Gef! The Strange Tale of an Extra-Special Talking Mongoose – Christopher Josiffe
In 1931, a talking mongoose named Gef invited himself to live with a farming family on the Isle of Man. He stayed with them for a decade, engaging in long conversations, eating their food, catching them rabbits, keeping them up to date on island gossip and occasionally spitting and peeing on them. Several times he let them touch him and take very blurry photographs of him. Despite his brazen personality, Gef, or the Dalby Spook, as he was sometimes known, was generally hesitant to engage with anyone but the farmer, his wife and their daughter.
A lot of people, including my old pal Harry Price, dismissed this as a hoax, but the family remained adamant that they were telling the truth. There are several theories about different members of the family deliberately tricking the others, but none of the three ever admitted to such. They had little to gain from their fabulous claims, and they made an effort to shun some of the attention they received. This is an interesting case partly because one of the main reasons for believing the story is the fact that it is so ridiculous. If the family was deliberately conducting a hoax, we would expect them to do a better job.
Followers of this blog will know that I am generally quite skeptical of paranormal phenomenon, but personally, I’m not convinced this was entirely a hoax. I think it likely had more to do with mental illness than simple deceit. This family had moved to the Isle of Man because the father’s business ventures had failed. They were forced into a difficult existence where they were not only physically isolated but socially separate to their closest neighbours. I think it’s very possible that the father had a mental breakdown and managed to convince his family that his hallucinations were real. This may have led to the family to perform acts of deception as a means to avoid internal conflict. Either way, it’s a fascinating story.
I’ve come across mentions of Gef before, and I’ve had Josiffe’s book on my to-read list for ages, but I brought it to the top a few weeks ago. I was going to say that it was after coming across mention of Gef in Graham J. McEwan’s Mystery Animals of Britain and Ireland, but I just looked there and realised that Gef doesn’t get a mention! The last place I saw him referenced was actually in The R’lyeh Text, a grimoire of Lovecraftian magic! There’s an essay at the back of that book which claims that Gef may well have been an influence on Lovecraft’s Brown Jenkin from The Dreams in the Witch House. Josiffe repeats these ideas towards the end of his book and notes that it was very likely that Lovecraft would have encountered articles on Gef in the news during the 1930s.
This book was great. The author presents things very fairly, and does a good job of just presenting the facts of the case. If anything, I think he could have been a bit more dismissive. The last few chapters of the book look at phenomena (poltergeists, fairies, tulpas and witches familiars…) in an attempt to potentially explain what Gef might have been. I wasn’t convinced by any of these suggestions. The story is weird enough without anything supernatural or paranormal being brought in to explain it. Still, I appreciated the comprehensive nature of Josiffe’s work. I am quite certain that this will remain the definitive book on the Gef phenomenon forever. If you like books about weird stuff, you have to read this masterpiece. This is the best book I’ve read this year, and it may well remain so for the remaining 361 days of 2026.
Nocturnal Revelries 