Why Would Dogs Be Scared Of Ghosts?

[gattino]

A bizarre and possibly unique question, but it often occurs to me when I read, hear or watch videos on YouTube of stories of hauntings etc where dogs and cats apparent ability to see/hear what we cannot crops up.

Whether told or shown, the animal cowering, being skittish or running away to hide - or else barking/hissing at something unseen - is a very common element in ghost accounts.

But taking it at face value, why would an animal be scared by the supernatural? I mean to say I'd be scared, perhaps, because there's something I can't see that can see me, rendering me vulnerable. If the animal can see the hypothetical spirit, that can't apply. A second reason a human may be unsettled is the deep spiritual /metaphysical implications of a spirit being real. Again, hardly a concern to Patch or Tiddles. And nor might a pet have been indoctrinated by Hollywood into associating spooks with being spooked.

Similarly I was watching a documentary about sasquatch ( treated as a flesh and blood cryptid, not a paranormal entity) and twice in one account animals - a horse and a dog - were described as being freaked out when the alleged creature appeared, even though no aggression on its part was involved. So why would either animal be distressed by a Bigfoot more than by say a cow, as they can't have any past associations with it as something dangerous or scary.

Im not doubting the accounts, but wondering what it might tell us if true.

 

[PeniG]

Animals unfamiliar with cows can be afraid of cows - and with excellent reason. Those things have big stompy hooves. Animals who are accustomed to cows are not afraid of them unless the cow is behaving erratically or aggressively.

Depending on the personality and training of the dog, any unfamiliar entity may be enough to spook them or render them aggressive. Dogs who are normally aggressive or friendly and react with (what looks to their human companions like) abject terror may be presumed to be sensing something as far out of their wheelhouse as the spiritual implications of a spirit being real. Since we aren't familiar with the interior lives of our domestic animals, and can only with great difficulty imagine ourselves into their sensory experience, the best we can do is speculate wildly.

You say, for example, that the fear of something you can't see that sees you is not applicable to a dog who can apparently see the spirit. But you don't know anything about the dog's sensory experience in any given case. Scent is a far more important sense to a dog than sight is; about as important as sight is to us; possibly more, given that the amount of information dogs can gain from sniffing a marking spot for a few seconds is often compared to the amount of information we get from reading a newspaper. So can the dog see something they can't smell? Possibly, but dogs are more likely to be aggressive, confused, or indifferent to, rather than afraid of, the sight-without-smell of themselves in the mirror. So are they smelling without seeing and finding this deeply unsettling? If so, how is the entity emitting a scent? Is a key feature of supernatural entities the emission of a some quality that evokes a cross-species "sense of menace?" Do animals (including humans) gain subtle sensory information that triggers a fear response in the presence of supernatural entities?

And then there's the matter of human interpretation of animal behavior. Are frightened humans misreading a submissive response to a dominant entity as a fear response? Are they projecting their own feelings onto their animals? Are domestic animals taking their cues from human reactions in some cases? Do animals (like dogs) whose normal priorities involve protecting their social groups and territories have some sort of criterion for establishing when a perceived threat should be threatened in turn and when it should be run away from or submitted to? These are questions we cannot hope to answer without a deeper understanding of how animals experience the world.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Fascinating topic as I have experience of this.

Had a quick look online and the American Kennel Club have a recent, related article:

Can Dogs See Ghosts?

https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/lifestyle/can-dogs-see-ghosts-spirits/

 

[Naughty_Felid]

So why would either animal be distressed by a Bigfoot more than by say a cow, as they can't have any past associations with it as something dangerous or scary.

Animals, (us included), are smart.

Just because they've not seen something before doesn't mean that they are going to marry it and give it a big cuddle.

Pretty obvious really.

 

[gattino]

No it's not that obvious. They don't quiver in terror or run and cower just becaise something is novel. Curiosity, maybe caution, a bit of sniffing, would seem to be the default reaction to new life forms not trauma.

