Gef the Talking Mongoose: Doarlish Cashen's Dalby Spook

Jan 16, 2011
Jill Stefko

Unlike Gef, this Mongoose Doesn’t Talk - Public Domain

Talented mongoose Gef shared a house with James and Margaret Irving and daughter Viorrey, in a Dalby farmhouse and made international news. Hoax or fact?

During the 1930s, Gef made international news. Psychic investigators psychoanalyst Nandor Fodor and flamboyant Harry Price investigated. Journalists had a field day. The curious and spiritualists flocked to Dalby, hoping to witness Gef’s antics. He enjoyed pulling pranks, spying on people and gossiping. While skeptics maintain Gef was a hoax, there’s evidence he existed.

Gef Makes the News

Initial reports were about man-weasel who lived on a farm in Dalby. At first, the entity said he was a weasel’s ghost, then proclaimed he was a clever little mongoose. In 1912, mongooses were imported to neighboring farm Eary Cushlinn to control the rabbit population. It’s possible some descendents still survive. Sightings were reported as late as 2007.

James Irving Interviewed about Gef

January 1932: A Manchester Daily Dispatch reporter spoke to Irving about a rumor that his house was haunted. Irving said the house wasn’t haunted, then told him about Gef. In October, Viorrey and he saw a small yellow animal with a long speckled black tail and unusually large human-like front paws that looked like a weasel, ferret or stoat. When he appeared in the house, he said his name was Gef.

Talented Gef

Gef was able to become invisible. He left dead rabbits for the Irvings’ meals and was rewarded with bananas, sausages and other goodies. He sang. Carolina Moon was his favorite song. Gef was a gossip who hitched rides on the under carriages of buses. He talked about his adventures and, when these were investigated, were found to be accurate.

Gef: Physical Evidence

In 1935, Irving sent Price hair samples, allegedly pulled from Gef’s back and tail. These were sent to F. Martin Duncan of the Zoological Society for analysis. He reported that the hair wasn’t from a mongoose, but was a dog’s. When Price later visited Doarlish Cashen, he took some hair samples from Mona, the Irvings’ sheepdog, which Duncan said were identical with the others.

Irving also sent Imprints of Gef’s teeth and claws to Price. There was a disparity between the size of the front and back paws, with the former measuring about 3 ½ inches in length. Gef was approximately 12 inches long. The paw imprints were sent to the Zoological Society. The response was that no existing animal had such a disparity between the size of its front and rear paws and the imprints displayed none of the folds and textures that would come from a known animal.

There are photographs of Gef in the University of London’s Harry Price archives and in the Society for Psychical Research’s archives, although Gef was reluctant to be photographed. Some people debunked the photos as fox fur stoles. Fodor, who stayed with the Irvings for a week, combed through all the drawers in the house while the family was out, but didn’t find any stoles.

Gef Disappears

A friend, Charles Morrison, wrote about Irving’s 1945 death. Elder daughter Elsie went to the house to help take care of her father, bed-ridden and weak during the last year of his life. Although Gef hadn’t talked in four years, there were strange noises in the house’s beams that escalated when Viorrey visited. On the night Irving died, Margaret and Elsie were sitting before the fireplace. A branch on the mantle started moving to and fro. It stopped at the moment of Irving’s death.

Viorrey Interviewed about Gef

In 1970, Walter McGraw, a journalist for Fate magazine, found Voirrey and persuaded her to be interviewed. She averred that Gef wasn’t a hoax and said she didn’t like him. People called her the Dalby Spook and said she was a ventriloquist because of him. People shunned the Irvings. McGraw asked her if Gef was a mongoose. She said she didn’t know. He had a high pitched voice, conversed and swore a lot. She wished that he had never appeared and added that her mother and she wouldn’t have talked about Gef, but her father thought Gef was wonderful and told people about him.

Gef: Price’s and Fodor’s Conclusions

Some locals believed the talking mongoose was a hoax, perpetrated by Margaret and Viorrey, to force Irving to move from the isolated farm they didn’t like by trying to scare him. Viorrey’s childhood friend, Kathleen Green, and a Manchester Daily Dispatch reporter said she was an adept ventriloquist who could throw her voice. There are verified cases when Gef spoke in Viorrey’s absence.

Price, despite another investigator’s findings, came to the conclusion that Gef was a hoax. The investigator was Captain Dennis, from Price’s National Laboratory of Psychical Research, who was sent there by Price. Dennis wasn’t easily fooled and made three trips to the Irving’s farmhouse. He was in the house and Viorrey, outside, about 100 feet away when he heard Gef describe his clothing. Irving and Dennis heard Gef outside of the house when Viorrey was indoors. Dennis heard knocking and bangings, in rapid succession, all about the house, saw pebbles being thrown into the house with no visible agent and had a packing needle thrown at him. Who or what left dead rabbits for the Irvings and talked about his excursions which were validated?

Fodor disagreed that Gef was a hoax because he ate, drank and left physical evidence of his existence. Fodor initially concluded that Gef was what he proclaimed to be, a very clever mongoose. Later, Fodor opined, using psychoanalytical theory, that Gef wasn’t just an amazing creature, but also a split-off part of Irving’s personality. The man’s unconscious mind created a hybrid that fit no type of animals or ghosts, but shared some common features with them.

The true nature of Gef remains a mystery.