The Ghosts Of Animals

Thought this may be of interest to some people

infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg ... /18233.htm

Link is dead. See later post for how to access the MIA book.
 
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We also have accounts of living, bi-locating cats. :D
 
Kazza34 said:
Has anyone heard of human spirit taking on the form of animal spirit?
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It used to be quite a common belief in rural areas that ghosts of people could return in the form of animals. In some parts of the world (I'm thinking particularly parts of Latin America) such beliefs still exist.
 
jimv1 said:
I once started a thread on 3am and why so many odd things start kicking off about that time. Spooky.
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I woke up screaming the other night and looked at the clock and it was 4:04. Dream not found!
I think if people wake up early morning its a sign of stress or depression.
Anyway, my sister had a ghost cat, at a cottage she used to live in. She saw it clearly enough to know it was tortoiseshell colour. My mother saw it there too. It wasn't a real cat, my sister is so allergic to cats she can't go anywhere near one without swelling up.
 
A neighbour of mine, and her daughter, both recently saw a ghostly stag as they drove down a country lane. :shock:

It walked away through a fence and across a deep ditch, neither of which seemed to detain it.

This was in Cheshire, just outside a busy town.

On the same route they've seen an apparently ghostly sheep too.

I've posted this elswhere but I think it also fits nicely here. ;)
 
I had a 'ghost cat' recurrently seen by both myself and my fiancee. During 1977 - 1979 I lived in an apartment (Greeneville Tennessee) that consisted of the entire second floor of a large 2-story house. The only access to the 2nd floor was a single staircase that was accessible only via a single locked door off the entry vestibule (itself accessible through an external double-door). My neighbors in the 2 downstairs apartments both owned cats - neither of which could tolerate the other or any other pets.

One day I awoke from a nap to see a grey tabby sitting in the doorway to my bedroom, silently staring at me. I shook off the sleep, and it was still sitting there. It quietly turned and headed out of sight down the apartment's central hallway. I got up and went after it, but ' nada ' ... The sole entry door to the apartment was closed and locked.

This basic scenario would repeat at least every couple of weeks over the 1 1/2 years I lived there. The cat never made an audible sound. It was usually seen just 'sitting there', then after a moment or two it would move away out of sight (e.g., into an adjacent room) to never be seen again (on that occasion). On some occasions I would see it in motion - calmly walking out of one room into another. Once it went out of sight it never reappeared (during that day).

I spent hours carefully inspecting the apartment for any possible entry / exit point, to no avail. On at least 3 occasions the cat exited into the bathroom - a small enclosure with absolutely no holes, gaps, or other possible exits - with me close enough to have cornered it (had it been there ...). I discussed it with the downstairs neighbors, who'd never seen a tabby there. The landlady had a carpenter check the entire apartment for holes or gaps that would admit a cat, but none were found. I put out food to see if it would prove itself material by snagging a snack, but it never did.

Except for inquiries with neighbors and landlady, I never mentioned it to anyone else ...

... Then I got involved with the young lady I'd later marry. On one of the first occasions when she 'overnighted' at my place I awoke to find her up and about already. The first thing she said was, "What's the cat's name?" I asked her to describe what she'd seen. She related a description (adult tabby) and storyline (cat seen; cat leaves room; cat can't be found) exactly like my own episodes.

From that point onward we just accepted the 'ghost cat' as part of the landscape and joked about it.

One more thing - there was at least one occasion when we were both awake in bed and saw the ghost cat simultaneously. *That* really sent a chill up my spine! ...
 
Thankss for that account EnolaGaia, very interesting!!
 
EnolaGaia said:
One more thing - there was at least one occasion when we were both awake in bed and saw the ghost cat simultaneously. *That* really sent a chill up my spine! ...
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Yup - rings a bell with me. Our ghost cat once walked across my and the sceptical ex's legs in bed, in the dark. The door was closed and no cat could get in. He leapt up, put the light on, stripped the bed, searched feverishly, found no cat, while I stood laughing in my jammies.
:lol:
 
A nice little story tacked on to the end of a rather lovely column about cats:

Like all cats, Felix had favourite napping spots around our house. One of these was on top of my parents’ bed, and although he was barred from all our bedrooms he had the uncanny ability of knowing when a door was left open upstairs.

