👻 HAUNTED PLACE · EXP. Nº9475
ACTIVE
Bélmez Faces
Bélmez Faces is a location reputed to be haunted in Jaén, Andalucía, ES. Its reputation comes from reported apparitions, unexplained phenomena and eyewitness accounts gathered over time.
Where is Bélmez Faces?
- Location
- Jaén, Andalucía, ES
- Type
- House / mansion
- Coordinates
- 37.724, -3.381
- Testimonies
- 0
- Last updated
LOCATION
Why is Bélmez Faces said to be haunted?
On 23 August 1971 María Gómez Cámara noticed a face-like stain on the concrete floor of her kitchen in Bélmez de la Moraleda, a small olive-growing village in Jaén. When her son broke up and re-laid the floor, a new image appeared within days, and the village curiosity became a national affair after the Madrid daily Pueblo put it on its front page on 31 January 1972. Parapsychologists such as Hans Bender defended the faces as "teleplasties" produced by the owner's mind, while skeptics noted that suspicion of fraud arose within six months: the Granada daily Ideal reported that the images had been painted with silver nitrate and silver chloride. The Spanish press split from the outset — Pueblo argued the case was genuine, Ideal called it a fraud. The story kept flaring in step with the media for decades, and after María's death in 2004 a second wave of "faces" in other houses ended in court. Today the original home is still family property, and the village runs a publicly funded interpretation centre.
What is the history of Bélmez Faces?
On 23 August 1971 María Gómez Cámara noticed a stain on the concrete floor of her kitchen at number 5 Calle Real, in Bélmez de la Moraleda, that seemed to form a face. More than fifty years later, the genuinely puzzling part of the case is not the stain. It is the machinery that assembled around it.
Bélmez was, and still is, a small village in the Sierra Mágina range of Jaén province — around 1,500 inhabitants, 825 metres above sea level, 69 kilometres from the provincial capital — living off its olive groves. By the family's account, her son Miguel broke up the floor and laid fresh concrete, and within days the image was back. The mayor forbade the destruction of the next one. Neighbours came first, then people from the surrounding district, then visitors who paid to get in.
The national press did the rest. On 31 January 1972 the Madrid daily Pueblo put the faces on its front page, and a local curiosity became a national affair. Journalists revisiting the episode on its fiftieth anniversary point to Pueblo's editor, Emilio Romero, as the man who "really staged" the case; without that front page it is hard to imagine there would have been a case at all. The parapsychologists followed. Germán de Argumosa, who said he had recorded voices inside the house, and the German researcher Hans Bender, of the Freiburg institute, argued that the faces were "teleplasties" — images impressed on matter by María's own mind, without intent or awareness. Fernando Jiménez del Oso and Joaquín Grau carried the supernatural reading into magazines and television.
The family gave the faces names: La Pava, El Pelao, El Fraile, La Familia. Miguel Pereira has said that the ground beneath the house was dug down to 2.8 metres and bones appeared, feeding the idea — repeated in guidebooks ever since — that the building stands on an old burial ground.
The case dimmed and flared repeatedly for three decades, always in time with the media: esoteric magazines in the 1980s, a popular revival in the 1990s and, in this century, the hours of radio and television that Iker Jiménez devoted to it.
María Gómez died in 2004, aged 85. New faces appeared almost immediately — first in another house, then in more than a dozen homes around the village — announced by the Spanish Society of Parapsychological Research. That sequence ended in court, and in an interpretation centre paid for with European funds. Calle Real is now called Calle María Gómez Cámara.
Timeline: the documented record of Bélmez Faces
- 23 August 1971 María Gómez Cámara reports a stain resembling a face on the concrete kitchen floor of her home at number 5 Calle Real. By the family's account the floor is broken up and re-laid, and the image returns within days.
- 31 January 1972 The Madrid daily Pueblo puts the faces on its front page. Journalists revisiting the case fifty years later point to its editor, Emilio Romero, as the figure who turned a village curiosity into a national phenomenon.
- 2004 María Gómez Cámara dies at the age of 85. Her son Miguel Pereira later says the manifestations dropped off sharply after her death.
- Autumn 2004 The Spanish Society of Parapsychological Research, led by Pedro Amorós, announces new faces in a different house in the village. In late November El Mundo publishes Javier Cavanilles's reports alleging the new faces were faked with the town council's knowledge.
- 11 September 2006 Court of First Instance number 3 of San Vicente del Raspeig (Alicante) dismisses Pedro Amorós's 60,000-euro claim against Cavanilles and El Mundo, ruling the reports truthful and of public interest, and orders him to pay more than 14,000 euros in costs.
