Bélmez de la Moraleda, Spain

Bélmez Faces

Mysterious face-like images that appeared within an Andalusian house are surrounded by legends of the paranormal.

In 1971 strange stains began to appear on the kitchen floor of a house in Bélmez de La Moraleda, a little village in Andalusia. The eerie markings seemed to represents the faces of people, sparking a decades-long interest in the “Bélmez Faces.”

In August 1971, María Gómez Cámara noticed a stain forming on her concrete kitchen floor which, later, seemed to turn into a disturbing face. Not only that, but the stain appeared to have moved positions.

María 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.

As it turns out, their efforts were in vain. The face 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. Everybody wanted to see this unexplained phenomenon for themselves.

Experts from the world of parapsychology rushed to this place and coincided in cataloging the phenomenon as a great mystery. They allegedly even recorded psychophonies in 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.

However, 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.

Maria Gómez Cámara died in 2004, but the strange stains, maybe now even more distorted, are still there.

Know Before You Go

From Jaen, access it the by the state road N-323a and then take regional road A-324 eastward toward Cambil/Huelma until you reach Bélmez de la Moraleda.