Animal Spirits?

Animal Spirits?

This topic is fairly hot today in the realms of the layman in the world of mediums and psi work. Everyone from Sylvia Browne to those who hold some interest in mediumship and have had things that go bump in the night. Or, they have in some way sensed a long dead pet for some odd reason.

In this piece, you will find stories of personal experiences, what some of the relevant research information (which is usually little more than personal experiences that have been picked apart by someone else! Usually someone who claims to have some sort of alphabet soup behind their name!)

According to Sylvia Browne, animals lives are much simpler than humans,

"that's why an animal can spot a spirit faster than a human can. Have

you ever watched a cat or dog bristle at something in a room and you

have no idea why? It's because their eyes are unclouded! An animal,

bird, or lower-level entity will know that a tornado or an earthquake is

coming long before because of the innocence of the lower levels."1

I dunno...seems like to me, the lives of our pet animals is NOT an easy life. I believe that they are able to spot spirits faster than humans because they have a much broader range of sight. That they are able to see beyond the light spectrum than humans are capable. I know from our own cats and dog and parrots that they instantly react whenever there is a new spirit that enters our living room. The parrots start to say "Hello!" The cats will seemingly stare into what I perceive as empty space. Our pup will sometimes growl or watch the spirit move about the room. In fact, I have patiently waited until "Max(ine)" our scarlet macaw will start t say "hello" and when I take a digital picture, there orbs can be seen in the photo. One day, in fact, I took a photo of Max(ine) and she actually had an orb floating very close to her cage!

Neo is our several years old neutered cat. One day Al was holding Neo in his arms petting him when Neo jumped out of Al's arms and ran to a spot under our front window. Neo just didn't jump per se. He attacked the area. Neo was jumping in the air biting an invisible being, hissing, yelling, scratching the thin air. For some moments after, we all figured out that Neo mutsa had some sort of nervous breakdown! His tail was HUGE and looked like a brush that you use to clean baby bottles with. Later we called a Native American friend of ours who explained that Neo was protecting us from a strange "spirit dog" that had suddenly entered into our living room. Since that date Neo is fairly jumpy.

Animal behaviorists know that elephants can communicate as as much as 50 miles between herds by using the lower frequencies range far beyond the human ability to hear. Perhaps, it is the animals to perceive what we do NOT that makes them so great for locating spirits, etc.

This "piece" was supposed to be an argument that animals have some sort of mechanism in their souls (for want of a better word) so that when they cross over, they are in the Spirit world. But I have digressed a bit. Please forgive me.

When a person crosses over, they meet their pets that they have had in this dimension. How do we know this? We know from Natural Law the phrase "as above, as below." This means roughly that as life is here on earth, there is a corresponding form of life in the hereafter. Could also be interpreted that life above us is highly similar to our life on earth. This would be a rational explanation why I have met spirits who have crossed over after a quick, violent death. They assume according to the churches policy on life-after-death that they are going to be ascending to a life VASTLY different from than what they have experienced on earth. Actually, the opposite is true. But back to animals before I digress any further...

Researchers Past and Present are Studying this Topic

This field of psychical research is nothing new. William Barrett has written about this very topic. According to Barrette, an 19 and 20 century parapsychology research on apparitions came to the conclusions about apparitions:

" are in fact so common and so generally accepted that the chief skepticism

regarding them has been as to "the ghosts of clothes" they wore. This

would be puzzling if they were regarded as objective realities, external to

the percipient. But if we regard apparitions of the dying and dead as

phantasms projected from the mind of the persipient, the difficulties of

clothes, and the ghosts of animal pets, which sometimes are seen,

disappear.2

Garth Moore a 20th century researcher believes,

Apparitions are not always of the dead; they are sometimes of the living.

These apparitions often appear at times of crises, sometimes shortly before

death. Sometimes they appear shortly after death or at the moment of death,

when they cannot be classified as apparitions of the living, though otherwise

the three types have much in common. It is difficult to distinguish those due

to telepathy or to clairvoyance from those which are an actual visitation by

the spirit of the person seen-of the person or animal, for apparitions of animals

are also known. But they are not all associated with a crises.3

Moore, page 41..

"...animals often appear to have a more acute ESP than human beings.

They seem to be as much aware of a psychic presence, such as an

apparition, as are humans, and they give the same indication of

awareness on occasions when humans have sensed nothing.

Moore, page 684

Martin Ebon, another 20th century researcher said the following...

On the afternoon of August 17, 1959, thousands of terns, gulls and

other water fowl, which had settled for some months on Montana's

Lake Hegben, lifted themselves off the water and flew away. When

the sun set, the lake's surface was virtually without a ripple. Within

hours, several earthquakes were ravaging mountainous western

Montana. The Hegben Dam cracked under the strain of the earth's

movements. The flooding killed residents and nearby Yellowstone

tourists alike, but the birds, of course, were safe.5

What had warned the birds on Lake Hegben? Any number of

hypothesis are possible, ranging from "pure" prophecy, actual

knowledge of the earthquake danger, to a delicate early sensing

of the movement's below the earth's crust. Reports to the Interior

Department's Fish and Wildlife Service and to the Agriculture

Department's Division of Wildlife Management revealed that rangers

had found no animal carcasses, either, in the zone affected by the

earthquake. Dr. John W. Aldrich of the Department of the Interior

recalled at the time that geese and peacocks are known to have an

acute sense of hearing-or perhaps another sensory or extrasensory

capacity-which enables them to detect sounds at great distances.

Dr. Aldrich noted that birds are acutely aware of changes in

atmospheric pressures which signal new weather conditions, and

that the sensory apparatus which functions to serve migratory fowl

may also help them to detect approaching dangers, including forest

fires, at an early stage.6

Ebon continues:

The Institute for Parapsychology at Durham has made such cases

the subject of several studies in "psi trailing". In these instances,

precognition does not play a clear role; the obvious overlapping

between seemingly prophetic impressions and telepathic or

clairvoyant images is an acknowledged research problem. The

Lake Hegben mass flight of birds strongly suggests that they

"foresaw" the earthquake danger in some way, but the means

and categorization of this foreknowledge completely elude

speculation. Dr. J. B. Rhine wrote in 1951 (Journal of

Parapsychology, Vol. XV, No. 4) that among case reports of

"unusual behavior in animals there are a fair number of cases in

which the reaction is taken to be premonitory."7

Our Own Personal Experiences

CHARMAINE

When our children were preschool age we decided to find them a pet. We visited a local pet store and fell in love with a sort of dark colored calico cat. We named her Charmaine after a cat I grew up with.

Charmaine was a difficult cat. Like most cats, Charmaine related to us on her level. Sometimes if the children would play with her she might nip them to warn them to keep their distance. She was not a "huggable" type of cat. She remained an indoor cat. She never was interested in leaving her home. That was fine by us.

Over the years we all sort of adjusted to our lives living together in our apartment. Charmaine sort of felt as if she owned us and that we were here for her amusement as well as to cater to her every whim (which of course, was all too true).

One day when Charmaine was about 17 years old, she had some sort of stroke. She passed away during the night.

Some years later, some of our children would see Charmaine walking in our hallway. We as adults would look, she simply vanished. Began to worry about the children's mental health! One evening, Deb was sitting in our living room on a chair when suddenly she announced, "I just saw Charmaine!" She had seen Charmaine walk down our front staircase and when Charmaine reached the bottom of our stairs she just vanished into thin air. I was wondering when Charmaine would make her appearance known to us.

A month or so later, it was Christmas time and we had a small Christmas tree (probably the last tree, if I remember correctly) in our living room. I sat on our sofa in full view of the tree when I noticed that one of the tree limbs moved. I sat transfixed! Kept staring at the same area...then I noticed that some of the presents were moving. They were being moved by Charmaine! How do I know? Simple! Charmaine walked right past me into parts of the living room and totally vanished. What did I see? WOW. I called Deb who was in the kitchen at the time and she sort of giggled and walked back into our kitchen.

Hmmm...I KNOW that this will sound ridiculous to some and to others, it will make complete sense. I saw only her rear end...the tail end! Literally! I saw her two back feet and her tail was pointed straight up as it always was when she was alive. She turned away from me and I could even see her business end...pointed straight at me...you see, Charmaine never really liked me much. She disliked me the most. It makes perfect sense to me that she would return for a visit and point her butt straight at me and then disintegrate into thin air!

