Pet Articles
Can Dogs See Dead People?
Author: Bill Knell
“I see dead people.” Uttered by actor Haley Joel Osment in M.
Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, it has become one of the most
famous lines in movie history. Although the film was based on a
fictional story, we have all seen those people on television who
claim they can see or communicate with the dead. Would it
surprise you to learn that dogs may also possess that ability?
One of the oldest known paranormal beliefs is that dogs have the
ability to see or communicate with the dead. It would be easy to
believe that people have come to that conclusion based on a
dog’s natural behavior. We’ve all seen dogs stand still and
stare or react to something we were unable to see or hear.
However, there may be much more to it then that.
Most of the pet people I have known had some sort of a weird dog
story to tell. The most common involves the death of a beloved
dog owner. The dog owner would die and it always seems like his
or her pet would know about the event before anyone else. My
mother often recounts the story of Grandpa Bill.
For the last few years of his life, Grandpa Bill languished from
a terminal illness. When he wasn’t in the hospital, he stayed
with us. It was during those stays that Bill became very close
to an Irish Setter adopted by my mother. Rusty and Bill were
inseparable. Whenever he sat in our back yard to get some sun
during summer afternoons, Bill would play with her by throwing a
ball for Rusty to catch or using her favorite old sock as a pull
toy. Rusty slept at the foot of Bill’s bed and would start
barking anytime he coughed or experienced shallow breathing.
During the final days of his life, Bill was back in the
hospital. It was during that time that Rusty started acting
strangely. She would pace back and forth in front of the bed in
a spare room where Bill slept when he stayed at our home. She
would circle the lawn chair he used to sit in when he played
with her in the backyard. It was really eerie! However, stranger
things were yet to come.
Although we knew he wasn’t going to live much longer, it came as
a bit of a shock when Bill finally passed on. We thought that he
would probably live another few months based on what the doctors
said, but that wasn‘t to be. A nurse checked on him around three
in the morning and found he had passed on. Around the same time
and without explanation, Rusty awakened everyone in our
household. She began to howl uncontrollably. Less then an hour
later, we received the sad news of Bill’s passing by phone.
I was too young to remember most of what happened, but I do
recall that my parents were freaked out by the whole event. My
mother was a no nonsense kind of person who had no use for
anything paranormal, yet she recounted this story several times
to me in later years whenever the subject of strange animal
behavior would come up. Anything but a storyteller, I always
felt that she spoke of those events as a way of trying to
understand them. I suppose we could just toss it all off to
coincidence, but the odds do not seem to be with that
considering how many other people have experienced similar
events.
Most everyone who has ever lived in any kind of a suburban
neighborhood has some sort of a story to tell about that one
weird house that everyone would stay away from. In my case, it
was about seven houses down from mine in a neighborhood on Long
Island. All of the houses on our block had been built in the
early 1950s. With slight exceptions of larger or smaller models,
most of the homes looked like they belonged together. All except
one. The weird house in our neighborhood had a dark wood
exterior and was landscaped with small trees instead of bushes
and hedges. It stood out and most of the neighbors were not
amused.
If it’s a true saying that strange houses attract stranger
people, you could prove it by the weird house on our block. From
the moment they moved in, the first family to live in that house
made no attempt to fit into the neighborhood. The parents and
three children were weird. They hated to answer their door, had
two dogs that were as mean as they were big and never kept up
their property.
Within ten years of moving into the house, the family fell
apart. After several biting incidents, the police took the dogs
away. The older brother died of a drug overdose, the younger one
stopped speaking, their sister always seemed to be taking on the
role of mom, and dad as their parents seemed unable to cope with
anything. After their father was hospitalized for alcoholism,
mom gave up, sold the house and moved away to parts unknown.
Before anyone could move in, the house was given a major
facelift. Gone was the excessive number of trees that had
created a haunted mansion look. Gone was the nasty looking wood
exterior that gave way to aluminum siding. The inside was gutted
and replaced with lighter colors and modern appliances. By the
time the new family moved in during the mid 1960s, it was like
an entirely different house. However, some of the sorrow from
the previous family may have been left behind.
The new family consisted of a couple, a boy and girl under ten,
and a cute Yorkshire Terrier they called nappy (short for
Napoleon). These people were just the opposite of the previous
occupants. They were friendly, took care of their property and
got along well with all the neighbors. I knew the children and
played with them when they came by my end of the block, but
rarely visited their house. Most of what happened next I got
from my other friends and people closer to the family then I was.
A couple of my friends were regularly invited to sleepovers at
the house. During the sleepovers, Nappy would normally roam the
house and eventually settle into his little doggie bed in one
corner of the living room. However, on more then a few occasions
the friendly little dog exhibited some very unfriendly and odd
behavior.
Nappy would bound up the stairs to a finished attic with two
bedrooms. This is where the children slept in bedrooms separated
by a small hallway. Once there, he would inexplicably start to
growl at the room to the right where the boy slept. This was
also the room were the older brother from the previous family
had once slept and where he had been found dead of a drug
overdose.
Their dog’s odd behavior was first noticed by the children a few
weeks after the new family moved in. Some of my friends who had
slept over in the boy’s room told me that the boy and his
parents were really freaked out by the whole thing. The girl had
seen it, but since it wasn’t directed at her room, tended to
ignore the incidents.
It seems that Nappy got along fine with the children and showed
no animosity towards the sleepover guests either. That meant
that his nighttime growling behavior was being directed towards
an unknown source. I suppose that any number of simple
explanations could be used to explain the whole thing away, but
the dog’s growling wasn’t consistent. He didn’t do it every
night and as often as not slept quietly without the growling
when friends of the boy stayed overnight.
About a year after they moved in, the family moved out. This
seemed strange considering the investment they had made in the
property, but I doubt the reason for their move had anything to
do with their dog‘s odd behavior. There were some strange
stories from my friends who spent more time at the house then I
did. On a few of the sleepovers they said that the boy’s room
always seemed very cold, despite a brand new oil burner having
been installed in the house before the family moved in.
Like so many other events involving the paranormal, odd animal
behavior is often categorized as explainable even if we do not
know the cause. Because dogs cannot talk, we do not know exactly
what they are reacting to. Can dogs see dead people? I guess
we’ll have to wait until we’re dead to find out the answer to
that question! Read more amazing stories about dogs at
http://advice.azpuppies.com
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Title: Can Dogs See Dead People? Topic: Pets Author: Bill Knell
Author's Email: billknell@cox.net Author's Website:
http://www.billknell.com Author's Phone: 480-632-7909 Word count
: 1456 Terms To Use Article: Permission is granted to use this
article for free online or in print. Please add a link to or
print my website address of http://www.billknell.com
A native New Yorker now living in Arizona, Bill Knell is a
forty-something guy with a wealth of knowledge and experience.
He's written hundreds of articles offer advice on a wide variety
of subjects. A popular Speaker, Bill Knell presents seminars on
a number of topics that entertain, train and teach. A popular
radio and television show Guest, you've heard Bill on thousands
of top-rated shows in all formats and seen him on local,
national and international television programs.
About the author:
A native New Yorker now living in Arizona, Bill Knell is a
forty-something guy with a wealth of knowledge and experience.
He's written hundreds of articles offer advice on a wide variety
of subjects.
