If you were to ask Gef the Talking Mongoose who he was and where he came from, he’d probably answer “I am the fifth dimension!” or “I am an earthbound spirit.” Or, perhaps, he’d leave you with a simple “I am a little extra, extra clever mongoose.”
That is, of course, if Gef existed at all, and not just as the imaginative fantasy of a family on the Isle of Man.
Gef’s Story
His story began in 1931. The Irving family lived in a remote farmhouse called Doarlish Cashen (or Cashen’s Gap) on the Isle of Man, a small isle in the Irish Sea.
There were three of them: James Irving, the father; Margaret, his wife; and their 13-year-old daughter, Voirrey Irving. They lived an ordinary life as a poor farming family, miles removed from the nearest town. But on one strange day, their lives changed forever.
In September of 1931, the family began to notice a persistent scratching behind the wooden walls of their farmhouse. It was an eerie rustling, followed by barking and spitting, that could have belonged to a ferret or some other wild creature. This continued for a while, until something extraordinary happened: a mongoose revealed itself, small and furry and yellow.