TARA

Tara was our Samoyed puppy. We had to put down our long time friend, Buffy. Buffy began to have seizures regularly and her quality of life was not good. Our family veterinarian suggested that she had to be put down. Her seizures became even worse with all of the meds that she prescribed.

Months passed and we eventually missed Buffy a great deal. So did the children. We decide to see if we could locate a puppy for our family. We did a little research and thought that a Samoyed pup might be just the ticket for us. We read our local newspaper and sure enough! Lo and Behold, an ad for a Samoyed puppy was available for adoption.

We wrote down the address and and drove off to pay a visit for our new found member of our family. We found the address and spotted Tara cavorting with some of the adult dogs that the breeder had. To say that Tara cavorted was an understatement. Tara didn't cavort. She floated! She was 15 pounds of puppy that had ADHD. Yup! That would be a fair statement. When the kids went outside to play with Tara they would run, she would sort of run, jump in the air, float, bounce all at the same time. We nicknamed Tara "Tinkerbell." We called the breeder and asked if her activity level was normal for her. The breeder assured me that it was. We then next took Tara to our veterinarian who assured me that she was a bit off the puppy scale of behavior. All the vet could do was to offer a series of pills and possibly "shots to drug Tara up." The effect would be that Tara would act like a stoned zombie most of the time. THAT was unacceptable for us. To make matters worse, if we returned her to the breeder then she would be undoubtedly resold again to another unsuspecting family. We decided to keep Tara...boundless energy and all.

Over the years, Tara grew older and moved a little slower. That was fine because our family was growing older and slowing down a bit. Eventually Tara matured into a really loving family dog. A dog who could float in air at the age of ten years. After that she started to really calm down.

One day I noticed that Tara was losing some weight. It was really obvious to us. Then she started to have difficulty eating her usual food. We rushed Tara to the vet who said Tara had a really nasty form of oral cancer. We knew what we had to do, we had to let her go. We did and she crossed over quickly.

It took about a few months later that Deb heard Tara barking...first in our basement. Then in our backyard. I take a lot of comfort in knowing that we did all that we could to love and treat Tara as if she was a member of our family for close to 18 years. One day, I heard tara whine...I was happy too hear her little whine that she would use whenever she wanted to go out to play with our kids.

Experiences of Friends

"Anyway, this was an odd few incidents and I'd like to know what you guys think of it. Before I start, please note that my husband is a 'believe it when I see it' kind of guy and this was the first ghostly encounter that he had.

We used to have 3 horses on our property - 2 black mares (Echo and Ruby) and 1 Chestnut gelding (Coupe). Keep in mind also that we kept Echo separate from Ruby and Coupe. Echo was always in the North pasture and Ruby and Coupe in the South pasture. So, there should always be 1 black horse in the North pasture and 1 black in the South.

Our first sighting was while we were in the house. He looked out the window upstairs and started cussing - Ruby apparently had jumped the fence and got into the pasture with Echo. I looked out the same window, next to him, and sure enough, there were 2 black horses in the north pasture - swishing tails, stomping feet and all. We go out, grab the gear to wrangle Ruby back out...only to find there is 1 horse in the North, not 2. Ruby was all the way down at the very south point of the South pasture. We look at each other like ... ... we'd both seen 2 black horses out there and there hadn't been enough time in between for Ruby to go from the North to the South again before we got down there. Plus, no reason too, as she loved Echo, which is why we separated them to begin with.

These appearances kept up sporadically even after we sold Ruby and Coupe, leaving only Echo. Still, we'd see 2 horses out there from time to time. We'd go to get a better look and it was gone. Then we sold Echo and so far...no more ghost horse. At least, not that we've seen.

Ideas? Thoughts?

~Raven"

I asked him, "How do you balance your collar with medium a medium? How do you balance what you teach with what you know inside to be true?"

He explained to me that this is interpretation in reading the Bible and he finds that his beliefs line up most of time with what is written in the Bible.

I looked at him and I said, "People who commit suicide don't go to hell."

