The faces of Bélmez

Bélmez de la Moraleda is a sleepy rural town in in the hills of the Sierra de la Magina in Spain’s principal olive oil region. Here, in the summer of 1971, Maria Gómez Pereira  was playing with her infant grandson in the kitchen of the family home. Suddenly the child cried out excitedly and pointed at the floor. What he had seen there may have been nothing more than a diverting new game to him, but it terrified his grandmother. For the image of a human face had inexplicably appeared on the concrete.

That was the extraordinary claim made by the Pereia family, the house’s occupants. According to their story, the face wore a deeply sorrowful expression that only deepened when they tried to clean it off. Eventually they destroyed the image with a pickaxe, and laid new concrete down. But a few weeks later another face appeared, even more clearly defined than the first.

This time the family involved the local authorities, and the section of concrete was carefully removed and sent away for study. The floor was once again repaired, only for further faces to appear. The media soon picked up the story, resulting in the house becoming a magnet for tourists by the spring of 1972. The phenomenon was to continue for another thirty years.

Experts analysed the images, but were unable to prove that they had been faked. Chemical analysis failed to confirm the use of paints or dyes, though sceptics continued to believe that the family had produced the images by means of some oxidising chemical or pigment that stained the concrete. If the faces were indeed faked by the family, their motive is not obvious. It could not have been financial, as they never charged visitors for entry to the house, and they did not accept donations. While the town of Bélmez may have benefited financially from the tourism boost, the Pereia family did not.

When the floor was excavated in the hopes of finding whatever was causing the phenomenon, a mediaeval cemetery was discovered. The bones were removed and reburied elsewhere, but as soon as the floor was restored, the images began to appear again. Ultra-sensitive microphones placed in the house picked up sounds of strange voices, cries and agonised moans inaudible to the human ear. Despite the disturbances, Maria Gómez Pereia continued to live in the house for the remainder of her life. The faces continued to appear at intermittent intervals over the following decades.

The Bélmez case was dubbed by one investigator as the most important paranormal phenomenon of the twentieth century, and the mystery is still going strong today. Maria Gómez died in 2004, but reports of fresh faces appearing at the property have continued over the last ten years. Doubters continue to claim fraud, but many others regard the phenomenon as genuine. They speculate that the site of the house was once the scene of a terrible incident, perhaps connected with some form of mediaeval witchcraft. Whatever the truth, the house in the once-obscure little town of Bélmez remains one of the most famous sites of alleged paranormal activity in the world.

UB-65: The haunted submarine

There are a number of ghost stories connected with the Great War, but one of the most famous is the tale of UB-65, a German U-boat (submarine) that served from 1917 to 1918. Allegedly haunted and believed by her crew to be cursed, the vessel experienced a series of strange phenomena before finally sinking in mysterious circumstances with the loss of all hands.

UB-65 was constructed in Hamburg and launched in July 1917. From the start she was plagued by bad luck. Four deaths occurred during her construction, including a workman killed by a falling girder and three engineers killed by fumes in the engine room. While she was on sea trials, a crew member was swept overboard and drowned. On her first test dive, a ballast tank failed, causing the submarine to sink to the bottom.  She remained there for twelve hours. Just as the oxygen was about to run out, the crew managed to repair the damage and surface.

Despite these problems, UB-65 was commissioned into service following her return to the harbour. While refuelling and taking on board weapons, a torpedo exploded, taking the death toll to 11. One of the victims was Lieutenant Richter, the ship’s second officer, who had been overseeing the loading. Not long afterwards, as the damaged submarine was being towed into dry dock for repairs, a crewman swore he had seen the dead officer standing on the prow of the vessel. This was to be the first of many alleged sightings of the ghost of Lieutenant Richter aboard UB-65.

As the repaired submarine was preparing to set out on her first mission, two crewmen reported sighting the spectral officer on separate occasions. Once at sea, the entire engine room staff allegedly reported seeing the ghost standing beside an instrument panel. The duty officer on the bridge also reported seeing the ghost on the prow and watching as it faded from sight. The Captain, having had enough of this ‘foolishness’, berated a crewmember over a further alleged sighting, but then saw the spectre for himself, standing on the submarine’s prow in the midst of a storm.    

The situation had so affected the morale of the crew that the Imperial Navy had the ship exorcised by a priest. On her next tour of duty, UB-65 had a new crew, and a new captain, who forbade any discussion of the alleged haunting. But the ghost continued to be seen. One witness was the Chief Petty Officer, who claimed that the spectral officer had walked right through the bulkhead into his quarters. Another sailor went mad after seeing the ghost and leapt overboard to his death.

In July 1918, UB-65 was sighted on the surface in the Irish Sea by an American submarine. The US vessel, which was submerged, prepared to attack. Before the Americans could fire, however, the U-boat was suddenly stricken by a huge explosion and sank with all hands. It was the final blow in a long series of disasters for the jinxed ship.  

Some sources state that the American crew saw a figure in an officer’s overcoat standing on the prow of UB-65 just before the submarine went down. Did Lieutenant Richter make a final appearance right before his shipmates joined him in the netherworld?