011 Gef The Talking Mongoose

This week the Henchmen get swept up in one of the strangest paranormal cases ever recorded: Gef the Talking Mongoose. Hidden inside the walls of a remote farmhouse on the Isle of Man was a filthy little creature that spoke perfect English, mocked investigators, threatened the family and claimed he “did it for the devilment.” Some said it was a hoax, others believed it was a demon, a poltergeist, or something far worse. Tune in to hear one of the most infamous supernatural cases in Fortean history.

The book Gef The Talking Mongoose: The "Eighth Wonder of the World"
by Tim R Swartz  is available at conspiracyjournal.com and amazon.com 

Transcript

Michelle 0:10

This is the Conspiracy Journey Podcast.

Bobby 0:15

The transmission starts now. This is heavy werewolf content, is what that reminds me of. The breathing and the lips macking. The breathing and the lips. The breathing and the lipsmacking. Werewolves.

Michelle 0:28

You know, speaking werewolf to me.

Bobby 0:30

Yeah, dog stuff.

Michelle 0:31

Ow! Well, turns out, you guys, actually, that brings us to today's topic somehow.

Bobby 0:39

Welcome.

Michelle 0:39

Uh, welcome to the conspiracy journal. I'm Michelle. How do you do? How do you do?

Bobby 0:44

Good day, Michelle.

Michelle 0:45

Good day to you. That's Greg.

Bobby 0:48

Hi, I'm Greg.

Michelle 0:49

Hi, Greg.

Bobby 0:50

Hi.

Michelle 0:52

And over there is Bobe.

Bobby 0:54

Bobe. Bobby. Hey, Bobby.

Michelle 0:58

Well, today we're gonna talk about the most bizarre thing I could find.

Bobby 1:07

Which is saying something for the Conspiracy Journal podcast.

Michelle 1:10

It's true, and like I call it a thing because I don't know what to call it. Is it a cryptid? Is it a poltergeist? Is it a ghost? Is it a man? Is it a mongoose? Is it Jeff the talking mongoose?

Bobby 1:25

So let's find out.

Michelle 1:26

Okay. Alright. So today we are covering Jeff the Talking Mongoose. If you haven't heard of him, buckle up because it is a fun one. Okay, this all takes place in the Isle of Man. Like looking around the room and I see crickets. Off the coast of England.

Bobby 1:44

I'm aware of it.

Michelle 1:45

Yeah, it's off the coast of England.

Bobby 1:46

It's in the- Did you expect us to be like, oh shit, yeah.

Michelle 1:50

What up? Dude, I don't know what I thought, but I got it.

Greg 1:53

There's Isle of Man, Isle of White. Yeah.

Michelle 1:55

I think there is a lot of the yeah. Isle of the White Man.

Greg 1:57

Yeah.

Michelle 1:57

Um okay, so it is an island. It is in the Irish Sea. It is off the coast of England and Ireland. So they speak English, but they also speak Manx Gaelic. Cool. So of course I went on a side quest to see what the fuck that accent's all about. And it's actually not that much weirder than like Irish or Scottish people when they're like speaking English, but you still need subtitles, and sometimes some of the words are Gaelic, so you actually don't know what they're saying, but it is sort of English.

Bobby 2:31

Yeah, I always in Ireland they would switch back and forth from English and Gaelic. And it would often take me a couple seconds to realize that they had switched. You know, if you're if you're somewhere with a with a heavy accent, it was like, okay, okay. Yeah. Fuck is the same in both. Yeah. That was kind of what threw me off a lot, is they would use a lot of F words, and so I'd be like, oh no, I it would take me a while to realize that we left English because we're still F-bombing.

Michelle 2:54

Yeah, yeah.

Greg 2:55

And Isle of Man has like that crazy race through the island, right? I guess. Yeah, it does.

Michelle 2:59

Yeah, there's like a motorcycle race. I know about that.

Bobby 3:02

Oh, that's the crazy race where people die all the time. Like the super rally race around the yeah.

Michelle 3:06

Yeah, the TT, I think it's called the T T.

Bobby 3:08

But like somebody who dies like every time. Every every time.

Michelle 3:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Um wow, okay. Yeah.

Bobby 3:14

Is Jeff involved in the race? He started it.

Michelle 3:17

Yes.

Bobby 3:18

I'm really gonna try to restrain myself, but I really just every time I hear it, I just want to go Monimaj.

Michelle 3:25

What is that? Barat?

Bobby 3:26

It's uh I believe it's Channing Tatum from 21 Jump Street.

Michelle 3:30

Oh, okay.

Bobby 3:30

Umrated comedic actor. And uh I fully agree with you. He's just building a cover story and they're they're like, what's your deal? He goes, he goes, Minimaj.

Michelle 3:40

I remember that. Okay, now I can't on hear it.

Bobby 3:44

I think I got it out of my system.

Michelle 3:46

Doubtful. Let's see how many times you just go, my name is Jeff. Um, anyhow, back to the island, the Isle of Man. When I was going down my rabbit hole of like, what do they sound like and what does it look like and whatever, I came upon this is like neither here nor there, but I came upon their flag, which is a really crazy three legs joined at the thigh. Like if you were a ninja throwing star made of legs. Yeah, it's pretty rad.

Greg 4:16

It's you threw an extra leg on there, it's a fucking swastika.

Michelle 4:19

I know. Well, you know what? Just because there's not an extra leg.

Bobby 4:24

It's like infinite legs. But are they wearing stirrups? There's a little star there, there's a little spur. There is horse are these legs of horse riders?

Michelle 4:32

There is a star at the ankle of every foot, but then there's also like ligaments or something. Like the there's like behind the knee is a different color.

Greg 4:42

It looks like it looks like armor. Yeah.

Michelle 4:46

It looked like anatomy to me, but like turns out I'm not a doctor or whatever. Um, anyway, fucking rad flag.

Bobby 4:53

Infinite legs legs forever.

Michelle 4:55

Yeah, yeah. Is that our new sign off? Um, so when people describe oh, also I did learn a Manx Gaelic slang word. Tell me geet.

Bobby 5:11

Is that Gaelic? Oh, does it mean the same thing in Gaelic that it doesn't? Okay. Nope. Over there.

Michelle 5:17

Over there, it just means gossip.

Bobby 5:18

No. Oh. Like, give me this keet.

Michelle 5:20

Give me this keet, skeet. I'm like, that's not what that means. Okay, so anyway, um everyone describes it as a windswept area. As I'm reading that, I'm like, uh kind of breezing it over, but like it just kept coming up, and then I was just like, this place sounds horrific.

Bobby 5:37

Yeah, that means the weather is rugged.

Michelle 5:40

Yeah, like this is this is not like everyone's like, oh, the farm and whatever. I'm like, oh, this is rough terrain. This is rocky, windy, a lot of like tall, fescue grass that's just been like smooshed, you know? Like that's a fescue drop. I know. I love that word. I really do. I can't help it. Fescue. Yeah.

Bobby 6:01

Yeah, windswept is like the wind is blowing hard and often with relentlessly.

Michelle 6:05

Yeah. So just to paint you a picture of where we are. We're in windswept. We talk weird. It's it's rough here. Skeet skeet. It is the 1930s. I swear I drank two sips of coffee, and I am out of my mind. It really, really ignited me. Here we go. Okay. So okay, let me introduce you to the family, the Irvings. We have James, he's the dad. We have Margaret, she's the mom. And then we have a teenage daughter named Rory. I have a really hard time with that word. I have a speech impediment. Fucking fuck off. Okay. So my mouth, it's hard for me to make sound sometimes. Okay. James worked for the man, I had it somewhere. I forget the name now. He worked for like a piano and organ factory in the city of somewhere. And he lost his job because like organs went out of business or whatever. And so he buys a plot of land on the Isle of Man, moves his family out there, and decides to become like a sheep farmer. So they're like well-to-do city folk. Now they're living on the farm, raising sheep. But like as we've discussed, this is not pretty farmland. This is rough living, you know? Maybe he wasn't really cut out for it, and maybe the whole family is like bored and upset. Sure. Okay. Rory. Or how Rory is um, she's like, um, she's like goth before goth was goth. You know what I mean? She's not necessarily like wearing black, but she's just like living in this gray land and just being like a depressed teenager. And she's kind of the only one that adapts to this farm and starts like she takes their sheepdog out a lot and like finds rabbits, kills them, skins them, eats them. I hope she makes them like really cute vest or something. But she seems to like, even though she's like a teenager and being like, you know, woe is me or whatever, she still's like kind of doing okay. That was just to paint you a picture of the family life that's going on here. And so let's introduce Jeff the talking mongoose into the story. So how it starts is scratching. All of these stories start with some scratching, right? So they think they're infested with rats or whatever.

Bobby 8:30

But then there's We're hearing like the walls. Like they're scratching at the walls at the door. Yeah, they're scratching on our human bodies where we scratch it.

Michelle 8:37

Oh, we're in the walls, we're in the door.

Bobby 8:40

The ones and twos.

Michelle 8:41

Yeah, but there's like not a lot of evidence of scratches, like scratch marks or anything. But like we're hearing a lot of noises, like they're in the walls, they're up in the rafters, like we we've got a problem. Okay. You know, there's a problem in the house, it's probably rats. You know, on the lookout for rats, but they don't find any. Oh, but they do find this cute yellow mongoose on the farm.

Bobby 9:03

And so I don't know where I thought mongoose were from, but it wouldn't have been the Isle of Man.

Michelle 9:09

You know something?

Bobby 9:10

I would have guessed, I think like a Southeast Asia.

Greg 9:13

Yeah, because you always think of them like fighting cobirts and shit.

Michelle 9:16

Yeah, okay. I just want to put it out there for everyone to know this. I am the dumb dummy, and these two are the smart smarties because I didn't even know what a mongoose fucking was. And you guys not only know where they're from, but you also know that they kill snakes. I have spent so much time in the last couple of days learning about mongooses, which is how you say the plural. It's not mongoose. Yeah, they're so cute, and there's so many different kinds, and yeah, they fight snakes, bro. Like they are cool, and they are from like Asia, they're not from the Isle of Man. So, like, how did Jeff get there? We don't know.

Bobby 9:51

I think I knew I knew that because my dad was in Vietnam, and sometimes for entertainment, they would have a cobra and a monkeys like fight in a pit.

Michelle 9:59

Sick. Yeah, that's rad. That's like some fucking Rambo shit right there. It's cool. Yeah, pretty good.

Greg 10:04

Well, I'm kind of dummy too because I'm I'm familiar with the name of this story, and guess I would just focused on the word goose. Because like because I always thought the name of this, like, this thing was like Jeff the Talking Goose.

Bobby 10:19

Wow.

Michelle 10:20

I have to say that a part of my mind, all right. So when I first started researching this, I was remembering back in like, I don't know, 2018, 2019, our our founder, the late great Timothy Green Beckley, was working with his uh co-author, uh longtime friend and collaborator Tim Schwartz on coming out with a book about this. And I can remember seeing all this, like my uncle, my uncle was Tim Green Beckley. He used to print the internet a lot, you know, like there would just be like printouts of like Wikipedia pages and shit just floating around all the time.

Bobby 10:52

And he had a Sometimes it's a nicer way to ingest it. I do it.

Michelle 10:56

I do it myself. So he printed the internet, and I too could like if I had to conjure a picture of some of the stuff he was working on, there was a goose involved, like a not a mongoose, like an actual like Aflack type goose, you know.

Greg 11:10

Um picturing that in my head when I when I think of Jeff the talking goose, I'm just it's almost like a child's book or something. Like I'm thinking of the like the cover of this. I'm like, What am I thinking of?

Michelle 11:22

There might be something because I'm like, there's active Mandela effect is happening right now at this table at this very moment because like I can see everything you're seeing. Um but I also remember having a problem pronouncing Jeff because it's spelled with a G. Uh when I saw all his research floating about, I like not only couldn't pronounce Jeff, but I also left thinking it was a duck.

Bobby 11:47

You know?

Michelle 11:48

Yeah.

Bobby 11:49

How is it spelled G E O F F?

Michelle 11:52

No, I feel like I or so I do know someone who spells their name Jeff that way.

Bobby 11:57

So it's a common. It's common. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Michelle 12:00

So if it was spelled that way, then I would have recognized it. It is not spelled that way. It is spelled G-E-F.

Bobby 12:08

Just a single F?

Michelle 12:09

Yeah.

Bobby 12:11

Nice. Um I would if I saw that in print, I would, that's Gef to me.

Michelle 12:15

Yeah. And also I said jiff, you know?

Bobby 12:18

But it's a good thing he talks because he can let us know how to pronounce it correctly. That's exactly right.

Michelle 12:25

Exactly. Yeah. Alright, let's go back to our fucking terrible farm. And we've got this cute yellow mongoose on the farm. And so they say yellow. I mean he's like brown. You know what I mean? If you like look up pictures of a yellow mongoose, you'll see why they would say yellow, but like he's not like banana yellow. He's like tan.

Bobby 12:46

Yeah, he's more like a yellow lab than a Pikachu.

Michelle 12:49

Yeah, exactly. Thank you for letting the people know. Um, so uh cute, they're so cute. I love them so much. So anyway, this mongoose on the farm can bark like a dog.

Bobby 13:00

Can I just we've been through a lot already? Yeah, I know.

Michelle 13:02

I'm on a lot of coffee too. I'm talking fast.

Bobby 13:05

On the farm, there's some scratching. And then one day a yellow mongoose shows up.

Michelle 13:10

So I gotta tell you, I've been talking for a while. I've said a lot of things, nothing's happened yet.

Bobby 13:14

Okay.

Michelle 13:15

Okay, so we're just living on the farm. It's it's hard life, but we're there. The scratches happened, whatever, we don't care. Maybe we had rats, we don't, whatever, it's fine. Um, but oh look, there's this Southeast Asian mongoose on the farm. That's interesting. And he's barking like a dog. That's crazy. So James the dad is like, let me investigate this guy, you know? So the mongoose is barking, so James starts barking at it and it starts barking back. So then he starts meowing at it, and the fucking mongoose starts meowing back at him. I just gotta I just gotta tell you, there's a lot of accounts that talk about all the different animal sounds that this mongoose could make. And in my mind, I'm just like, he invented the old McDonald's song. You know, like in my mind, I'm just hearing like and a bark bark here and a meow meow there, and so like that's what the mongooses and and James are up to.

Bobby 14:10

We're in the 1930s.

Michelle 14:11

1930s, yep. Okay. Um, okay, so you know what? Maybe the old McDonald's farm song already existed.

Bobby 14:18

But that's what I no, wasn't that not what I was trying to say.

