Bélmez Faces facts for kids

A 1992 image of an alleged face in The House of the Faces

The Bélmez Faces or the Faces of Bélmez is an alleged paranormal phenomenon in a private house in Spain. The phenomenon started in 1971 when residents claimed images of faces appeared in the concrete floor of the house.

Located at the Pereira family home at Calle Real 5, Bélmez de la Moraleda, Jaén, Andalusia, Spain, the Bélmez faces have been responsible for bringing large numbers of sightseers to Bélmez.

Various faces have supposedly appeared and disappeared at irregular intervals since 1971 and have been frequently photographed by the local newspapers and curious visitors. Many Bélmez residents believe that the faces were not made by human hand. Some paranormal investigators believe that it is a thoughtographic phenomenon, subconsciously produced by the deceased former owner of the house, María Gómez Cámara.

Skeptical researchers have performed extensive tests on the faces and believe that they are fabrications possibly created as part of a hoax. It is suspected that the Pereira family may have perpetrated the hoax for financial gain.

History
The investigations
- The forgery hypothesis
- The thoughtographic hypothesis
The "new" Bélmez faces
See also

History

Reports of appearances in Bélmez began on 23 August 1971, when María Gómez Cámara claimed that a human face formed spontaneously on her concrete kitchen floor. María's husband, Juan Pereira and their son, Miguel, destroyed the image with a pickaxe and new concrete was laid down. However, the Pereira story goes, a new face formed on the floor. The mayor of Bélmez was informed and forbade the destruction of the new face. Instead, the floor concrete was cut out and taken for study.

María's home was advertised to the tourists as La Casa de las Caras (The House of the Faces). By Easter of 1972 hundreds of people were flocking to the house to see the faces. For the next 30 years the Pereira family claimed that faces continued to appear, both male and female and of different shapes, sizes and expressions.

The investigations

There have been several investigations into the Bélmez case:

The forgery hypothesis

In an article published in the July 1993 issue of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Luis Ruiz-Noguez noted that the presence of three cations used as pigments in the manufacture of paint must be mentioned: zinc, lead and chromium. Two of these, lead and chromium, lay the foundation for suspecting the use of paint in making the Bélmez faces. Ruiz-Noguez postulated that lead was used for several reasons:

Lead was, for many years, the most commonly used pigment in making the primary colors.
The percentage of chromium in the analysis is too low to be a viable option.
Lead tends to cause dark, difficult-to-see colorations; something that does not happen in chromium.
The most common and cheapest primary colors are enamels that contain lead; these enamels are widely used in the home, since they are easy to apply.

The ICV analysis does not demonstrate the non-existence of paint. On the other hand, Ruiz-Noguez also points to several objections to the hypothesis of utilization of paint on the ICV samples: alkydalic-type enamels do not withstand abrasion; paint leaves a film that is easily differentiated from the substratum; and the alkydalics' chemical tolerance to acids, alkalis and detergents is low.

Manuel Martín Serrano, a sociologist at the Complutense University of Madrid, wrote a laborious study, Sociología del Milagro (Sociology of the miracle): the first book that a skeptic has written about this case exclusively. Throughout his book Serrano interviews dozens of Bélmez inhabitants but he never mentions anyone by name. However, Serrano's study is a contribution to explain the social dynamics of what he believes was a hoax perpetrated for financial gain.

Although José Luis Jordán was vice-president of the Spanish Society of Parapsychology, he was rather skeptical. In Jordán's Casas Encantadas, Poltergeist he analyzes cases of supposed haunted houses in Spain, including the Bélmez case.

