Ah now, try this. It's from b3ta, a few years ago. I've posted it before but here it is again because I think you'll like it.
The night our dog died
When our family dog died, I was in my early twenties still living in the home I was raised, an Indian family in the suburbs of London
As anyone who has had a pet will know, it was devastating for all of us and it marks the one creepy story in my life
The evening that our dog passed away, my younger brother walked into my bedroom at about 2am and quietly asked if i was awake. Of course, that did the trick and I said I was. "Can you hear that?". With such a question, I was wide awake in a nano second and sitting upright.
I strained to pick out what he seemed to hear very obviously, but couldnt hear anything. he repeated twice "there, can't you hear that?".
I might add at this point that my Brother is very level head-headed. Very anti drugs and anti anything that results in loss of mental self control, very stoic... So i did not think then, or now, that he was imagining it and asked him what he could hear. "I can hear Dad outside calling me"
I got out of bed and in my sleepy state, I imagined that perhaps our Father had gone sleep walking or got stuck outside (why, I didnt know, but I was trying to match scenarios to what my Brother was telling me). He had never done either. So, we walked to my Parents room and peered into the darkness.
I quietly called out "Dad?" and he woke with a slight start obviously a bit suprised to have both his adult sons looking in to the room. This time my brother just said he could hear a voice in the garden and now the whole family was awake
What followed would be comical if it wasn't so odd at the time. We all quietly trooped downstairs and I picking up the nearest solid object as now I supposed there must be an intruder in our back garden
Our garden is accessed by huge sliding glass doors. It means that you can see the outside clearer than the inside because of the ambient light from the street. As we walked towards the doors, it was obvious that the garden was empty
Again, my brother asked "Cant you all hear that???" By now he was slightly bewildered more than anything. My Father asked "what exactly can you hear?" and he told him what he told me orginally "Dad, I can hear YOU calling out to me". I still remember my Father's reaction when he asked him to repeat what he just said.
My Father's face showed a sense of recognition & sadness. He seemed to nod.. He looked out at the garden and said to all of us "everyone go to sleep, I am going to stay up a while"
At this point I just thought the whole thing was rather silly and happily trooped up to bed, and was asleep immediately
The next morning, I came downstairs and of course asked what all that was about. My brother was already awake, but my Father was waiting for me to get up before saying anything
My father is a hindu. The religion is the world's oldest major religion and is a unique combination of culturally led traditions, supersitions & dogma. My Father is a humble man and never imposed the religion on us London born boys (he even sent us to Roman Catholic Schools without blinking).
So he chose words knowing that his audience were in many ways removed from his beliefs, neither familiar nor overly skeptical
He told us that according to Hindu belief, when animals die, they dont know that they have passed on. Humans know that they have died, so, unless they have 'unfinished' business, they dont hang about. But pets want to come back into the home that they have lived in for years.
As they are on the outside, they call out to someone in the family in a human voice that this person will recognise in the hope that they will let them in.
I went quite cold, and my Brother was so unnerved, his face actually went completely blank
My Father then said that he had sat facing the garden and prayed for our pet dog and told her to go in peace.
I never questioned my Brother about it and he did not defend what he said he had heard nor started to fob it off as something imagined
We never spoke about it again.