Michelle 14:21

Yeah, that's what it sounded like.

Bobby 14:22

I I was just trying to again put myself in space and time.

Michelle 14:26

Yeah.

Bobby 14:26

Yeah.

Michelle 14:27

Sure. Okay, so James and his new mongoose friend are singing the old McDonald's song on the farm, and they're it's going great. So now the mongoose starts coming into the house sometimes. And like, he's cute, but he's a rascal, you know. He's knocking stuff over, he's peeing in the house, you know. Margaret, the mom, doesn't like it. Doesn't like it at all. He wakes everybody up, he's stealing food and and whatnot. So the family starts feeding him from a basket hanging from the rafter, which sounds like to me they were trying to keep the food away from him, and he found a way into it, and that just became his bowl. Sure. You know? They start just kind of like living with this mongoose who all of this is like, oh, weird, you have like a a fun pet. This is an unusual thing that you guys have going on here. But then he starts talking in like human language in English. So the way that they describe his voice is very interesting. So it is quoted as saying that it's like a male voice. Uh, he's a hymn. Jeff is a hymn. Um, and he speaks at about two octaves higher than a normal man. So he's a very high-pitched voice.

Bobby 15:43

Okay, you gonna give us a little taste?

Michelle 15:45

Well, I in my I'm gonna try my best not to, to be honest. One account says it he sounds like a teenage girl. Okay, which is a red flag because there is a teenage girl in the house.

Bobby 16:00

Okay. Right. So just saying.

Michelle 16:02

Yeah, just putting that out there. Um, also, when I'm reading this stuff, you know, there's no voice that I can put to it. It's my mind makes one. And so my mind has made it. Yeah, it's high pitch Eric from the Howard Stern show. You know that that's who's high pitch? So one of the first things that Jeff says is that he he's like, hi, I'm a mongoose, and my name is Jeff. And it's spelled with a G, E, one F. So I don't know how he can spell also already. So, like, as soon as he can start talking about it. It's already fancy.

Bobby 16:40

That's a fancy mongoose. He clarifies it right out of the gate. Right out of the gate. He knows there's gonna be, they're gonna get it wrong. There's some discrepancy that could possibly happen. I know what you heard, that's not what I said.

Michelle 16:50

Yeah.

Bobby 16:50

Yeah.

Michelle 16:51

With a G.

Bobby 16:52

Yeah.

Michelle 16:52

E. One F one F.

Bobby 16:53

Yep.

Michelle 16:54

Yep, that's right.

Bobby 16:55

Get that other F the fuck out of here.

Greg 16:57

I like that the mongoose calls himself a mongoose too.

Bobby 17:00

Yeah.

Michelle 17:00

I'm a mongoose. Yeah.

Greg 17:02

Okay.

Michelle 17:02

That uh Greg, good good catch there, cuz we switch it up. Um one of the one of the other things he says right out of the gate, all right, is I was born in near Delhi, India, on June 7th, 1852. Which would make him about 80 years old at this point, because it's the third.

Bobby 17:26

My part just like took it there. Like, this sounds like a Mark Twain book.

Michelle 17:30

Um, but I mean, okay, so I picture, I'm bringing myself back into time. I'm, you know, it's the 1930s, I'm on the Isle of Man, and there's a Jeff the talking mongoose, is telling me he's from Delhi, India. Like, that must seem insane.

Bobby 17:46

And like so, is he a Gemini? I don't know. He's a mongoose. All right, fair enough.

Michelle 17:52

I don't know. I mean, it's June 7th, he's not a cancer. I don't know. Uh so it it just sounds so insane. Like, how would a teenage girl or anybody else you even know to like reference this? But anyhow, he says he's from Delhi, India, and some of the stuff that he starts doing, he does say that he could understand language always, um, and that he understands nine different languages, but he couldn't speak until James taught him to speak. So all that old McDonald farm song taught Jeff how to speak fluent English and spell.

Bobby 18:30

Some of the stuff and geography, apparently. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I wonder there, I mean, I don't know the exact dates of the British occupation in India, but there might have been like some people around the bunch that had been there or serving a business. Also confirmed Gemini.

Michelle 18:46

Thank you. Thank you. Um such a Gemini. Yeah, he's such a Gemini. Fucking Jeff, Jeff the Gemini, get out here. Uh, some of the rascal stuff that he would do, now that he can talk, he likes singing songs in his high-pitched voice. He's singing songs around the house. He's reciting poetry, he's doing this thing that I love, Skeet Skeet. He's gossiping about the neighbors. Oh. And he would do some fucking some shit where he would fucking mongoose on over to the neighbor's house and like spy on them and like come back and be like, Margaret, listen to what this bitch is doing down the road.

Bobby 19:21

I like that he's really capitalizing on his circumstances. You know, like he comes out of the gate hot. Like, as soon as he gets to talk, he's like, I'm gonna sing some songs. Yeah, I'm gonna talk some shit. Yeah, like let's get it.

Michelle 19:30

He's like me on Colbert Coffee, like fucking. I said a lot of shit, but nothing happened. You know what I mean? Like he he's got really nothing to say, but he's talking, you know. One of the other things that makes me think I might be related to Jeff is he swears constantly, and this really ticks off Margaret. Like this this little rascally mongoose is Margaret's the mom. Margaret's the mom, and she does not like Jeff because he's a rascal, he's cursing, and he's you know, causing uh get all types of problems in the house and uh and a about town and for her, you know? Um okay, so here's some sorry hit me. What do you got? You got questions?

Bobby 20:10

He's causing problems about town. Is the the rest of the town is just like, oh yeah, that's Jeff. You know, everybody just really kind of takes this in stride, it sounds like.

Michelle 20:19

Um no.

Bobby 20:20

Is anybody so there are people around that are like, what the fuck is going on?

Michelle 20:24

You know what, Bobby? If you sit back and relax, I will get to that part of the story and I will tell you exactly what the town folk think. Um but first I want to tell you, in all honesty, if I switch around in my notes, I'm not gonna be able to find my way back. And so I just want to stay with my notes. Stand up in. Oh yeah, because I get thrown off easy. My notes say crazy shit Jeff said. Um, so here we go. And I'm gonna try to both do this in my high-pitch Eric voice and not do this in my high-pitch Eric voice. So he does come out and say, like, I'm Jeff, I spell it with a G, I'm from here, blah, blah, blah. But then he also is like a fucking lunatic, you know? So he's saying shit like, I'll split the atom, I'm the fifth dimension, I'm the eighth wonder of the world, baby. He didn't say baby, but that's what he's he's saying stuff like that.

Bobby 21:17

He's not cutting old WWF promos.

Michelle 21:20

He's basically Jeff is Ric Flair.

Greg 21:22

At some point, he's like, Baba buoy, baba booy.

Michelle 21:25

Exactly, exactly. You know what? When I read that, I was like, What do you mean he's splitting atoms? Like, how does he know about splitting atoms? And then I looked, and the Adam was split in April 1932. So he was a fucking timely mongoose, you know. He was like up on what was happening right then.

Bobby 21:41

Reading the paper. He was reading the paper, yeah.

Michelle 21:44

Then, you know, because oh, sorry, sorry, I did skip a huge thing that you guys need to know is a lot of the time he is a disembodied voice. Noah so Rory, she Has seen Jeff talk, but she's the only one. And like maybe James has seen him talk, but basically, it's like there's a mongoose running around the house, like hopping around the rafters and shit, and then I'll split the atom on the fifth wonder of the world or whatever is happening while there's mongoose running around the house. And so just know that. If your imagination was like, you know, his mouth is moving, it's not that's not happening. That would be far-fetched and absurd, and you would be insane.

Bobby 22:33

Yeah. Okay. That would be absurd. That would be the problem. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So we're living in reality here, folks. Yeah. Thank you.

Michelle 22:41

Welcome back to reality. And so now, since he's a disembodied mongoose voice in the house, we start asking him questions. Not just like, why are you here and what's going on, but like, what's the purpose of life? What is death? Some magic eight ball shit. Exactly. They ask him, what about death? Pretty vague. The mongoose is like, to hell, the land of the mist. Um, sorry, I don't know how to do his voice yet. I go, I go deep and then I go forget and then I try to make it high. So anyway, some of the he calls hell the land of the mist, which I believe it. I believe that Jeff has seen hell. And so he's just trying to let you know.

Greg 23:19

Jeff is just a demon that's come back. So there's like a demon haunting either the this little girl or this or this little rascally varmint that's running around their house.

Michelle 23:29

Greg, these are the exact questions. You already like okay, you came in thinking we were talking about a goose, and now you've got the whole thing figured out.

Greg 23:36

Now it's just a demon possession.

Michelle 23:38

Yeah, we don't know.

Greg 23:39

Okay.

Michelle 23:39

Okay. We're still in the crazy shit Jeff said section, so I just want to hit you with some some more. Um put the bloody gramophone on. Because remember, he likes singing and songs. And so, you know, that would just happen. He would just yell that out, and he would also demand food, like bacon with no fat. I'm embarrassed for myself. And he would also yell out stuff like put a sock in it, and nuts. And he liked to say nuts a lot. I don't know why. I think he is just like a little boy, you know. Little boys like to say nuts, you know? And he would say stuff like nuts, crack them. Okay. Okay, okay. When we talk about uh possessions and stuff like that, there's these these poltergeists or demons or whatever they are are liars all the time, right? So they're hitting us with this fucking typical misinformation and contradictions and like non-hell pretty rad place to go.

Greg 24:44

You want to go to hell.

Michelle 24:45

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is No, this is what the mongoose is. Oh, yeah. No, no, he doesn't. All he just said that one time that hell was like the land of the mist. You know, he just said it that one time. But you remember when he was like, I'm Jeff, I'm a mongoose. I'm from India, right? Now he's also like, I'm a spirit. I am an earthbound spirit.

Bobby 25:11

And then he's like, Jeff is escalating.

Michelle 25:13

Yeah, yeah. But then he's also like, I am not a spirit, I am a little extra, extra clever mongoose. I love Jeff so much. What a nut. And then he says, If I was a spirit, I could not kill rabbits. So sidebar, at some point, Margaret, the mom, was getting really mad at Jeff all the time. And so, in order to like get out of the doghouse, Jeff would go kill a rabbit and bring it to her like a cat does, you know?

Greg 25:44

So at what point in the story does Jeff start saying we need to eradicate a specific race off the face of the planet? I feel like that's where this is going.

Michelle 25:55

So like the whole world is building toward that. But that never happens. So just fucking chill out, okay?

Bobby 26:01

Jeff put ahead of his time. Yeah.

Michelle 26:04

Besides being fucking weird, this story is harmless. Okay. So everybody just relax a little bit.

Greg 26:12

Well, I'm just thinking like it's gonna like start escalating into something that's gonna be like, what the fuck did you say, Jeff?

Michelle 26:18

No, no. I mean, he needs to fucking cool it, you know, with his crazy talk, but he's he only gets scary a little bit one time. Okay, so after he's like, I'm a spirit, I'm not a spirit, if I was a spirit, I couldn't kill rabbits. He says stuff like, I'm a ghost in the form of a weasel, and I shall haunt you with weird noises and clanking chains. And I also have three spirits, and their names are foe, faith, and truth. So he's like spewing weird nonsense, you know, but it's like harmless, and nobody's really afraid of Jeff. Like this is annoying, you know. If anything, we would say as the family, this sucks, but we're not like scared, we're not calling priests, we're not trying to kill the weasel, we're not like that freaked out about it for some reason. I mean I would be, but whatever. The one time that it does get a little scary is end I quote.

Greg 27:12

Here we go.

Michelle 27:13

If you are kind to me, I will bring you good luck. If you are not kind, I shall kill all your poultry. I can get them wherever you put them. If you are nasty to me, I shall be nasty to you. I am not evil, but I could be if I want it. And this is the scariest one. You don't know what damage or harm I could do if I were roused. I could kill you all if I like, but I won't.

Greg 27:39

Yeah, it's dark. I'm just imagining him with a tiny little mustache now. Oh no.

Michelle 27:45

So I don't like it when the mongoose says that, but this is I save this one for last. It's not a scary. Um, it's more in the the nonsense category of Jeff's quotes, but it's my most favorite one. He says, I am a freak. I have hands and I have feet. And if you saw me, you'd faint. You'd be petrified, mummified, and turned into stone or a pillar of salt.

Greg 28:10

Oh, if we actually saw the actual like uh embodiment of who Jeff is, not just the mongoose. Or is he saying, Because I'm a mongoose, I'm a freak?

Michelle 28:19

I don't know, man. That's deep. I don't I didn't really think about it. I thought because he's a disembodied voice, a lot of the time he doesn't show himself and stuff. So I you know, I've I'm a freak! I gotta admit that I was picturing a mongoose with hands. Like human hands. Like human hands.

Greg 28:37

That'd be cool.

Michelle 28:37

And I guess mongoose feet. You know, now that you bring this up, it definitely deserves more thinking, and I'll I'll do that on my own time.

Greg 28:46

We can uh all take turns drawing a picture of what we think Jeff looks like.

Michelle 28:50

Yeah, I want to use the like the new uh software that police officers use instead of doing like the old school get a sketch artist, like they just have like an app now where they're like, we're the ears bigger, we're the eyes further apart. Yeah, I want to use that for the Jeff the Mongo.

Greg 29:06

What's weird about like the police thing is like it's still like shitty sketches that they've just like scanned in and they have like 15 different types of ears, and then it's just like they're just compositing all of these like shitty old like things, yeah, and it's just like how is this like the peak of your technology for this? Like we have like we could just read a prompt into AI and be like, does it look like this? Yeah, try again AI, and then like it keeps doing it, and it's like that's the fucking guy right there. Yeah, it looks exactly like that.

Michelle 29:34

Yeah, yeah, but whatever. Yeah, get on it, Greg. Um I'm gonna be a millionaire. Yeah, I'm I'm sure Tish already owns the software. All right, back to Jeff. Bobby, remember earlier when you were like, Oh, is everybody in town just like uh cool, it's Jeff. Let's high five them or whatever.

Bobby 29:50

I do recall.

