Unsolved and Bizarre Mysteries: The People in the Floor.

A small mountain village; an unassuming farming family. And the faces in the floor.

(Buckle in, my people. This is one I’d never heard of and one that would make an excellent addition to a horror story! Author ears perk up here😆)

Yes, my friends, you read that correctly. Faces. In the floor. Staring, wide-eyed, occasionally winking at you.

Okay, I made that last part up. There was, as far as I know, no winking involved. But the faces did change position, morph into different features. And it all started with, what appeared to be, a mysterious stain.

(Cue creepy music here…)

It was the summer of 1971 and Maria Gomez Pereira of Belmez, a village in Spain, noticed a dark stain had developed on her concrete kitchen floor. It was odd, as no one in the family could recall spilling anything.

Maria: “Miguel? Is this stain your doing, son?”

Miguel: No, momma! I’m in my room, praying to our Mother and contemplating my sins!”

Because I firmly believe that Miguel was a good boy.

Anyhoo…

Despite Miguel’s denials, the stain grew darker over the hours. Maria scrubbed and scrubbed until the stain had vanished.

Or so she thought. (More creepy music here. I’m thinking Vincent Price-like tones😉)

Over the next week, the stain reappeared, turning into the unmistakable image of a face. So, probably beyond disturbed by this, poor little Maria began scrubbing again. But this time, the face— like an pesky gnat or a whining kid—would not leave.

Eventually the family, feeling watched and getting leg cramps from hopping over the face, took action. They grew bored playing “step on the crack and you’ll break your mother’s back.” Only this time, it was more like, “step on the cheeks and your name, the devil speaks.”

Well, that’s what I heard—in my mind, anyway.

At the very least, it would be considered rude. And at the most? An act of disrespect and aggression, dealt with by several years of bad luck and lost fortunes.

Maybe even a broken back.

So, Maria and the gang decided to rip up the flooring. Using a pickaxe and some good, ol’ fashioned grunt work, they chopped up and discarded the current concrete floor and replaced it with another. Things were groovy for about a week. Then, a different face appeared.

Clearer, lighter, scarier than the first. Yikes.😳

Now, Maria, it seemed, fancied herself a bit of a psychic; a spiritual medium who didn’t scare easily. Unfortunately, because she had a history of hosting seances and such, many of the townsfolk blamed her, believing Maria herself was somehow responsible for the appearance of the face.

So, to save ‘face’ and rid themselves of this creepy image, back to the pickaxe they went, laying down yet another concrete floor.

By this time, word had really spread in the tiny town of Belmez. People came from all over, lining up outside to get a glimpse of the face in the floor. Eventually, the mayor of the town ordered the face to be removed and studied.

Being the obedient residents that they were, they dug up the floor yet again (imagine remodeling your kitchen three or four times in months!) carefully preserving the face. But, during the excavation— in a moment that surely screamed ‘Fix me, Jesus!’— they discovered several skeletons beneath the kitchen floor. Even more disturbing, many of the skeletons had no skulls.

Headless remains? Where’d they go? And, if there are no heads, how the blazes are did their faces form? This is the stuff that keeps me up at night.😜

As far as the composition of the picture, detailed analysis of the concrete could find no reason for the image’s appearance. Several samples were taken but those revealed no evidence of paints, stains, or dyes that would explain the image.

The age of the headless remains found were over 700 years old and believed to be part of a long-ago cemetery. Once disinterred, the bones were laid to rest in a Catholic cemetery not far from the home.

Never did say where those skulls went.

Maria and company, relieved that the face (and the bodies) were gone, filled in the excavated hole and poured a new cement floor. In a few weeks—you guessed it!—another face appeared. Check that…not another face. Instead, there appeared many faces. That’s faces. Plural.

Double yikes!

The faces seemed to move, change position. They crowded together, melding into almost one, many of the images depicting women and children. As a result, another investigation was launched by authorities. One German television group, part of the investigation and intrigued by the mystery, had the family vacate for awhile, sealed the house and windows with wax, and preserved the image on the floor with a foil-like covering. Their goal was to ensure a hoax-proof, impenetrable building.

When they returned months later, although no signs of tampering were found, the faces had not only multiplied, but evolved.

At this point, it would be a kindness to tell Maria to get the hell outta dodge. I mean, the victims in horror movies are always the ones who steadfastly refuse to leave their house, shaking a fist in rage and screaming ‘this is MY house!"‘

However, since this incident occurred decades ago, poor Maria is no longer with us. Which is an important plot point, so tuck that away.

By now, the world was going wild. Police, psychics, journalists and priests all flocked to the home to witness the phenomena. All the while, exhausted and heartbroken that her life was in such upheaval, Maria remained blissfully unaware her troubles were about to multiply.

It all started when those non-believers I spoke of earlier suspected her of perpetrating a ‘hoax.’

Way back then, and even now I suspect, there are those who subscribe to the theory that these images were conjured by Maria during a psychokinetic process called ‘thoughtography.’

Not exactly an original sounding word, but there it is🤷‍♀️

Thoughtography involves projecting a picture onto a surface using only the mind. One could say that ‘proof’ of this possibility lay in the fact that Maria was always present when the faces appeared. When she was out and about, the faces faded.

Of course, since she died in 2004 and the faces continued to appear, that pours a big ol’ cup of ‘loser’ on the foreheads of those investigators.😁

Told ya to tuck that ‘Maria’s dead’ tidbit under yer hat!

And investigators? There were a few. (But then again, too few to mention. Sorry, couldn’t resist that one!) In truth, there were a staunch few to be sure, various researchers who went to extremes to either document the phenomena or disprove it. One such man, a Professor in psychic research named De Argumosa, paid to seal off the kitchen once again in order to continue his investigation. In return—and on his own dime— he paid to have another room built that could be converted into a new kitchen.

This made me happy. After all, how long was Maria supposed to live without a kitchen and mouths to feed?

During construction, Professor De Argumosa conducted several Electronic Voice Phenomena sessions (EVP’s) and was said to have captured on his recorder both a child’s voice and sounds that were ‘a mixture of hell and a brothel.’

Hell and a brothel. Well, you don’t hear that every day. But, even after hearing the stirring sounds of ‘Hellboy and his Bitches’, crooning near the fridge, Maria and her dopey family were still steadfastly refusing to leave the home. Go figure🙄

So, back to the new kitchen Professor ‘D’ commissioned. After completion and within a short period of time, more faces appeared, this time on the newly-laid stone floor of the replacement kitchen. In all, there were countless witnesses, including some researchers, who swore they actually watched faces forming before their eyes.

Freaky.

Who these ‘people in the floor’ were, how they appeared in little Maria’s kitchen, and why the devil she didn’t switch to linoleum, may remain one of life’s unanswered mysteries.

As late as 2014, a forensic team, with the permission of the current owners, extracted samples from the floor of some of the faces. Analysis verified the results of the exam taken years prior. There was no “external manipulation” found, and the faces were not made from paint. In addition, one analyst attempted to construct a similar image using various solvents (alcohol, lacquer, dyes etc.) without success.

The failure to successfully replicate a face of any kind was, in the analyst’s words, “an absolute bewilderment.”

So, there you have it, ladies and gents. Everything you wanted to know about “The House of Faces,” but were afraid to ask. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to scrub my bathroom floor. While I can’t be sure, I think I see a dozen eyes near the bathtub, just staring at me.👀

Bet you a beer and a steak ya’ll will check your floors tonight!

Peace out, my people❤️

—Q