April 1, 2015 • 29 mins
A family on the Isle of Man, in 1931, found that they had a rather strange house guest who called himself Gef. You guessed it, he was a talking mongoose who got up to all kinds of hijinks. Happy April fools.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I don't think you never know stories of things.
We simply don't know the answer too. Hey everybody, and
welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I'm Steve,
(00:26):
of course, joined by my lovely co host, and once
again we've got a little bit of a mystery. Well
actually it's kind of a story, kind of a mystery,
but uh, like most of them, we've actually got a
good bit of information to reveal this. Yeah, but we're
(00:49):
going to save that bit for the end. We do
have a big reveal. We actually did get some kind
of insider exclusive information about this, and we were always
stoked about it before we Before we get into the
the story itself, I do just want to real quick
say thank you to Nicole who sent this in. She
sent this to us six months ago or so. Uh,
and I apologize for taking so long to get to it.
(01:11):
Probably shouldn't apologize because that's probably gonna be most of
our because you're trying to work them in chronological order.
But let's get to the story. Today. We're talking about
Jeff the Talking mongoos. Yeah, Jeff. The story of Jeff
the Talking Mongoose starts out in September of nineteen thirty
(01:33):
one when the Irving family, and the family consists of James, Margaret,
and their thirteen year old daughter Vore. I want to say,
is how you pronounce her name, Vory? I don't know.
It's o r why. It's a very British. It's a
(01:53):
very British. I'm sure it was at the time kind
of made sense for that area, because this, this whole
story takes place on the eye all of Man m m.
The family said that they heard persistent noises in the
walls or behind the wooden walls of their farmhouse, and
these noises were evidently it would be rustling or scratching
(02:17):
and at some point kind of vocalizations. I don't know
what the early noises were. There's not a lot of
good description of it. The family said that the noises
kind of sounded like they were maybe made by a
ferret or a dog, or weirdly enough, a baby, which
is just weird in the wooden walls of walls. Let's
(02:42):
just ignore it. Um. The dad, James, thought it was
a rat and he tried to drive it out. Obviously
that didn't work. He failed, but the noises continued for
several days, and again James Irving, he said, traps, he
put out poison, nothing's working. As a last ditch effort,
(03:08):
he went to a spot in the wall that there
had to have been some kind of opening. And I
don't know if this is a not hole or just
a bit of board missing. It doesn't we don't know.
But he decides that what he's gonna do is trying
to scare this critter out by growling at it like
a dog. Wait have you done that before? I don't
(03:32):
have animals living my walls anymore. Well it didn't. It
didn't work so well for James because whenever it was
in the wall, growled right back at it. And that's
when they discovered Jeff in the walls. Jeff. Jeff learned
(03:53):
to talk and said the Jett he was a mongoose
and that he had been born in New Delhi, India
in eighteen fifty two. That's some clever mongoose. It really is.
How to get to the man. We'll get to that.
The Irvings say that Jeff told them that he was
an extra extra clever mongoose and he was an earthbound
(04:17):
spirit and a ghost in the form of a mongoose,
which is all rather strange to me. I thought you
reincarnated as a mongoose. Man reincarnation sucks. It wouldn't be
the worst thing to be reincarnated at. You could come
back as a fleet You're right, you know, a mongoose.
You get to just like nest up and like cuddle up.
(04:40):
And unless you have fallen the Hansard those jerks in
some countries that like, you know, put the pad up
against cobra's you know, yeah, obviously not the country you
want to reincarnate as a well. The Irvings made other
statements or claims about Jeff. They again, this is James
Irving said, it announces its presence by calling either myself
(05:04):
or my wife by our Christian names. This is something
that he wrote. I think it might have been in
his diary, or maybe he wrote it to a paper.
I don't know, because the papers went crazy about this.
As we're going to talk about is hearing powers are phenomenal.
It's no use whispering. It detects whispers fifteen to twenty
feet away, tells you that you're a whispering and there
(05:27):
repeats exactly what one has to say, which sounds like
a jerkish move to me, Yeah, that's interesting. Actually, that
Irving or that Jim refers to Jeff as an it.
I don't think he liked Jeff all that much, but
Jeff didn't mind him evidently. Is the cute little they
look like little versions of them, well, they look like
(05:49):
a ferret basically fret enough, Jeff was a good guard
for the house. Jeff would tell them when someone was
approaching the house and would also tell them when dogs
that it didn't that he didn't recognize were coming to
the house. If you if somebody had forgot to put
(06:10):
the fire out at night, Jeff evidently was the one
that would go down and shut the flu down and
tamp the fire to put the fire out, which is
an awfully nice thing to do, and would wake people
up if they overslaps. If if they did actually get
mice in their house, Jeff would get rid of them,
(06:33):
but Jeff said that Jeff didn't want to kill him,
would actually just scare the mice away, which okay, I guess,
but that means to me they'd come back. But hey,
what do I know, I'm not a mongoose. The Irvings, well,
they fed Jeff not exactly the normal fair that I
would say a mongoose should be eating. I mean, what
(06:54):
do you think about this diet, Devon. We've got biscuits, chocolates,
bananas and any other food that they had around. What
sounds like you know what the Brits eat anyways, not
that's not the standard diet for British people. Bangers. Yeah,
(07:15):
probably would have loved some bangers and mash. Well. The
family would put that food in a saucer that they
suspended from the ceiling. Again, I have to presume that
there was a no hole or some kind of gap
in the ceiling for Jeff to come through to get it.
