The mysterious and unexplained Bélmez faces
What happened back on August 23rd of 1971, would change the lives of the Pereira family forever. Their home located at Calle Real 5, Bélmez de la Moraleda, Jaén, Andalusia, Spain—was host to a rather strange series of events. The woman who lived here, Maria Gõmez Pereira witnessed and even documented rather bizarre faces—which spontaneously appeared on her kitchen floor. All of these strange faces, appeared to be expressionistic paintings of a man’s face.
It disturbed the family so much, that they elected to remove them by any means…including digging these faces from stone walls and floors. Later, the floors and walls were re-cemented. But this didn’t stop these faces from appearing once again. They appeared in different shapes and sizes and often with varying expressions on each of them.
From what is known, roughly a week after the first removal of the faces, the word got out about the home and what was happening there. The town mayor even intervened, by having stone slabs cut and removed for preservation. The location of the property, was known for having been constructed on top of a graveyard.
As it turns out, nine feet below the floor of the home, human remains were discovered and later given a proper burial. Additional new flooring was put in as well. However, yet another man’s faces began to mysteriously appear. This didn’t stop—as several weeks later, the face of a woman appeared surrounded by many smaller faces.
People started to visit the Pereira home, as it began to attract large crowds of onlookers. People watched for hours as some claimed witness to the faces appearing right before them. Each of the expressions on the faces had different meanings, yet nobody could figure our what they meant or why this was happening.
On occasion, the different images would appear only to disappear later within the same day. Sometimes a face would remain for a while longer and people recorded on audio tape the unusual sounds of whispering and wailing which was heard. Maria Gõmez Pereira used different cleaning products to try and remove these faces to no avail.
The eyes seemed to widen as the expressions seemingly changed. The faces themselves seemed to age and transform over time. Chemistry was used to test samples from the cement, but there was no evidence of any paints or dyes used. There were/are theories about Maria Gõmez Pereira and whether or not the faces were reflecting her mood.
Perhaps something was disturbed by these people living where they once reigned. This unusual phenomena is still unexplained to date and remains an unsolved mystery. Now, these faces are simply known as the Bélmez faces.
(Source: The Cobra’s Ghost)