You could always hear him launching himself at the duvet or jumping off again because he was simply enormous. Not for him the delicate cat-like tread celebrated by Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan. No, Felix in flight sounded more like a sack of potatoes.

Which brings me to something rather odd.

After our pet finally went through the great celestial catflap, there were several occasions - usually when my mum and I were alone in the house - when we distinctly heard the unmistakable sound of his fat form landing heavily on the floor of the bedroom above our heads.

The first time it happened we were so surprised that we actually went upstairs to investigate and were totally mystified to find nothing.

When the same thing happened again a couple of weeks later, I casually mentioned that It sounded just like Felix and my mum, who wasn’t usually one for psychic speculation, agreed she had been thinking exactly the same thing.

Which just goes to show that cats really are extraordinary creatures and that Eddie the cross-dressing tortoiseshell kitten possibly isn’t the only mysterious feline prowling the streets of Watford.
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http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/c ... t_subject/
 
escargot1 said:
EnolaGaia said:
One more thing - there was at least one occasion when we were both awake in bed and saw the ghost cat simultaneously. *That* really sent a chill up my spine! ...
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Yup - rings a bell with me. Our ghost cat once walked across my and the sceptical ex's legs in bed, in the dark. The door was closed and no cat could get in. He leapt up, put the light on, stripped the bed, searched feverishly, found no cat, while I stood laughing in my jammies.
:lol:
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Yeah I've felt a cat jump up on the bed at night only to reach down to give him/her a stroke only to find nothing there, (but still feel the weight there).

I don't mind and our other kitties don't either. We think we know who he is.

We call/called him "Old Grandad", he was a skinny, ancient cat that would come through the catflap and lay in front of the fire when he was alive. Our other cats never seemed bothered and would give up their place in front of the woodburner.

We had only just bought the house and forgot to ask the previous owners where he came from but we later found out he lived about 4 houses down from us. His owners would happily shut him out in all weathers. :x

The last night we saw he was during a storm he came in absolutely soaked, lay down and I tried to dry him with a towel, but he got pissed off and left and we never saw him again.

A month or two later we began hearing the catflap opening on it's own, we'd go and have a look as to who had come in or left only to find no one there. Or more amusing you'd hear the catflap open, waking up one of our cats nearby and watch them sort of go :shock:

This continues to happen over two years after he died, we're quite glad Old Grandad comes to visit now and again.
 
THERE are ghost dogs on the beach at Hengistbury Head in Dorset. Pete Hazell, a photographer, was out taking pictures of the beauty early in the morning as the sun began to rise over the English Channel.

He saw the sea and the sand. He saw no other living thing around.

But when he processed the images he saw the dogs on the beach. Do you see the ghosts? Has anyone else seen them?
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Link here - with photo




Looks like the lens needs a wipe to me...
 
its cbar all over again. (could be anything really),with ghost dog way at the bottom of the list. :(
 
I knew a dog that became a ghost. He belonged to a neighbour. He was a friendly family dog, not too old, but he contracted rabies (this was in bush, in Canada) and died rather suddenly. He had a habit of moving his food bowl around on the deck outside the kitchen where he was regularly fed; making noise with the bowl was his way of indicating he was home and wanted food. For weeks after he died, he asked for food every day. It was rather sweet, but it was strange to hear (I only heard him a couple of times; I just happened to be in the house at 'feeding time').

Also, the story that ElishevaBarshabe told way back in August 2002, reminds me of one of my sister's cats who took on the annoying habits of his cat companion, who had recently died (nothing BEFORE he died, only AFTER). Lightning (the dead cat) never ate food from a bowl the regular way: he always picked his wet cat food up from the bowl with his paws and then licked it off. His mate, Blackie, took on this eating method right after Lightning died. He also copied Lightning's habit of jumping into ANY available cardboard box, no matter the size (if you've never seen a large, lazy male cat try to squeeze into a 8cm sq box, you've seen nothing--paws crammed into the box, with great blobs of fat, oozing over the sides).
 