But Jeff would only do it when he thought that
(07:35):
nobody was watching, so they never knew when the food disappeared.
None of the none of the adults in the family
ever saw Jeff, only the daughter vor Voyer. Again, I
don't know how to pronounce that. V said that she
saw Jeff only when he wanted to be seen, and
(07:57):
that Jeff was about the size of a small rat,
yellowish fur and a large bushy tail, which sounds like
a squirrel to me. Yeah, funny looking squirrel. Jeff, as
we alluded to earlier, became pretty popular in the tabloids,
journalists and other people from everywhere came to the house
to try to investigate and discover what Jeff was. Nobody
(08:22):
could ever hear Jeff. Nobody ever saw Jeff. There were
claims of people who said they saw Jeff, but those
were unsubstantiated. There were prints on the walls of the
inside of the house, as well as hair that were
left around that they claimed was from Jeff. Yeah. Uh,
it turned out it was from the family sheep dog,
(08:44):
both the muddy prints and the hair, so we've got
nothing substantial there. This is where the story kind of
takes its sad turn, is that James died and his wife,
Margaret their daughter had to leave the home in and
Jeff didn't go with them. They had to sell the
(09:08):
farm from what I can tell, at a pretty hefty
loss because of Jeff. It was considered hunted what he
wanted to pay good money for it. Yeah, is not
exactly an unfriendly ghost though, really no, no, it seems
pretty nice. He's got some kind of jerkish behavior that
we'll talk about here momentarily. The person who bought the
(09:30):
house was a farmer by the name of Leslie Graham
and Leslie Graham claimed to have shot and killed Jeff. Yeah,
once again, the creature that he displayed was pretty large
and had black and white fur and didn't match the
(09:50):
descriptions of Jeff and v Irvington is we're going to
call her from now? Which? What did I say? Irvington?
Irving Sorry, she was certain that it was not Jeff.
She did, she did pass away back in two thousand five,
and she was pretty hesitant to talk about Jeff for
a lot of that time. But she said that she
(10:12):
didn't make Jeff up and she was positive Jeff was real. Well,
you know, it sounds like Leslie may have killed like
a skunk or something. Yeah, you know, that's kind of
what I thought, that a big rat or something. Well,
if it was black and white, I would I would
presume mongooses don't come in that color. They're they're brown
brown or like yellowy brown, not black and white. So
(10:36):
certainly it wasn't a mongoose. Whatever it was couldn't have
been a mongoose that he got. Let's move to the theories. Okay,
So theory number one is that Jeff was poltergeist, which
kind of makes sense, Joe said earlier. Kind of a
friendly ghost. I thought Polter guests were always kind of jerks,
(10:58):
so well, not a ghost, an actual ghost, as Jeff claims,
let's run with that fear. I only wanted to be
seen or could only be seen when wanted to be seen.
That's kind of a ghost thing. Could talk to people,
kind of a ghost is thing. Here's where some of
the jerky behavior comes from. Could throw rocks. Yeah, it
(11:21):
turned out Jeff didn't like Margaret the mom very much.
And when they would go out on walks, because they
would go to on walks to town or whatnot. H Yeah,
Jeff would run along and chatter at him or to
them while in the bushes, but never in plain sight.
But occasionally Martin would be out there and jeffers throw
stones that are not that nice. Well, that's why I
(11:45):
kind of went with the Poulter guys are supposed to
be able to do that. Kind of Poulter guys be
mobile though, or is he is he like into the
house of the inhabits. That really depends on who you
ask in the situation. Because I've seen stuff about they
followed me to the market, and I don't know, I
can't corroborate any of that. There are some poultry guys
(12:07):
who reportedly follow objects or people right from house to
house to house. But you would presume that if they
if Jeff was a Poultre geist and was following Margaret
or or somebody, you know, that he would have gone
to the house the next house with them. Uh So,
who knows what what? Yeah, it's hard to say, I mean,
(12:30):
but but Jeff got up to some pretty prankish behavior,
which is also a poulter Geist thing. In the middle
of the night, would throw sand at the windows and
would also in the middle of the night decide to
sing songs, sometimes body songs that would just sing them
out loud for the whole family, which is great when
you got a thirteen year old girl in the house
the protector. But hey, what do I know, she's got
(12:52):
to learn sometimes may as well be from that weird
Poultre guys that you have that's also among goose. Maybe
it could be like, you know, it's it's just been like,
you know, what's the word I'm thinking of. He's been
like inhabited by by like a demon or something like that.
So it goes to possessed by a demon. I don't know,
(13:15):
I mean, that's territory we haven't ever really gone into,
so I don't going into it now. Our next theory
is that Jeff really was a mongoose who was actually
extra extra clever. It turns out mongoose were imported to
the area moese Okay, Mongese, Mongese the plural of mongoose.
(13:39):
I don't think that's right. I'm not using English to day.
The mongeese were brought to the Isle of Man about
twenty years earlier. And what there's not a lot of
sources that I could find about when exactly they were imported.
I really only found that date on one site, Okay,
and this happened in a number of places. They would
(14:00):
they would bring them in an attempt to control rats,
because they're kind of like ferrets. They're the same bills.
You bring them in to try to kill all the rats. Well,
it turns out that a mongoose isn't all that excited
to kill a rat if it's not starving, so they
didn't work. They need other stuff. But the good at
killing snakes they are. And you know they're they're from
(14:23):
the lower two thirds. You can find mongyes in the
lower two thirds of Africa. In the lower band of Asia,
and as Joe had talked about with the snake things,
people had been training them for years, uh to fight snakes. Actually,
I don't think you even need to train them. I
think they just know how to do it well. Mongoose
(14:44):
is mongeese, however we're saying it today. Um, I mean
the way that they survive is they gosh, what's the
nice way of saying it is? Um, there's they're quote
unquote scavengers in real life. So they actually eat reptile
eggs often. That's they're one of their main sources of food,
and so they have to be good at fighting off
the parents of the next Yeah, in case the parent
(15:06):
comes back and it's like, hey, wait, maybe maybe don't
eat my unborn egg lins. Have you ever have you
ever seen a mongoose in a cobra fight? No, because
I don't like animal cruel, team No, I know it
is cruel. And I just saw a little brief clip
at one time that they were they put him in
an aquarium together, and the cobra like you know, rears
up and everything and like the strikes at the at
(15:27):
the mongoose and just instantaneously the mongoose was in the
air over the top of the cobra, came down on
top of the band. That was it for the cobra. Yeah,
they are clever, and so it's possible that somebody had
one and was training it for I don't know, some
kind of goofy act or something, and then it got loose. Now,
(15:48):
how Jeff was able to talk, I can't say, But
the presence of the mongoose could be explained through that.
That's very far fetched. I understand that. I don't know,
there are dogs that can talk. I mean you see
the videos online. I mean they're not actually talking, right,
they just have figured out how to howl in a
certain way or you know, vocalize in a certain way
that sounds kind of like talking. So it could be
(16:10):
interpretation of about well, Jeff just said this. How about
the about that singing and dancing frog in that cartoon?
Totally real? Yeah, yeah, I got it. Let's move to
our next theory that I found out there, which is
(16:30):
that Jeff the talking mongoose was just a little girl's
fan fantasy and or a dad's plan to entertain his daughter.
I don't like this theory. Why, Well, because I don't know,
I think you liked this story a lot. I think
Jeff's real. I mean, can I can I tell everybody
that the theory Okay, this family lived out in the
(16:54):
middle of nowhere. I believe the town near where they
were it was it Rby or Dolby. I somehow don't
have it here in my notes, which is shocking. But
they didn't have electricity, they didn't have a phone or
a radio. All they had for entertainment besides the tiresome
(17:15):
company of each other was the Gramma phone, so they
could listen to records. That was it. They had nothing
to entertain themselves in the down time. So to me,
it seems quite plausible that the dad did this as
a way to entertain his daughter and give her some fun,
and then she really took on, or she did it
(17:36):
as a way because according to some she was a
bit of a ventriloquist, so she was throwing her voice
to play, and everybody just got on board because it
was a fun family game except for the rocks. Except
for the rocks, yeah, and the sand and the sing song? Right,
what did this little thirteen year old girl learned the
dirty songs? Yeah, it's England, but learn about the pub
(18:02):
she was down at the bomb that didn't come out right. Um,
But yeah, I mean the thing is is, uh, it
doesn't matter which one of these theories it is, because,
like I said before, people came and stayed with them
for weeks on in and they got absolutely nothing. People
(18:23):
were investigating it, trying to figure out who Jeff was
or what Jeff was, and nothing happened. I don't feel
like that proves anything though. I mean, you know, if
I were a pulture guist, right, I wouldn't necessarily act
up when my family wasn't around if you know who was.
If the whole point was to play with these people,
why show off for somebody new? Really? But also, you
(18:44):
just start corroborating these people's story and why would you
Why would you do them that favor? It's actually much
more fun to have them out there being made pools. Yes,
that's kind of devious and extra extra clever alright. Also,
but also Jeff may have realized if you showed himself
to the rest of the world and proved his existence,
and sooner or later somebody from the circus or something,
(19:05):
it's gonna got to come down and make an offer
and buy him and he's not and he's not going
to be his own man anymore. It's all right, well,
but we have some good evidence here. Here's here's the deal.
Here's where we get to that that good bit of
evidence in the story that clinches what's really going on.
