Who is Gef the Mongoose & Why did he Ruin my Life? - Dapper History

[@mwoodyard00ify]

Wait lemon demon didn’t just make up a funny story about a mongoose? Wild

[@cheekybananaboy3361]

maybe cabinet man was true too 😳

[@scarabeedae]

@@cheekybananaboy3361 cabinet man was likely inspired by the urban legend of polybius

[@cheekybananaboy3361]

@@scarabeedae i mean thats kind of a stretch lmao. the majority of the lines in "eight wonder" are direct quotes from gef meanwhile cabinet man is about a living cabinet with human body parts eating maintenance men, neither of which were parts of the polybius myth as far as im aware. although the "driving a few kids to madness" does sound like a polybius reference

[@scarabeedae]

@@cheekybananaboy3361 yeah thats what i was getting at lol. cabinet man is not an adaptation of polybius like 8th wonder is

[@GossamerAtara]

@@cheekybananaboy3361 that's why they said "inspired by" instead of based on the legend of

[@daniellel230]

"Bullied by the rat ghost" sounds like a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard album

[@lighthoused.]

Or a Chuck Tingle book

[@AquariumBoy55]

Literally just thinking of this

[@eloso5670]

Gef: stalks the townspeople for tea The family: honestly, work

[@liulfrmcshane]

The fact you initially thought Dalby Spook and Gef the Mongoose were names of members of the Irving family just makes me wish there was a horror-pop band called The Irving Family with band members using those aforesaid names.

[@lenorebelladonna]

and he has hands… and he has feet… he’ll never die… he is a FREAK….

[@tardigradez]

hello, he's here, he's living in the wall, he knows, he might, be small but heeeee iss theeee eighthh wooooooooondeeeerrrrrr

[@mariecarie1]

And they were roommates!

[@Frog_Enigma]

I was thinking about that song too. Especially when he said he was the 8th wonder of the world.

[@creative_name_here7853]

He has hands, he has feet. He says he will never die.

[@beetlesticks721]

this is so genuinely creepy but i can only hear the lemon demon song and it’s making it so hard to listen lol

[@heylujie]

I’ve never heard of Gef the Mongoose but listening to the story i was CONVINCED that it was going to end with some weirdo secretly living on the Irving family’s property eating their food and pretending to be a ghost living in their walls and stalking the daughter like, damn. And i dunno if thats supposed to be a BETTER alternative to Gef being an actual ghost freak mongoose with human hands or not.

[@z-beeblebrox]

Okay so I thought the "I split the atom" thing was weird, but I looked it up and it was a pair of British physicists who were the first to split the atom in 1932, so that would've definitely been front page news on the isle of Mann. It mostly clears things up. Now my main concern is with the timing of that quote - if it was from a year+ into the haunting then whatever, but if that's one of the things Geff said in 1931 HOOOO BOY

[@owie8212]

If Gef knew about the atomic bomb BEFORE IT WAS INVENTED ISTG IM JUST GOING TO LIE DOWN AND DIE N O

[@pahbody5336]

I know i'm a year late but i got curious about this too, while watching and I looked it up The same procedure that led to what i understand to be splitting of the atom was done before, first time in 1919, from what i can tell. The procedure that led to splitting of the atom - bombarding lithium with high energy particles has not been done by accident, to my understanding the concept was in circulation before they have done this, perhaps even as far back as 1919 when they were also disintegrating atoms successfully, but i guess without the atom being split into two other atoms. I am pretty fuzzy on the science of it, but I don't think I'm wrong in saying Gef the mongoose wasn't the first to utter the words "split the atom"

[@the.aardvark]

​@@owie8212Now I am become Gef, the destroyer of worlds

[@lilyw.719]

​@@the.aardvark *slow clap* 👏👏👏 You win the internet today, sir.

