Animals and the Afterlife (21 page)

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C
HAPTER
12
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When Seeing Is Believing: Visual Encounters

As much of Heaven is visible as we have eyes to see.

—R
ALPH
W
ALDO
E
MERSON

A
S
I
GATHERED STORIES
over the years, I came across a surprisingly large number of people who had actually
seen
the spirits of departed animals with their own eyes, but many of them had never shared their experiences with anyone for fear of being ridiculed. Once I gained their trust, they opened up in a way that was both revealing and healing.

There’s something about sharing our stories, and feeling validated that our experiences are indeed authentic, that can provide a healing in and of itself. When I began to ask permission to include some of these stories in my book, most people—whether or not they felt comfortable about this—told me that they had already received much healing just in the telling.

One woman, who had always kept such experiences to herself for fear of ridicule, eventually felt comfortable sharing her experiences with me. In her words:

My horse, Rusty, whom I had for thirty-two years, developed an inoperable intestinal problem and we had to put him down. He was thirty-six years old. Rusty died on a Friday, and the next Saturday my mother passed away. So my husband and I had to go to California for the funeral, and on our return home we stopped in New Mexico. Late that night, my husband got up and went to the store, and while I was sitting watching TV, I heard what I thought were hoofbeats outside. I never thought about it again until several months later when we were moving to a new home. I was out in the back yard of the old house and I swear I saw Rusty run across the yard. I just sat there in amazement, and due to the fact that no one would believe me, I just always kept it to myself.

Although she now felt comfortable sharing these experiences with me—and agreed to allow me to tell her story in this book—she still preferred that I withhold her identity. I completely understood and agreed to honor her request when sharing her experiences, which continued….

Something new happened two weeks ago. I had gotten very sick one evening and was having spells of severe dizziness and passing out. My husband had gone to the store, so I was alone. I made my way to the phone to call an ambulance and then passed out again. And when I woke up, I was going down the street—red lights and siren—and the strangest thing happened. I saw my dog [who had previously died] sitting in the corner of the ambulance when I awoke. Very afraid and confused, I then started to feel an overwhelming sense of safety. I turned my head and he was right next to me, licking my hand like he always had when I was sick. At that point my fear was gone, and I knew I was going to be okay. These are the strangest things, aren’t they?

In a culture that doesn’t readily accept the reality or even the possibility of such experiences, yes, they do indeed seem strange. However, once we open our minds to such possibilities, more and more people will feel comfortable sharing such experiences without fear of ridicule.

When these experiences occur in hospitals, they are often dismissed as drug-induced delusions. Although it is true that drugs can sometimes induce hallucinations, it is equally true that those who have serious illnesses or close brushes with death—and who are
not
under the influence of any drugs—often report seeing loved ones who have previously crossed over, and this includes animals.

Another woman shared the following about her departed dog:

I got up in the middle of the night once and saw what appeared to be my dog on the oriental rug that he used to lie on. I could have sworn I saw him there, but it wasn’t like it was solid him—and I am
not
the kind of person who believes in this sort of thing. I understand there are psychics and so forth, but I’m not an afterlife kind of person. I’m not into New Age stuff. I sort of looked and said, “Well, I think I’ll just get back into bed and pretend that I didn’t see it.” It was a little eerie, but I didn’t feel any fear.

Some of the people who shared these experiences did, indeed, express doubt. Either they doubted the reality of these experiences
themselves,
or others around them did. Often embedded within their accounts of what took place were little explanations or rationalizations that almost seemed to negate the reality of these experiences, for fear of otherwise sounding crazy. It seems our minds—or the minds of those around us—are always trying to fit such events within the context of what we have come to accept as “reality.”

Elaine Seamans of California shared the following story about her beloved dog, a dachshund named Quackers:

When Quackers left, we did a really beautiful ceremony with candles and white lights … I felt relief.

It was three days after. I was crying a lot, and missing her, yet I had a bit of peace about it because I knew she was ready to go. I was sick and coughing a lot, and I wasn’t able to sleep, so I got up. I had previously done the laundry and had washed her big pillowcase. I had folded it and put it down the hallway, which is where she would sleep sometimes when she was getting too warm.

I got up at five o’clock in the morning, coughing, and I walked down the hallway … I looked down and there she was. I stopped and I thought,
Maybe it’s just the shadows of the pillow.
It was so clear. I was saying out loud, “Quackers? Quackers?” I saw her little ear on top of her head, her skinny little legs (she had had cancer and lost a lot of weight). I put my hand down, a little bit nervously, and my hand went through her image. I didn’t know what to do. The reality part of my mind is thinking,
It’s just the shadows, the folds of the fabric.
I, like an idiot, pulled the corner of the fabric and she disappeared.

