Belmez Faces : Mystery of the People In the Floor

In August 1971, Belmez resident Maria Gomez Pereira noticed a stain forming on her kitchen floor. Not only that, but the stain appeared to have moved positions. This kicked started a fascination across of the world and it became one of the best documented cases of paranormal phenomenon in the 20th century.

María reported she tried to scrub the face away, but nothing worked. Her husband and son destroyed the stain with a pick-axe and re-cemented the floor but reappeared a week later, alongside others. The rumor spread quickly and everyone talked about “house of faces,” which drew a lot of visitors to the house.

According to local legend, when people excavated the floor while examining the property, they found skeletons buried below.

After this discovery, a new floor was cast in concrete and everybody thought that the phenomenon had vanished for good. But two weeks later another face, different from the ones before, began to appear.

After numberous attempts to debunk the Phonomenon was done, skeptics believe the whole ordeal was a hoax. They’ve come to the conclusion that the family used some kind of paint or chemical agent to create the images as a way to draw tourists to their house and turn a profit.

Pieces of the floor had been took for investigations and was tested to see if any chemicals or paints was used. Some tests come back as inconclusive and some came back that their was no substances or chemicals used on the floor at all.

Some explain the phenomenon has psychokinetic ability. Many believe Maria projected an image into a surface either deliberately or accidentally.

The interesting thing is that studies of the faces did resemble expressions were identical to those of Maria. The faces also only did tend to appear when Maria was present also.

Maria Gómez Cámara died in 2004, but the strange stains, maybe now even more distorted, are still there and more faces are reported to appear!