[@certifiedfreakygal]

wait are you telling me this wasn't a lemon demon reference

[@BeaverDaBeaver]

Eighth Wonder by Lemon Demon is how I found out about this

[@f1zzyb33]

Same lol

[@generic8618]

Same

[@RACMEAT]

Same

[@galaxydacreature]

I heard abt it in passing a couple times before I heard the song, bur Eighth Wonder def made me want to look more into it lol

[@SoftServe33]

I was like “the things Gef says sound so familiar..” and when it hit me!! I was so thrilled lol

[@thefisherking2268]

I like to think that, while I highly doubt it was the entire reason, the placebo effect might have had something to do with it. Because the human mind is a powerful thing, so if you’re all already on the edge from being stuck in the middle of nowhere on a goat farm and your Daughter starts talking about a monghost in the walls, it wouldn’t be too out of the question that a mix of already persistent mental health issues and believing in what your daughter is saying could end up with you yourself starting to experience these things too. I’m by no means a psychologist though so I’m probably just talking out of my ass

[@BeaverDaBeaver]

Maybe Gef was an alien from another world seeking refuge here for some other evil activities, since splitting an atom wasn't common knowledge until way later, and 5th dimensional beings could explain every ghost encounter ever.

[@cirrocumulus1948]

Actually it was said in 1931 and the atom split thing occurred in 1932

[@officialsaya]

What about shared delusional disorder (SDD) ? "This syndrome is most commonly diagnosed when the two or more individuals of concern live in proximity, may be socially or physically isolated, and have little interaction with other people."

[@aw7145]

Yeah that's what I was thinking. Less "everyone had schizophrenia/psychosis" and more a folie à deux type thing. I mean I don't believe in anything supernatural, so I find this to be the most likely explanation 🤷

[@PsychologicalApparition]

Those are just terms to discount people's experiences.

[@joshuahawkins4199]

I like how when the Irving's told gef that an investigator was flying by plane to see him he shrieked, "tell him I hope the propeller falls off!". Also when gef realizes that an investigator is trying to sneak up on him upstairs to catch a glimpse he shreiks, "their coming!." I find this so fascinating how concerned he was about not being seen. One investigator noted that it was clear Voirrey was trying to throw her voice as he could see her mouth move. She would follow her father around while he would ask gef questions. How sad to think that her dad may have been so gullible she was able to follow him around the house answering as gef and him not being any the wiser. This story had me in its hold for years questioning. Then I realized, Voirrey had the last laugh.

[@xanderguyer7512]

I feel like Isle of Man's faery folklore is important here? The way they welcome him as a house guest, as well as an otherworldly nuisance? Even the treats they offer him, the chores he does, and the pranks he plays. It's like he's a force of nature, just part of the house, rather than a malevolent intruder. They definitely don't see him as an invading demon; he's more like a local fae they've learned to live with.

[@cryptidkid]

honestly? to me it sounds so similar to a creature in celtic folklore called a brownie

[@WhichDoctor1]

Yeah in Celtic traditions you don’t piss off the fae folk. If one turns up in your house the least worst option is letting them insult you and occasionally throw things at you. Being hostile or trying to drive them out will get you fucked up.

[@irisaferg2524]

OH MY GOD ITS *THE THING FROM THE LEMON DEMON SONG!!!*

[@Connoble]

I love pretending that we're in Jules' mom's closet while swapping ghost stories and wearing driving scarves. Favorite video this month

[@the.aardvark]

Gef the Talking Mongoose is definitely one of my favourite things ever. Real or not, we must never forget Gef's best quote: "Put the Bloody Gramophone on!"

[@dustinkordish]

I think what you’re trying to describe in your theory is a tulpa - a Tibetan term for a magical emanation through sheer discipline of will, intentionally or otherwise. It’s been suggested that Walter Gibson, who wrote the pulp fiction novels of The Shadow back in the 1920s, had focused so intently on his writings that for years after his death people were able to see manifestations of the characters from these stories that were never real to begin with. There are countless precedents for these kinds of things happening, and I personally believe that what many people interpret as ghosts and such are actually witnessing some aberration of the ill-defined parameters of the subjective reality in which we exist, be it a computer simulation or variations of tightly bound parallel dimensions. So yeah - I’m picking up what you’re laying down

[@ipek9754]

i mean if the family was constantly isolated and there were hereditary mental illness issues in the mix they probably influenced each other to the point where each story would add to their reality. it's interesting how the father-daughter duo are more prominent here as the daughter could easily have inherited this illness from her father and they could've egged each other on building up the story to be more and more convincing for each other. isolation, huge financial losses, untreated and undiagnosed mental health issues... it's enough to make anyone believe a mongoose with Hands is living in their walls.

[@elderflower2133]

for some reason anything to do with 'something living in the walls' always gets me hyped so as soon as I heard you mention that I went 'OHOHOHOHOHO'

[@kodiaksigel]

"I don't even have a car" I'm literally fucking deadddd Another banger of a video

[@mysterylime3471]

18 minutes later and I'm still just losing my shit at the concept of a dead, hand-ridden mongoose named Gef. I expected a well-dressed con-man with a fursona or something, I did NOT sign up for this trip lmao

[@razminfox1787]

Same I expected it to be a furry thing

[@elderflower2133]

omg an Irish ghost story about a dead gemini mongoose, this is gonna be wild

[@leod-sigefast]

Isle of Man, not Ireland. It's a small island between Britain and Ireland.

[@Boggythefroggy]

Oh also folie à deux is a completely plausible thing to have happened - it happens even more often with families that are isolated in, for instance, a rural place the Irvings lived. A similar situation happened in Australian back in like 2016 with the Tromp family where they fled in a road trip because they had a shared psychosis that manifested as a paranoid delusion of people being after them. The delusion is shared and so the family or couple will have similar psychotic symptoms. Oh and hmm I’d say maybe look into the story of Patience Worth because it’s definitely a weird one! Also maybe an alien one like the Zanfretta UFO incident where an Italian watchmen described being abducted at least 11 times between 1978-81. I love me some spooky tales.

[@KwikTripCryptid]

Thank you for covering Gef the Mongoose! He's my favorite Cryptid and no one ever talks about him! If you want more weird history stuff to cover for Dapper History, I think you should look into the Kentucky Meat Showers.

[@AJPrice-cg5ip]

The parallels between Gef and the Bell Witch of Tennessee are amazing. Look it up if you don't know the story. It also is a tale of an intelligent entity that haunted a family, particularly focusing on the father and daughter, and who was often very malevolent towards them. Like Gef, the Bell Witch could talk and again like Gef, she could hear and see everything the neighbors were doing. Gef seems less evil to me than the Bell Witch, who appeared to be fueled by rage. Most of what he says seems like a little kid claiming to be Batman, although it IS pretty disturbing to have his voice come out of the wall! More mischievous than malicious. I personally believe both the Bell Witch and Gef are spirits bound to those particular areas of land, and that their intelligence grew as they interacted with human beings. The big difference in how they treated their human "families" I think might arise from how *they* were treated. When the Bell Witch first appeared to John Bell, he shot at her with a rifle because he saw her as a weird animal. The witch declared war on him and his family soon after that. Gef, however, was taken in and treated as a family member and I think that made a huge difference. Both stories are fascinating! :-)

[@demoniccherry5246]

As an Irish American whose fathers been to Ireland and was related to the county storyteller in a small part of Galway, their reaction makes complete and total sense to me. The older generations of Ireland will tell you stories of the faeries, or the fair folk. Some like to help families, protecting the home and doing tasks, some are tricksters, and others gods. The fair folk are known to enjoy sweets and toys and all things entertaining, and yes sometimes gossip. Leaving offerings for them can keep your relationship with them more friendly and keep the powerful ones from harming you. They often appear as animals or part animal. And the trickster types often move things or say spooky things to mess with the people. To an Irish person in that time period this would be pretty normal to believe, it was probably just not common where they moved.

[@Tosspoet]

my inner Lemon Demon fan girl is screaming

[@redllanterns7736]

Gef is an old favorite of mine. He's 100% real and awful and I love him.

[@prettyoddsound4544]

'gef the mongoose' as a title sounds like my new gender

[@retrieverstudio]

God same

[@Draeandor]

I truly appreciate your chaotic energy. Thank you for making me laugh every time!

[@lorelig]

God I've been obsessed with this story since I was in like middle school. I LOVE the idea of Gef and his freaky little form!! His ICONIC quotes!! Hell turn you into salt and he will NOT be sorry!!