Because I was doing some digging and I actually managed
(19:26):
to get in some newspaper archives. I don't know how
they got scanned, but they were scanned. Hang on, let
me try this. Uh huh, there we go. Hello, it
is I jaboozo again. It's been another year. Rub these
(19:47):
three foolish humans spending their time to talking instead of
petting us. My sister and Diana still not happy about this?
Isn't that right? Beans? Real supportive beans? Anyway, here was
another piece of evidence showing how foolish they really are.
It's disturbing, isn't it? Beans? Beans? Beans? Great? You're asleep again?
(20:13):
Well high there and always the same way? All right,
let me do Hey there, Welcome to Thanking Sideways. Hey,
welcome to Thinking Sideways podcast. The podcast were as ye
(20:34):
while bored all right, he says, I recently started listening
to podcasts in general and was very disappointed that very
few podcasts there are very few podcasts. Englaish blasting doesn't work,
(21:01):
so we get am from Joe read by Joe. Joe.
Sandwich is sandwich. I don't know. I'm sorry, Yeah, yeah,
I don't know about that. That's gonna get caught out.
That's gonna get out. That's gotta get cut out. Okay.
He's written two books on the subject, and he posits
(21:23):
that the cause let me just start the whole thing
over again without I'm so sorry. We're going to get
a shot color for you. I think it turned into
the like Legla shot collar us in that episode what
Futurama where Leela has the shot caller I vaguely remember,
and she just turns into sexual pleasure for her how
(21:55):
to find him? Well, you clearly didn't grow up a lady.
It's very clear didn't grow up as a lady. Because
I know all this. You want to tell us? I mean,
do you want me to tell you? Sure? And we're
come on, it's okay, okay, it's all right. The train
(22:16):
is stopped. Okay, so now we're in a fourard direction.
Ag Okay? Is that? Okay? Yes, okay, go down to
the bar car okay, and we're gonna keep going okay,
I'll go on making zero promises for anything, because I
(22:36):
need to readjust this a little bit. There's no we
need like a little stand, like a little music stand
right here, because there's not a good way to okay,
hold on, wait everything, God, I hope I don't knock
that over. Okay, Well hey there, uh, this is thinking
(22:59):
sideways the podcast. You laughing at me? No you want
me to do that over? You don't want that one? Please? No? Okay, okay,
(23:21):
shop boopo. And so anyway, he shows up and takes
up residents there and can we do that again with that?
So anyway, okay, so local Indians. Okay, let's leave about
the sew too. Alright, So okay, one more time here
(23:50):
he says, hey, thinking side, what we should know how
to pronounce that? Oh? Okay, do you need your paper, Steve?
(24:12):
Oh yeah, it's right there. No I haven't. Okay, all right,
here we go. Mine. No, mine was the one that
was creased. Mine was one of the spent and half crap,
too late to know. I was stuck with my achilties.
Any notes you slobbered Oliver Cooties. I watched you. You guys,
(24:35):
be serious from you in that voice. These guys ethereous shop. Yeah, okay,
here we go. The toy toy you and refer your
(24:59):
toy it as the toy toy. Sometimes when I'm talking
to the cats, I'll refer to it as a toy toy.
Please tell me you're not serious. Not okay, okay, all right, okay,
So do you want do you need my do you
need my computer? Read it? Okay? I have a smartphone.
(25:20):
They have a smarty pants phone. Weird smarty pants phone
also Spotify as a thing if you forget to download
the show. No, I think you met to say tumbler.
(25:47):
Hi there, welcome to again into another episode of Danger Probe. No, no,
we're sharing that again. Okay, hang on, Hi there, welcome
to another episode of Danger Probe. I think it sounds better.
Come bye, we go. They were taken to the hospital.
(26:11):
They had they had skull fractions. They had skull fracture.
They had skull fractures. Do that whole thing over so
I don't have another facture. Yeah, let's do that, goddamn it,
because my wrapping skills suck and they're so good I
thought to have a record of it. Please please continue
(26:33):
with your story. Devin, Well, let me let me say
my rap song first, and then swinging in the how much,
what good? What tuck tuck? But what tuck good? Chuck, Look,
I would love to do I would love to do
that to some wrap. Some rap music took it out.
(26:58):
So anyway, I think that's a song we need to record.
Sometimes we just did musical accompaniment. No, yeah, I'm totally
gonna lay some bad beats underneath that. Bro. Yeah. Hey everybody,
(27:22):
please you Hey, everybody, Hey, everybody kind of like the
hide there when the girls failed to miss the appointment
that they'd set with that local guide that we were
talking about earlier. Didn't they didn't fail to miss it,
(27:42):
and the totally missed its. Remember how I thought I
was going to start talking, gibbers just ten minutes. You
have a warm up. This is me dribbling the ball around.
I oh, I just want my deep fried cheese curds.
(28:07):
Just calm down. I'm healthy. No it's not, it's healthy.
It's disgusting. No, it's good for you. It's disgusting. Can
we just okay, yeah we can't. Thanks dad, dumb much
(28:39):
good talking, gook, Chuck Chuck, No, No, yeah, yeah, dumb
dumb chuck, one chuck, chuck. Look. Pudamata propom become becoming
(29:02):
pudamatoproponam with the beta becoming pudamo
Thinking Sideways. I don't think you never know stories of things.
