Phantom Felines And Other Ghostly Animals - Gerina Dunwich 2006

Sampson and Teddy
Hounds and Hauntings

by Russell Roberts

I live in the Utica area of central New York in a house built circa 1805. My grandparents, who used to live in the house, had two dogs that they adopted in the 1970s. Sampson (my favorite of the two dogs) was a white-and-brown-spotted English spaniel with a bobbed tail. The other dog, Teddy, was a black-and-tan-colored terrier mix. The two dogs got along well, despite being from separate homes. They are buried on a hill just off the back lawn within view of the house.

My story about these dogs starts two years ago when my girlfriend Elizabeth was visiting my home and asked who the two dogs looking in the window were. I looked and didn’t see anything. But I knew from experience that she was able to see things in the ghostly realm reflected in television screens or windows.

I might add that from my own experiences with ghosts I have taken up the hobby of ghost hunting as a way to prove and document the existence of ghosts, especially through photography. One day I saw a dog’s head in a picture I took inside the house. Later I saw two dogs in exterior pictures I took and they strongly resembled the two dogs that had belonged to my grandfather.

Last winter I heard a dog bark twice in the hallway while I was working on the computer. It sounded just like Sampson’s bark. (As I remember, he usually would bark twice and had a deeper bark than the other dog.) Upon investigation I found no dogs in the area, either inside or outside. So I figured Sampson was just letting me know of his presence or wanted me to do something for him, which I could not do being unable to see him.

It’s nice to know that both dogs loved living here enough to stay around even after their physical lives ended.