Michelle 29:51

So that you guys know, this goes on for a couple of years, but we're still like in our first year of Jeff. And so it took a little while to go from, you know, cute mongoose out in the farm to like full-on talking and being fucking weird and it's true color show, you know? It's like dating, you know, the first couple of dates, you're like on your best behavior, but then you really let the weird out later. So it took a while to get to full weird Jeff. And so now other people are hearing about Jeff, they want to know, they want to see, they're coming over. But he never shows himself for anyone besides the family. And I think Margaret said that she saw him like twice or something, and then it's just basically the teenage daughter and the dad who see him all the time. The neighbors start coming over, but the family is not trying to like let strangers into their house to go looking for Jeff the mongoose or whatever. So they would just kind of like gather outside and look in outbuildings and stuff and just try to get a glimpse of Jeff. Jeff doesn't show himself, but we can hear him. So Jeff would talk to the people from inside the house. Some of the stuff that I thought was interesting was like one of the sorry, preemptively laughing because it is funny. One of the things that the neighbors would do was they would come over and they would flip a coin and they would call heads or legs because I guess remember the flag being legs. I can only assume that their coin had legs on it, so it was heads or legs, and so Jeff would always guess right, except sometimes he was wrong, but he was wrong on purpose. I thought that was hilarious. Even though the Isle of Man is pretty small, I guess there's like a good amount of newspapers and uh reporters and tabloids and whatnot. This story starts blowing up, and they have journalists coming, they have like the Irvings are like hot goss in the Isle of Man, and people wanna know. So there's like you can look them up on the internet, there's lots of reports, and it's basically like lunatic man says there's a mongoose on his farm on his land or whatever, you know? And so uh as the stories are coming out, the 1930s were I don't wanna say chalk full, but there were quite a few fairly famous paranormal investigators about. James the Dad starts writing to some of these investigators, and he's like, Come to my farm and check out Jeff. It's fucking crazy, you gotta get over here. And one of the people that he reaches out to is Harry Price. Now, we love Harry Price because he is, as Jeff would say, a doubter. I mean, we've talked about this before. We love doubters because it brings like a certain level of believability. Like if this guy is good, he's the guy that you call when something paranormal is happening to come and myth bust it for you, you know? Eventually Harry Price becomes a believer after doing all these investigations. Very similar to Friend of the Pod, Jay Alan Heineck, our buddy from a couple of episodes ago. Uh, and also, I mean, he kind of gets woven into a lot of the stories, but he's the guy who was investigating UFOs to, you know, myth bust all of them. And he was the first guy to come up with swamp gas as the reason why people are seeing lights in the sky. And eventually he came to believe in UFOs. And so Harry Price is like the paranormal British version of that. He is also played by Christopher Lloyd in a 2023 movie that I will tell you more about later.

Greg 33:37

Not about Jeff the Mongoose.

Michelle 33:39

Maybe it is about Jeff the Mongoose.

Greg 33:41

I'm just looking it up too, and there is a crude actual photograph of Jeff.

Michelle 33:46

Of Jeff? Yeah. And he's just show me.

Greg 33:48

It's just him sitting on.

Michelle 33:50

Oh yeah, there's a couple of all right, there's a couple of pictures of a mongoose on a fence. Oh, we don't know if it's Jeff or not. Yeah.

Greg 33:59

I mean I mean it seems to be at a farm and it's like kind of rocky and hilly, and like it is very Isle of Manny, so it's possible.

Michelle 34:07

Yeah, but like was that Jeff or was that like like another mongoose? We don't know because so I look like a skunk. Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you. It does look very smoky. Uh-huh. Alright, I'm gonna just disregard your photographic proof and keep on keeping on. So when the dad writes to Harry Price, he's like, dude, you gotta come see my mongoose. Price writes back and he's like, I'm not coming unless you send me proof. And so James is like, no problem, buddy. He sends him a tuft of fur and like paw prints in uh plaster Paris vibe, you know? He sends that out, Price sends it to the labs, whatever the labs are in 1933, and it comes back as probably dog fur. So, like, oops. Harry Price does uh it's kind of a long story. He like sends somebody else out first to scout it and whatever, but a couple of years into the story, mid-1930s, Price invites his editor buddy, a guy named Richard S. Lambert, also known as Rex, to come with him to the Isle of Man and investigate Jeff. And so they do. The two of them go out there, and Jeff says that he doesn't like what Price looks like, and so he's not coming out. And so Price has this like back and forth with Jeff where he's like, please come out. I believe in you, I'm not a doubter, blah blah blah. And Jeff says no, and I quote, No, I don't mean to stay long because I do not like you. And so Jeff just like leaves the farmhouse and doesn't come back for a while. Sometimes when I read my notes, I'm like, dude, I was on one when I wrote that. So next to that quote, no, I don't mean to stay long because I don't like you. I wrote, sounds like my autistic cousin, just telling it like it is. I don't even have an autistic cousin. What am I talking about? Anyway, Price went. So, all right, Price went, he's investigating, he's with his buddy Lamper, they're there for a while, they're doing all kinds of investigations in caves and nearby rocks and shit. They never do see Jeff, but they do hear him. You know, they do this investigation and all they can come back with is like, there's, you know, a disembodied mongoose running around this farm. I don't, I don't know what to say. They do write a book, because like, why wouldn't they? But in the book, they don't say it's real or it's not. They're like, it's likely a hoax. But all of these people, like all those people who were flipping coins with Jeff outside, and people who were farmhands and neighbors and the whole family, like, there's so many accounts of hearing this mongoose speak that when they write this book, they don't disregard all of that. Like they all take everybody at their word. They're basically like, it's a cold case, but it can't be confirmed nor denied, you know? Every single week we talk about why. Why would people make this up? Why would this dad say this? Like he has nothing to gain, you know? What's the He's a man in a suit?

Greg 37:18

Yeah, I mean, there's no But also if you think about like where they're at, and it is pretty dismal, and like they're that idea of like feeling special, drawing attention and like whatever. Like there's a thousand different reasons as to why people would like start a hoax. I'm getting the same vibe as uh the bell witch. And it's just like kind of the same idea where it's just like, is it haunting? And then even like the idea of like hearing the ghost out of the cave that's close by. Yeah, like it's it's almost the same story in that respect. And the bell witch being so much older, it almost seems like they use that as like as kind of inspiration for their own thing. And again, it could be that there are two separate stories that have that fall in line the same way, um, especially since it's across the ocean. It's not like down the road. Oh, by the way, this mongoose is now talking to me, like 10 years after this other thing happened.

Michelle 38:11

Right. I will say The Bell Witch is one of those stories, though, that you can compare to like every story because it has literally everything. And it's like the first story to have all of those things, you know, like there's a yeah. Andrew Jackson.

Greg 38:26

Andrew Jackson, not Thomas Jefferson.

Michelle 38:28

Um guys, yeah, but it's like it's a witch, it's a poltergeist, it's a disembodied voice, it's uh haunting, it's a cave, it's uh astral projection, it's got it's got it all, you know. And so so does this one. You're not wrong, you know. Like this got a lot of lot of that stuff going on too. Now, okay, I understand like the dad, everybody's bored, they want they they start this thing, it gets out of hand. But I could see that. But writing a book is probably the only time that it's like, oh, actually, somebody can make some money here. So like now that that makes sense to me that like Harry Price and this guy, Rex Lambert, could you know go out there and write a book, make some make some books, like that makes sense. But I think it only sold a couple of copies and like didn't didn't make any money. But it does turn into a thing. Shortly after the book was written, the guy Lampart, Price's buddy, he is on the board of the British Film Institute, and they get a you know, a load of this book, and they're like, he's a fucking kook. We gotta kick him off the board. And apparently being a kook is not grounds for being kicked off the board of the British Film Institute. So he sues them for slander. It goes to court, so he's gotta get his solicitors, everybody's got their fucking wigs on, like they're in the actual courtroom, and the whole thing, they have to talk, or not the whole thing, but a lot of it, they have to talk about Jeff the talking mongoose in court. And I just find it.

Greg 40:00

I like that there's someone like taking like uh there's someone taking notes, notes, and like the like someone's reading back the minutes of everything that happened in this trial and talking mongoose has to come up.

Michelle 40:11

Yeah, so d he wins. What else can I say? Long story short, he fucking wins that court case. The judge is quoted as saying that a talk believing in a talking mongoose is embarrassing, but it is not grounds for dismissal. And so he wins a settlement for what in today's money would be one half a million dollars. And the court case goes down in history as being known as the mongoose case. I find that hilarious, and I'm I'm really glad that I could get that in there. Uh moving on to some of the other investigations that happened.

Greg 40:43

Wait, is there the book that they made? Is that available anywhere? Like, do is there a name on that book?

Michelle 40:48

Okay, great question. So I need to tell you guys that the conspiracy journal sells a book called Jeff the Talking Mongoose, The Eight Wonder of the World by Tim R. Schwartz. A couple of things about this book that are incredible is one, the cover art, which I'm gonna show my friends here. And now I found it again. Here we go. So it has this like kind of famous picture of what the the home look like, which is like this really ominous-looking stone depressing building. It's not a cute farmhouse. You're not gonna see this in like uh brutalist farmhouse. Exactly. It's it's it's bad, dude. It doesn't have enough windows, there's no porch, there's zero cute things.

Bobby 41:34

This is the cover art of the book?

Michelle 41:36

This is the cover art of our book. So they have made it. So the original photo, which you can see on like Wikipedia, is a black and white. So we have turned it into a collar, you know, so we put a little color. It's got the daughter and the dad are standing at the door, so we put a little color on them, we put a little color on the roof, but then we've added some like street.

Greg 41:57

It's a wild mural of a mongoose on the side of it.

Michelle 42:00

As if you had a muralist come to your brutalist farmhouse and do a, I don't know, what is this four-story fucking street art mural of a like photorealism mongoose on the It looks like there's a wheat paste of a mongoose on the side of this farmhouse.

Greg 42:17

Well, I think aside from from this book, you said that they wrote a book.

Michelle 42:21

Yes. So, all right, it's stick with me. So in the like introduction, Timothy Green Beckley does the introduction and he says, and I quote, that this book wouldn't be in your hands or on your device today if it wasn't for an anonymous donor whose husband scanned the original Price book for us. So, yes, Harry Price and Lampert wrote a book, which is not fucking in print anymore, but we have a scanned copy of it in our edition. It includes the entire thing, and you can read it in our book. Incredible. So, going back to uh the investigations that were going on, we have Price and Lampert show up, they investigate, they write a book, he goes to court. That all happened. But then James starts writing letters to a parapsychologist. Anyone know what that is?

Greg 43:12

Yes.

Michelle 43:12

Uh I didn't. So I'll tell the people who don't. Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena. So James is writing to this guy who's like a famous parapsychologist, and through letters over like a couple of years, convinces the guy that Jeff is real. And so this guy comes to investigate.

Bobby 43:30

Dude, I cannot believe that this many people have taken this seriously up to this point. And that people continue to take this seriously. My fucking mind is blown. How many people keep being like, Yeah, tell me about Jeff.

Greg 43:44

It's kind of like part of like the fun and mystery of it all though, too. It's just lasted that long and like this many, like to your point, that many people are like involved with God, how boring must it have been on the Isle of Man in the nineteen thirties.

Bobby 43:56

Did you get a load of that house? Jeff's gonna get this much traction. Alright, keep going.

Greg 44:01

That's why they have like this wild fucking motor race where like one at least one person dies every year now.

Bobby 44:06

Let's see if we can just end it for ourselves. Let's see if one of us can die.

Michelle 44:11

Yeah.

Bobby 44:11

Yeah.

Michelle 44:12

Alright, so enter Nandor Fodor, the parapsychologist with the best name in history. So Nandor and the Talking Mongoose is a 2023 film starring Simon Pegg, who plays Nandor, and Christopher Lloyd, who plays Harry Price, and Neil Gaiman does the voice of Jeff.

Greg 44:33

Of course.

Michelle 44:34

Which would be awesome.

Greg 44:36

But it's not high-pitched at all.

Michelle 44:38

Actually, it's weird. I did watch it. I watched it last night. It was not as high-pitched as I would have liked, but Neil Gaiman is problematic. He's been canceled, you know?

Greg 44:49

So it's like Well, he's he's still done things.

Michelle 44:52

Oh man, what I just fucking hate. I mean, it tracks that a weird guy would be into weird shit. So like that's believable, but man, what a bummer. Like, never fucking damn it. Just damn it.

Greg 45:04

American Gods is still great. I don't care what anyone says.

Michelle 45:07

Ah, dude. I can't. I won't I won't I won't.

Bobby 45:11

I didn't I didn't finish it.

Michelle 45:12

Really?

Bobby 45:13

Nope. Then do it for me. Just be in the, you know, the other, the other side of the equation.

Michelle 45:19

Shit. I read quite a few of his books and I I loved every single one of them. My thought hit I I'm not, I'm not gonna get into it, but it was a really like I I took it really hard.

Bobby 45:31

You watched this film last night.

Michelle 45:33

Oh, the movie. Yeah, sorry, back to the movie. Yes, I did watch this film last night. Nandor Fodor in the Talking Mongoose, where Neil Gaiman plays Jeff.

Bobby 45:40

Uh-huh.

Michelle 45:41

It was great. Yeah, good time. I I what can I say? It was good.

Bobby 45:46

I mean, there it is. You could be you could be honest.

Michelle 45:50

Uh I want to see a movie about Jeff, and this was a movie about Nandor. But it's Simon Pegg plays Nandor and he was great. It was it was great. It was a good movie. I liked it. It was a good time. Christopher Lloyd, it was really fucking great to see him again. True. You know, and uh I liked him as price. I liked everything. Anyway, one of the things I haven't told you is that the name of the farm is called Darlish Cashin. And so Nandor spends a week at Darlish Cashon and Jeff never appears. Jeff is like, you guys are all haters and doubters, and I'm not I'm not trying to see you. Nandor leaves without ever seeing him, but he does leave saying that Jeff, his hot take on Jeff, right? Because again, going back to what Greg brought up is like we've got all of these different aspects, right? Like, is it a cryptid? Is it a poltergeist? Like, what the fuck is Jeff? So Nandor is like, it's a real mongoose that learned human speech. That's what he leaves saying. And I'm like, you know what? Same. That's what I believe too. He also throws in there that there's a possibility that James the Dad conjured Jeff into existence with his Isle of Man boredom. You know, like he was so fucking bored.

Greg 47:04

Wait, that's a that's that's a uh an option?

Michelle 47:08

Apparently, yeah. If you're um a parapsychologist, you can you'll know stuff like that. You can conjure a mongoose? Yeah. Well, if you're a parapsychologist, then you know that that's an option. You know, if you're just a layman, then you don't even know it's an option, so you don't even think about it.

Greg 47:21

Well, now everyone that listens knows they can conjure a talking mongoose.

Michelle 47:25

I'm gonna try.

Greg 47:26

Only if you're bored of it. Only if you're bored of it.

Michelle 47:28

Yeah, you gotta be Isle Man level bored.

Greg 47:30

Oh does this happen like to like lighthouse workers?