Guy Gibson: ghost of Dambusters dog 'found' at airbase
A team of paranormal investigators have claimed they have made contact with the "spirit" of the dog owned by Wing Commander Guy Gibson, the heroic pilot who led the Dambusters raids during the Second World War.
7:00AM GMT 02 Nov 2011

Wing Commander Gibson led the Dambusters raid in 1943 from his base at RAF Scampton, near Lincoln, just hours after his black labrador, called Nigger, was run over and killed.
Before taking off for the Ruhr Dams, Wing Commander Gibson left instructions for his faithful companion to be buried outside his office
But a legend sprung up around Nigger after there were several reported sightings of a black dog seen around the base following his death.

His office has been empty for more than half a century and is now part of the RAF Scampton Historical Museum, near Lincoln, Lincs.
Now paranormal investigators, given special permission to stake out the operational RAF base, have claimed that the spectre of the dog's spirit may have tried to speak to them as they have picked up activity on their electronic detection equipment. :shock:

Filmed by the BBC, the team embarked on three all-night stakeouts at the base, now home to the Red Arrows.

It came [after?] Paul Drake, the lead investigator, was inspired by a 1987 photograph showing a mystery black dog at the opening of a Damsbusters memorial in the nearby village of Woodhall Spa.

"I saw a picture that had the dog in it, which the photographer said was not there when it was taken, and that has stayed in the back of my mind for a few years," said Mr Drake, 49, a computer engineer and founder of Paranormal Lincs.
"After I saw the picture I got in contact with RAF Scampton to see if we could do an investigation. I never dreamed they would say 'yes' as it is still an operational base and everything has to go through the base commander.
"But they have been absolutely brilliant and have welcomed us with open arms."

The name of Gibson's black labrador was used as a code word whenever one of Germany's Ruhr Dams was breached during the "bouncing bomb" mission in May 1943, and was immortalised in the 1955 film starring Richard Todd.

Among the specialist kit used by the paranormal team were infra-red lights, proximity sensors and video cameras.
Mr Drake added: "We have been up there on three different occasions, each time something different has happened. Something is definitely going on as there has been no power to the office for years.
"The equipment we use to measure the electromagnetic field in a building is very sensitive, and every time we have been inside Guy Gibson's office there has been a reaction.
"When we have asked the question 'are you there?,' the metre has always gone up."

Fellow paranormal investigator, Michelle Clements, added: "We are looking for the spirit of Guy Gibson, but there have been a lot of things reported about his dog."
Before his death Nigger was always at the side of Gibson, who would take him for long walks around the airfield.

The raid on the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe Dams was launched on 16 May 1943. Only hours before the raid Gibson was informed that Nigger had been run over by a car outside the camp and he was killed instantaneously.

The Möhne and Eder Dams were breached, but it was a very costly operation with loss of nine aircraft and fifty-three men.
Gibson returned and was subsequently awarded the Victoria Cross but was later killed on a raid against Germany in September 1944, when his Mosquito plane crashed in Holland.

The first sighting of a dog matching Nigger's description was in February 1952 when a mess waiter working at RAF Scampton reported seeing a "phantom" black dog on the base.

Jim Shortland, a historian who specialises in the Dambuster raids, said he was sceptical about the paranormal but welcomed the investigation.
"What they expect to find I don't know," Mr Shortland said.
"But I think anything that helps to keep the memory alive of the things those lads did in the Second World War is a good thing."

Mr Shortland said the exact location of the dog's grave was unknown, but it was thought to be near Guy Gibson's former office next to the 617 Squadron hanger.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... rbase.html
 
I have spotted a historical inaccuracy with this story, the dog was called tigger!! :D
 
And they had to pick on a famous dog. Who's out searching for the ghost of my mongrel mutt Bonzo, who was run over in the early 1950s...?
 