[@Hobgoblintroubadour]

Gef the mongoose, stuck in my walls: i am a girlboss i am a war criminal i am a lunatic . i am clinically insane & the next virgin mary & i am never going to die

[@trickofthelight5337]

Words cannot describe the ELATION of seeing a new Dapper History on my feed... And how HILARIOUS that is in contrast to your feelings this entire fucking video. X'D "Oh my GOD he's a GEMINI" I need you to know the concern I caused from how fucking hard I laughed at this Anyway this channel is my lifeblood thank you

[@kokomis1]

The ad i got after this video freaked me out so much and i need you to experience it too “Remember those nightmares youd get where youre naked in public? WELL THEY ARENT NIGHTMARES ANYMORE :D” like fucking hell WHAT AN OPENING LINE

[@NokoFace]

"They had to sell the house for less than what it was worth because of the story of Gef." Meanwhile, today, houses that are supposedly haunted sell for MORE than they're worth. What a crazy time to live in.

[@RobotAnatomy]

OH Lemon Demon has a song about this I didn't realize until you started hitting me with the Gef quotes he literally made those quotes the lyrics!!!!

[@inkcritters]

the fact that voirrey could have seen the first two shrek movies

[@retrieverstudio]

For real? These videos are the highlight of my week. Every time when I come home from work I flick on a Dapper History video and I feel like I’m a child in comfortable closet being told an extremely entertaining story by the cool cousin on your moms side of the family you click very well with.

[@lpssuperlove201]

I am so so so so so terrified of hostile talking animals. I am still petrified of that fucking picture of smile dog and this. A fucking mongoose with hands talking to me makes me so so scared I feel like such a idiot for being scared. gef is so scary but also kinda an icon….

[@sagaevan9641]

when you were about to say your theory my heart dropped cuz i really thought you were gonna say "it wasn't a ghost, and it wasn't a hallucination, but it was a real human m,an invading their home and living in their walls tormenting them" which would actually be the scariest option. what if he's still in there.

[@hurricanerae]

So, my sister is an anthropologist, and she wrote and published a book with a couple other people about ghosts and hauntings being connected to generational and colonial trauma. So, your idea is not quite as crazy as some might think it is.

[@KnievilK]

Ahhhhhhhhhhh A new dapper history! i cant express how much i love this series

[@waugsqueke]

I recall reading about this back when I was a kid. Only difference was his name was Gus, and he did allow his shadow to be seen on occasion.

[@StargazerSkyscraper]

Everything I know about mongooses tells me that all the shit Gef talked was 100% in character for a mongoose. Watch those grompy bois screaming and snapping at a pack of young lions for getting on their lawn, and Gef will sound less like a terrifying freak and more like, well... a mongoose.

[@misterdewott8766]

The Virgin Gef the Mongoose vs The Chad Zangoose from Pokemon

[@JohnnyLover32]

Wake up babe new dapper history video

[@saige5396]

ever since watching this my youtube feed has been inundated with well-crafted but obscure youtube videos about gef the mongoose and i really do feel haunted

[@batesianmimic4916]

oh my god. im not even done with this video yet but when i saw it i RAN to watch it. i was hyperfixated on gef the mongoose for (almost) an entire year. my end-of-the-year presentation for one of my highschool english classes was about gef. i was obsessed. i never stopped talking about him.

[@yeoldegeorgemac]

interesting that you describe yourself as being scared of him because i first learned about gef from the lemon demon song and it has such a weirdly… empowering tone? like you know it’s actually from the daughters perspective, that she was the one who made this all up, and all the things he was saying were actually her taking control of their financial situation. she’s the “eight wonder”. idk, it’s a huge stretch but that’s what i always felt about it.

[@user-hanging-at-the-hanged-man]

Idk if financial empowerment is getting threatened violently by a rat, I don’t think I want to be financially empowered

[@AJPrice-cg5ip]

LOL! Feeding Gef also ties into old fairy lore, where hostile fey must be propitiated with gifts or tribute of some sort. I think the Irvings knew enough of these old stories to try the idea when Gef got really pissed off.

[@panqueque445]

Honestly I wouldn't mind having a ghost in my house if it helped around the house.

