Can Pets See Ghosts?

Can our pets see spooky things that we can't?

Many pet owners have experienced being in a room with an animal spookily staring into space as if there’s something there we can’t see. Are pets able to see ghosts?

Paranormal Pet Stories

Stories of pets that can see ghosts.

Thousands of people online have stories to tell about their pets having seemingly supernatural abilities. Here is a small selection we discovered.

Reddit user VCinOhio wrote about their experience with their pet dog Lucky in a cemetery.

“I used to take photos of grave markers for out-of-state family for a genealogical website. I would often take my previous dog, Lucky dog, with me as company.

On one trip to a really old part of a cemetery, I could not find the markers from a previous cemetery transcription. I reached out in my thoughts and asked the people who's markers I was looking for help to find them.

After I made the request, I had a feeling to go up on the top a small hill. They are at the top of the hill. As this thought popped into my head, the hair on Lucky's back went up and he seemed to be looking at something on the road to the top of the hill.

Yep all 6 of the graves were there.”

Another reddit user called pinkisacoloryes wrote of their little dog waking them up several times during the night and leading them to an empty room. Once they reached the room the dog would howl and growl which was very out of character. Sometimes the lights would also flicker on and off on their own in the same room but no where else in the house.

You can find hundreds more stories like these all over the internet. It has even become a common trope in horror movies that cats or dogs are the first to notice when something spooky is about to happen.

Theories about Pets and Ghosts

Some animals’ special sensory abilities are able to be explained by science. Cats and dogs have eyesight, hearing and smell that is far more highly tuned for sensing prey and unexpected activity than ours is.

According to the American Kennel Club dogs in particular have a sense of intuition that is very powerful. Dogs are somehow able to sense when their owner is about to come home even if they show up unexpectedly.

Dogs are also able to predict disasters such as large storms and earthquakes before they happen. This is probably due to their superior sense of hearing and smell giving them clues that we are not able to notice.

Cats and dogs also have far better night vision than us. It could be that they are able to see things moving in the night time such as bugs or other pests that we simply can’t see because of our limited vision.

It is also possible that animal’s superior senses give them an ability to see things in realms that we can’t. Spirits are generally believed to exist in a form we can’t usually see but can experience in other ways.

Perhaps animals’ senses are finely tuned enough that they are able to see a whole world of spirits that isn’t visible to us most of the time. Unfortunately we can never really know for sure what our pets are experiencing.

Do you have any stories about pets behaving strangely? Let us know in the comments!

If you enjoyed this article you may also be interested in Oscar the rest home cat or our ability to detect when someone is looking at us.