 

[catseye]

Maybe (in dogs and horses) it's the lack of scent? Dogs tend to recognise people by their smell (so we are told anyway, although my dog seems to have an inordinate tendency to mix people up, but then she's a Patterdale and almost criminally stupid). Perhaps animals 'see' a human shape but don't 'smell a human smell'? So they are confused as to what it is that they are perceiving - whereupon the natural tendency would be to fear or running away.

Which is pretty much what PeniG said, above, I now realise....

 

[gattino]

Here's a video with some examples. The first two don't really count ( the first doesn't show the dog agitated and the second is totally unconvincing) but the other 3 are of interest to this subject.

 

[RaM]

I had a horse that for no apparent reason took a dislike to a lump of concrete at the side of the Rd,
we had been riding that Rd and passed that concrete many times, this went on for a few weeks
then suddenly he took no interest what so ever, back to normal, who knows what was going on in
his head, it was the only thing I ever remember him being spooked by.
My daughters dog would normally come up and make a fuss every time she saw me but would cower
away if I wore my motorbike jacket, best reason I can come up with is it made me look very big across
the shoulders and maybe she took this as a aggressive stance.

 

[BlackPeter]

Not exactly animals being frightened of ghosts but I have just remembered a curious phenomena observed by me and my family years ago - we lived in a house in Nuneaton at the time and had a long garden with a field at the back and running down this garden was a slabbed path which we could see from the living room window. This path was used regularly by neighbourhood cats who would come through the hedge from the field down our garden and out through the gate to the street. The strange thing we observed was that at a certain point on the path the cats would all swerve off and back on again as though walking round something invisible - there were no signs that this upset or frightened the animals just that they were seeing something we weren't! The path was totally straight and ran through a flat grass lawn and close examination never revealed anything different about the spot!

 

[Schrodinger's Zebra]

We're starting this on the assumption that all dogs are scared of ghosts, which probably isn't the case. There are probably (I'm just guessing here) lots of dogs who may not give two hoots about a ghostly entity - and we won't know about those simply because they're not reacting to something that can't be seen, so ergo nothing is happening. If that makes sense. We can only base our observations on dogs who do react.

Unless of course there are documented instances of a person seeing a ghost/something paranormal and the dog with them didn't react.

Having lived with dogs all my life I can attest that they all have different personalities and react to things in different ways, much like humans. As @NaughtyFelid says, dogs are intelligent and they are also inquisitive.

But, they also need 'life experiences' in order to understand the world - known as socialisation. ZebraPup2 (who had a bad start in life and missed out on her essential 8-12-weeks-old socialisation period thanks to her previous owners ) often barks at things that are - at least to you and me - perfectly normal. One example was a person crouched down reading a phone - when we turned a corner and saw this person, ZebraPup2 barked in her "I'm excited and don't know what's going on" way, because she didn't recognise the shape as a person.

My long and rambling point is that because there is something out of the norm about the ghost/entity/whatever thing, then a dog might react in fear because it doesn't fit with their world-view - they don't understand it.

(Whereas some dogs - not looking at ZebraPup1 in particular) would probably run up and greet the entity and hope it has a tennis ball.

 

[gattino]

I think what the catalyst for my question was the aforementioned sasquatch documentary. It got me thinking that as in ghost accounts descriptions of the animals' behaviour seem to be inviting an inference that they "smelt" or "perceived" something "evil, dark or malevolent". Very subjective qualities it's hard to imagine produce a scent. Nonetheless that implication - expressed or otherwise - is often part of the story.

 

[Schrodinger's Zebra]

I think what the catalyst for my question was the aforementioned sasquatch documentary. It got me thinking that as in ghost accounts descriptions of the animals' behaviour seem to be inviting an inference that they "smelt" or "perceived" something "evil, dark or malevolent". Very subjective qualities it's hard to imagine produce a scent. Nonetheless that implication - expressed or otherwise - is often part of the story.