I sat back and waited for him to show anger toward me. He leaned forward and said, "I know, I see them too. I counsel both the living and the dead."

He and I spent a few moments studying each other, and both of us had a bit of a smirk.

I stared at the chain around his neck that existed only to hold a precious cross. His eyes were cool and contemplative. He almost seemed relieved to have another person like him to talk to. I had so many questions to ask him. This was an opportunity that most mediums never have, to speak to a priest who understands what it is to be a medium. He shared a story form his childhood that included parochial school and a nun who seemed to understand his path. He had questioned he about animals that die and his belief that they were in heaven.

She responded, and I paraphrase, "If we love animals, then God loves them too, so wouldn't they go to heaven?" The father explained that this form of belief is called "theology from below," meaning common sense of the faithful people. I found all of this terribly interesting and enlightening. I think that was a good answer form the sister, an honest gentle response for a child.

DuBois, Allison, We are their heaven, page 197f.

Robert Morris, in a paper on "Precognition in Laboratory rats" presented at the 1967 Winter meeting of the Foundation for Research on the nature of Man, noted that spontaneous cases reported to the Foundation's Institute for Parapsychology contain a number suggesting extrasensory powers on the parts of animals, generally household pets and added that "often some sort of emotional bond between man and animal provides the impetus for the manifestation of psi on the animal's part."

Ebon, page 174.

Mr. Morris told of an incident reported by a visitor to the Foundation headquarters whose young brother had left the family home for a long stay out f town. Neither he nor his family knew how long the trip would last. A few days after the boy had left, his pet dog became disconsolate, eating very little and spending much time "lying outside the boy's bedroom." As time went on, eventually the dog seemed to get used to the boy's absence and act quite normally. One day, however, it became very excited. It ran up to the boy's door and started pawing on it; then raced down the stairs out the door, and up the road to the main highway, where it looked both ways and then scampered back to the house. It did this, with gusto, several times that day. About an hour later this excited behavior, the boy returned-to the surprise of everyone except for his dog.

Ebon, page 174.

Mr. Morris deduced from this and similar cases that animal precognition may yield "a readily observable emotional response." The animal psi study group of Duke University consequently sought to devise an experiment that would bring measurable emotion into a laboratory setting involving animals. As maze experiments with rats provided the only reliable setting, the researchers studied case reports to find a suitable pattern. A frequently reported case was that of a hunting dog that eagerly runs to his master whenever he shoulders his gun-except on the day when the dog, old and feeble, is to be put out of his misery with the same gun. Morris noted that "on such occasions the dogs often are found hiding somewhere, cowering under the house whining and whimpering, and reluctant to come out."

Ebon, page 174f.

This prompted Morris to recall that at the end of his experiments, rats taken from their cages to be killed "tend to be more aggressive and relcitrant" than usual. But how could an experiment isolate sensory or telepathic links between the rat-about-to-die and a reluctant experimenter who "dislikes very much the task of killing rats and thus may be less at ease in handling them" on the eve of their execution? And how does one measure a rat's emotional state? And if the experimenters nervousness simply transfers to the rat, is that a psychic phenomenon?

Ebon, page 175.

Several means of testing whether or not a rat was keyed up, could sense its death, were examined. One method was pointed towards significant results employed an "open field", an eight foot by eight foot box whose floor was marked off into small squares. The rat was placed in a corner of the box an, among other observations, "a record was kept of the number of squares the animal crossed." Morris stated: "Taking our cue from the cowering dog under the house, we figured that a rat who is about to die would show more restricted activity in the open field, spending most of his time in the corner in which he was put, compared with a rat who was not about to die." He added:

The actual procedure was to take a group of rats that were scheduled to be killed and to run each of them individually in the open field for two minutes. Immediately after running, each was taken to a coworker who either destroyed it or returned it to its own colony, according to a random plan unknown to the open-field scorer. Thus the open field scorer did not know which animals were to live and which ones were to die, and the coworker did not know how each animal had performed in the open field. After the series was completed, a record of each animal's performance was compiled and compared with the record of which ones lived or died."

Ebon, page 175.

The pilot experiment, involving only 16 animals, was described by Mr. Morris as enlightening: "In the short two minute period of observation, half of the animals that lived were active enough to leave their original square, whereas none of the animals that died showed such activity." Although this is but the first step toward statistically based laboratory research of animal precognition, it is cited here because, as Morris states, it points a way toward an assessment of "animals emotional responses to situations which either do not yet exist, or which do exist but of which the animal could have had no sensory awareness."

Ebon, page 175f.

OSCAR THE CAT PREDICTS CROSSING OVER--- For a couple of weeks in late July, a two year old feline named Oscar made headlines on national television news, newspapers and a lot of Spiritualist and Religious egroups. He seems to have the uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to make their transition into spirit. He curls up next to them in their final hours. Dr. David Dosa reported the phenomena in the New England Journal of Medicine. "He does not¹t make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die." Oscar lives on the third floor of the dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center at Providence, Rhode Island. The facility treats people with Alzheimers, Parkinson¹s disease and other illnesses. His accuracy, recorded in 25 cases to date, prompted staff to call family members once Oscar had chosen someone. It usually means the person has less than four hours to live. "Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one," said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University. One family refused to have Oscar in the room while their loved one was dying. Oscar meowed furiously and paced up and down the corridor. Dr. Dosa reported that Oscar is "not a cat that's friendly to people." He noted that Oscar was generally aloof. No one¹s certain if Oscar¹s behavior is scientifically significant or points to a cause. Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University wonders if the cat notices telltale scents or reads something into the behavior of the nurses who raised him. From the time Associated broke the story, through its many presentations on various media, no one seems to have pointed out that pets, particularly cats, are very adept at seeing spirits. Spiritualist mediums who work in hospitals and nursing homes and have opportunities to witness patients making their transition, report a large number of spirits gathered in the room prior to the transition. No one ever dies alone. Some Spiritualists pointed out that Oscar would have been attracted to higher energies. Most mediums report the presence of pets in the Spirit World, a point denied in religious chat rooms, where one writer pointed to Ecclesiastes 3:21 which says: "Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the beast, which goes down to the earth?" Perhaps someone should update the Bible. It's been done before.8

SOMETHING ELSE TO THINK ABOUT

It is very comforting to think that our deceased animal spirits come to visit us! It is cozy to think that we might hear the bark of our greatest friend...but mere comforting is not enough for me...our conclusions above all else, must be real and true! Proving truth or fallacy could be hard...but perhaps if we use our ability to deduce things then we may be able to understand ideas even better.

One of my main beefs about the whole concept of dead pets visiting us is that if it were possible then why haven't more animals ever visited us? Why is it that when I am using our stove cooking something for dinner that when I turn to reach for some odd item to add to what ever I am cooking at the time that wild animals don't appear? I have yet to see an elephant standing in my kitchen!

Or a boar in the bathroom!! Why aren't wild animal spirits showing up where ever we live or travel? Wild animals are dying every day. There is no day that a wild animal doesn't die in the wild some where's in the world.

Could it be that our own memories are somehow triggering these visits from the after-life? Perhaps. Even most likely. Each person has to answer this for their own satisfaction.

Is there some role between seeing spirit animals and mediumship? Most likely...especially if one is seeing an animal that they have never seen in life before. Example, once I was doing a reading for a client whose dad passed away while he was driving a semi. During the reading I was shown that he had a favorite pet. A white terrier mix named "Ricky". It is interesting to me to note that perhaps I was actually telepathically reading the young clients mind?

Another possibility is that I was in contact with the spirit and the spirit told me what I needed to know to authenticate the reading for the client.

Footnotes:

1. Browne, Sylvia, Exploring the Levels of Creation, page 22.

2. Barrett, William, F, FRS, On The Threshold of the Unseen, (NY: Dutton), 1918.

3. Moore, Garth, E. Try the Spirits: Christianity and Psychical Research (NY: Oxford University Press) 1977.

4. Ibid

5. Ebon, Martin Prophecy In Our Time, (NY, NY The New American Library) 1968.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. PARAPSYCHIC JOURNAL Reporting News in Metaphysics, Spiritualism and the Afterlife Edition # 54 Friday, August 17th 2007 -- Editor: Robert Egby

NOTES

Ecclesiastes 3:19, which says: "For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other."