Animal Ghosts; Or, Animal Hauntings and the HereafterO'Donnell, Elliott
Religion
Animal Ghosts; Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter
O'Donnell, Elliott
Animal ghosts; Extrasensory perception in animals
There are many accounts of ghostly cows heard "mooing" in the moors and
bog-lands of Scotland and Ireland respectively, and not a few cases of
whole herds of phantom cattle seen, gliding along, one behind the other,
with silent, noiseless tread. Though I have never had the opportunity of
experimenting with cows to see if they are sensitive to the
superphysical, I see no reason why they should not be, and I feel quite
certain they will participate in "the future life."
Apropos of pigs, Mr. Dyer, in his _Ghost World_, says, "Another form of
spectre animal is the kirk-grim, which is believed to haunt many
churches. Sometimes it is a pig, sometimes a horse, the haunting spectre
being the spirit of an animal buried alive in the churchyard for the
purpose of scaring away the sacrilegious."
Mr. Dyer goes on to say that it was the custom of the old Christian
churches to bury a lamb under the altar; and that if anyone entered a
church out of service time and happened to see a little lamb spring
across the choir and vanish, it was a sure prognostication of the death
of some child; and if this apparition was seen by the grave-digger the
death would take place immediately. Mr. Dyer also tells us that the
Danish kirk-grim was thought to hide itself in the tower of a church in
preference to any other place, and that it was thought to protect the
sacred buildings. According to the same writer, in the streets of
Kroskjoberg, a grave sow, or, as it was called, a "gray-sow," was
frequently seen, and it was said to be the apparition of a sow formerly
buried alive; its appearance foretelling death or calamity.
_Phantasm of a Goat_
Mrs. Crowe, in her _Night Side of Nature_, relates one case of a house
near Philadelphia, U.S.A., that was haunted by a variety of phenomena,
among others that of a spectre resembling a goat.
"Other extraordinary things happened in the house," she writes, "which
had the reputation of being haunted, although the son had not believed
it, and had thereupon not mentioned the report to the father.
"One day the children said they had been running after 'such a queer
thing in the cellar; it was like a goat, and not like a goat, but it
seemed to be like a shadow.'"
This explanation does not appear to be very satisfactory, but as I have
heard of one or two other cases of premises being haunted by what,
undoubtedly, were the phantasms of goats, I think it highly probable it
was the ghost of a goat in this instance, too.
_The Phantom Pigs of the Chiltern Hills_
A good many years ago there was a story current of an extraordinary
haunting by a herd of pigs. The chief authority on the subject was a
farmer, who was an eye-witness of the phenomena. I will call him Mr. B.
Mr. B., as a boy, lived in a small house called the Moat Grange, which
was situated in a very lonely spot near four cross-roads, connecting
four towns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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