It'll be interesting to see if they draw anything more definitive from their search.i was actually thinking of posting on here a couple of weeks ago when i found this thread trawling through the back pages, so here's my two pennorth worth...
When i lived at home still we had 3 dogs, an older labrador, one of her pups and a jack russell. As the mother got older she had to have a hysterectomy from which point she took to taking herself off for wanders which had never happened before and although we tried to prevent, she became quite sneaky and still managed every so often to have away on her toes for an hour or so before re-appearing on the doorstep.
One day i was sitting in a portacabin at school, which served as our history classroom. It must have been around summertime as all the windows and door were open, and the teacher was waffling on about something not particularly interesting. My attention shifted and i looked up, (i was sitting in the second row back, so near the front, directly opposite the doorway. Sitting in the doorway staring at me was my dog. I stared back at her and she said goodbye and vanished. Just there one second, not the next. I felt her goodbye rather than heard it-like when you know what somebody's going to say next that sort of thing. The strange thing was instead of being upset at her being gone it was quite calming-almost like a peaceful detachment if that doesnt sound too harsh.
Later that day i was speaking to my mum on the phone arranging a lift home and she started to tell me, but knowing what was coming i told her-the dog's dead. Seemed she'd got hit by a car on one of her wanders, come back home and they'd had to take her to the vets. As she was 13, the vet decided it was the best thing to do :( The time that this had happened-when i was stuck in history class.
A few years ago my own dog had become quite ill he was 12 and started having fits etc, so although i held off for a while, i knew what the outcome was. After i'd done the dread deed id gone through the rest of the day feeling sad but already used to the fact really. That night i'd gone to bed and my dogs habit had been to follow me up, wait at the bottom corner staring at me until i invited him up, then spend the night next to my feet. That night i was reading when i felt him staring at me as usual. i looked up but couldn't see anything and feeling a bit foolish said aloud 'come on then if you're coming...' immediately the bed dipped and settled into a depression as if he'd jumped up as normal. This has never happened since, just that first night and i never saw him as with the first dog, just where he was.
 
Great tales, Jac21!

Literally made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up!
 
Dunno if I've mentioned this before, but just after my old boxer/Staffie Rocky died a few years ago I *saw* him in the house.

He had to be put to put to sleep on the Monday, which was very sad but you have to do what's best for animal, y'know. :(

On the Thursday, I was coming through the back door, which has a glass internal door beside it. I glanced at the glass and saw Rocky walking past. Well, just his back and legs, not his head, as if he was trotting along and I'd missed the front end.

I saw his very distinctive stripes - he had a vivid brindle coat - and his legs moving as he walked. However, as there's furniture either side of that door he couldn't have been walking along.

So I thought 'That must be a reflection' and looked down to where he'd be - no dog - and then realised that Rocky was gone and couldn't be there. :shock:

When I looked back at the glass door, of course, he'd gone. On his way, wherever they go.

This all took about a second or two. Haven't seen Rocky since, although my other dog used to sit and stare at his empty bed for ten minutes at a time.

I threw the bed out later as neither that dog nor our several cats would use it after Rocky died, even though they'd all loved it before.

Pets, eh.
 
It's lovely when someone you believe to be truthful (i.e. you, Escargot) report something like this!
Thanks :)
 
Awww, thank you. :oops:

It was one of those 'impossible but it happened!' things. Probably a brain-fart. ;)

I saw those stripes, though. 8)
 
escargot1 said:
It was one of those 'impossible but it happened!' things. Probably a brain-fart. ;)

I saw those stripes, though. 8)
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In the past I have 'seen' deceased animals out of the corner of my eye, so I sort of know that experience of being sure you've seen them. More recently, my partner and I had to put three cats to sleep over the course of twelve months. We're not cat killing monsters. They were all elderly cats which developed conditions from which they were never going to recover. Anyway, we very quickly went from having a house containing three cats to one containing no cats. At no point have I felt, heard or seen anything which for even an instant I thought was one of those cats, even though I was completely prepared to. My brain seemed to adjust instantly to the feline-free status of the environment. I really am surprised that I didn't have anything that could have been interpreted as a 'ghostly animal' experience, considering three dearly loved animals had gone in such a short space of time. We've since been adopted by another cat, but for over a year we were catless, and cat-ghost-less.
 
drbates said:
Im fairly sure I have an occasional visitor in my house.

When I first moved in I used to sit on the sofa on my laptop facing the fireplace and regularly see a little black something about the size of a small cat dart across the hearth.

I've not seen anything for few years, and then on Friday I distinctly saw, for a moment, a black cats tail, up, and curled over at the tip (exactly like the tail in this pic in this article http://www.hillspet.com/cat-care/tales-cat-tail-tells-ktn.html) moving amongst the pots and vases on the hearth.