Michelle 47:33

Probably.

Greg 47:33

I would assume so. I feel like that's the type of bored you'd have to be.

Michelle 47:37

I feel like this is how we get like fairies and sprites from boredom.

Greg 47:40

Yeah, and psychedelic trucks. Yeah, yeah. Or otherwise. There are mushrooms that specifically have the same effect on every single person where they see tiny little people and like dancing and stuff.

Michelle 47:51

So that's another story. He also Nandor, Nandor Fodor, real name. He does like a, I don't know, a reassessment a little while later. I don't know how long, a year or so later, he's like, I've got notes on my theories, and comes up with like another possibility later. And that is that Jeff was a mongoose, like a real regular ass mongoose, and that the mongoose was possessed by the brain of James. So like James was psychically controlling the mongoose and conjured Jeff into existence with his brain, but like subconsciously, right? So like James doesn't know that he is possessing a mongoose, you know? So he's not lying when he says, like, holy shit, this fucking Jeff the mongoose is in my house. He it it's not he's not trying to manipulate anybody, but like this is Nandor's uh third option, human possessed uh mongoose.

Greg 48:52

Okay.

Michelle 48:53

Take that in, take it. Sure, take it in. Okay, so that's pretty much it, right? So like mongoose shows up, he starts talking, he's a rascal, we've got all the neighbors come, the tabloids are talking, hot goss, skeet, skeet, investigate, investigate, books, court, jail, whatever. Then we come back. Jeff is like losing his power. We see him less and less. When he shows up, he's less talking, and I don't know if he's like, you know, mongoose doesn't live that long. I don't know what's happening.

Greg 49:21

Well he's already 80, so he's like uh little old mongoose.

Michelle 49:25

Good point. Rory. She's five, six years older now, so she's like 18, which is like old, you know. So she like moves out, and after she moves out, no one ever sees Jeff again. James in 1945 is on his deathbed in the house, because that's where you died back then. The eldest daughter, which fucking red flag, no one talks about there being another daughter until the dad's dying. She says that right before her dad dies, they hear a fucking ruckus up in the rafters, and the whole family believes that that was Jeff coming back to say goodbye to James. Then, right after James dies, they sell the farm. Margaret, the other fucking kids who just showed up out of nowhere, they all move, and uh the new owner of the farm about a year later kills a mongoose. And he's in the papers is like, I killed Jeff, like holding up a dead fucking mongoose. Rory is like, that's not Jeff. That looks nothing like Jeff. I know what Jeff looks like, and that's not Jeff. So we don't know if we believe that anybody killed Jeff or not. Um, but everybody in the family goes to their grave with this story. No one ever recounts. Never in the 1970s. A guy from Fate magazine finds and interviews Rory, and she's like, this definitely happened, and it was crazy. I mean, some of the haters or the doubters say that it was Rory the whole time, that she was like the world's best ventriloquist.

Bobby 51:01

That's me.

Michelle 51:02

And yeah.

Bobby 51:05

Nerd. I am uh no, no, I'm part of that group.

Michelle 51:08

Oh, you weren't the teenage daughter the whole time.

Bobby 51:11

Joiner voice. Yeah, yeah. So I did say firmly planted in that group based on everything I've heard.

Michelle 51:17

I did say very early on when we were talking about what Jeff sounded like, that it was very suspicious that he sounds like a teenage girl and there is a teenage girl on premises. That was my first.

Greg 51:26

And she's the only one that hears him speak. Yeah, yeah. That's a lot of response after she moved out.

Michelle 51:30

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I see how you guys got there, but I don't believe it. I'm with Nandor. Like, this is a real mongoose who could speak. That's just my take. But also, for you haters, just to give you a little bit.

Bobby 51:44

I'm also in the camp that it was a skunk.

Michelle 51:49

So remember when I showed you guys what the house looked like from the outside? Just like a big stone. And when I say stone, I mean it's like it's not brick. Like you can't see, like it's just one big massive wall.

Greg 52:00

Yeah, it looks it looks almost like like a war bunker. That they that they put shingles on top of to like make it concrete or stucco, but it's gray.

Bobby 52:09

It looks like just like cement.

Michelle 52:10

Yeah, it looks like one big block.

Bobby 52:13

No definition, yeah. Yeah.

Michelle 52:14

So the house on the inside though had walls. So they had built a wood frame inside of this cement house.

Bobby 52:22

I like how you said that. Like I get a lot of the house? Walls. Walls.

Michelle 52:27

Yeah, check it out. Room separation. Some of the walls though are janky and they didn't go all the way to the ceiling. And there was like some of these rooms when they're talking about the mongoose running on the rafters, like the mom could reach up and touch him as he was running on the rafters because like the the there's no ceiling, you know.

Bobby 52:47

Like a bushwick loft.

Michelle 52:48

Yeah, exactly. It's like, yeah, I'm gonna um turn this living room into two bedrooms. Yeah, totally, exactly, exactly like a bushwick loft in the Isle of Man. Yeah. Totally. So one of the things about this method of constructing a home is that there's a huge ass fucking gap in between that cement exterior wall and the whatever the fuck wood wall you've got made in your bushwick loft. Which means I envision no, I did not read this. This is just my own uh, you know, Michelle's a scientist.com analysis is that she could, or or he could, or someone could, a person who could throw their voice, could throw it into the walls and have it travel through the house like a whispering wall type of vibe, where you're like you're in one room, but you can hear it coming from the other side, and like, how's that fucking possible? It must be haunted, or there's a big ass gap between the walls and the sound carries weird.

Greg 53:42

So just giving you guys there are some ideas there that would kind of fill in the gaps of this story.

Michelle 53:51

Yeah, whatever. If you believe in that kind of shit, like whispering walls or whatever. Lame.

Bobby 53:56

If we believe in fucking liars. Yeah, exactly.

Michelle 54:02

Um, I mean it's a fun story though.

Greg 54:04

I like the idea of it.

Michelle 54:05

Dude, I fucking love Jeff the Talking Mongoose. I didn't know I was gonna, but like turns out he's my homie, love him for life. Going back to the book uh conspiracy journal has Jeff the Talking Mongoose, the eighth wonder of the world.

Greg 54:19

I wonder if there's any like uh adult erotica written about Jeff.

Michelle 54:23

You fucking know there is. He was a dirty little mongoose. Everybody knows it. So I just want to end by reading to you a quote from Timothy Green Beckley's like introduction to this book. He says, on a scale of one to ten in the ranks of Fortinea, with respect to Charles Fort, the grandfather of the supernatural, I would give it a solid nine for its overall appeal and its refusal to go away with the passing of time. How did you guys not stop me when I said Fortanea?

Bobby 54:57

Sounded great.

Michelle 54:57

Yeah? Alright. Do you guys know what that is? Or who Charles Fort is? Okay, whatever. I need to know more. Every single time I do research, I go on a whole side quest. And so we will cover Charles Fort at some point on this podcast, because I didn't know that there was the grandfather of the supernatural, and I needed to know about his scale. So Timothy Green Beckley gives it a nine again for its overall appeal and refusal to go away at the passing of time. I gotta say, I give it a five. But I don't really know the scale yet.

Greg 55:27

But yeah, in terms of uh in terms of a a story and something that's going to like last a while and like can get passed down and like yeah, the story itself is great. Like it's a it's a fine story.

Michelle 55:37

It's just it's so fun, but I gotta admit, I like uh I like a dark story. So to get me over the five line, you gotta bring something fucking gross, you know?

