporters and ghost-hunters began to arrive at the lonely farmhouse in droves. Harry Price, one of the most famous ghost hunters alive at the time, investigated the case. And the stories that Irving told them all grew even stranger. How Gef killed rabbits and left them on the porch. How Gef would daily discover new words and ask about them: “Jim, what is countenance? Jim, what is a nun?” How he would read the daily newspapers over Irving’s shoulder and scream at him when he opened a letter: “Read it out, you fat-headed gnome.”
Irving said Gef told him: “Thou wilt never know what I am. I am a freak. I have hands and feet. And if you saw me you would be paralysed, petrified, mummified, turned into a pillar of salt. I am the fifth dimension. The eighth wonder of the world. I can split the atom.” But soon the Irvings were claiming to have caught glimpses of Gef – a weasel-like animal with a long bushy tail and hands like human hands. No one else saw him.
The haunting, if haunting it were, went on for five years. And the stories grew more remarkable. According to Mr Irving, Gef knew everything that was going on in the Island. He knew the names of horses and when a foal was born. He could describe furniture in houses 20 miles away. He told Irving all the gossip, saying that he had overheard it while riding on buses. Certainly it was difficult to understand how else Irving could have known of conversations on buses. The Islanders, of course, became angry, and John Cowley, a mechanic at the Peel bus terminus fixed a contact-plate under a bus to electrocute Gef. Irving was becoming attached to Gef, and told him about it. “Oh, I know all about that,” Gef replied. “It’s under bus 31.” Irving checked. It was!
Stones, some weighing a pound, were thrown at islanders from nowhere. They blamed Gef! Now Gef told Irving that he was a mongoose, born on June 7, 1852, and came from Delhi.
The ghost hunters and reporters suspected ventriloquism. The islanders suspected that Voirrey, the Irvings’ daughter, was responsible. But, despite all manner of tests and traps the investigators were unable to get to the bottom of the case. Anyway what could the Irvines gain from a hoax? And then the case of the talking mongoose reached the High Court. One of the people who had helped investigate it was the then editor of the BBC paper, “The Listener.” When a titled man laughed at his interest in the affair, the editor sued him for slander and after a sensational action reported all over the world, was awared £7,500 damages. Later the case was mentioned in the House of Commons. Radio comedians took it up. But Gef’s public career was almost at an end. The Irvings moved away from Cashen’s Gap and vanished – at least from public notice.
Gef has never been heard of since. Some islanders believe Gef went with the Irvings. Others believe that he was the odd, polecat-type animal which was trapped and shot in 1947 by Mr Leslie Graham, the next tenant of Cashen’s Gap. Was Gef a real talking form? The Irvings claimed to have seen him and that he raided their larder. No one else ever saw him despite the number of investigators who searched the farm over a period of many years. Was the whole affair a delusion or a hoax?
The Singapore Free Press, 5th December 1958.