I see what you're saying. Dogs are highly perceptive, they certainly know 'good' from 'bad' when it comes to people so it's not surprising that they would also have perceptions of 'otherworldy' things.

Could be a scent (isn't there a 'smell of fear'?) or could be just a perception.


One of the most unnerving things is walking along a country path, no one else around, and the dog keeps looking behind you!

 

[gattino]

A - if not the - famous variation on the notion.

 

[bugmum]

Similarly I was watching a documentary about sasquatch ( treated as a flesh and blood cryptid, not a paranormal entity) and twice in one account animals - a horse and a dog - were described as being freaked out when the alleged creature appeared, even though no aggression on its part was involved. So why would either animal be distressed by a Bigfoot more than by say a cow, as they can't have any past associations with it as something dangerous or scary.

Aren't Sasquatch supposed to leave a distinctive smell, or am I muddling them up with something else? Such a scent might agitate another animal.

 

[On The Brink]

Aren't Sasquatch supposed to leave a distinctive smell, or am I muddling them up with something else? Such a scent might agitate another animal.

That is right. They smell really bad aparently.

 

[AgProv]

There was an experiment; it involved a room where there was a "haunted chair" of the sort that nobody could sit in for longer than a minute without feeling discomfort verging on nausea. A psychic experimenter brought in a series of animals to see if there was anything in there they'd respond to. A mouse or a rat just carried on as normal, unconcerned; a snake went into a threatened posture and hissed at the chair; a cat ran straight out again; and a dog would go nowhere near it and start whining. Clear canine distress.

this was quite a famous story and possibly somebody else knows the details more - and they only ran the test with one of each animal so there was no wider experimental sample - and therefore limited. But insofar as it goes, interesting here.

 

[Bad Bungle]

There was an experiment; it involved a room where there was a "haunted chair" of the sort that nobody could sit in for longer than a minute without feeling discomfort verging on nausea

Oh I know that chair - it's in the McDonalds on the Euston Road.

 

[Bad Bungle]

As I once mentioned before on another thread, my brother lives in a ground floor converted flat that's part of a large old Country Manse. He has an open fire, useful since the flat is always cold and a large padded leather couch pushed against the wall. His son visited occasionally with his large Labrador, who would invariably push his snout in the gap between the wall and the couch and force a space big enough to squeeze in. The dog would stay standing behind the couch until it was time to leave (which he happily did). My brother and nephew sensed nothing amiss and the dog never indicated what the problem was with the flat.

 

[AgProv]

I know I first read this story in one of Colin Wilson's brick-thick books on Weird Things - might have been Mysteries, the one with the purple cover. (or The Occult, the one with the bilious lime-green cover) It's cropped up in a few other places since as a "classic parapsychological experiment", but can I find it with a Google search... and a sense of nausea in McDonalds. Had that just by walking past one. Must be some underlying unifying factor there if only we can find it.

 

[Cloudbusting]

Perhaps there is a smell of death (or something similar) that occurs around ghosts that we can't pick up on. I'm just thinking about how much our family dogs hated going to the vet and I've always assumed part of the reason may be the smell. Obviously not all dogs are scared of the vets and I know one of our old dogs only started showing fear after being spayed. It's not something I've ever considered re. ghosts but when people were talking about smells and exhibiting fear it made me think of the vet scenario.

Come to think of it there is one house NONE of our dogs like - my grandparent's house. They can never settle and are desperate to leave as soon as we arrive. They often pace the living room. It's weird because they like my grandparents and as far as I know no-one has had any unusual or spooky experiences in the house. It's just a standard bungalow and not even particularly old (built in the 80s I think). We think it may be due to the internal doors which have long pieces of bevelled glass throughout most the house. I say this because the dogs tend to be more distressed in the hallway. Perhaps they're seeing their own distorted reflections and think they're seeing ghostly dogs! (Note: They're never spooked by mirrors)

 

[Spookdaddy]

I had a horse that for no apparent reason took a dislike to a lump of concrete at the side of the Rd, we had been riding that Rd and passed that concrete many times, this went on for a few weeks
then suddenly he took no interest what so ever, back to normal, who knows what was going on in
his head, it was the only thing I ever remember him being spooked by...

