You woke up due to a loud sound of constant barking. It was coming from the living room downstairs. You rush down to find your dog staring at a wall. It stopped barking but kept growling in the dark shadows. Being a trained dog, it’s not how it should have behaved. The experience you just had might have left you baffled. It has never acted out of the ordinary. Then what stirred it to action?
You might have been convinced that your dog can see the dead despite no scientific evidence of ghosts. You still feel pretty unsettled. Living with someone fusing through the walls, invisible to human eyes, is scary. In the best-case scenario, it’s Casper, the friendly ghost.
But wait, can dogs see ghosts? It depends on whether or not you believe in ghosts.
Do You Believe In Ghosts And Spirits?
Humans leave an impact on everything they come across. For many years, we have bred dogs to make them more valuable to us. Turning them into the genuinely extraordinary beings we know today. We then started to put their senses to the test, answering numerous questions. However, whether or not they can see a ghost has remained a mystery to date.
Lots of people, including Audrey Hopes, believe that dogs can. When they see their dog acting weird, they are convinced. On the contrary, you should note that their own belief underlies such a perception. The most common signs that prove their dogs’ ability to sense paranormal activity are as follow,
- Staring down a hallway, wall, or corner,
- Barking, whining, or showing other anxious behavior,
- Being fearful of or drawn to specific rooms or areas of your home.
What Do Skeptics Believe?
Dogs are undoubtedly unique pets. Along with the usual five senses – Touch, smell, see, hearing, and taste. They arguably have a powerful gut feeling. The fact that they outreach us in these senses makes them more loveable. So, when you see a dog acting weird, it can be the reason mentioned below.
Superior Sense Of Smell:
While we humans tend to see the world with our eyes, dogs do the same with their sense of smell. As known today, it is the most prominent sense in dogs. Reportedly dogs can have up to 300 million scent receptors which are far more than our five million—making their sense of smell around 10,000 – 100,000 times stronger than ours.
Being territorial animals, they tend to react to the presence of someone new in their area. While you don’t know it, your dog might have barked as it felt the presence of a new dog your neighbors bought in as a pet. Or maybe you are right, and it may have sensed a deceased person, but not in the way you thought.
There must be something in the house that person was attached to. Maybe it was an armchair or a small gadget. While you were heading towards your bed, you accidentally left the drawer open where you kept the device. The dog sensed its former owner’s smell there, stimulating his barking response. Or you can say it was calling upon its former owner.
Ability Go Hear Ultrasonic Sounds:
Have you ever wondered how a whistle works? I mean, you never hear any sound coming out of it. But this furry friend of ours seems to respond to it. That’s because the whistle releases ultrasonic waves, sound at a frequency that human ears are not capable of listening to.
Your dog may not be acting weird; perhaps it was responding to annoying noises out of your reach. Those noises made it upset and irritated it to the point of barking. Maybe it was just a coincidence that the dark shadow and those noises lined up in the same direction.
Wider Field Of Vision:
Like cats, dogs can see clearly through the darkness of the night. They are believed to have about four times better sight than us. Thus, it is possible that the dog detected a movement that can’t be seen through human eyes.
Repeating A Habit:
At some point in our lives, we all have experienced the departure of someone dear to us. In the early days after this separation, we find ourselves staring at the empty chair where they used to sit. If we millennials, being the smart ones around, do something seemingly strange. Then dogs, a social species, are bound to act the same in one way or another.
It won’t come as a surprise if you see a dog staring at an empty chair and its owners tell you that this was where his former master used to rest. It does not necessarily mean that the dog sees their ghost. Instead, it can act out of its habit, lying there at this time of day. Its head is resting on the floor, like an obedient child waiting to receive an order or a pat.
What Can Be Deduced?
In recent years AI has come a long way! And it feels like it has answers to all our problems. However, it does not seem to believe in the supernatural. Maybe there’s no such thing as ghosts. It has to be a fantasy our seniors embedded in our minds as reality, warning us about the boogie man. Right? Not so sure.
Recent studies have shown that dogs can sense minor changes in the environment. They have been reported to sense cancer in humans and predict lousy weather. According to pet psychologist Marty Miller, these tiny changes in the atmosphere detected by dogs take place when there’s a supernatural being present.
As for the actual answer, it is unfortunate that dogs can’t speak. Because they are the only ones who can end this fuss, lucky for us, the jury is still out; one day, we might finally get to know what makes them act so strange. After all, dogs are adorable and capable of surpassing us in everything we do. Yet they are so loyal to their beloved parents.
Further Reading: