Phantom Felines And Other Ghostly Animals - Gerina Dunwich 2006
An Interview with Jeff Belanger
Understanding Paranormal Animals
Jeff Belanger, who launched the popular Ghostvillage.com website on Halloween of 1999, first experienced ghosts and the supernatural at the age of ten. He has been writing about these subjects since 1997 when he conducted an interview with the famed husband-and-wife ghost-hunting team of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Belanger has written on the topic of the supernatural for many magazines, and is the author of the following books: The World’s Most Haunted Places: From the Secret Files of Ghostvillage.com (New Page Books, 2004), Communicating with the Dead: Reach Beyond the Grave (New Page Books, 2005), and The Encyclopedia of Haunted Places: Ghostly Locales from Around the World (New Page Books, 2005). He is a graduate of Hofstra University and a member of the American Society of Psychical Research. His website is www.GhostVillage.com.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff Belanger in September of 2005. I posed the following twelve questions to him about animal ghosts and hauntings, which are followed by his straight-forward replies:
Q: How did you first become interested in the subject of ghosts?
A: I grew up in a very historic and haunted old New England town where it wasn’t uncommon to see houses that were two hundred or more years old. At age ten, I had more than one friend who claimed their old home was haunted. We would have sleepovers and break out the Ouija board—and then we would search the house for the things that bumped and creaked in the night. I found the descriptions of my friends’ ghost encounters so compelling that I’ve been hooked ever since.
Q: Have you personally ever seen, felt, heard, or sensed an animal ghost?
A: I’m not sure. In the house I grew up in, everyone in my family had heard something walking in the front hallway. I recall one afternoon as a teenager being home alone. I walked through the front hallway and looked down at a miniature chair my mother had along the wall, and just as it caught my attention, the chair slid out from the wall about six inches—as if something had bumped into it. I honestly can’t say what that something may have been, but it certainly wasn’t me.
Q: Why do some animal spirits remain earthbound after the death of the physical body while others apparently do not?
A: Some animal ghosts are simply psychic impressions left in an area—like a movie that plays over and over again, and some people can tune in to that movie under certain circumstances. It doesn’t mean the animal is still there and can interact with us—just that it was there at one time and we perceive it as an animal ghost. I imagine some animal spirits remain earthbound for the same reasons that some humans do—they don’t realize that they’re dead or they have something they feel obligated to do before they can move on (maybe keep a protective eye on their owner or claw at the couch one last time).
Q: There are many reports of houses, castles, and other dwellings being haunted by cats, dogs, and even phantom horse-drawn carriages. What causes ghosts to haunt certain places?
A: It seems that spirits of all kinds tend to stick around where they were most comfortable, and that’s usually home. In some cases, these animal spirits may be running through the routines they ran through in life, or they may feel the need to keep a watchful eye on the location they loved.
Q: If a person witnesses the apparition of an animal (or any other type of ghost, for that matter), how can he or she be certain that the apparition is actually a ghost and not a hallucination or a trick of the eyes?
A: Ghost encounters of all kinds are completely personal and subjective experiences, and truth is absolutely relative. Some people are so eager to believe in spirit contact that they seek (and usually find) signs everywhere. Others are more skeptical and won’t believe until the spirit of someone they knew in life taps them on their shoulder. No one can tell another what’s the real experience and what’s a trick of the eye. It comes down to the individual who has the encounter and what they perceive it to be. One person’s darting shadow is another person’s ghost.
Q: In cases of non-apparitional hauntings, are there any ways for a person to determine whether a ghost is that of a human or an animal?
A: You have to look for characteristic patterns. Animals wouldn’t typically open and close the head-level kitchen cabinets, and humans don’t typically brush up against other people’s ankles. Individual perception is everything when it comes to ghosts—it’s a gut feeling (or maybe even a sixth sense, if you will) that helps the living witness determine exactly who or what may be haunting them.
Q: Some people have reported hearing their deceased pets. Can EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) recordings pick up paranormal animal sounds (such as meowing, barking, or chirping) in the same way it does human voices? Are you familiar with any such cases?
A: I have heard a lot of EVP recordings that have many strange sounds in them, some that one might interpret to be non-human sounds. Though I haven’t personally heard a distinctly animal EVP, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible.
Q: Various methods, ranging from Ouija boards to séances, have been employed for communication with the spirits of dead people. Do you believe it is also possible to communicate with the spirits of animals, and if so, how would one go about making contact with, let’s say, the spirit of a deceased family pet?
A: For any kind of communication to occur, there needs to be at least two willing parties involved—this is also true in the world of the living. If I walk into my backyard and yell, “Hello,” and no one is there to hear it, then I’m not communicating. I have a pet parakeet named Mambo who flies around my house all day and often sits on my shoulder while I’m working. Though I don’t speak bird (and he doesn’t speak human), I believe we communicate—I can tell from his body language and peeps when he’s feeling playful or when he’s feeling mellow. Without being able to physically see or hear him, I don’t know how we would communicate. A Ouija board would likely mean the same thing to Mambo in death as it does in life—to him it may look a little like the newspaper he so often poops on in his cage. That’s not to say that I may not hear the phantom flutter of his wings one day letting me know that he’s still around. But I don’t know how I could communicate with him in death. All that being said, I have met animal healers and psychics who claim to be able to communicate with animals in both life and death, but I don’t feel I personally have this gift.
Q: Many people are afraid of ghosts. As a ghost investigator, do you feel such fears are unfounded?
A: A lot of us fear what we don’t understand. For many people, ghost experiences aren’t something they’re allowed to talk about. So if it happens to someone, they’re afraid of many things—their own mortality, if they’re sane, and concern that they may have to bear the burden of having this experience and not being able to talk about it with anyone for fear of ridicule. I’m glad to say I’ve seen this changing. People are discussing the subject more, books like this one talk about the experience, many websites have forums for people to share their own encounters, and ghosts have even gone mainstream on TV and in movies. It’s important we keep talking about them.
Q: Is there a difference between the spirit and the soul?
A: It depends on your belief system, but many faiths use these words interchangeably. For me, I don’t think it matters what terminology you use, so long as you acknowledge that “thing” inside of you and inside of every other living thing that makes us something more than creatures that just eat, sleep, procreate, and repeat.
Q: Some people do not believe that animals have souls. Others believe that only human beings have individual souls and that every animal is part of the “group soul” of its species. Do you have any thoughts on this?
A: One of the experiences I had as a child that convinced me there must be something after death was witnessing my grandfather’s body at his wake. It was clearly my grandfather’s body, but it didn’t really look like him—that “thing” inside of him that made him who he was, was gone. If we all had no soul or spirit, then he should have looked like he was sleeping, but he didn’t. I’ve witnessed the same phenomena with my pets over the years—that life force and personality, which made the animal something more than just an object, left after they died. I can only give my own opinion here as some would consider the idea heresy, but I believe all living things move on to something else—to what or where, I don’t know. Maybe some day I’ll come back and tell you.
Q: Your Ghost Village website features a large number of true ghost stories. Can you talk about some of the most interesting or unusual animal-related ones that you’ve received?
A: We’ve published more than a couple ghost encounters from people who believe their pets have visited them. Some people wrote that they felt something invisible pounce on their bed beside them, they watched little paw prints push into the bedspread just as their cat used to do and then the footprints stopped and the event was over. I once spoke to a family of four who all witnessed the shadow of what appeared to be their deceased dog dart through the room. And several witnesses have claimed to feel a cat brush against their legs though their cat passed away in some cases months earlier. Most people who have these pet encounters don’t seem frightened because the presence is somehow familiar. Once the encounter ends, most claim the experience was actually very special and comforting to know their pets are still around and are making themselves known.