 Okay, so recently I was bored and I was looking for a new topic to, like, hyper-fix it on for a couple months and I was desperate, so I did the worst thing anyone has ever done short of selling their soul to the devil. I posted on Twitter.com. I asked people about weird historical figures or events that they knew of that I could go down the rabbit hole of and, oh boy, did you guys deliver! One of the replies that very much stood out to me said, the Irving family. I've been obsessed with this story for such a long time. If you look up Dalby Spook or Geff the Mongoose, you'll get a bunch of stuff on them. It's so interesting. For some reason, the way that I read that tweet, it made it sound like the Irvings were a family of people, and two of the members of the family were named Dalby Spook and Geff the Mongoose. Oh, and by the way, I'm calling him Geff. His name isn't Jeff. If it was Jeff, it'd be spelled with a J. Also, I don't really respect him that much, so who gives a fuck? No, the tale of the Irvings is actually a ghost story. In fact, it's the first ghost story that I've heard in a really long time that's actually like scared me and shook me to my bones. It's just perfect for a rabbit hole to fall down because there's so many parts to look into, and just when you think it can't get crazier, it does. That's why we have the goosebumps lighting. That's why I'm filming on location in my mom's closet. Yes, I will do anything to improve the quality of my videos, except get a higher quality camera or sound equipment, or just better equipment in general, or use an actual editing software that's not iMovie. I'm not going to change any of those things. So this is the story of the Irvings and Geff the Mongoose. The Irvings were a small family consisting of James, Margaret, and their 13-year-old daughter, Wari. Since I had never heard a name like Wari before, I looked it up and turns out that in Celtic, it means bitter. So thanks, mom and dad. Our story takes place in 1931 on the Isle of Man. For those of you who don't know, it's an island state between England and Ireland. I bring this up because before this video, I didn't know that. So the Great War had just ended in times where tough. James had been a successful piano repairman, but because the post-war economy was so bad, he decided to up and move his family to Cashion's Gap Farm. It had no electricity and no running water, but it's what they could afford, and so it would be home for the family. They planned on living a simple honest life, tending to the farm and just getting by. That is until Wari said that she heard a strange scratching and rustling in the walls of the farmhouse. Oh, Wari, it's an old farmhouse. I'm sure it's just a mouse in the walls or something. It's talking to, huh? Yup, whatever it was that was in the walls. It slowly learned how to talk. It started by just roughly mimicking human speech to repeating nursery rhymes to fully mastering English. And oh boy, did this spook have a lot to say. The creature introduced himself as Geph, explaining that he was the ghost of a mongoose born in India on June 7, 1852. Oh my god, he's a Gemini. Also, no wonder he connected with the Irvings. Both their people got colonized by the fucking British. Since Wari was the first one to discover him, I guess she was sort of his favorite, and subsequently he talked with her the most. Okay, so I'm not a hater, all right? I'm not trying to be a hater. I love cryptids as much as the next guy, but Geph fucking terrifies me. Just some of the things that Wari reported that he said to her are, I am a ghost and a form of a weasel and a shahanty. I will split the atom. I am the fifth dimension. I am the eighth wonder of the world and possibly worst of all, I am a freak. I have hands and I have feet. If you saw me, you'd fence, you'd be petrified, mummified during the in the snow or a pillar of salt. So all we know about how Geph looks is that he's a mongoose. He's kind of small in size. He's kind of yellowish in color. Oh, and he has hands. Okay, imagine you're just some guy and your daughter one day comes to you and tells you that she is hearing an inhuman voice that's saying stuff like that to her. What would you do? Me personally, I'd call the fucking priest and I don't even believe in that stuff. But what the Irvings decided to do was invite the mongoose ghost to live in their house with them. Obviously, why didn't I think of that? At this point in the script, I just wrote insert joke about white people in horror movies here. In the time that followed, the Irvings made so many insane claims about Geph, I can barely comprehend them all. So he's living in their house, right? He's living in the walls of their house, and he's very elusive. He wouldn't let anyone look at him like he'd bitch you out if he thought that you were trying to sneak a peek at him. Geph did all kinds of tasks around the house to kind of earn his keep, including but not limited to turning off the stove if someone leapt it on, waking people up when they overslept, keeping guard over the house and alerting them when a visitor was coming. Oh, and he also took care of their mouse problem. Um, but it specifically stated that he preferred scaring them rather than actually killing them. That's not at all concerning. I'm so glad the