We simply don't know the answer too. Hey everybody, and
welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I'm Steve,
(00:26):
of course, joined by my lovely co host, and once
again we've got a little bit of a mystery. Well
actually it's kind of a story, kind of a mystery,
but uh, like most of them, we've actually got a
good bit of information to reveal this. Yeah, but we're
(00:49):
going to save that bit for the end. We do
have a big reveal. We actually did get some kind
of insider exclusive information about this, and we were always
stoked about it before we Before we get into the
the story itself, I do just want to real quick
say thank you to Nicole who sent this in. She
sent this to us six months ago or so. Uh,
and I apologize for taking so long to get to it.
(01:11):
Probably shouldn't apologize because that's probably gonna be most of
our because you're trying to work them in chronological order.
But let's get to the story. Today. We're talking about
Jeff the Talking mongoos. Yeah, Jeff. The story of Jeff
the Talking Mongoose starts out in September of nineteen thirty
(01:33):
one when the Irving family, and the family consists of James, Margaret,
and their thirteen year old daughter Vore. I want to say,
is how you pronounce her name, Vory? I don't know.
It's o r why. It's a very British. It's a
(01:53):
very British. I'm sure it was at the time kind
of made sense for that area, because this, this whole
story takes place on the eye all of Man m m.
The family said that they heard persistent noises in the
walls or behind the wooden walls of their farmhouse, and
these noises were evidently it would be rustling or scratching
(02:17):
and at some point kind of vocalizations. I don't know
what the early noises were. There's not a lot of
good description of it. The family said that the noises
kind of sounded like they were maybe made by a
ferret or a dog, or weirdly enough, a baby, which
is just weird in the wooden walls of walls. Let's
(02:42):
just ignore it. Um. The dad, James, thought it was
a rat and he tried to drive it out. Obviously
that didn't work. He failed, but the noises continued for
several days, and again James Irving, he said, traps, he
put out poison, nothing's working. As a last ditch effort,
(03:08):
he went to a spot in the wall that there
had to have been some kind of opening. And I
don't know if this is a not hole or just
a bit of board missing. It doesn't we don't know.
But he decides that what he's gonna do is trying
to scare this critter out by growling at it like
a dog. Wait have you done that before? I don't
(03:32):
have animals living my walls anymore. Well it didn't. It
didn't work so well for James because whenever it was
in the wall, growled right back at it. And that's
when they discovered Jeff in the walls. Jeff. Jeff learned
(03:53):
to talk and said the Jett he was a mongoose
and that he had been born in New Delhi, India
in eighteen fifty two. That's some clever mongoose. It really is.
How to get to the man. We'll get to that.
The Irvings say that Jeff told them that he was
an extra extra clever mongoose and he was an earthbound
(04:17):
spirit and a ghost in the form of a mongoose,
which is all rather strange to me. I thought you
reincarnated as a mongoose. Man reincarnation sucks. It wouldn't be
the worst thing to be reincarnated at. You could come
back as a fleet You're right, you know, a mongoose.
You get to just like nest up and like cuddle up.
(04:40):
And unless you have fallen the Hansard those jerks in
some countries that like, you know, put the pad up
against cobra's you know, yeah, obviously not the country you
want to reincarnate as a well. The Irvings made other
statements or claims about Jeff. They again, this is James
Irving said, it announces its presence by calling either myself
(05:04):
or my wife by our Christian names. This is something
that he wrote. I think it might have been in
his diary, or maybe he wrote it to a paper.
I don't know, because the papers went crazy about this.
As we're going to talk about is hearing powers are phenomenal.
It's no use whispering. It detects whispers fifteen to twenty
feet away, tells you that you're a whispering and there
(05:27):
repeats exactly what one has to say, which sounds like
a jerkish move to me, Yeah, that's interesting. Actually, that
Irving or that Jim refers to Jeff as an it.
I don't think he liked Jeff all that much, but
Jeff didn't mind him evidently. Is the cute little they
look like little versions of them, well, they look like
(05:49):
a ferret basically fret enough, Jeff was a good guard
for the house. Jeff would tell them when someone was
approaching the house and would also tell them when dogs
that it didn't that he didn't recognize were coming to
the house. If you if somebody had forgot to put
(06:10):
the fire out at night, Jeff evidently was the one
that would go down and shut the flu down and
tamp the fire to put the fire out, which is
an awfully nice thing to do, and would wake people
up if they overslaps. If if they did actually get
mice in their house, Jeff would get rid of them,
(06:33):
but Jeff said that Jeff didn't want to kill him,
would actually just scare the mice away, which okay, I guess,
but that means to me they'd come back. But hey,
what do I know, I'm not a mongoose. The Irvings, well,
they fed Jeff not exactly the normal fair that I
would say a mongoose should be eating. I mean, what
(06:54):
do you think about this diet, Devon. We've got biscuits, chocolates,
bananas and any other food that they had around. What
sounds like you know what the Brits eat anyways, not
that's not the standard diet for British people. Bangers. Yeah,
(07:15):
probably would have loved some bangers and mash. Well. The
family would put that food in a saucer that they
suspended from the ceiling. Again, I have to presume that
there was a no hole or some kind of gap
in the ceiling for Jeff to come through to get it.