Greg 55:46

Yeah. Um, and that's kind of where I thought it was going to go. Like I said, I I I've known I known of the story, like I've heard the story. Not the the full story of like the details, but I know of Jeff. Jeff, yeah. Um but I didn't know any of the details, but like I was I was waiting for it to like take like a real horrible turn.

Michelle 56:04

No, it never does. It's like when I watched the uh Mr. Rogers documentary, the whole time I was like on the edge of my seat. Like, when's it gonna go bad? What did he do? What did he do? And it never does, you know? Mr. Rogers just a wonderful man. Yeah. Jeff the talking mongoose, just a wonderful mongoose, you know, rascal, but like totally fine. Hey Bobby, what do you on your uh a fortunea scale, w what do you give Jeff?

Greg 56:28

I'm gonna abstain from raiding. Oh rating, Jeff.

Michelle 56:31

Okay. All right. Okay.

Greg 56:32

I'm up there, I think, with you. Like it's about a five. Like it's an okay story, but like it's I'm not saying if something horrible, if like a child died or something, I'd rate it more or something, but it's just like a yeah, it's for me. I kind of you know the story, you've heard it. You can kind of compare this type of hoax if it is to like 30, 40, 50 other ones that sounds like.

Bobby 56:53

I guess I was also hoping for more of like the demonic possession, like a turn that way or like some some threats. I thought when he like started threatening to like kill chickens that we were like it reminded me of like uh violent leprechaun tales. Yeah, you know, I thought it was gonna go that direction.

Michelle 57:08

I think the reason I give it a five is because one, it's fun and he's got this high-pitched voice, and there's like a lot of stuff I can do with my imagination, but just the fact that so many people were involved, people are coming from you know all over the world to investigate, and it's making the papers and it causes a court case, and like all or it doesn't cause a court case, but it you know, whatever. I just think it's a a wild ride. Had it not gotten so out of hand, it probably would have rated for me a lot lower. Um, but because of all those other factors, it rose up to a five.

Greg 57:41

I probably would have rated it more if it was an actual goose, and the picture that I have in my head of this children's book illustration of like a goose running away from a house. Yeah, like in like a really pastel watercolor-y type of thing. Like, I don't know where that image came from and why I'm attaching it to this, but I wanted it to get more out of hand.

Bobby 58:00

I think I mean that this is the I think it's the teenage girl's fault. She wasn't demented enough. I was hoping she because she was controlling the monkeys clearly. I felt that like she I was wanted her to be like, what can I make people do? Yeah, and it was almost like you were dark shit. Can I make people do?

Greg 58:13

Yeah, painting her as like this depressed goth teen at the beginning. I was I I was thinking like it was gonna get real like Sylvia Plathy and like she was gonna there was gonna be a real dark turn somewhere in this.

Michelle 58:25

But yeah, you know what it was is I feel like she didn't have a library or somewhere to go to read a Sylvia Plath book to really send her over the edge, you know. She was working with what she had and it just like wasn't a lot, you know? Right. But I think like fucking Nandor's assessment, uh or you know, whatever you want to call it the whatever he did. I don't even know if I'd call it an investigation because he never sees anything or does anything. He just like comes up with a couple theories. But I wonder why some of these guys don't talk more about her unless about the dad. Like I would think that it was probably her possessing of real mongoose, if anything, not the dad, you know. Like, why's the dad getting blamed for all of this?

Greg 59:10

There's like a psychological reason why people would all go along with this too, because if it if people are getting something good out of it, they'll they'll continue on with it. There's like this I'm I'm not sure if you're aware of who Darren Brown is. He's like a mentalist out of England, and like he does all these like weird fun shows. And during one of the series, he was talking about luck. And he went to this small town like in the north of England somewhere, and then just found random people who he could like manipulate essentially into like being on the show and like participating in this little experiment that he was doing and in hopes to change their luck. So he was finding people that were kind of down on their luck, and like nothing ever seems to work out for me, type of shit. And then he started planting seeds of there being this lucky dog statue out in the park. And it was just it's always been there.

Michelle 1:00:01

Uh-huh.

Greg 1:00:02

And but he he used that as like the totem, started spreading like the word that there's this lucky dog, you pat its head, you'll get good luck. And then like they put up like this like hidden camera on it.

Michelle 1:00:11

Uh-huh.

Greg 1:00:12

And then eventually, as the show progressed, like these these people would like go pet the thing and like yada yada, and like their luck started changing. And it's like a mental thing that like if you start perceiving yourself as having better luck, you probably will. You'll you'll like quote unquote manifest that for yourself. And like as time went on, the whole town knew to go pet the dog's head.

Michelle 1:00:32

Right.

Greg 1:00:33

And it's just like that's how like that's how these stories spread. Right, right. And like if you if there's some sort of benefit that you get out of it, then what's the harm in it? Like, and it's something small and like it's not that big of a deal. Even though people watched the show and they know exactly that's what happened, they'll still go pet it, yeah.

Michelle 1:00:51

Well, that's fun.

Greg 1:00:52

And that's why, like, even if this story is made up, like it helped the family get through maybe a really horrible time.

Michelle 1:00:59

Um, other people helped the whole island. Yeah, yeah.

Greg 1:01:03

It was something that they could all kind of rally around and just like it gave them enough of a distraction from whatever like weird, dismal life they might have had. So there's no harm in that at all.

Michelle 1:01:12

Yeah, it's so windy. They needed something they needed, they needed a mongoose to raise morale.

Greg 1:01:17

Yeah, it became like their little mascot or something.

Michelle 1:01:19

Yeah. Fucking Jeff.

Greg 1:01:21

And that's awesome. Like, I I back that sort of stuff.

Michelle 1:01:23

Yeah, me too. Well, if it's for good, you know.

Greg 1:01:25

Yeah, and like you can it's who's to say what's good and what's bad, but like there they're I'm not saying hurt.

Michelle 1:01:32

Exactly.

Greg 1:01:32

Yeah, and like I am I'm I'm not saying I don't know the difference between good and evil.

Michelle 1:01:36

No, I know what you mean.

Greg 1:01:37

That's what it sounded like.

Bobby 1:01:38

Okay.

Greg 1:01:38

There was a whole lot of Hitler talking about it.

Michelle 1:01:41

There was but also like there's something to be said that like the Irvings' lives were were their reputation was destroyed. Like it wasn't all in good fun, you know. Some bad bad things did happen here, but you know, there's not, you know, dead babies.

Bobby 1:01:55

Right. You know, much to our chagrin.

Michelle 1:01:58

Yeah, it would have got a higher rating on my scale.

Bobby 1:02:01

If you have a story with some of those elements, why don't you give us a call?

Michelle 1:02:05

Oh, yeah. Also, um, in our book, Timothy Ream Beckley ends his his little introduction with saying, Maybe Jeff has a descendant out there somewhere, in which case, come talk to us. We'll do our best to keep your secret. No ordinary rodent masquerading as a talking mongoose need apply.

Greg 1:02:23

And so if you are a descendant of Jeff, or you're Jeff, like the actual descendant of the mongoose.

Michelle 1:02:30

Exactly. Or if you know a mongoose, or you have, you know, you know about Jeff the mongoose, you whatever you know, we want to know. And so give us a call at the Strange Exchange, 929-445-3705.

Greg 1:02:47

All right.

Michelle 1:02:48

Goodbye.