[@fourshore502]

this makes me think of the skinwalker ranch in utah. the family (shermans?) didnt have a talking mongoose afaik but they had a lot of other weird shit happening to them until they moved (and perhaps it followed them idont know). also the wife in the family at one or several times saw some kind of hyena like creature red/brown fur with a BUSHY TAIL. gef was also described as having a bushy tail, almost like a broom and i see this again and again in many cryptid sightings. reddish fur and bushy tail !

[@owleeve2098]

Personally, I think that since they heard voices come from the walls it's possible that SOMEONE was living INSIDE the walls. I mean, we don't know about the architecture of the house so it's a possibility. In this case, Gef was real but wasn't a mongoose. Gef was then a human who basically just passed as a ghost and just lived in there tormenting this family for literal years, getting fed and all (though we'd need to know if the food left for him was eaten or not). Idk if this theory is a good one but I kept thinking about that the whole way through. Home invasion do be a real thing and even if the other theories have merit to them, I feel like it'd be the most realistic one if we assume that the Irvings were not lying. That'd also explain why Gef absolutely didn't want to be seen, would get aggressive if seen and, oh yeah, had human hands. So that's my two cents lol

[@lighthoused.]

Your discussion at 17:00 makes me think you’d LOVE the video game “What Remains of Edith Finch”

[@naruli]

This is my new favourite historical story ever

[@zoeh232]

this is the best thing ive seen in so long. jules also obsessed with gef the talking mongoose

[@liwuidmoko2659]

I came back to this video because this video literally made me have a nightmare about a mongoose last night and it was insane. This video scares me slightly and I love it

[@LilyAvarA]

It's nice to have the full story of this, I've heard bits and pieces of it before. Also lemon demon lyrics make sense now

[@paya1026]

gef is my favorite ghost story ever. if ge comes for u just tell him to come over to my house

[@teazombie14]

ghost stories usually don’t do it for me but the idea of a haunted mongoose with HANDS kinda fucks w me love your content, can’t wait for more! 💕

[@ichhabzuvielehobbys1276]

I think dapper history might be becoming my favorite thing on youtube

[@lizbethwhite-gluz7880]

Am I reading the text? Yes, I'm paying attention attention to class, and who hasn't questioned their sanity during quarantine? You're not alone and I enjoy your content ❤️❤️❤️

[@elderflower2133]

if you had asked me last week if a family can be haunted or cursed I'd probably have said no but recently I started reading beloved by toni morrison and even though that book is fictional it still fucking SHOOK UP MY PERCEPTION OF HAUNTINGS as did this video thank you jules

[@hecticscribbler]

I love the rusty lake voice you gave Gef

[@L_Aster]

I kow Gef is really scary when you think about him but man he's just a little guy

[@mincenttheclown]

noted that if u pass away under mysterious circumstances its definitely gef

[@dustinkordish]

Yes! One of my favorites - and I love the cover artwork for the book Gef!

[@lourdesvalladares5785]

The best part is when she sang some of eighth wonder

[@buddy454]

This was awesome! I hope you make more about ghosts!

[@beansfebreeze]

I really want to believe in ghosts, but I have too many ghost questions and I turn into kind of a ghost story wet blanket.

[@_Rog3r_]

"I am a freak. I have hands and I have feet, and if you saw me you'd faint, you'd be petrified, mummified, turned into stone or a pillar of salt" is my new quote now, thanks gef 💅

[@thehobbler1349]

This whole time I was expecting it to be a man in the walls of their house so for the first half I was imaging Gef as a man who just said this stuff and it made me extremely uncomfortable. Great video.

[@TindraSan]

I did not expect to learn the origin of Neil 'Lemon Demon' Cicierega's song "Eighth Wonder" when clicking this video but here we are.

[@maush.]

Thid feels hard to get scared of after having listened to lemon demons eigth wonder hundreds of time across my tween years

[@Trassel242]

Gef the mongoose really scares me too, because it’s such an incomprehensible thing. It’s not a ghost of a human, because then you might be able to reason with it and get it to leave. But no, it’s just a mongoose with hands and knowledge of the atom and it’s not behaving like anything we can understand. I can kind of understand why the Irvings tried to placate Gef by being nice to him, they must have thought that if that’s what he’s like when he’s not angry, we’d better not get him angry at all or he’ll get even worse.

