Can pets see ghosts?

Spooky season is in full swing, meaning there may be some heightened paranormal activity afoot. In fact, a survey conducted by YouGov revealed that two in five Americans believe ghosts are real, while one in five people say they’ve actually encountered one.

The existence of ghosts may be up for debate, but one of the most persistent beliefs is that our animals can sense spirits or paranormal activity. We’ve all witnessed the scene in scary movies or TV shows, when the tiny dog barks at the door but no one is there. Sure, the movie may be fake, but many pet owners have noticed their dog or cat do the same in real life.

Of course, there’s only one thought that enters a pet owner’s mind when this occurs – that their animal is obviously interacting with a ghost. To set the record straight, we spoke with two animal communicators – aka, pet psychics – to learn whether our animals are really channeling the other side.

Why do we believe our pets can see ghosts in the first place? According to Phoebe Hoffman, an animal communicator and intuitive guide based in New York City, it has a lot to do with their heightened senses.

“Pets are living off of energy, whether it’s our energy or energy that we are not privy to, because we’re so limited in our senses compared to them,” Hoffman tells us. “Now, can I say that what they’re seeing is ghosts? I don’t know that because I’ve never seen a ghost. I’m not seeing what they’re seeing, but I’ve had many experiences with my own animals – which happen to be cats – where they are having an absolute moment with something that’s there that only they can witness.”

It goes without saying that animals have senses that are unknown to humans. When it comes to our beloved canines, dogs have the ability to hear much higher-pitched noises than their owners. The average adult human can’t hear sounds above 20,000 Hertz (Hz), while dogs can hear sounds as high as 47,000 to 65,000 Hz, per the American Kennel Club.

Meanwhile, cats are known to have great eyesight, especially in the dark. According to Texas A&M University, felines can dilate their pupils in low-light settings and they have a special reflective layer called the tapetum lucidum, which can reflect more light to the back of the eye.

“Non-human animals sense things in different ways than humans do. Cats, for instance, the way they see things is different from the way humans see things. Their eyesight is different, they can definitely perceive energies that we can’t or things that aren’t visible to the human eye,” Olivia LaBarre, an animal communicator and Reiki specialist based in NYC, tells us. “Most of the animals I communicate with have increased senses beyond the five senses.”

But what about those undeniable moments when our dog or cat appears to be reacting – or interacting – with something we can’t see? When they begin to bark or meow at nothing visible, stand in the corner, play with an object that belonged to a deceased family member, or assume behaviours that are characteristic of a former pet? For LaBarre – who’s been an animal communicator and grief worker for five years – her clients have noticed that, after one of their pets dies, their living animal will even start taking on some of the behaviours of the animal who passed.

When these moments occur, it’s important to look out for certain signs or signals that your dog or cat’s behaviour has suddenly shifted. This can look like playing with something that isn’t there, tilting their head, arching their back, or wagging their tail.

As for what pet owners should do when they believe their beloved animal is interacting with a ghost, experts agree to just sit back and let it happen. “Allow it, observe it, and just pay attention because it might be about you. Humans are very unaware of the mysteries of the universe. Animals, they’re tapped in. They are aware that energy doesn’t die,” says Hoffman. “Just let it happen. It’s not a bad thing.”

However, there could be the slight off chance that a poltergeist from the next Paranormal Activity instalment just so happens to be living in your kitchen. Then, of course, it’s time to call in the experts… or an exorcist.

Our pets’ heightened senses – and sometimes their silly, quirky, and erratic behaviour – has played into the belief that dogs and cats can see ghosts. Still, there’s much uncertainty about whether this long-standing superstition is actually true.

“We are so limited in our ability to see what the naked eye cannot see. Animals have this window into watching spirits and energy,” says Hoffman. “But as far as a ghost? That I don’t know, but I know they’re seeing something.”

Although it continues to be a mystery whether our pets’ senses are able to pick up on energies or spirits, pay close attention to your dog or cat this spooky season. Who knows what life forms will be lurking this Halloween?

The dogs helping find earthquake survivors in Turkey

Trained rescue dogs are helping to find survivors buried underneath layers of concrete and otherwise undetectable.

Hours after two huge earthquakes and hundreds of aftershocks struck southeastern Turkey and northwestern Syria on February 6, some much-needed rescuers began to arrive in Turkey – K9 teams from around the world that had come to lend a hand to GEA, a Turkish volunteer rescue team.

K9, a homophone of canine, is a dog specially trained to assist security forces and emergency teams – in rescues, drug enforcement or other operations. These dogs came from, among other countries, El Salvador, Germany, Mexico, Qatar, South Korea, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United States.

The much-welcomed rescuers, who can find victims by scent alone, are needed to help the Turkish K9 teams in desperate operations where buildings as high as 14 storeys have collapsed, making it difficult to find survivors by sight or sound.

REDOG, a K9 volunteer team from Switzerland, is on the ground in the Turkish city of Iskenderun, working with the local GEA team, an all-volunteer search and rescue group.

Since arriving on February 6 near midnight, the team of 10 people and six trained dogs together with GEA have so far found 39 people alive under the rubble.

The dogs are trained to sniff out a human scent, stand at the spot and bark loudly to alert their handlers to the spot where they have found it. A second dog is then released to see if it can confirm the findings.

If the two dogs confirm, this allows human rescuers to concentrate their digging efforts on that particular spot until they find the person.

“I think it’s one of the most emotional moments of my life … the moment when one of our dogs signals to us that he found some people in the rubble,” REDOG’s vice chief for rubble search Matthias Gerber told Al Jazeera.

The dogs work all day in teams of three at rubble sites, taking turns to work 20-minute shifts, followed by 40-minute breaks.

In one case after their dogs signalled the location of where people were buried, human rescuers began digging at the spot and soon heard knocking coming from behind the rubble from the victims trapped inside, confirming what the dogs had already pinpointed.

“Eight hours later of hard work, they saved four people alive from this position,” Gian Forster, REDOG team leader who works with three dogs, told Al Jazeera.

Every time a REDOG dog finds a person, he or she is praised and rewarded with a toy or food.

“He really likes to find people because he gets rewarded every time,” Forster said. “The main thing is that the dog has fun and likes to search for the people.”

If the survivor isn’t buried too deep, the dogs can pick up on the scent quite quickly. But some buildings in Iskenderun have six floors that have collapsed with 2-3 metres (4-6 feet) of concrete pancaked in between each level, making it a challenge to find people buried more deeply.

“If it takes time for the scent to come up, we have to go [to the spot of debris] and remove some [floors of] rubble and try again. It’s quite a hard process if the person is buried that deep,” Gerber said.

Describing a recent rescue, Gerber said: “We arrived at the rubble field and we started searching on top of the roof of the building, and we didn’t get any scent there. And then Gian thought about how the wind is coming from the west, so we searched the east side of the rubble and there, the dogs [detected] the scent from the person.”

The dogs working with REDOG on the ground in Turkey – among them labradors, German shepherds, Belgian shepherds, border collies and golden retrievers – have up to seven years’ experience working in rescue missions and have helped find survivors after disasters in Japan, Nepal and Albania.

Courtesy of Matthias Gerber of Redog Switzerland. K9 team in Iskenderun, Turkey
Switzerland’s REDOG team working with Turkish organisation GEA on the ground in Iskenderun, Turkey [Courtesy of Matthias Gerber, REDOG]

But, Gerber said, in the last 30 years of his rescue dog work, the current mission in Turkey is the most challenging and tragic that he has experienced, referring to the scale of destruction.

“For our dogs, it’s very hard if there is so much rubble on top of the victims to find them. It’s a big obstacle for us. It’s good if we can come back to the same rubble site after they removed some floors of rubble and search again, because then we’ll have a chance to find people alive even if they’re buried very deep,” Gerber said.

Murat Kurum, the Turkish minister of environment, urbanisation and climate change, has said that more than 41,700 buildings in 10 affected provinces in the country’s southeast had either collapsed, urgently needed to be torn down or were severely damaged, according to state news agency Anadolu.

At least 1,791 buildings in 10 provinces that were affected have been identified as being severely damaged or requiring immediate demolition.

“It’s horrible what happened here. All these collapsed buildings, all these people who lost their relatives, their homes. It’s horrible,” Gerber said.

“We are happy to help here with our dogs, to get people out alive. It’s really important. It really moves me that we can help here.”

So far, of the 2,000 calls that GEA has received, REDOG, working with the GEA, has answered about 200 of them, he said.

A rescuer with a sniffer dog searches in a destroyed building in Antakya, southeastern Turkey, Friday, Feb. 10, 2023. Rescuers pulled several earthquake survivors from the shattered remnants of buildings Friday, including some who lasted more than 100 hours trapped under crushed concrete after the disaster slammed Turkey and Syria. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A human and K9 rescuer search a destroyed building in Antakya, Turkey, on February 10, 2023 [Hussein Malla/AP Photo]

California-based NGO National Disaster Search Dog Foundation (SDF) has trained seven of the 12 rescue dogs deployed from the US currently searching for survivors in Turkey.

Denise Sanders, director of communications and search team operations, told Al Jazeera that the dogs are “so much better at detecting scents than any technology that we have”.

“They run over the top of rubble and do what’s called air sensing. They’re picking up those scent particles in the air and then following their nose quite literally to the strongest scent source, and that would be the point of the potential victim,” Sanders said.

Knowing from past experience working in the aftermath of earthquakes such as in Haiti, she said dogs have shown that they are able to sniff “very distinct scents that are very dispersed in the air”, as deep as 6-9 metres (20-30 feet) below the surface.

“In Haiti in particular, we had collapsed buildings that had been six, seven storeys tall that pancake-collapsed … We know that the dogs were able to locate [the survivors] and alert,” Sanders said.

picture showing quake rescue dog "Balam"
Balam was one of the K9s taking part in the rescue efforts in Adiyaman, Turkey, on February 9, 2023 [Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Mexican Foreign Ministry/AFP]

For a dog to be trained and skilled at finding survivors, they naturally need to have drive, determination and “boundless energy”, Sanders said.

“This is not your pet that you toss the toy for in the back yard a couple of times and they kind of get tired and lay down. These dogs will go until they drop, until you tell them it’s time to stop.

“That kind of resilience and determination is exactly what we need… they’re [on the ground] for one, two weeks and they need to cover a massive area, and check so many different sites and run over so many different mountains of rubble.

“They don’t necessarily make great pets [due to their high energy]; they are not able to settle quite as well as the average dog, so we really try to channel that into a job that they love.”

The K9 rescuers are dedicated to their work, and they face as many dangers as their human partners do. Proteo, a German shepherd working with the Mexican rescue team in Kahramanmaras, died this past week when the remains of a building he was searching in fell on him. He has been honoured as a hero by the Mexican defence ministry.

The members of the Mexican army and air force. We deeply regret the loss of our great companion, the dog: Proteo. You fulfilled your mission as a member of the Mexican delegation in the search and rescue of our brothers in Turkey. Thank you for your heroic work.

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