https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9lmez_Faces
In 1971, María Gómez Cámara saw a clear face form in her cement floor, seemingly overnight. The Pereira family home at Calle Real 5, Bélmez de la Moraleda, Jaén, Spain, became famous shortly thereafter, with Spanish newspapers coming down on one side or the other regarding the authenticity of the faces. What followed were decades of faces appearing, transforming, and disappearing. The house has been investigated extensively over the years by scientists and paranormal teams within Spain, and unsurprisingly, what determines the true nature of the faces has more to do with one’s openness to paranormal explanations than with any objective truth; when it comes to the paranormal, truth is a mixture of fraud and illumination.
When we arrived, it was a blustery March day. Snow was whipping through the mountain town, and there was no sign that a famous house with hotly debated paranormal activity was just in front of us. It seemed so ordinary, unassuming, and easy to miss. After calling the number on the door, Miguel informed us that the family had just sat down to lunch, and requested we return at 3:30. If you know anything about Spanish lunches, they can last awhile. So my husband, brother-in-law and myself trudged off to find food and landed at Bar San Antonio, where everyone swiveled their heads at the strangers walking in the door. Indeed, this is a small town.
We found the one, open table and ate plates of habas con jamón y huevo and flamenquín with a carne en salsa tapa–lots of ham, egg, fried meats and cheese. I loved it, but if you’re not used to Spanish lunch food in a small town, it’s quite heavy. While there, we discussed our hopes for the house and our expectations. My sense is that my cuñado was hoping for something haunted but not expecting it, my husband was already skeptical, and I wanted to believe that something truly weird was happening. Our expectations often color our experience.
Once Miguel arrived and opened up the door to the infamous Casa de las Caras, my first impression is that the house was not haunted, in the classic sense. There was no electric energy, no sense of being watched, no strong emotions connected to the space; it was quiet, like a memorial to a past that had left only traces behind. At first, none of us could see the faces. Miguel, after the obligatory introduction and history lesson, used a pointer to show us where eyes, noses, chins, and hairlines were etched into the cement. For all three of us, there was this moment when the faces started to emerge from the cement like fast-blooming flowers. Where there had been almost nothing before, faces popped out everywhere. I was taking photos all over the two rooms, seeing new faces even as I returned to the same spot I had been moments before.
This was beyond anything I have experienced before. Faces were appearing before my eyes. Not only was I not straining to see anything, I could not keep up with the sheer number of odd forms. Here are some of the photos I took:
We made a generous donation to Miguel and proceeded to argue about the faces and figures for the next hour as we headed to Jaén. My brother in law swears that his cement floor has faces, too, and that this is all a hyped-up case of “pareidolia” or the human propensity to see faces everywhere (we are hard wired for facial recognition even when there are no faces to be seen). Plus, he said, it’s not haunted. I agree with him on the last opinion, but pareidolia has its limits, too–sometimes, there is a face in the damn floor. My husband remained agnostic on this issue, thinking that fraud was involved, and indeed, there have been accusations of tampering with the cement floor with paints and other chemicals to “enhance” a subtle pattern that might have been there. There was little doubt that some of the historic photos of the faces had been traced with pencil or paint so that they would stand out, but . . .
Some of those faces were neither pareidolia nor produced via fraud. Something strange was happening at that house.
As Ty and I were scrolling through our photos, something odd had happened: the faces that were so clear at the house had vanished in the photos, even though we reviewed our photos at the house and saw the faces more clearly in the photos than on the floor. Where had they gone upon review at our hotel? At least 50% of the photos no longer showed any evidence of the original faces. And weirder yet, as I reviewed the photos today that had “lost” the original faces and figures, I found new faces; faces that I had never seen before. I can see them in the photos above.
Miguel said that the “caras” would transform over time. He swears that one set of figures not only changed over time, but the children grew up between the first photos and the last, taken years later. That strains credulity, I know; however, what does seem to be true is that the faces morph and evolve, appear and disappear, with no known cause.
As is typically the case, you can choose your explanation and be right. Or be wrong. You could call all of this a case of “pareidolia” and be justified in your position. You could say that something authentically paranormal is happening, and you would also be right. You can accuse the family of fraud and profit taking (although the condition of the house and the pueblo in general strongly argues against that), and maybe you would be onto something. Or not. My husband suggests that there is a spirit or paranormal energy in the house that affects what you see and manipulates your senses. I tend to agree with that, because something is altering your perception after a few minutes in that house. Try as I might, I do not see a proliferation of faces in my kitchen floor, or anywhere else. But there, it was a phenomenon impossible to deny. It happened to all of us.
I am actually desperate for comments on this post, as I am still attempting to make sense of what we all saw. I don’t mind skeptical comments, or wild theories, because I have no explanation for La Casa de las Caras.
–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD