Bélmez Faces

The phenomenon started in 1971 when residents claimed images of extremely unsettling faces appeared in the concrete floor of the house.

Various faces have supposedly appeared and disappeared at irregular intervals since 1971 and have been frequently photographed by the local newspapers and curious visitors.

Some paranormal investigators claim that it is a “thoughtographic” phenomenon, purportedly subconsciously produced by the deceased former owner of the house, Maria Cámara.

Skeptical researchers have performed extensive tests on the faces and believe that they are fabrications possibly created as part of a hoax.

[1][2] Reports of appearances in Bélmez began on 23 August 1971, when María Gómez Cámara claimed that a human face formed spontaneously on her concrete kitchen floor.

For the next 30 years the Pereira family claimed that faces continued to appear, both male and female and of different shapes, sizes and expressions.

There have been several investigations into the Bélmez case: In an article published in the July 1993 issue of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Luis Ruiz-Noguez noted that the presence of three cations used as pigments in the manufacture of paint must be mentioned: zinc, lead and chromium.

[3] Manuel Martín Serrano, a sociologist at the Complutense University of Madrid, wrote a laborious study, Sociología del Milagro (Sociology of the miracle): the first book that a skeptic has written about this case exclusively.

In 1971, a department of the Spanish Ministry of the Interior asked Jordán to head a commission that appointed diverse technicians specializing in concrete chemistry to carry out an exhaustive study of the strange occurrences in Bélmez and present a report on such to the authorities.

In the report Jordán deals with several possibilities of fraud: "pigmentation with a dark, brownish substance", "a mixture of soot and vinegar" and "the aggressive action of a chemical compound".

[6] In an interview by two members of the Spanish Society of Parapsychology, Jordán stated: With regard to the enigma of the chemical procedure, I solved it by discovering that this compound can be found in any drugstore by asking for a German product to remove concrete stains.

The presence of aluminum in the analysis of the Bélmez face called El Pelao (The bald one) could indicate that an aluminum-type cement was being dealt with.

Luis Ruiz-Noguez believes that the most likely explanation for the visual effect of the Bélmez images is Jordán's suggestion of the use of an oxidizing chemical agent.

Another explanation might be the use of agents sensitive to light (which was not mentioned in either Jordán's or Perera's repertoire of forgery hypotheses): silver nitrate which, when subjected to ultraviolet sunlight, darkens.

"[16] In 2014, investigative journalism TV show Cuarto Milenio, presented by Iker Jiménez, carried on a technical analysis in order to discover the possible hoax.

[17] Alamancos then attempted to reproduce similar images through the variety of methods considered valid in previous investigations, including but not limited to concrete solvents, hydrochloric acid and silver nitrate.