rat ghost that lives in our house has a sadistic kick. Do not get it twisted, though. Geph was no friendly ghost. He was openly hostile to all the members of the family, particularly James. Like, the majority of the quotes that I could find of Geph were him just bitching James out for different things. He would call him a bastard. He would mock his house. He would mock his faith in God. He would knock things over. He would shoot needles from the walls at the family. Even Vwari, his favorite, wasn't safe from his abuse. At one point after he moved into her room, oh yeah, I didn't mention that, he's sleeping in her room. He started saying things to Vwari that were so threatening and violent that she had to sleep in her parents' room because they were afraid that Geph would hurt her in her sleep. That was only for a while. After Geph calmed down and stopped saying stuff like that, they thought it was completely fine for her to move back into the ghost room. Parents of the year over here, everyone! Parents of the fucking year! At this point you might be saying, wow, that sure is scary. I'm sure glad Geph can't come into my house. Think again! Geph was really into gossip, to the point that he would go onto neighboring farms and eavesdrop on them and then report back to the Irvings what he heard. He would also go on the city buses and sit behind people so he could listen to their conversations like he needed to get all the tea. The Irvings fed him biscuits, chocolate, and bananas on a little dish that they suspended from the ceiling. He slept in a little tiny compartment in Vwari's room and apparently he even had a favorite ball that he would play with up there. Aw, okay, that's kind of cute. Okay, but imagine like going over to your friend's house and you see that they have like a plate hanging from the ceiling and when you ask them what it is, they say that it's to feed the fucking ghost in their house that sleeps in their daughter's room. Oh, by the way, the ghost has almost certainly been in your house too because he just loves gossip. The only part of the story that's scarier than Geph himself is the way that the family reacted to him. They just welcomed him with open arms. He was really like, I could kill you all if I wanted to. And they're just like, make yourself at home, Mikasa Tsukasa. Wanna sleep in my child's room? With the story this insane, it wasn't long before word spread. Pretty soon curious locals, tabloid journalists, and finally psychic investigators made their way to the aisle to meet Geph themselves. So there's about a million and a half accounts of people who came to the farm to try to see Geph for themselves. And I'm gonna say this right off the bat, all these people are fucking lying. All of their stories contradict each other. Some of them say they heard Geph and it was a man's voice. Some of them say they heard Geph speak and it was clearly war-y, faking a voice. Some say they saw things moving. Some say they saw nothing at all. Someone even said that they literally saw Geph, which we know isn't true. If he won't even let the family see him, why would he let some random schmuck see him? And the Irvings went along with all of this because they were really eager to prove that Geph was real, particularly James. He probably just wanted someone to defend him after he'd been bullied by the rat ghost for like half a decade at this point. Over the years, James persistently wrote to Harry Price, a well-known English ghost hunter, asking him to come and investigate the place. And for years, Harry completely blew him off. I guess he had better things to do. But as more and more people came and investigated the Irvings farm, more and more people slowly started to come to the same conclusion. This family is either lying or they're all fucking crazy. Local reporter Jay Radcliffe, after investigating the house, wrote that he had no doubt in his mind that Geph's voice was actually Wari's, and James just wouldn't let up trying to find evidence of Geph's existence. He submitted a sample of what he claimed to be Geph's hair, but it was later found to be the hair of Wari's sheepdog. He also sent Geph's paw and tooth prints to the British Natural History Museum, which they determined actually came from a raccoon, but James just wouldn't let up. Finally, in 1935, Harry Price was having a slow work week, so he said, I guess I'll see what all the hubbub's about. And finally, investigated the farm. But oh, what a shame. Shortly before he got there, Geph declared that he didn't like Price and therefore would not show himself during the investigation. In fact, Geph very conveniently wasn't in the mood to talk almost every time an investigator came to the Irving farm. Pretty soon, the general consensus amongst investigators and average Joseph like was that Geph wasn't real. Either the Irving family was crazy, or this was some attempt to make a quick buck through paranormal tourism. And it really didn't help that the person who initially discovered Geph was a young girl. It was just too easy to write her off as being hysterical or looking for attention. Most fascinating to me was the final investigation of the Irving farm done by Nandor Fodor, a Hungarian journalist and psychoanalyst. Despite never hearing or seeing Geph, what a surprise, Nandor