I went back to bed thinking that it was my imagination. Then when I got up later that morning, I thought,
There is no way—even though I knew her the best—there is no way I could have folded the fabric to put her ear on top of her head and one leg on top of the other. There is no possible way.
I know now that was the biggest gift she ever could have given me. I had been crying, saying, “Quackers, if I could just see you one more time.” And then she gave me that gift.

T
HE STORY THAT FOLLOWS
is yet another example of the self-doubt that so often accompanies these experiences….

Boots

Steve McDonald, Graphic Designer Edinburgh, Scotland

W
E HAD TO HAVE OUR LOVING CAT
Boots put to sleep after being diagnosed with renal (kidney) disease two weeks earlier. As far as cats go, he was old, but only eleven. He was too young for this, so it came as a shock. We decided to have him cremated and receive his ashes to give him a befitting memorial. We have three other cats (Boots’s sister, Ivy, and two younger cats, Dougal and Dylan), and they knew. It’s strange how animals know things.

Our cats and us are a very strong family unit. There are no children. The cats each have their own personality, and every one of them is extremely affectionate. Boots always looked after one of the younger ones, Dougal, who always looked up to Boots. One day this youngster got lost outside and was gone overnight. Boots went out and found him.

I
T WAS A SAD DAY
when the other cats realized that Boots was on his way. When he was ill, he isolated himself in the bedroom. The other cats stayed away from him until the last day, when they came through one by one, almost as if to say good-bye. They knew. As soon as we came back from the vet, the cats were extremely upset. They were very down and not active or running about. This has now passed except for his sister, Ivy, who I think still misses him.

A
FTER HIS PASSING
, after many periods of sadness I could see Boots as he was at his best in places he would always be … in the bathroom, on top of the laundry basket, on the windowsill, lying next to me on the bed. I tell myself these are just memories, and I feel it is a case of wanting at such a recent loss, but I believe he is here letting us know he is happy now and we did the right thing.

The sightings continue and are very clear. Usually I see him sitting on the windowsill looking out the window, one of his favourite spots. At times when I am slightly dozing while listening to the radio, I think he is sitting on my lap. Or if I am lying on the bed watching the TV, he will come across the floor and jump up, looking for a cuddle. Maybe it’s me still missing him, but it is comforting. I will always remember him, and I hope I continue to see him around the house.

S
KEPTICS MAY ARGUE
that people have these experiences because they
believe
in them, but many times it’s quite the opposite: They believe in them
because
they experience them. I’ve come across many cases involving witnesses who have encountered the spirits of animals quite unexpectedly.

For example, Robert Simmons of Montpelier, Vermont, shared the following experience.

Robert and his wife, Kathy, shared the love of a golden retriever named Hobbes. Hobbes died of lung cancer a mere ten days after the diagnosis. In honor of Hobbes, they made a “shrine” of photographs of him, which were displayed on the refrigerator.

Kathy continued to feel the presence of their beloved dog, though she did not actually see him. She did see him in her dreams, however, which Hobbes often interrupted (this relatively common form of after- death communication will be covered in a later chapter).

A week after Hobbes died, Robert and Kathy’s son, Moe, returned from college. A female friend of his came back from a different college, and she waited in the family’s kitchen while Moe was showering, as the two were planning to go out that evening.

When Moe then joined her in the kitchen, she asked him why there were pictures of Hobbes on the refrigerator. He explained to her that it was a shrine, because the dog had died the week before.

“No, seriously, why are the photographs displayed there like that?” she asked again, thinking he was joking when he said that Hobbes had died. Moe repeated his answer, assuring her that the pictures were on the refrigerator because Hobbes had indeed died.

She looked at him incredulously and exclaimed, “That’s impossible! He was just in here and I petted him!”

She had no idea the dog had died. Needless to say, she was absolutely stunned.

Experiences such as this cannot be explained away as “wishful thinking” or a coping mechanism of a mind steeped in grief, as the young woman didn’t even know that there had been a loss to grieve.

In another case, George Stone of Ontario, Canada, reported the following experience, which convinced him of an afterlife for animals. In his words:

I would say they live on after death and they come around us. I say this because I have seen a dog. It was nighttime, and I was on my way home. I was walking down a road where there were no streetlights when I saw this big white dog come across the road. It was jumping as it moved in slow motion and just went right through the fence on the other side, and on up through the field. I watched as it ran, still in slow motion, until I lost sight of it. So, yes, I believe they have spirits like we do. I think every living thing has an afterlife.

In speaking with professional animal communicators, I found that some of their clients had shared similar experiences. For example, animal communicator Gail De Sciose had the following to say:

I have had people tell me that they have actually felt the presence of their animals after they have departed. There was one woman in New York City who told me that at times she could feel her cat sitting on her lap purring, even though the cat was deceased.

I also had a client who had moved into a house where she started seeing a spirit animal, a cat. Her own animals saw that spirit animal, too, and everybody was very comfortable with it because the cat had a very nice energy. We later found out that this particular cat had lived in that house twenty or thirty years ago, and the cat’s person had since died.

