The Ghosts of Animals, etc.
I have elsewhere spoken of the apparent ability of animals to see phantasmal forms and figures. The reverse of this is also true. Ghosts of animals have been seen—spectral dogs, cats, horses as well as human beings. These apparitions are very perplexing, and raise the question of the immortality of animals—a very vexed question, which has given rise to much discussion. Mr. H. Rider Haggard records the case of his own dog, whose apparition he saw at the very moment that the dog was killed by an express train some miles away. Did the animal succeed in affecting his master by telepathy? If not, why the coincidence? I myself have recorded a case in which a (real) cat spat at a phantom dog, seen independently by a clairvoyant, who had described it a few moments before to a group of spectators. Such cases are very interesting. They tend to prove that dogs, cats, horses and other animals also survive death—a conclusion which is certainly the most humane and logical to many minds.
In addition to these animal apparitions, there are also grotesque, horrible, monstrous and undefinable ghosts. One or two cases of this character are described in this book. Sometimes the “seer” sees something awful, but cannot describe in words what it is. Many of the phantoms of the imaginative type are of this character. Again, there are grave-yard ghosts; banshees, gnomes, elementals, pixies, fairies, brownies, nature-spirits, hobgoblins, sylphs, salamanders, dragons, vampires, wraiths, corpse-candles, and many other awful beings which have been described from time to time in the past. We need not consider these in a book of this character, however. But, to return to our argument for the objective reality of “ghosts.”
Fifthly, we have those cases in which the apparition has produced a physical effect in the material world—snuffed a light, opened a door, pulled back the bed-curtains, etc. A hallucinatory figure could not do this. It has been suggested that all this is only a part of the hallucination, but when the thing is found to have been moved in reality, we must explain this somehow; for otherwise how did it change its place?
Sixthly, we have cases in which the same apparition has been seen by several separate and independent persons in the same room or house, and afterwards they have recognized the features of this person in a photograph shown them—the photograph of the person supposed to haunt that particular house. If we were to believe that a simple hallucination caused the figure, how account for this identification? Surely the theory is far-fetched!
For all these reasons, therefore, and others it would be possible to mention, there is much to be said in favor of this theory of haunted houses; the theory which says that the figures seen are real, semi-material entities.