Could a hidden graveyard have been responsible?    In a slow news month we'll be dipping into the archives to bring you some of the scariest, most revealing, most mysterious of unsolved mysteries. This month we're highlighting a terrifying and probably eternally inexplicable supernatural event - The Ghost Faces of the Floor in Belmez near Cordoba, Spain. It truly is one of the most remarkable paranormal events ever, more so as it was studied by scientists using state of the art equipment of the time period, as well as the phenomena being photographed so that we might have a permanent record. 

It started in 1971 in a quiet residential cottage in Belmez, an elderly woman and her young grandchild were in the kitchen when the child yelled excitedly. He had discovered something which to him was 'interesting' but to the grandmother was something terrible and would ultimately lead to the house being swamped by baffled scientists and intruded upon by the local authorities.

The child had seen the unmistakable face of a person on the floor of the kitchen within a tile, a sad face. No recognizable pigment had formed the face and when the family tried to erase it, it appeared to grow even sadder. So alarming was this that the family tore up the floor tiles and replaced the tiles with concrete. Just three weeks later however yet another face appeared on the floor, this time there could be no ambiguity whatsoever - it was clearly a face. Word soon spread around the village and locals thronged to see the 'face' - news of the event spread to the Local Authority who intervened and ordered the removal of the sections of floor where the faces had appeared and an offical inquiry began. Even after large sections of the floor were removed, new faces continued to appear - a third, a fourth, then a series of faces all together.

 

Two of the faces from Belmez

The Local Authority ordered the kitchen be locked and sealed and still the faces appeared. Digging deeper through the topsoil beneath the kitchen, the authorities and assembled scientists found the remains of a medieval cemetery beneath. Ultra sensitive microphones had been placed in the house in the hope of detecting movement and proving that a human hand was responsible for the creation of the faces - but with no success. The faces still continued to appear. What was heard on the recordings after some technical adjustments however, terrified the scientists involved. People were clearly speaking an unknown language which was inaudible to the human ear when played back - only after slowing the tapes down did it become very apparent. Four more faces appeared in the house before they stopped appearing as suddenly as they had started. To this day the Local Authority and Scientists who investigated the phenomena have no conclusions to offer, other than that it was 'beyond their understanding'.

 

A series of faces from Belmez