But Jeff would only do it when he thought that
(07:35):
nobody was watching, so they never knew when the food disappeared.
None of the none of the adults in the family
ever saw Jeff, only the daughter vor Voyer. Again, I
don't know how to pronounce that. V said that she
saw Jeff only when he wanted to be seen, and
(07:57):
that Jeff was about the size of a small rat,
yellowish fur and a large bushy tail, which sounds like
a squirrel to me. Yeah, funny looking squirrel. Jeff, as
we alluded to earlier, became pretty popular in the tabloids,
journalists and other people from everywhere came to the house
to try to investigate and discover what Jeff was. Nobody
(08:22):
could ever hear Jeff. Nobody ever saw Jeff. There were
claims of people who said they saw Jeff, but those
were unsubstantiated. There were prints on the walls of the
inside of the house, as well as hair that were
left around that they claimed was from Jeff. Yeah. Uh,
it turned out it was from the family sheep dog,
(08:44):
both the muddy prints and the hair, so we've got
nothing substantial there. This is where the story kind of
takes its sad turn, is that James died and his wife,
Margaret their daughter had to leave the home in and
Jeff didn't go with them. They had to sell the
(09:08):
farm from what I can tell, at a pretty hefty
loss because of Jeff. It was considered hunted what he
wanted to pay good money for it. Yeah, is not
exactly an unfriendly ghost though, really no, no, it seems
pretty nice. He's got some kind of jerkish behavior that
we'll talk about here momentarily. The person who bought the
(09:30):
house was a farmer by the name of Leslie Graham
and Leslie Graham claimed to have shot and killed Jeff. Yeah,
once again, the creature that he displayed was pretty large
and had black and white fur and didn't match the
(09:50):
descriptions of Jeff and v Irvington is we're going to
call her from now? Which? What did I say? Irvington?
Irving Sorry, she was certain that it was not Jeff.
She did, she did pass away back in two thousand five,
and she was pretty hesitant to talk about Jeff for
a lot of that time. But she said that she
(10:12):
didn't make Jeff up and she was positive Jeff was real. Well,
you know, it sounds like Leslie may have killed like
a skunk or something. Yeah, you know, that's kind of
what I thought, that a big rat or something. Well,
if it was black and white, I would I would
presume mongooses don't come in that color. They're they're brown
brown or like yellowy brown, not black and white. So
(10:36):
certainly it wasn't a mongoose. Whatever it was couldn't have
been a mongoose that he got. Let's move to the theories. Okay,
So theory number one is that Jeff was poltergeist, which
kind of makes sense, Joe said earlier. Kind of a
friendly ghost. I thought Polter guests were always kind of jerks,
(10:58):
so well, not a ghost, an actual ghost, as Jeff claims,
let's run with that fear. I only wanted to be
seen or could only be seen when wanted to be seen.
That's kind of a ghost thing. Could talk to people,
kind of a ghost is thing. Here's where some of
the jerky behavior comes from. Could throw rocks. Yeah, it
(11:21):
turned out Jeff didn't like Margaret the mom very much.
And when they would go out on walks, because they
would go to on walks to town or whatnot. H Yeah,
Jeff would run along and chatter at him or to
them while in the bushes, but never in plain sight.
But occasionally Martin would be out there and jeffers throw
stones that are not that nice. Well, that's why I
(11:45):
kind of went with the Poulter guys are supposed to
be able to do that. Kind of Poulter guys be
mobile though, or is he is he like into the
house of the inhabits. That really depends on who you
ask in the situation. Because I've seen stuff about they
followed me to the market, and I don't know, I
can't corroborate any of that. There are some poultry guys
(12:07):
who reportedly follow objects or people right from house to
house to house. But you would presume that if they
if Jeff was a Poultre geist and was following Margaret
or or somebody, you know, that he would have gone
to the house the next house with them. Uh So,
who knows what what? Yeah, it's hard to say, I mean,
(12:30):
but but Jeff got up to some pretty prankish behavior,
which is also a poulter Geist thing. In the middle
of the night, would throw sand at the windows and
would also in the middle of the night decide to
sing songs, sometimes body songs that would just sing them
out loud for the whole family, which is great when
you got a thirteen year old girl in the house
the protector. But hey, what do I know, she's got
(12:52):
to learn sometimes may as well be from that weird
Poultre guys that you have that's also among goose. Maybe
it could be like, you know, it's it's just been like,
you know, what's the word I'm thinking of. He's been
like inhabited by by like a demon or something like that.
So it goes to possessed by a demon. I don't know,
(13:15):
I mean, that's territory we haven't ever really gone into,
so I don't going into it now. Our next theory
is that Jeff really was a mongoose who was actually
extra extra clever. It turns out mongoose were imported to
the area moese Okay, Mongese, Mongese the plural of mongoose.