wouldn't declare that the house wasn't haunted by something. He suggested that what the family knew as Geph was actually a poltergeist. Or a product of conflict in the subconscious mind. It should be noted that the Irvings never referred to Geph as a poltergeist, meaning that Nandor came to that conclusion entirely on his own. For those of you who don't know, poltergeists are spirits or ghosts that are known for being violent, loud and disturbing. They're best known for making a lot of noise, moving and breaking objects and causing people physical pain. Furthermore, they're described as being troublesome spirits who haunt people instead of locations. And who was the person that Nandor hypothesized was the one being haunted? James. He writes about James as a man who failed in life, whose many passions were too strong to bear the failure with resignation. Basically, James spent his life as a successful salesman who suddenly lost everything and became a poor goat farmer, living in the middle of nowhere without even running water or electricity. He couldn't cope with the humiliation of this loss of status until his anguish manifested physically becoming a poltergeist. Unfortunately though, James Irving died in 1945. Margaret and Vwari sold the farm and moved away. The person who bought the property, an actor named Lindsey Graham, claimed that at one point he saw a mongoose in the farm, which he shot and killed. But the body of the mongoose that he showed didn't match the description of Geff. It was larger, it was black and white, oh and it didn't have hands! Very little information is known about what happened to Vwari after she left the farm, but from what I can found it seems like she lived a fairly normal life. Pretty late in her life, she was interviewed one final time about Geff the mongoose and she once again insisted that he was real and she didn't make him up. She passed away in 2005 at the age of 87. When I was planning on how I was going to film this video, I was like, oh my god it's going to be so cool, I'm going to put a light under my face and so it's going to look like I'm telling a ghost story or something, it's going to be all dark all around, it's going to be great. I did not consider that there are consequences to shining a light in your eyes for an extended period of time, bitch I can't see anything anymore. I have a script with me, I can't read it anymore. My eyesight is just gone. What if it's Geff? Oh my fucking god. So at this point if you're anything like me, you're trying to figure out what this was actually all about. Was there an actual ghost hunting the farm? Did Vahri make it all up? If she did, how did she get her family to go along with it? Was the whole family crazy? Was this all a big scam? What's the truth? I'm going to bring you through some of the more popular theories about Geff the mongoose and then I will tell you what I believe to be true. Theory number one, the grift theory. Geff was completely made up by the Irvings as an attempt to make money through tourism or something. This would explain why they wanted people to investigate their farm and why they were so open to tabloid interviews and stuff like that. But listen, I don't believe this theory for one second and I'll tell you why. First of all, I firmly believe that this theory originates from classism. It's another attempt to discredit and dehumanize lower class people by making them out to be dishonest huckster cheats or something. But even if you completely remove the classism element from it, this theory makes no sense. If I were trying to pull off a scam by saying like, there's a ghost in my house, I'd be charging people for tickets to tour the place but the Irvings never did anything like that. Oh yeah, this is kind of important. They never made money from the story of Geff. In fact, they lost money. After James's death, Varie and Margaret had to sell the farm for less than it was worth because of its reputation of being haunted. Furthermore, years after everyone had moved on and forgotten about the story and there was no chance of making money from it, the Irvings never wavered in their claims. Varie insisted until the day that she died that Geff was real and she didn't make him up Why would she be so committed to this bit if this was a lie? Her parents came up with when she was 13 to try to make a quick buck. It just doesn't make sense. Now that I've thoroughly destroyed that theory with facts and logic, let's move on to theory number two, the mental illness theory. The Irvings were suffering from some mental illness that was causing them to have delusions and hallucinations and that's what Geff actually was. This is a theory that most people tend to settle on and for good reason. It's the most feasible and realistic and there's actually a good amount of evidence to back it up. This was a family of three living in the middle of nowhere in almost complete isolation. It's the perfect environment for the mind to run wild. Also, disorders like these tend to be hereditary so that would explain why the entire family was experiencing it. It's very common for people who experience delusions or hallucinations to describe feeling like something or someone is watching them at all times like, say, a creature living in your walls. Furthermore, it's common