- MADRID -- Spain's most famous
haunted house has gone up for sale, with potential buyers offered the chance
of sharing their home with a cast of ghosts whose faces allegedly appear
on floors and walls.
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- The unique selling point of the whitewashed house, 5
Real Street, in the village of Belmez de la Moraleda, in the southern province
of Jaen - is its kitchen.
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- It was here, 33 years ago, that Maria Gomez first found
the outline of a human face which appeared in the concrete floor. She chipped
away at the cement to get rid of it, but soon a cast of a dozen other faces
and outlines of whole bodies began to appear.
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- The phenomenon became so famous in Spain that queues
of visitors formed every weekend. Scientists set about proving that GÛmez
must have painted the figures.
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- The state-run centre for scientific investigation became
involved and the kitchen was closed off under the supervision of a notary.
But when it was reopened three months later, the faces were still there.
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- A two-metre trench was dug, revealing bones from a 13th-century
graveyard. "The strange thing was that they found bones but no skulls,"
said Lorenzo Fernandez, the author of a book on the "faces of Belmez".
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- A more recent theory is that the faces belong to members
of Gomez's family who were massacred during Spain's civil war.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,2763,1259702,00.html
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