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Ghosts of Animals
A few days ago, a reader wrote me asking if I’d ever heard anything about hauntings caused by animals. They described a story in which they were in bed one night and felt the sensation of a cat jumping onto the mattress - a feeling they were quite accustomed to after having spent many years with cats.
I think somebody in one of our monster-encounter threads may have also related an animal ghost story, but I can’t remember where it was. Does anybody else have stories about this kind of thing, either that they’ve experienced first hand or heard from some other source?
There’s only a couple pages on the topic online. A page on Shadowlands has a little bit of information and suggests that most animal hauntings are benign and involve former pets. Although they also mention that some negative animal ghosts take the forms of “black dogs, black cats, rabbits, goats and other small black rodent-like animals”. The Ghost Research Society has a little bit of info on it as well. And a New Zealand ghost site has a bunch of reader-accounts of animal ghosts and hauntings.
Most of these sites seem to be asking the question of whether or not animals have souls or spirits which allow them to return to our plane. None of them seem to address how to stop these types of hauntings when they are not welcome. I’d be curious to hear people’s experiences and suggestions with such things. Do you need an animal exorcist or what?
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September 26th, 2005 at 7:50 pm
From my limited extent of knowledge and experience regarding such phantasms, my guess would be that it was something else — perhaps still of a faeirie- or alien-like nature. Her interpretation of it interacting with the environment was interpreted by her conscious self as the sensation of a cat cuz that is what she has been used to.
My friend has had an invisible something akin to an animal like a large cat or dog jump on his back before, too, but he’s also had cats and dogs.
Another friend of mine has been accosted and pushed, dragged, but she’s never had pets (as far as I know). She describes it much more frighteningly, more akin to a humanoid spirit.
Also, I am more tempted to bet that animals don’t have souls and that any sort of “hauntings” by animals is highly unlikely.
September 26th, 2005 at 7:59 pm
Hm, I’m not willing to bet that they don’t have souls. But then, I don’t know what a soul is, or if any of us humans have them either. The question really goes to do humans have some different substance that separates them from animals? I’m really not convinced we do. If nothing else, spectral animals seem to have appeared throughout all history according to various folkore accounts.
Also, I’m not sure I totally go with the “its not really a ghost but her consciousness interpreted it that way” line of thinking. Or rather, if that is how her consciousness interpreted in, then that’s most likely the appropriate way to deal with it. Anything else is just a layer of abstraction and mental distancing that feels unnecessary.
September 26th, 2005 at 8:56 pm
Not too long ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and could have sworn that my dear old cat, who in his last few weeks had taken to sleeping on the floor by the side of the bed instead of in the bed, was there by the side of the bed. It might have been a dream, of course, but it really felt like he was there.
September 26th, 2005 at 11:19 pm
I had frequent perception of my cat after her death for a year or so. I’d sense that she was rubbing up against me, or lightly jumping up onto my lap. It was very comforting. FWIW, my mother was somewhat psychic, and the only time she ever felt she encountered a human ghost this cat was coming into the house with her, and was hissing at something in the same direction.
I also once had the sense that I needed to move my feet out of the way of a friend’s dog under the kitchen table, having forgotten he was dead at that point. I was not the only one who experienced that.
September 27th, 2005 at 12:02 am
First of all, I have been lurking on your site for awhile, and after reading your interview, I felt that interesting embarrassment of realizing that I feel like I know you. When of course I only know what you post on the site, which is interesting enough to me that I visit PopOcculture every time I log on. It’s interesting, but I guess I have no idea about the etiquette of posting comments to people’s sites. I’ve started a blog and I get mostly only comments from people who are trying to sell me stuff. (I’m sort of embarrassed to even say what site it is, because I haven’t been posting regularly, and a lot of what I have been posting — feh.)
I’ve been in my East Village apartment for 11 years, and I’m finally moving away to Albany. But when I moved into the place, I had the sense that there were entities there. Particularly a cat that would jump onto my bed. I would feel its patter about me–it wasn’t affectionate or hostile. I wonder if it even acknowledged my presence–you know how cats are. I got a real cat eight years ago, and every once in awhile I’ve wondered if Kitzel can see the “ghost cat” that I’ve experienced. Perhaps Kitzel and the ghost play when I’m not there. I like to think so. He does spend a lot of time alone. I haven’t experienced a lot of the cat-spirit of late, however.
The other entity, I’ve come to think of as the “Spirit of 4B.” For a long time I thought she was an old lady who died there–old lady, cat, makes sense right? I had a conversation with the spirit who told me that all of the apartment spirits hate the landlord. (Yeah, call me crazy. I’ve been having conversations with all sorts of animal, spirit and deity guides since I started meditation through a 12-step program and then ventured into the Reclaiming tradition of witchcraft.) Evidently all the apartment devas of this building look for opportunities to make his life a living hell. Whatever, I’m going away to greener pastures. Hopefully a better landlord awaits.
September 27th, 2005 at 12:08 am
Wow! Great stories. Don’t worry about any kind of posting etiquette cause that was just great. I’m always happy when long-time lurkers decide to step out of the shadows. I wish I could write more posts to inspire them all to do so. It’s a richer experience when we all share.
September 27th, 2005 at 12:40 am
Bad enough to be human and in a hating relationship, but to be discarnate and hating someone of another density…
Richard, is there some way you could persuade them to work on/with the landlord’s Higher Self?
That you’re sensitive to the idea of etiquette gets you further along than most posters on the Net to start with. Figure out what the blog or board owner’s hot buttons are and avoid them, figure out what the local culture is and decide how you fit in. If you are doing Reclaiming-style, you know about harming none. On your own blog, delete spam promptly and ruthlessly.
