extraordinary%20encounters

The sounds were high-pitched and appeared
to be emanating from a very small
throat.
The knockings continued for the next few
weeks. Then one day, Irving asked his wife,
“What in the name of God can he be?” From
the walls a squeaky voice echoed, “What in
the name of God can he be?” These were the
first recognizable words from Gef, as the animal
said it wanted to be called. As time
passed, Gef, whose voice was said to be two
octaves above a normal woman’s, appeared to
learn more and more words, accumulating a
vocabulary from listening to the family. He
also claimed to travel widely throughout the
island, overhearing others and learning from
them. He also brought news and gossip and
regaled family members with information
they otherwise would not have known and
sometimes did not want to know.
For his part, Gef would assert that for a
long time he had understood what people
were saying, but it was not until he took up
residence with the Irvings that he learned how
to speak words himself. When he was there,
he knew everything that went on in the
house. His favorite place, however, was in the
walls of Viorrey’s room.
Irving’s first impulse was to kill Gef, who
frightened the family with his temper and his
penchant for throwing things such as stones.
First, he tried to poison him, then to shoot
him, but, in response, Gef caused property
damage and screeched out threats. According
to Irving, Gef said, “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.” The family decided
to do its best to get along with its strange
guest.
Asked who he was, Gef first identified himself
as a “ghost in the form of a weasel” but
later denied that he was a ghost or a poltergeist.
He was highly temperamental, his behavior
unpredictable, his speech often profane.
The family left food out for him. He ate
the same food as the daughter, a detail that
skeptics would later remark on. In return, he
Gef 109
would provide the Irvings with dead rabbits
that would show up on the doorstep. The rabbits
appeared to have been strangled rather
than bitten to death.
As Gef became known and feared throughout
the island, someone suggested that he
might be a mongoose, though at that point no
one had ever seen him. Mongooses (mammals
ordinarily found in India) are not native to
the isle, but in 1914 a local farmer had imported
them to kill rabbits. When asked if he
was a mongoose, Gef said he was. At other
times, though, he boasted, “Thou wilt never
know who I am. I am a freak. I have hands,
and I have feet.” On another occasion he said,
“I am the fifth dimension. I am the eighth
wonder of the world. I can split the atom.”
Still, the idea took hold that Gef was a mongoose,
and he took to calling himself one.
But if eyewitness testimony is to be believed,
he could not have been a mongoose.
Those who saw him, according to investigator
Walter McGraw, “said he had a bushy tail like
a squirrel’s, yellow to brownish fur, small ears
and a pushed-in face. His most-often described
features were his front paws, which according
to Irving were handlike with three
fingers and a thumb” (McGraw, 1970). Mc-
Graw adds, “he fitted the description of a
mongoose about as well as he did that of ‘part
of the fifth dimension’.” Irving estimated that
he was no more than five or six inches long
and weighed no more than a pound to a
pound and a half. Sightings of him were always
fleeting, and on rare occasion the Irvings
saw him in silhouette as a shadow in the wall.
Gef said he did not want to be seen because
he was terrified of being captured or killed. A
photograph Viorrey took of him at a distance
of five hundred feet showed little except a
furry blur.
By early 1932, news of Gef’s doings had
spread past the isle. In a dispatch dated January
10, a Manchester Daily Dispatch reporter
wrote that on a visit to Doarlish Cashen he
had heard “a voice I never imagined could
issue from a human throat,” leaving him in “a
state of considerable perplexity . . . The peo-