Isn't there a thing - it may just be lore, rather than fact - about horses hating the smell of old blood and/or putrefaction?

I was reminded of this when watching a quite effective scene in something on TV recently - where several unattended horses are shown becoming increasingly distressed and agitated, eventually leading to the discovery of an illicit burial in a field where they are paddocked. I'm almost sure I've read about something like this happening in a real world case - but can't track down a source at the present time.

 

[RaM]

Once you have smelled death you never forget it, not a pleasant smell, I know if
there's something that's been dead for a wile within at least 1/4 of a mile.
Don't know how good a horses smell is but I bet it's much better than ours, I was
out on the moors one day when my horse took a interest in a clump of bushes some
way off, I could see smell or hear nothing but when we approached, mine and the horses
head were way above the bushes we had about half a dozen fully armed soldiers looking
back up at us and not looking to happy about it, don't know what sense he used to know
they were there but he did I would have rode passed and not known a thing.
They can sense things we cant I am sure of that, they are a hunted animal not a hunter
so need to be aware of any threat within striking distance.

 

[catseye]

The strange thing we observed was that at a certain point on the path the cats would all swerve off and back on again as though walking round something invisible - there were no signs that this upset or frightened the animals just that they were seeing something we weren't! The path was totally straight and ran through a flat grass lawn and close examination never revealed anything different about the spot!

Electricity cables underneath being slightly 'leaky'? Not enough for humans to detect but enough to give cats' paws a bit of a 'tingle'?

I'm another one with an unsocialised dog - she will bark at anyone she doesn't know. If that person is behaving in an 'unusual' (to her), sitting, crouching, carrying something, she goes into overdrive. She occasionally stares at random corners too, but I've always put that down to dogs having 'faster' vision than humans, so her seeing a fly or a spider or something moving that I can't detect because it's gone almost as soon as I register it.


We were discussing horses and their random behaviours over on another thread, https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...inted-clumsy-manner.28622/page-2#post-2025310. This one in fact.

 

[Schrodinger's Zebra]

I'm another one with an unsocialised dog - she will bark at anyone she doesn't know. If that person is behaving in an 'unusual' (to her), sitting, crouching, carrying something, she goes into overdrive. She occasionally stares at random corners too, but I've always put that down to dogs having 'faster' vision than humans, so her seeing a fly or a spider or something moving that I can't detect because it's gone almost as soon as I register it.

It's odd the things dogs like that will react to, isn't it? And people don't understand if they don't know about socialising dogs.

Thankfully we got ZebraPup2 well before all the lockdown stuff started (we got her in August 2019) and although she was a shy, terrified little thing (3 months old and having missed out on all socialisation from the looks of her) we took her places, on trains, near shops, different parks, anywhere and everywhere - just like we did with ZebraPup1 in her normal socialisation period (we got her at 8 weeks old so she was fine). We also did games to increase her confidence which helped.

And now ZebraPup2 is probably as normal as she's ever going to be. She barks at people walking past the window but doesn't bark at everyone she meets outside, just ones that don't "look right" in her mind, like you say sitting, crouching, not looking like a 'normal' shaped person I guess! But it's a happy bark with a waggy tail and we see it as her "I'm excited cos you look strange and I don't know what you are" bark rather than, thankfully, an aggressive bark (and we fervently hope that continues as she approaches the crucial 2-year-old stage in May).

But our ongoing training is hampered by the limits on where we're allowed to go. We can walk around our village but only ever see a handful of people at a time. What she really needs is a busy town/city and other varied locations which we can't do anymore.

I really feel for people who got puppies just before/during lockdown and who haven't been able to socialise them fully. Some will be fine (as always it depends on the dog to some extent) but others will grow up with problems, varying from mild to serious, sadly. Yet another consequence of what's happening.