In 1971, a department of the Spanish Ministry of the Interior asked Jordán to head a commission that appointed diverse technicians specializing in concrete chemistry to carry out an exhaustive study of the strange occurrences in Bélmez and present a report on such to the authorities. In the report Jordán deals with several possibilities of fraud: "pigmentation with a dark, brownish substance", "a mixture of soot and vinegar" and "the aggressive action of a chemical compound". In an interview by two members of the Spanish Society of Parapsychology, Jordán stated:

With regard to the enigma of the chemical procedure, I solved it by discovering that this compound can be found in any drugstore by asking for a German product to remove concrete stains. [The mystery] that the images were invisible and latent for some time is thereby solved.

In Spain other skeptical parapsychologists have also maintained the forgery hypothesis. Ramos Perera, president of the Spanish Society of Parapsychology, stated that it was found that La Pava, the first and most famous of the Bélmez faces, had coloration and deduced it had been painted:

Through infrared photography we saw that this one had added pigmentation [over the original appearance], and even the paint brush bristles could be perceived. Of course, after that we had no doubts it had been painted.

La Pava was later embedded in the wall of María's home for exhibition purposes.

Besides the ICV's, there are other chemical analysis on the Bélmez faces, performed by J.J. Alonso, a researcher of the Spanish National Research Council. The Alonso report was originally published in Psi Comunicación, the journal of the Spanish Society of Parapsychology. However, the results are ambiguous on the subject of how the images were formed. Also, Alonso refused to wield judgment on the thoughtographic claims. However, his analysis did confirm the presence of a melanocratic compound.

In general, artificial cement is made from limestone, clay and gypsum (natural cements are obtained from rocks containing lime and clay). The main components are lime and kaolinitic clay. There are some cements such as the aluminous, derived from aluminous and lime materials, that are black (melanocratic). The presence of aluminum in the analysis of the Bélmez face called El Pelao (The bald one) could indicate that an aluminum-type cement was being dealt with. However, in his report Alonso does not indicate the percentage of said cation, nor its structure, resistance to compression, elasticity module, chemical resistance or other characteristics necessary to differentiate a Portland cement from an aluminum cement.

The thoughtographic hypothesis

The main researchers of the Bélmez case were Hans Bender and Germán de Argumosa. They collaborated in Bélmez and Freiburg in the early 1970s when the alleged phenomena began. Neither Bender nor de Argumosa published an official report on them. Bender wrote very little about the case in his journal Zeitschrift für Parapsychologie. Argumosa, a Spanish parapsychologist, spent two years evaluating what he believed was a Gothic mystery, but published nothing on the subject either. Bender did mention the case in passing and referred to it in some of his lectures. His crucial statement referred to the sealing of areas of the floor where some faces were in progress with a transparent plastic material:

In Bélmez, slight changes of the faces' configuration during the period when the phenomenon was under seal (attested by a notary) have contributed to ensure its paranormal origin.

The only believer who has published an entire book on the case is José Martínez-Romero. His book Las Caras de Bélmez is a collection of anecdotes. Argumosa who used to be the main defender of this case in Spain, believes that Martínez-Romero discredited the phenomenon with his book.

The most serious publication to date by a believer appears in the first chapter of the book The Seen and the Unseen by Andrew Carr MacKenzie. MacKenzie did not speak Spanish and during his stay in Bélmez lacked an interpreter. Only a taxi driver and Martínez-Romero's son were able to assist him, though very little.

The "new" Bélmez faces

María Gómez, the purported psychic that allegedly produced the appearances, died in February 2004 at the age of 85. After her death the popular psychic researcher Pedro Amorós tried to "discover" more thoughtographic appearances in Gómez's house. A new wave of Bélmez faces thus took place. However, Amorós' claims have been debunked in the Spanish media. In November 2004 the newspaper El Mundo published the article "New Belmez Faces Faked by 'Ghostbusters' and Municipal Government."

In May 2007, journalist Javier Cavanilles and investigator Francisco Máñez published a book called Los Caras de Bélmez, which has the double meaning of "The Faces of Bélmez" and "The Scoundrels of Bélmez", where they explain the history of the scam and pointed to María's son, Diego Pereira, as author of the mysterious paintings.