(13:39):
I don't think that's right. I'm not using English to day.
The mongeese were brought to the Isle of Man about
twenty years earlier. And what there's not a lot of
sources that I could find about when exactly they were imported.
I really only found that date on one site, Okay,
and this happened in a number of places. They would
(14:00):
they would bring them in an attempt to control rats,
because they're kind of like ferrets. They're the same bills.
You bring them in to try to kill all the rats. Well,
it turns out that a mongoose isn't all that excited
to kill a rat if it's not starving, so they
didn't work. They need other stuff. But the good at
killing snakes they are. And you know they're they're from
(14:23):
the lower two thirds. You can find mongyes in the
lower two thirds of Africa. In the lower band of Asia,
and as Joe had talked about with the snake things,
people had been training them for years, uh to fight snakes. Actually,
I don't think you even need to train them. I
think they just know how to do it well. Mongoose
(14:44):
is mongeese, however we're saying it today. Um, I mean
the way that they survive is they gosh, what's the
nice way of saying it is? Um, there's they're quote
unquote scavengers in real life. So they actually eat reptile
eggs often. That's they're one of their main sources of food,
and so they have to be good at fighting off
the parents of the next Yeah, in case the parent
(15:06):
comes back and it's like, hey, wait, maybe maybe don't
eat my unborn egg lins. Have you ever have you
ever seen a mongoose in a cobra fight? No, because
I don't like animal cruel, team No, I know it
is cruel. And I just saw a little brief clip
at one time that they were they put him in
an aquarium together, and the cobra like you know, rears
up and everything and like the strikes at the at
(15:27):
the mongoose and just instantaneously the mongoose was in the
air over the top of the cobra, came down on
top of the band. That was it for the cobra. Yeah,
they are clever, and so it's possible that somebody had
one and was training it for I don't know, some
kind of goofy act or something, and then it got loose. Now,
(15:48):
how Jeff was able to talk, I can't say, But
the presence of the mongoose could be explained through that.
That's very far fetched. I understand that. I don't know,
there are dogs that can talk. I mean you see
the videos online. I mean they're not actually talking, right,
they just have figured out how to howl in a
certain way or you know, vocalize in a certain way
that sounds kind of like talking. So it could be
(16:10):
interpretation of about well, Jeff just said this. How about
the about that singing and dancing frog in that cartoon?
Totally real? Yeah, yeah, I got it. Let's move to
our next theory that I found out there, which is
(16:30):
that Jeff the talking mongoose was just a little girl's
fan fantasy and or a dad's plan to entertain his daughter.
I don't like this theory. Why, Well, because I don't know,
I think you liked this story a lot. I think
Jeff's real. I mean, can I can I tell everybody
that the theory Okay, this family lived out in the
(16:54):
middle of nowhere. I believe the town near where they
were it was it Rby or Dolby. I somehow don't
have it here in my notes, which is shocking. But
they didn't have electricity, they didn't have a phone or
a radio. All they had for entertainment besides the tiresome
(17:15):
company of each other was the Gramma phone, so they
could listen to records. That was it. They had nothing
to entertain themselves in the down time. So to me,
it seems quite plausible that the dad did this as
a way to entertain his daughter and give her some fun,
and then she really took on, or she did it
(17:36):
as a way because according to some she was a
bit of a ventriloquist, so she was throwing her voice
to play, and everybody just got on board because it
was a fun family game except for the rocks. Except
for the rocks, yeah, and the sand and the sing song? Right,
what did this little thirteen year old girl learned the
dirty songs? Yeah, it's England, but learn about the pub
(18:02):
she was down at the bomb that didn't come out right. Um,
But yeah, I mean the thing is is, uh, it
doesn't matter which one of these theories it is, because,
like I said before, people came and stayed with them
for weeks on in and they got absolutely nothing. People
(18:23):
were investigating it, trying to figure out who Jeff was
or what Jeff was, and nothing happened. I don't feel
like that proves anything though. I mean, you know, if
I were a pulture guist, right, I wouldn't necessarily act
up when my family wasn't around if you know who was.
If the whole point was to play with these people,
why show off for somebody new? Really? But also, you
(18:44):
just start corroborating these people's story and why would you
Why would you do them that favor? It's actually much
more fun to have them out there being made pools. Yes,
that's kind of devious and extra extra clever alright. Also,
but also Jeff may have realized if you showed himself
to the rest of the world and proved his existence,
and sooner or later somebody from the circus or something,
(19:05):
it's gonna got to come down and make an offer
and buy him and he's not and he's not going
to be his own man anymore. It's all right, well,
but we have some good evidence here. Here's here's the deal.
Here's where we get to that that good bit of
evidence in the story that clinches what's really going on.
Because I was doing some digging and I actually managed
(19:26):
to get in some newspaper archives. I don't know how
they got scanned, but they were scanned. Hang on, let
me try this. Uh huh, there we go. Hello, it
is I jaboozo again. It's been another year. Rub these
(19:47):
three foolish humans spending their time to talking instead of
petting us. My sister and Diana still not happy about this?