[@arachne8214]

What if Gef sees this video and decides to visit you?

[@blitzblue8799]

HOLY SHIT THIS IS WHAT 8TH WONDER WAS ABOUT OMG I LOVE IT

[@water594]

Nothing bad EVER happens to the Kennedys!

[@julesdapper5584]

WHY DIDN'T I MAKE THIS JOKE

[@Boggythefroggy]

Omg I heard about Gef from the Two Girls One Ghost podcast, then when I hyperfixated on Spirit Phone for months on end I was very happy to hear about him. That boy is so mischievous and I kinda love his weird ass

[@alicia5925]

while i was watching this video i scraped something with my shoe and it made a weird screech-y noise and my immediate reaction was "GEF IS TALKING TO ME" so i understand why these people would feel that way too

[@Frog_Enigma]

Gef the Mongoose sounds like a sonic oc

[@JFeldon]

Gef always lets me know when someone is either talking about him or publishing a book concerning him. Also, he might have been a familiar.

[@TheFunnehMan85]

Well, I studied the paranormal and demonology and I think this "mongoose" was a familiar for whatever reason got away from his master.

[@valkprince2596]

Another awesome video Jules

[@stellabell8640]

This video has extended my life by 10 years

[@manicmax7909]

I've watched this video at least 4 times in the past 3 weeks lol. Your content is so refreshing and brilliant so I always get excited for new videos and rewatch the old ones. Love your humor, your enthusiasm, and overall vibes!

[@muchacho_happy]

duddeee this video was fantastic!!! (p.s. ill bring da slushies for the movie :p )

[@retrieverstudio]

If Gef chose violence: “What’s the defendants reasoning for killing three people?” “Well shit! I’m a Gemini!” “I understand completely.” (This is in reference to a vine)

[@y2krashman576]

To my knowledge no one really saw Gef. They saw passing glimpses or the back of a tail darting behind a corner. Or only the daughter saw it. If that's so, the daughter could have been the only crazy one, creating the hysteria.

[@MinaKirby]

I put your History Playlist on to fall asleep to. I just woke up to KNOCKING outside my second-story window, right before you said "I'm getting a bad vibe that Gef heard me. I really hope he's not real, cuz OH BOY..." Help. I'm scared. 😂

[@loomynati3986]

I am loving this series!! 😍

[@lokiehigh8732]

This is my first time ever hearing about this story and i just gotta say.. WHAT????

[@shnoozezzz9752]

before i forget the title cards(? transition slides?? idk what to call it) music is so good and infectious that after i watch one of your videos i just start singing it nonstop

[@mildlyupsetnug4399]

when you said that the mongoose said he was born on June 7th my immediate thought process was "oh, cool, that's my birthday........**wait no**"

[@skleechtheleech]

I was originally gonna propose the theory that Gef may have been like a phrogging (I think that’s the term?) case but thinking about it, I don’t think he’d be able to walk around the walls unless his body was like paper thin-

[@cannedrabies]

schizophrenia isnt the only thing that causes hallucinations, theres actually a lotta things that can bring them on: ptsd, sleep deprivation, dehydration/starvation, dementia/alzheimer's, even severe migraines. most likely this was another case of folie a deux, aka shared psychosis, and its exactly what it sounds like-- a group of people, usually families who are isolated and/or undergoing intense stress, will begin developing delusions and sometimes full on hallucinations, and bc theyre isolated with only each other as company they in turn fuel and build off of each others' delusions. thats the thing abt delusions and hallucinations, theyre influenced by your environment, so if something or someone is encouraging or affirming your delusions then theyll only get stronger. folie a deux is pretty rare, we dont know much abt it yet, but it is a thing that has happened before-- ursala & sabina eriksson and that family of 5 in australia being the most famous examples.

[@Dooms-Daisy]

Folie a deaux is when two people share a delusion. People's hallucinations and delusions and trigger eachother and they can develop similar delusions.

[@willowloe6917]

I could listen to this forever lmao I love you and this

[@ChrisLeeW00]

Gef: I am the destroyer of worlds. The Irvings: OMG totes adorbs!