- 10 February 2013 The Centro de Interpretación de las Caras opens in the old village school, built with 587,000 euros of European funds and promoted by the town council and the Jaén provincial council.
- 8 September 2014 The television programme Cuarto Milenio broadcasts an analysis by the chemist José Javier Gracenea, who concludes that the samples examined were not made with paint and show no external manipulation.
- 2016 Forty-five years on, Miguel Pereira keeps the original house open to visitors and acknowledges one proven fraud in the village: the faces painted in a second house around 2004.
- 2018 Researchers José Luis Anta Félez and José Manuel Crespo Guerrero publish an academic study of Bélmez as a dark-tourism destination, based on the interpretation centre's visitor book and 38 semi-structured questionnaires.
Is there a rational explanation for Bélmez Faces?
This is, in all honesty, one of the worst-supported cases in the Spanish paranormal canon.
Start with the chronology: suspicion of fraud did not take decades to surface, it took six months. Six months after the first faces appeared, the Granada daily Ideal published analyses holding that the images had been painted with silver nitrate and silver chloride — light-sensitive compounds that would explain the supposed "changes of expression" between visits. The press split from the outset: Pueblo defended the case as genuine, Ideal treated it as fraud. The documentary archive of ARP, the Spanish society for critical thinking, further records that a 1975 CSIC analysis of the face known as "la Pelona" concluded it was a shoe print, and that samples taken in 1990 by the team of the Jesuit José María Pilón yielded zinc, chromium, lead, copper and barium — elements the technicians associated with paints and enamels.
There is a cheaper explanation still for how it all began: pareidolia. A concrete floor marked by grease and damp is exactly the kind of irregular surface in which human vision cannot help finding faces. And retouching it with water or oil is enough to "improve" a face: the journalist Francisco Máñez demonstrated as much in the village itself in September 2004, weeks before the new faces were announced.
Then there is the incentive. Bélmez had no industry beyond its olive groves, and the faces brought visitors: in 2013 the municipality opened an interpretation centre costing 587,000 euros of European money.
In fairness to the mystery: in 2014 an analysis broadcast by the programme Cuarto Milenio and signed by the chemist José Javier Gracenea concluded that the samples examined were not made with paint and showed no external manipulation. It is the strongest argument on that side, though it speaks to specific samples taken forty years on, not to how the case began.
Can you visit Bélmez Faces?
Bélmez de la Moraleda sits in the Sierra Mágina range, 69 kilometres from Jaén and a little over an hour and a half by car from Granada. There is no railway: you arrive on a regional road — the A-401 runs through the village — and you need your own vehicle. There is free parking at the entrance.
There are two things to see today, and they are not the same thing.
The Centro de Interpretación de las Caras occupies the old village school at Calle Alonso Vega 2. Museum listings consulted in 2026 give admission at 3 € (free for children under 10) and weekend-only opening, Saturday and Sunday, mornings and afternoons. Hours are irregular and more than one visitor has found it shut, so phone the town hall, which runs it, on +34 953 394 002. Inside there are newspapers from the period, photographs and audiovisual displays.
The original house stands on what used to be Calle Real, number 5, now renamed Calle María Gómez Cámara. It is not a municipal museum: it remains family property, and in recent years relatives have opened the door to those who ask, explained the case in about half an hour and charged nothing beyond a voluntary contribution. The visit therefore depends on somebody being available: it means stepping into a private home.
Two warnings: the faces are far fainter today than in the 1970s photographs, and the village takes a morning; the trip works better combined with the Sierra Mágina Natural Park.
Sources consulted
- Luis Alfonso Gámez, «Pedro Amorós y Bruno Cardeñosa pierden el juicio» — Magonia, 2006 web
- Luis Alfonso Gámez, «Las caras de Bélmez ya tienen museo: dinero de la UE para fomentar la incultura y la superstición» — Magonia, 2013 web
- Redacción, «Cincuenta años del misterio de Bélmez, el pueblo de las caras» — Diario de León, 2021 newspaper archive
- David López Frías, «Las Caras de Bélmez vuelven a aparecer en versión 2.0» — El Español, 2016 newspaper archive
- José Luis Anta Félez y José Manuel Crespo Guerrero, «Las Caras de Bélmez (España): construcción social y alcance territorial de un atractivo turístico» — Teoría y Praxis, n.º 24, pp. 229-260, 2018 academic
- Cuarto Milenio, «Dr. Gracenea: «Las caras de Bélmez no muestran manipulación externa»» — Cuatro, 2014 web
Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-07-29 · How we verify our content
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