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What Gef is?

What Jef is? Jef says that he is an animal and an Indian mongoose. He flouts the idea that he is a spirit. He is just "a little extra, extra clever mongoose." Let us suppose that this is the truth. What is there about Jef's doings and life which conflicts with the idea that he could be a mongoose. 1. He does not eat mongoose food. Could that be explained that if Jef can speak, as he appears to be, he is slowly humanizing himself. The fact that he is an animal may give him an inferiority complex. Consciously unconsciously he would adapt the ways of men. The easiest unconscious adaptation is the food. Mentally he is passing into the human kingdom. There would be a reaction physically as well. To a polecat which he found one day in a rabbit hole, significantly he referred thus: "There is an enemy in, a blasted polecat" 2. He speaks and is extremely intelligent. There have been talking dogs and calculating horses. When the Elberfeld horses were taught complicated mathematical operations, they showed extremely rapid progress as soon as they mastered the elementaries. May we not witness in Jef the same blossoming out of intelligence? The Elberfeld horses never rose above the intelligence of a 10 years old child. Jef has learned a lot and uses big words. But his knowledge consists of odd bits just as the knowledge of a precocious child would. 3. Jef can read. There is some evidence that Jef visits a school three miles away. He also used to accompany Voirrey to school. He often told the Irvings that he watches things from tree-tops and from window sills. He has extremely sharp eyesight. At the school, three miles away, they teach the tonic sol-fa. It was obviously here that Jef learned it. May he not have seen children standing before the blackboard and being taught writing and reading? He can read both print and writing. One day, Mr. Irving was reading out a letter because he wanted to know what was in it. It was a letter from Morrison. Mr. Irving skipped a passage. Jef immediately stopped him and told him that he had left out something. Further evidence that Jef listened at the school is to be found in the fact that when he got his first ball he bounced it in the attic in the same way as children do. When he missed, he shouted, just as the children, "Dash!" Mr. Irving tested him. He put his finger on the picture of a Rover motorcar and asked Jef what that was. He answered: 'Dog'. On another occasion, Mr. Irving put his finger on the picture of Anna May Wong. Jef answered: 'Weng Fu'. This is a China tea which the Irvings did not have in the house for 10-11 years.

Nobody knew what Gef was. He said he was an Indian mongoose, perhaps a spirit, but he did not act like a real mongoose. He ate human food, was extremely intelligent and sassy, and could read.

Nandor Fodor, “My Diary in the House of the Talking Mongoose,” pg. 44, February 1, 1937, Folder “Gef the Talking Mongoose,” Box A, Eileen J. Garrett Parapsychology Foundation Collection, Collection 331, Special Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Baltimore, MD).

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