THE CHINA MAIE, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1858.
The Ghost of Cashen's Gap
THIS is the traditional time of the year for
sitting by the fire and telling ghost stories. This story is remembered by many people and possibly ranks as the strangest ghost story ever told.m
The haunting of Cashen's Gap began in the winter of 1931. Farmer James Irving was sitting with his wife in their lonely cottage 750 ft, up Dalby Mountain on the west coast of the Isle of Man, where they had lived peacefully and quietly for 14 years. Their 13-year-old daughter Voirrey (Manx for Mary) was in bed upstairs.
Then, "Tap. Tap. Tsp." The The farmer put down rat noise came from the attle which poison and the animal screamed was boarded in. "Must be mice," and shook the house with great said the farmer to his wife, burps He hunted him with a
gun and found nothing. The job Next day he opened to the was difficult because the house ceiling and went into the attle, had double walls to guard He found no mice but he did find against draughts and keep li
ittle wood carving that had warm. There were spaces be been mlesing. When dropped on tween the walls and it was from the floor it produced the sort these spaces that the voice of tup that he had heard the generally came. previous night.
By now the farmer's story of
That evening the sounda came the sirunge happenings DI again. Louder. Then came
Caven's Gap had spread. The running nolse That's no
first reaction was the obvious Jouse," sald Mr Irving to hla
cnc. That the Irvings must be wile,
guing mad.
Yel Mr Irving was known as a healthy, educated mun. M-
Charles Northwood, cotton broker and
* retired
friend of
the Irvings for mony years, dashed to the Island to clear up the business.
He was greeted by the volce at Ger, as the ghost was now called, "Charlie, my old sport!"
Then in succession came animal sounds, barks, grow, spitting and hissing, a thump that art pictures on the walls * swinging a noise like a baby slerting to talk, more barks and to silence.
a
On the Dalby Mountain in the Isle of Man, a lonely cottage suddenly became hounted, But by what? According to the "ghost" itself, it was
Whatever it was, it started one of the most amazing mongoose from Delhi,
ghost-hunts ever recorded.
when he opened a letter: "Read it out you fat-headed now." Irving sald Get told him; Thou wilt never know what I om.
I am a freak. I have hands and feet. And if you saw Gel went on: "Tell Arthur Bot the you would be paralysed, come." (Arthur Was Mi petrified, mummifled, turned into I am the fifth Northwood's non) "1'11 blow his a pillar of salt. Urpins out with a threepenny dimension
the eighth
I am
Mr Irving waited. Nothing cartridge, Ma Northwood was wonder of the world, happened. fio looked at his staggered.
split the atom" wife, then made a baricing sound 1:mself. Back come a bark Mr Irving moowed. Back camg a meow
came
And so according to Mr Irving
spook, the Dalby
to Cashen's Gap. The story was to become stronger still.
By
And Captain
The "thing" next began to Imitate Mr Irving's voice. in a matter of weeks was talking like a human, talking in a high- pitched screech.
1
frightened farmer,
the
HENRY LEWIS
Macdonald, a rucing rotorist, also claimed to have heard Gef screaming and knock- ing and saying "Hello, every body."
"What in the name of Heaven
be?" demanded he
Harry Two boys from Peel, "What in Hall, 19, and Wi Cubbon, 15, the name of Heaven can he ba?" told came back the mimicking screech Gef. from the walls.
when
1 can
were
But soon the Irvines claiming to have caught glimpses weusel-like animal of Gefa with a long bushy tail and hands Hke human hands. No one else stu hinn.
The haunting. If haunting it of conversations with weru, went on for five years. According to Harry And the stories grew more re-
to Mr he tussed
According perty markable, E
riding on buses. Certainly 1 was difficult to understand how else Irving could have known of conversations on buses,
The islanders, of course, be- came angry and John Cowley, a mechania at the Peel bus ter- ninus fixed a contact plate under a bus to electrocute def.
Irving was becoming attached to Gef. and told in about it. "Oh. I know all about that," Gef repiled. "It's under bus 81." Irving checked. It was!
Stones, some weighing а pound, were thrown at islanders from nowhere They blamed Gef.
Now Gef told Irving that he was a mongoose, born on June 7, 1852, and came from Delhi.
that
Thu ghost hunters and re- In the porch Gof called: Irving, Gef knew everything porters suspected ventriloquism, Then it answered the question: "Talls," and was right, He that was going on in the island. The Islanders suspected
the Irvings' daughter, "I am a ghost in the form of a tossed again and Gef again called Be knew the names of horses Volrrey, weasel and I shall haunt you correctly. He mutted the next and when a foal was born. Ho was responsible. But, despite with weird noises and claniting one and Gef screamed: "You could describe furniture in oli munner of tests and traps, chains." There Was a noise idn't turn the peruny."
like metal clanking.
Get asked Will: "Can you rive a steam-roller?" "Y" sald Will. "You young rëscht," sald G. "You would put it
over a hedge.
Reporters and ghost-hunters began to arrive at the lonely droves Harry
"If you are kind to me 1 will farmhouse in bring you good luck. If you Price, one of the most famous are not kind I shall kit all your ghost hunters alive at the time, poultry. I can get them wherever investigated the case. you put them. am not evil,
You
I could be if I wanted. don't know what damage or harm I could do if I were roused. I could kill you uil it i liked but I won't."
And to prove it, the self- described ghost in the form of n weasel began to throw things. Gravel wa9 hurled nt the windows from outside Things were pitched indoors.
And the stories that Irving
tuiti them all grew even stranger, How Gef killed rabbits and left them on the porch.
How Gel would daily discover new words and ask about them: "Jim, what is countenance? Jim,
what is a nun?"
How he would read the dally over Irving'a seross the rooms newspapers
shoulder and
at him
seream
houses 20 miles away.
He told Irving all the gossip, saying he had overheard it while
the investigators were unable to get to the bottom of the ease. Anyway what could the Irvings gain from a hook?
And then the case of the tolk~ ing mongoose reached the High Cour One of the people who hud helped Investigate it was the then Editor of the B.B.C. paper, The Listener. When a titied man laughed at his interest In the affair, the editor qued him for lander and after a ochsa- tional action reported all over! the world, was awarded £7,000 dunages Later the case was mentioned in the House of Com- nions.
Radio comedians took it
up.
But Gef's public career was al- most at an end, The Irvings moved away from Cashen's Gap and vanished-} least from public notice.
Ger has never been heard of since. Some islanders believe
Get went with the Irvings.
Others belleve that he was the odd, polecat-type animal which was trapped and shot in 1947, by Mr Lealle Graham, the next tenant of Cashen's Gap,
Was Get a real talking animal? The Irvings claimed to have seen He raded their him and that larder.
Was he a ghost in animal form? No one else ever saw him, despite the number of investi searched the farm gators who over a period of many years, Was the whole affair a delusion or a hoax?
ENDS
いや
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