‘I’ll split the atom! I am the fifth dimension! I am the eighth wonder of the world!’ Gef.
For several years beginning in the early 1930s, a family living in a remote smallholding on the Isle of Man were plagued by something that called itself Gef:
I’m a freak. I have hands and feet, and if you saw me you’d faint, you’d be petrified, mummified, turned into stone or a pillar of salt.
One of the strangest tales in the long history of high strangeness, the story of Gef, the so-called talking mongoose (pictured left… What do you mean you can’t see him?) has never been satisfactorily resolved, nor properly re-investigated. Until now. Researcher Christopher Josiffe has spent the past few years digging through the archives of famed ghost-hunter Harry Price in search of an answer to this truly puzzling and rather sinister series of events.
What makes the Gef affair so fascinating is that it doesn’t quite fit into any of the usual categories of anomalous phenomena. Was Gef a prank, a poltergeist, a demon, a real creature, or something else entirely? Find out at the Strange Attractor Salon, this Wednesday…
Christopher Josiffe will be talking about Gef, Harry Price and his own research at 7pm this Wednesday, 10 November at the Strange Attractor Salon at The Little Shoppe of Horrors, 11 Mare st, London E8.
Book tickets (£6/£4, includes a drink and free admission to the museum) here.
[Gef also features on the cover of this month’s Fortean Times]UPDATE: Christopher Josiffe talks about Gef and Harry Price on Strange Attractor On Air, Tuesday, 2pm UT, on Resonance 104.4 FM.