 

[catseye]

Mine is unsocialised due to events around the time I got her - it was early January, snowing and icy and she refused, point blank to leave the house and garden for a while (she was a tiny, wee and quite poorly scrap). Once the weather improved and we could get out and about more (and there were more people to meet) she was past the critical stage.

But then she's a terrier and bred to work rather than as a pet, so I have adapted round her and we live so rurally that the only people (and other dogs) that we meet are ones she already knows.

And, as a single woman living alone and rurally, I'm actually quite glad that she gives off very loud 'go away' vibes when people come to the door!

 

[Schrodinger's Zebra]

Mine is unsocialised due to events around the time I got her - it was early January, snowing and icy and she refused, point blank to leave the house and garden for a while (she was a tiny, wee and quite poorly scrap). Once the weather improved and we could get out and about more (and there were more people to meet) she was past the critical stage.

But then she's a terrier and bred to work rather than as a pet, so I have adapted round her and we live so rurally that the only people (and other dogs) that we meet are ones she already knows.

And, as a single woman living alone and rurally, I'm actually quite glad that she gives off very loud 'go away' vibes when people come to the door!

Aww, she sounds lovely.

Yes, the bark, although annoying at times, can be beneficial of course!

 

[escargot]

Dogs have a different emotion

Once you have smelled death you never forget it, not a pleasant smell, I know if
there's something that's been dead for a wile within at least 1/4 of a mile.
Don't know how good a horses smell is but I bet it's much better than ours, I was
out on the moors one day when my horse took a interest in a clump of bushes some
way off, I could see smell or hear nothing but when we approached, mine and the horses
head were way above the bushes we had about half a dozen fully armed soldiers looking
back up at us and not looking to happy about it, don't know what sense he used to know
they were there but he did I would have rode passed and not known a thing.
They can sense things we cant I am sure of that, they are a hunted animal not a hunter
so need to be aware of any threat within striking distance.

This made me laugh because it reminded me of something my squaddie son told me about his service in Kenya.
On days off the lads'd pile into a Jeep for a little safari. This involved driving out to the middle of nowhere to look at the wildlife.
There was no shooting or other disturbance, just an awed observation of giraffes and the odd elephant.

At some point on time Sonny and mates became separated from their vehicle by a lion. They cowered in bushes while the lion walked round and round them, growling to itself.

Eventually, probably bored by the cowardly food that wouldn't play, it pee'd into the bushes and all over the corporal and wandered off.

The squaddies gave it 15 minutes or so and then legged it back to the Jeep. They set off back with the corporal walking behind. He smelled so bad they wouldn't let him ride with them!

 

[escargot]

Mine is unsocialised due to events around the time I got her - it was early January, snowing and icy and she refused, point blank to leave the house and garden for a while (she was a tiny, wee and quite poorly scrap). Once the weather improved and we could get out and about more (and there were more people to meet) she was past the critical stage.

But then she's a terrier and bred to work rather than as a pet, so I have adapted round her and we live so rurally that the only people (and other dogs) that we meet are ones she already knows.

And, as a single woman living alone and rurally, I'm actually quite glad that she gives off very loud 'go away' vibes when people come to the door!

 

[Amergin]

Related to this thread - instances where a cat or a dog exhibits behaviour indicating that their attention is drawn to something that is “not there” - I have often thought it likely that many of these occurrences could be explained by them seeing floaters in their eyes. Lacking an understanding of what is going on, they would be quite naturally be mesmerised &/or startled by such floating shapes.

 

[Schrodinger's Zebra]

Related to this thread - instances where a cat or a dog exhibits behaviour indicating that their attention is drawn to something that is “not there” - I have often thought it likely that many of these occurrences could be explained by them seeing floaters in their eyes. Lacking an understanding of what is going on, they would be quite naturally be mesmerised &/or startled by such floating shapes.

That's an interesting point. No reason to suppose that dogs and cats can't get floaters.