Isn't that right? Beans? Real supportive beans? Anyway, here was
another piece of evidence showing how foolish they really are.
It's disturbing, isn't it? Beans? Beans? Beans? Great? You're asleep again?
(20:13):
Well high there and always the same way? All right,
let me do Hey there, Welcome to Thanking Sideways. Hey,
welcome to Thinking Sideways podcast. The podcast were as ye
(20:34):
while bored all right, he says, I recently started listening
to podcasts in general and was very disappointed that very
few podcasts there are very few podcasts. Englaish blasting doesn't work,
(21:01):
so we get am from Joe read by Joe. Joe.
Sandwich is sandwich. I don't know. I'm sorry, Yeah, yeah,
I don't know about that. That's gonna get caught out.
That's gonna get out. That's gotta get cut out. Okay.
He's written two books on the subject, and he posits
(21:23):
that the cause let me just start the whole thing
over again without I'm so sorry. We're going to get
a shot color for you. I think it turned into
the like Legla shot collar us in that episode what
Futurama where Leela has the shot caller I vaguely remember,
and she just turns into sexual pleasure for her how
(21:55):
to find him? Well, you clearly didn't grow up a lady.
It's very clear didn't grow up as a lady. Because
I know all this. You want to tell us? I mean,
do you want me to tell you? Sure? And we're
come on, it's okay, okay, it's all right. The train
(22:16):
is stopped. Okay, so now we're in a fourard direction.
Ag Okay? Is that? Okay? Yes, okay, go down to
the bar car okay, and we're gonna keep going okay,
I'll go on making zero promises for anything, because I
(22:36):
need to readjust this a little bit. There's no we
need like a little stand, like a little music stand
right here, because there's not a good way to okay,
hold on, wait everything, God, I hope I don't knock
that over. Okay, Well hey there, uh, this is thinking
(22:59):
sideways the podcast. You laughing at me? No you want
me to do that over? You don't want that one? Please? No? Okay, okay,
(23:21):
shop boopo. And so anyway, he shows up and takes
up residents there and can we do that again with that?
So anyway, okay, so local Indians. Okay, let's leave about
the sew too. Alright, So okay, one more time here
(23:50):
he says, hey, thinking side, what we should know how
to pronounce that? Oh? Okay, do you need your paper, Steve?
(24:12):
Oh yeah, it's right there. No I haven't. Okay, all right,
here we go. Mine. No, mine was the one that
was creased. Mine was one of the spent and half crap,
too late to know. I was stuck with my achilties.
Any notes you slobbered Oliver Cooties. I watched you. You guys,
(24:35):
be serious from you in that voice. These guys ethereous shop. Yeah, okay,
here we go. The toy toy you and refer your
(24:59):
toy it as the toy toy. Sometimes when I'm talking
to the cats, I'll refer to it as a toy toy.
Please tell me you're not serious. Not okay, okay, all right, okay,
So do you want do you need my do you
need my computer? Read it? Okay? I have a smartphone.
(25:20):
They have a smarty pants phone. Weird smarty pants phone
also Spotify as a thing if you forget to download
the show. No, I think you met to say tumbler.
(25:47):
Hi there, welcome to again into another episode of Danger Probe. No, no,
we're sharing that again. Okay, hang on, Hi there, welcome
to another episode of Danger Probe. I think it sounds better.
Come bye, we go. They were taken to the hospital.
(26:11):
They had they had skull fractions. They had skull fracture.
They had skull fractures. Do that whole thing over so
I don't have another facture. Yeah, let's do that, goddamn it,
because my wrapping skills suck and they're so good I
thought to have a record of it. Please please continue
(26:33):
with your story. Devin, Well, let me let me say
my rap song first, and then swinging in the how much,
what good? What tuck tuck? But what tuck good? Chuck, Look,
I would love to do I would love to do
that to some wrap. Some rap music took it out.
(26:58):
So anyway, I think that's a song we need to record.
Sometimes we just did musical accompaniment. No, yeah, I'm totally
gonna lay some bad beats underneath that. Bro. Yeah. Hey everybody,
(27:22):
please you Hey, everybody, Hey, everybody kind of like the
hide there when the girls failed to miss the appointment
that they'd set with that local guide that we were
talking about earlier. Didn't they didn't fail to miss it,
(27:42):
and the totally missed its. Remember how I thought I
was going to start talking, gibbers just ten minutes. You
have a warm up. This is me dribbling the ball around.
I oh, I just want my deep fried cheese curds.
(28:07):
Just calm down. I'm healthy. No it's not, it's healthy.
It's disgusting. No, it's good for you. It's disgusting. Can
we just okay, yeah we can't. Thanks dad, dumb much
(28:39):
good talking, gook, Chuck Chuck, No, No, yeah, yeah, dumb
dumb chuck, one chuck, chuck. Look. Pudamata propom become becoming
(29:02):
pudamatoproponam with the beta becoming pudamo
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