It was late summer in August 1971, that Maria Gomez Pereia noticed a dark stain on the kitchen floor of her house in Bélmez, Spain. Curiously, after she cleaned and scrubbed the floor the stain return. Stranger yet, the stain resembled a human face. This face and other faces which began to appear around the house would eventually come to be known as The Bélmez Faces.
The Phenomena
On August 23, 1971, the first face appeared as a dark stain on the kitchen floor of the house located in the small farming village of Bélmez in the south of Spain. After cleaning the floor the first face, later referred to as La Pala, resurfaced. Maria soon asked her husband for help. Armed with a pickaxe, he destroyed the floor and resurfaced it with concrete. The family reported that soon the faces and others re-appeared all over the house a week later. Word of the phenomena spread across the region of Spain and the mayor of the village got involved requesting a section of the floor be cut out for study.
Investigations
Parapsychologist and scientist descended to the house in Bèlmez to verify the authenticity of the faces. Were these mysterious faces the result of an elaborate hoax, a spiritual paranormal event or a psychic message? Under the supervision of a notary, part of the kitchen was sectioned off and sent to the ICV (Instituto De Cerámica y Vidrio) or the Institute of Ceramics and Glass. The results of the study showed no evidence of dyes or pigments. However, the was no documentation of which face or section of the kitchen was sent for analysis and studied and neither was there documentation of which mineralogical or chemical analysis were performed.
Parapsychologists noted each time the floor of the house was torn, the face always returned. Scrubbing the floor with detergent did not make the faces go away. In fact, the faces changed expression with the eyes seemingly widening. A German crew was given person to seal off the kitchen for three months, and the family used a makeshift kitchen in a different area of the house during that time. Upon re-opening the kitchen, the faces had moved and evolved.
Theories
Speculation of what could have created the faces In Bélmez abound from the scientific to the paranormal. Two prominent paranormal researchers of the day Hans Bender and Professor Germán de Argumosa were proponents of the authenticity of the phenomena yet neither published scientific papers of the event in spite of conducting lots of research. Hans Bender called the Bélmez faces the most significant paranormal event of the twentieth century. Argumosa who was considerably Spain’s biggest defender of the Bélmez faces claimed to have made several EVP (electronic voice phenomena records of sounds which he could only describe a cross between hell and a brothel.
Others were found documents claiming the governor of Granada had murdered five members of a local family on the property on which the house was built. Theories also circulated that face were the souls of the dead buried in the cemetery of a nearby church. There were also reports of beheaded skeletal remains found under the concrete floor of a neighboring house. Yet even though a proper burial were given to the remains the faces continued to appear.
Maria Pereia, the owner of the house, claimed to have psychic abilities which led researchers to speculate the was case of “thoughtography.” Thoughtography is the psychic ability to burn images from the mind on surfaces. Claims were made that the faces changed expression and color as Mara’s mood changed.
Hoax?
Are the Bélmez faces a hoax created by the Pereia family to attract fame and fortune? Scientists claim there is evidence that the face were partially drawn or painted. The study conducted by the ICV found traces of lead. Lead was one of the primary components used to the make the paint that was present at the house during the time of the study. An article presented by the ICV stated that despite finding lead on the section taken from the floor of the kitchen the use of pain cannot be necessarily ruled out.
What is of particular interest if that despite fierce proponents such a Bender and Armugosa, other parapsychologist pronounced the Bélmez faces to be a hoax. In fact, Ramon Perera, the president of the Spanish Society of Parapsychology, announced that La Para, as the first Bélmez face is referred, was found to show pigmentation and was touched up with brush strokes as the face began to fade when studied under infrared photography. Other scientists suggested that oxidizing agents or light sensitive agents were used such as silver nitrate. Silver nitrate darkens when exposed to light which would explain the seeming appearance of the faces. However, did the Pereia family have the means and the motive to create such an elaborate hoax?
Present Day
The Bélmez faces still appear to this day and attract visitors and tourist to the house. In 2014, the Spanish journalistic investigative show, Cuarto Milenio (Fourth Millenium) carried out their own analysis at the house and extracted samples of the faces from the kitchen floor. Their analysis found no evidence of the presence of paint nor that the faces had been manipulated in anyway. The tv crew attempted to reproduce the hoax claims by using silver nitrate yet failed in reproducing the faces. The faces at Bélmez continue to appear yet are said slowly to be fading.
