Tin Pets See Ghosts?

Photograph-Illustration: past The Cutting; Photos: Getty Images/Getty Images

I love my canis familiaris, Cleo, so much, simply she'southward non exactly a canine rocket scientist or anything. So I didn't think information technology was that odd when, one night a couple of years ago, she started intently staring into an empty corner of my apartment. As my roommate and I stood in the kitchen watching her — her small torso fully alert in front of an empty wall — I felt a bang-up fondness for my sweet, simple little mutt. "That'southward my girl," I thought. "Firing on all cylinders."

"You know what it means when an animal stares into an empty corner like that?" my roommate said. "It means there's a ghost in that corner, and she can see information technology."

"Oh," I said, and didn't question the statement further.

Over fourth dimension, my roommate'due south annotate calcified into fact in my heed, and every time I'd encounter my canis familiaris staring at nothing I'd recollect "Hm, must be a ghost." It never spooked me. Their business seemed to exist with Cleo, not me.

At present, though, with Halloween upon us, I decided to investigate this claim further. Tin pets see ghosts? Tin can they communicate with them? Are some pets amend at this than others? What is my dog talking almost with them, and do they know if she loves me as much as I honey her?

The answers to the get-go three questions, I discovered, depended on a couple of things. First, whether the experts themselves believed in ghosts in the first place, and second, whether they would reply my emails. For example, at that place is i extremely famous dog trainer — let's call him Geezer Gillan — whose squad did non reply to my multiple requests for comment, across multiple platforms, fifty-fifty though I once saw with my own 2 eyes an episode of East!'south Hollywood Medium where he connected with i of his deceased dogs.

Oh well. Fortunately, Jackson Galaxy, a cat behavior and wellness expert, and the host of Animate being Planet'southward My Cat From Hell was willing to talk with me, and told me that he himself is a laic in the supernatural.

"Everybody has their leaning 1 way or another. I am a believer in the spirit world. I've had many experiences. And that colors my perception a little chip," he said when we spoke over Zoom one afternoon. From but a purely evolutionary standpoint, he explains, cats have evolved to sense things that we, as humans, can't. Their optics tin can see perfectly with the smallest scrap of lite, they can hear six to eight times improve than we tin, and their whiskers are designed to observe everything from temperature changes to air current changes.

Does this mean that cats can see ghosts, though? Galaxy concedes that skeptics might argue that, if you catch your true cat staring at an empty wall, it's just because they happened to hear a mouse inside of information technology, or a piece of plaster fell, or something else happened that nosotros didn't sense but our true cat did. But Galaxy believes it could be more. His own cats, he says, are always picking upwardly energies in his house. "I start from a place of maxim there's no way we're the just sentient beings in the universe. I think it'southward hubris to think of us equally the only beings in an inhabitable, spiritual, energetic world." So, in other words: Perhaps … ?

Energized by the tentative yes I got from an Animal Planet star, I decided to dig deeper into the question, and talk to someone who'due south an expert in both pets and ghosts. Only, when several pet psychics ignored my emails, I began to lose hope. Possibly I would never know if Cleo was really seeing ghosts. Still, this dubiousness did not stop me from warning several friends with new puppies that if they ever caught their dogs staring into an empty corner, they're probably locking eyes with a supernatural beingness. Yes, my information was unconfirmed, but all-time to continue them on their toes, I figured.

Then, Katherine Bozzi got dorsum to me. Bozzi is an creature communicator who lives in British Columbia, and who uses meditation to communicate with animals who are both alive and expressionless. Bozzi, of grade, believes animals tin run across spirits. (Information technology would exist unusual to find an animal communicator who didn't, I suppose, but I can't be certain because, as I mentioned before, so many of them ignored my emails.) She says horses are the best at connecting with ghosts, because they're herd animals, so their bonds are very strong, and they're very emotional. Still, a canis familiaris or a cat definitely could connect with a spirit as well, in her professional opinion. Animals in general are more than open to experiencing spiritual connections than humans, she said, considering they're not culturally conditioned to dismiss these moments as pure imagination.

"We're all sentient beings, and nosotros're all souls in a trunk on Earth at this moment," she explained. "We can experience that connection if we're open to information technology."

Selfishly, though, I wanted to know more than nearly dogs. What was my Cleo experiencing? I reached out to Grisha Stewart, a dog trainer, author, and speaker based in Oregon. Stewart told me that many people have shared with her stories about their animals seeming to pick up on something spiritual. In one spooky instance, a fellow trainer told her most a domestic dog they had worked with who refused to become down into the basement of the family unit'southward home. The trainer couldn't coax the dog downstairs, and eventually, the family unit hired a medium to come cleanse and bewitch the energy in the basement. Immediately later, she says, the dog had no problem going downwardly at that place.

"Things like that make me think," says Stewart, who admits that she's ever looking for a more than rational reason for unusual beast behavior. Ultimately, though, she believes that if thinking that your pets tin can encounter and connect with spirits is helpful to you, or gives you a sense of reassurance, then that's great. Why not hold on to that?

"My husband died a year and a one-half ago," Stewart told me in September. "I of the things that I did when my husband died was to deliberately suspend this atheism in the idea that he could reach me, because I knew information technology would be soothing to me."

Stewart recounted the story of one woman who reached out to her. The woman'southward father had died, and she had taken over caring for his canis familiaris, and every once in a while, the dog would stand up and wag excitedly, like someone was in the room.

"I'm going to accept that with a grain of salt and say, well maybe it was hearing the UPS truck, or some sound outside," she says, before adding: "Only it feels really good to say maybe that was [her begetter]. And who are we to say it wasn't?"

Tin Pets See Ghosts?