I've never seen it anywhere else in the house...very odd.
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Cat ghosts I can believe in. Used to have a cat that liked to sleep in a wardrobe and you would hear him snoring. Once thought I heard a snore in my new place so it must be the ghost of another cat or maybe he followed me.
 
When we think of ghosts we think of human spirits almost exclusively. Why is that? Do animals always die without unfinished business? Is the whole "unfinished business" paradigm even what causes ghosts? Now when you go to an abattoir you can tell it isn't a nice place (mainly by the smell), but given all the death, how come Abattoirs aren't incredibly haunted? Is the problem mitigated by humane killing methods perhaps? Now I have heard of a ghost monkey of Whitby, and a few nasty faerie hounds, but where are all the animal ghosts? The air should be thick with discorporate insects searching for a mate before being fly-sprayed and meeting an untimely demise, surely? What Monty Python fan hasn't awoken in a cold sweat after repeating the dead parrot sketch once too often to the ghostly squarking of "Pollllly waaaant aaaa craaaaker?". You know its all true. Tell me of the beasts that lay unquiet in their graves fellow Forteans! I beseech thee!
 
Kazza34 said:
Thought this may be of interest to some people
infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg ... /18233.htm
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This dead link led to the Project Gutenberg online edition of:
Elliott O'Donnell
Animal Ghosts Or, Animal Hauntings And The Hereafter
London: William Rider & Son, Ltd., 1913.

The MIA version can be accessed via the Wayback Machine at:

https://web.archive.org/web/2009040...etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/8/2/3/18233/18233.htm

A more current version can be accessed at:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18233/18233-h/18233-h.htm
 
There's a lovely, hair-raising piece hereabouts somewhere concerning the spirit of a dog who belonged to a Hindu family. Tried to find it on b3ta where I first saw it with no joy.

Edit - here it is!

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.
 
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I lived in a house for 8 years that had a ghost cat. He ( I always assumed it was a he because of it's size ) was big and black with a patch of white on it's chest and loved the kitchen where there was a hearth and an old wood fuel oven. As we live in a place that can get well below zero during winter, my guess was he enjoyed the the warmth there from days gone by when he lived there in physical form. You could walk into the kitchen and see him sitting or laying, stretched on the hearth for a second or two before fading before your eyes.
He also liked to trot down the hallway now and again.
When we lived there, our boys where both still young and would occasionally see the ''big cat'' passing by the lounge room door as he went down the hallway.
My wife was at first a little skeptical until she too got a good glimpse of him walking past the doorway in plain daylight. She was startled at first and a little unsettled. I said to her, ''You just saw the cat, didn't you?'' to which she nodded affirmatively and wide eyed. We then went into the kitchen only to catch a fleeting glimpse of him fading away in his favourite spot.
Aside from my wife, children and myself, my mother and a few friends also saw him during our time in the house.
He was quite a comforting spirit when he was about, which was infrequent, though we did see him a handful of times each year.
 
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Lord Lucan said:
I lived in a house for 8 years that had a ghost cat. He ( I always assumed it was a he because of it's size ) was big and black with a patch of white on it's chest and loved the kitchen where there was a hearth and an old wood fuel oven. As we live in a place that can get well below zero during winter, my guess was he enjoyed the the warmth there from days gone by when he lived there in physical form. You could walk into the kitchen and see him sitting or laying, stretched on the hearth for a second or two before fading before your eyes.
He also liked to trot down the hallway now and again.
When we lived there, our boys where both still young and would occasionally see the ''big cat'' passing by the lounge room door as he went down the hallway.
My wife was at first a little skeptical until she too got a good glimpse of him walking past the doorway in plain daylight. She was startled at first and a little unsettled. I said to her, ''You just saw the cat, didn't you?'' to which she nodded affirmatively and wide eyed. We then went into the kitchen only to catch a fleeting glimpse of him fading away in his favourite spot.
Aside from my wife, children and myself, my mother and a few friends also saw him during our time in the house.
He was quite a comforting spirit when he was about, which was infrequent, though we did see him a handful of times each year.
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Fantastic. I wonder if Big Cat is still there, comforting whoever lives in the house now?
 
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