September 27th, 2005 at 12:45 am
Funny, because sometimes the opposite is really more effective. That is, depending on what effect you’re looking for. I’d formally like to encourage people to push my hot button issues.
September 27th, 2005 at 12:56 am
Maybe amend that to be “Don’t be a pain in the ass unless invited to do so.”
Tim, would you like to give us a short list of your hot button issues so those of us who are so inclined can smack you around at our leisure? If you’re truly asking for it, it doesn’t contravene the Rede.
September 27th, 2005 at 1:18 am
You should be able to figure them out, just like you said! Anyway, people do it all the time without my telling them to!
September 27th, 2005 at 2:46 am
Avalon, thank you for that notion. Whether or not it’s effective for 4B or 5C to change their negative energies, it would be good for the tenants if nothing else. I’m all for expanding 10th Step work to the etheric plane. (”Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”)
And Tim, thanks for the encouragement. I’m grateful that there seems to be a disparate community of the “both/and rational/non-rational” crowd out there. I came to this site via Ran Prieur’s site, which came through Mayanmajix.com which I’ve been following for about a year now. I’m now exploring the connections between gnosticism and the Feri tradition from which Reclaiming emerged because of the sites you and Ran list on your blogroll. There’s an interesting crossover between the Gnostic and Feri myths of creation.
September 27th, 2005 at 3:08 am
When I was in highschool I was crowned Homecoming King. I got off early from school that day and had to run home and shower and such to get ready for the big parade.
When I went outside to feed the dogs I saw that one of them had tried to jump over the fence and had got caught in the barbed wire, stuck halfway over the kennel. It was a horrible scene and my sister and mom came home and it took quite a while to figure out how to get him unkinked.
About two years ago I had this dream that a fox tried to jump over our back fence (at my parents house). He was halfway over and he cut himself on the barbed wire, and disembowled himself, but was still alive when I found him. I’m pretty sure that this is a direct correlation the dog situation I just mentioned. My family and I buried this dream-fox in our backyard in the spot where all our family animals are buried. After we said a few words I started to hear whispers in every direction around me, as if the animals were speaking to me. It wasn’t a 100% negative experience, but there was something wrong with the situation.
It was a pretty disturbing dream, so I emailed it off to my mom to see what she made of it. The wierdest part? My sister was going through the family emails and saw what I wrote and totally flipped out! SHE HAD HAD PRETTY MUCH THE SAME EXACT DREAM WITH THE FOX THREE MONTHS PRIOR! I’m still trying to figure out this one.
September 27th, 2005 at 1:04 pm
Fair enough. I don’t mean to say the “ghost” isn’t there, but it’s difficult to describe how the paradox works where we are all connected, yet any differentiation is the cause of layers or — I like how Avalon put it — “densities” which are structured by the things that we can only vaguely wrap words around: semiotic analogies, gestalts, ontological analogies, whatever kind of metaphors we can come up with to try to explain concepts generally alien to accepted awareness.
From what I can tell, ghosts and left-over astral garbage are just that: left-overs. The divine spark that is granted humans, which subsequently embue us with the capacity for free will, does not exist in animals. Or the dead. They are echoes of their former selves.
Thus, the paranormal/spirit construct that accost the waking experiences and dreams of people are composed of the astral patterns and characteristics of what it once was, but no, it is not actually a dog or cat or whatever. Consciousness picks up on those particular vibrational characteristics and, if they resemble what the subconscious mind relates to as dog or cat, it gives you the sense of a dog or cat.
Probably the same reason Egyptians and aboriginals wrap animal façades around their gods, or David Icke freaks out about lizard people. They’re poetic analogies to make sense of the noncorporeal. Until you spend conscious time building up a knowledge of the astral and its own order, the human mind will try to maintain a semblance to what it knows to make sense of. Unfortunately, descriptive language, too, is a part of the manifest world and not structured to adequately describe the mechanics of the other “densities” of existence.
September 27th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
I used to believe that animals don’t have souls. But after living with a cat for 6 years (and recently adding a kitten to the mix) I now believe that animals have souls but no conscience… or at least that’s how it is with cats!
Personally, I prefer my animal ghost stories to come from established authors, such as Edgar Allan Poe or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
September 27th, 2005 at 4:57 pm
If animals have souls, I wonder if there is a “different type” of soul for domesticated animals.
From several accounts of Near-Death Experiences and such, people claim to have seen their beloved pets on “the other side.” And in What Dreams May Come (the book, at least), which is supposedly based off of a bunch of research given all the references in the back, the main character’s dog is waiting for him in the afterlife. (Actually I’m not really sure if I’m confusing the movie and the book, because they’re pretty different, so maybe it was/wasn’t the same) And I have heard plenty of spooky stories about cats haunting people, but I don’t really think I’ve really heard any that were treated as nonfiction.
But then there’s wild animals, which would seem to be the same, right? I mean, you can often domesticate a wild animal. But I’ve never heard anything about wild animal hauntings or seeing wild animals in the afterlife. What I HAVE heard about wild animals, from Native American viewpoints, from a few psychics/mediums I’ve read, plus I think Carlos Castaneda said something about it at some point — is that animals have a sort of… collective soul. So every wolf carries the same spirit, and every bird carries the same spirit, and so on and so forth. At least that’s what I got from it. So does that make wild animals transcendent and domesticated animals in a sort of spiritual bondage?
September 27th, 2005 at 10:12 pm
Cats have a conscience.
You can tell by the way they turn their backs to you and start licking their butts as if they haven’t a care in the world when they know that you know that they’ve been up to something naughty.
September 28th, 2005 at 1:58 pm
Hahaha