Говорящий мангуст с острова Мэн Говорящий мангуст из Далби / Тайна говорящего мангуста / Геф: Говорящий мангуст с острова Мэн

Supposed talking mongoose

Gef ('/dʒ//ɛ//f/ JEF'), also referred to as the Talking Mongoose or the Dalby Spook, was an allegedly talking mongoose which inhabited a farmhouse owned by the Irving family. The Irvings' farm was located at Cashen's Gap near the hamlet of Dalby on the Isle of Man. The story was given extensive coverage by the tabloid press in Britain in the early 1930s. The Irvings' claims gained the attention of parapsychologists and ghost hunters, such as Harry Price, Hereward Carrington, and Nandor Fodor. Some investigators of the era as well as contemporary critics have concluded that the phenomenon was a hoax that the Irving family perpetuated by using ventriloquism.

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 mongoose" 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!" Several other people, both locals and visitors, claimed to have heard Gef's voice, and two claimed to have seen it; 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.

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."

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."

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 but persisted with it and won, receiving £7,600 in damages, then an exceptional figure for a slander case, awarded because Lambert's counsel managed to introduce a BBC memo which showed Lambert's career had been threatened if he persisted with the action, which became known as "the Mongoose Case".