for people with auditory hallucinations to describe hearing voices that threaten and berate or insult them. Remember how rude Geff was being to James? Remember when Geff started threatening Varie? This would also explain why James saw things like a patch of fur or a random paw print as irrefutable proof of Geff being real and why he was so desperate to convince other people that he wasn't making it up. He was trying to prove that he wasn't crazy. Like I said, this is the most realistic and probable theory of them all, but it doesn't quite add up. Let's say, hypothetically, that every member of the Irving family has schizophrenia. That doesn't explain how they were all seeing and hearing the same things. Hallucinating isn't like putting on the sunglasses from They Live where everyone who experiences them sees the same thing. If three different people are hallucinating, they're each going to be experiencing unique symptoms. So how is it that all three members of the Irving family heard and saw the same thing? Furthermore, disorders like this persist throughout a person's life unless treated, and I could find no evidence of any members of the Irving family seeing or hearing things any time before or after they came to the farm. This theory is so close to being able to explain it all, but it's just not quite there. That's what makes it so exciting. Anyway, let's move on to theory three, the worst theory. It was all true. Geff was an actual ghost of an Indian mongoose that decided to haunt a random farm family on the Isle of Man. This is the most exciting, but also the most upsetting of all the theories. I hate it. I hate it so much, but it's also so funny. One of the things that makes me upset about it is that I don't know how to prove it wrong, besides just insisting that ghosts aren't real, but I don't know if that's true anymore. I just really hope that this isn't true. I really don't want Geff to be real because if he is real, I'm convinced he's gonna fucking come for me next. I don't know why I just am. So moving away from that idea as fast as I can, let's talk about what I believe the truth is. Theory number four, my theory. Look, I need you to have faith in me. Okay, what I'm about to say is going to sound insane, but if you just take my hand here, take my hand, hold my hand, and hear me out, I promise I'll explain what I mean, okay? You with me? Here's what I believe to be true. I am certain that Geff is real, just maybe not, literally. You still with me? Everybody still here? Okay, thank you for hearing me out. Now you shall be rewarded with an explanation. So right off the bat, I'm going to establish that I don't know if ghosts are real, but I firmly believe that hauntings are real. It's hard to explain, and I think it could be possible that there's overlap between the poltergeist theory and the mental illness theory, but what I believe is that something was haunting the herbings, and it may or may not have been a ghost. From the moment that Vwari discovered Geff in 1931, every aspect of the herbings' lives were permanently changed, from how they live their day-to-day life, to how they kept their house, to their reputations, to their relationships with their peers, and also after the herbings left the farm, there were no more reports of weird haunted shit happening there. Maybe Geff was a real phantom manifestation of what was haunting them, or maybe they invented Geff. Could it be possible that the spirit was real because they made him real? Adding on to this, I have a question for you guys, like question for the culture here. Do you believe that a family can be haunted? Now adding on to that, do you believe that a family can be cursed? You know how with some families, particularly the rich famous ones, there seems to be kind of like a pattern of a curse with them? A really popular example in the United States is the Kennedys, and about how bad things just kept happening to their family. I know I'm bad at explaining this, but what if the explanation for that kind of generational bad luck wasn't just a coincidence? It was some kind of haunting. When I was doing research, that idea just kept getting invoked within me, where like a family being haunted, or a family being cursed, and maybe it just physically manifested in the most absurd way they could think of, which is an Indian mongoose. The best part about the story of Geff is that it has no concrete answers, meaning that we can keep speculating on it and telling this ghost story until the end of time. And really, what could be better than that? Anyway, I started getting really bad vibes midway through this video, that I think that Geff heard me and he's gonna come fuck me up, so we all better really hope that Geff was a manifestation of like generational trauma or whatever, and not a literal ghost, because if he is, oh boy! Thank you for watching. As always, I hope you were entertained. Subscribe if you want to. Don't if you don't. If you have a particularly interesting historical figure or story that you'd like to see a dapper history on, comment it down below, and I will be seeing you all next whenever time I upload. Bye! That looks so much fucking cooler. Why didn't- Why didn't I do that for the whole thing? Why did I try to do like a driving scarf thing? I don't even have a car.