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Posted: 30-04-2002 01:17 Post subject: Talking Mongoose?

I seem to remember reading a story in one of those "Mysterious Britain" type books (you know the sort, covering ABCs, ghosts, crop circles, psychics etc) about a young girl who lived on a remote Scottish island (the daughter of a lighthouse keeper?) who apparently owned/lived with a "Talking Mongoose".

This may have been linked to Poltergeist activity. I think other people saw the "mongoose" but the girl was the only one who heard it talk. Not sure what it said.

There was an indistinct photograph of the girl with what looked like a small animal in the corner of the picture, but it could have been a rat or anything.

Also I seem to recall the girl`s life ended young and tragically - either she killed herself, someone else in the family killed her or she ended up in a mental institution?

The same book had a picture of a "Winged Cat" in it if that helps. (a real picture, it was a longhaired cat with hair that had been braided and left to get matted so it looked like wings)

Anyone got any details? Please tell me I`m not making this up...

Posted: 30-04-2002 01:50 Post subject:

Check these out...

http://www.resologist.net/ryook005.htm

http://www.forteantimes.com/gallery/gef.shtml

Posted: 30-04-2002 01:56 Post subject:

in the forteantimes link i cant see a mongoose in the pic, can someone point it out to me.

Posted: 30-04-2002 13:37 Post subject:

There's a discussion on Jef on this meandering Mothman thread here

Posted: 30-04-2002 14:06 Post subject:

Posted: 30-04-2002 22:50 Post subject:

The most accessible source on Gef is probably the Orbis part-work
The Unexplained, which carried a good account over two or three
issues. These turn up quite frequently in charity shops and were
often reprinted in various formats as books, with or without the
original art-work. Otherwise you will need to look out for Harry
Price's monograph, which is surprisingly rare, given the fame or
notoriety of the mongoose in the thirties.

The Unexplained contained a picture of a nondescript creature on
a wall, said to be Gef. It has to be said that a contemporary
analysis of Gef's hairs, showed them to be identical with those
of Voirrey's doggie. roll eyes (sarcastic)

Posted: 01-05-2002 00:47 Post subject:

On the same theme, can anyone see what others seem to see but I cant, check this out, looks like some kind of fish to me.

Posted: 01-05-2002 01:56 Post subject:

Took me a while, but there's a simulacra of a deer at the bottom....

Posted: 01-05-2002 04:24 Post subject: thanx for the mongoose info

"Jeff (or Gef, whatever you spell it) the Talking Mongoose"... sounds like a slightly off-the-wall (Ren & Stimpy-ish) TV show...

I cant make out any obvious "creature" in the photo either. Looks like it most likely was something the girl made up, whether deliberately as a fraud or subconsciously as something weirder - although there could have also been an OOP flesh-and-blood mongoose. (SOMETHING was shot in 1947... is this too early for introduced Mink perhaps?)

Guess I must have just made up the bit about the girl killing herself or whatever, although she does claim that "people thought she was crazy". Not surprising really if you claim to be living with a talking mongoose!

re the "deer" picture - the simulacra of a bug-eyed creature (maybe a fish, maybe an alien) in the top half of the picture looks a lot clearer than the simulacra of a deer to me...

btw what is the plural of mongoose?

I too as a teenager read about the talking mongoose 'Gef' which raised lots of questions for me. For a start, I didn't think the mongoose (careful syntactical avoidance of the plural form there!) was native to these islands, so that in itself seemed odd to me. I felt that there was an Indian sub-continent connection that we weren't told about. In fact, there was a 'curse' feeling about it, as if Gef were inflicted on the family by someone with a grievance.

Its conversations were sometimes recorded in detail, and it appeared to quarrel vigorously with both the house's residents and their visitors. It also appeared and disappeared through cracks in the walls and ceilings and could hang upside-down to talk. It didn't melt away like a ghost, it seemed to act as a little rodent would be expected to.

But I don't remember learning what its voice sounded like- I imagine it to be squeaky and rapid- or what its prophesies were. Maybe that's my failing memory.

Posted: 01-05-2002 19:20 Post subject:

I think this is the picture that James mentioned. It's from 'Open Files', an Orbis book made up of excerpts from 'The Unexplained'.

'Gef' is on the fencepost at the top left.

Posted: 01-05-2002 21:11 Post subject: Re: thanx for the mongoose info

Posted: 01-05-2002 23:02 Post subject:

With regard to Gef's foreignness, the mongoose was most familiar
from Kipling's Indian-based tale Rikititavi, which was still going strong in my
Primary School days. But there had been a more local history of the
animal on the IOM. It appears that an attempt had been made in
1912 to establish the animal on the island to control rabbits.

Gef himself claimed to have been born in Delhi on 7th June, 1852 - which
would have made him 79 years of age in 1931! roll eyes (sarcastic)

Posted: 09-08-2002 19:20 Post subject: Gef the most mysterious of mongooses

After attempting in vain to dislodge the idea of the talking mongoose from my mind, I have recently given in. I decided I really wanted to know more about the cheeky little chap.

There are a few versions of the tale kicking around, but most state that a cast of Gef's prints were sent to the Natural History Museum.

After some telephone conversations from which you could have extracted a whole comedy series, I was finally contacted by someone from thier mamals department. I was told that they have no such cast, or any knowledge of ever having seen it...

Does anyone know anything of these infamouse mongoose prints? confused