Cases such as this help to further validate the reality of these encounters, as the witnesses are outsiders (including humans
and
other animals) who aren’t even grieving the loss of their own beloved animal companions and certainly aren’t looking for such things. They witness the spirit of an animal without even knowing who the animal could be, and then are often able to verify the former existence of that very animal after the fact.

Another animal communicator, Elizabeth O’Donnell, shared the following experience involving her own dog, Sarah:

I had her since I was eleven. She passed away when she was sixteen. We sort of grew up together. She was my absolute best friend, complete soul-mate animal, who lived with me through everything. After she passed over, she would appear to me like you could reach out and touch her. I know it was not my imagination. It wasn’t just me; she also appeared to my parents. It was quick, but she was there. I would say it’s not as clear as I’m looking at my dog right now; she had sort of an ethereal quality—it was her shape, her fur, her colorings, her markings—but as though she had a dimmer switch on and she was just dimmed down a little bit. The tinkling of her little tags on her collar [was heard]—she had three tags and she was always jingling around. I know she is with me now. Her spirit definitely goes to where my parents live now, and my dad will tell me all the time that he hears her. He hears the jingling.

Another case was shared by Barbara Meyers of New York, a certified grief therapist, human-animal bond consultant and animal behaviorist with the gift of interspecies communication. While interviewing her, I asked her if she could share any experiences that had convinced
someone else
of an afterlife for animals. Here is what she had to say:

There is one that comes to mind right away, although there are many. When the true skeptic—more than a skeptic, in fact—was confronted with a solid visitation from the afterlife.

For a number of years, I consulted personally with a chiropractor—and I think that chiropractic is one of many wonderful techniques, both for animals as well as people. At that time, one of the canine members of my family was a toy white poodle. Her name was Skila. Skila accompanied me, quite literally, everywhere. If I went to business, she was—in my lap, being so very portable at her size, and highly sophisticated—welcome everywhere. So I took her to my chiropractor as well; and anyplace that we went where she was not welcome, we didn’t go. It was that simple. (Just as an aside, we made many visits to the hospital to see friends and family who were hospitalized, and she was a great comfort. In a simple, heavy-duty shopping bag, we were in every major hospital in New York City.)

As Skila grew older, she had some subluxations [partial dislocations] in her spine, so I convinced my chiropractor to adjust her, and reluctantly, he did, knowing of the complete trust. It was just marvelous. He would do the adjustment, and she would go rickshaw all around the office, run down the hallway outside the exam room and run back and jump into his arms with an obvious “Thanks a lot.” He always knew when we were there even before we were in because he could hear her coming down that hall. Even though we were in the waiting room area, she would always go down the hall and look for him. They would say hello; she would come back; we would wait to be called in.

About six months after she died, I received a very agitated phone call from him, and he told me the following: He was in his office at the end of the building, working at his desk, and there were a few patients waiting out front—and the secretary. He heard something in the hallway. It wasn’t the footsteps of his secretary or patients coming down. He was compelled to get up, and when he got up and peeked out his office door, Skila was walking down the hallway as she had done so many times before. It was not a feeling or an image or some kind of shadowy sensation. It was what is known as a solid visitation.

He was stunned. He called me, not so much to tell me that Skila had come to visit him, but that he thought he was having a breakdown. You see, he was a person who (since I knew him for so many years and we talked about many things) believed that all of this “stuff,” as he would call it, was simply the effect of a grief stricken mind; but that day, everything changed for him.

He was so upset. It was really a frightening experience for him. There was nothing menacing about it; there she was, coming down the hallway to see him. She was there. He thought he was having hallucinations and a mental breakdown. It happened again a number of days later. This time we had talked many times about it and he was okay with it. He had two solid visitations within a short time. Then he would say later that sometimes he would get up from his desk and look out, kind of looking for her. He never saw her again.

Then he fulfilled a wish that his children had had all of their lives, and they were pretty well grown up by then, high school and college. He got them a dog. This is a situation where you can make a real good case for coming back to make a visit to give someone the opportunity to enrich their life. They had never had a dog or a cat or anything. Their dog became the love of his life, as well as everybody else in the family. When she was diagnosed with cancer, how he cried. What he wouldn’t have done and did do for her. And this was the man who had never patted a dog on the head.

One of his sons went on to become a chiropractor himself. He and his wife, also a chiropractor, have had built into them from that time such a deep love of animals. Such a deep and abiding love and respect, and their current dog is a wonderful example of the perfect dog’s life. One of the things that drew them together when they met at chiropractic school was that she had a dog. Not to make more of it than there is, but there are many forms in which there is a gift; there is a lesson.

E
XPERIENCES SUCH AS THIS
can certainly be life-changing in many ways. When we come face-to-face with such profound evidence of life after death, it can alter our very understanding of reality. And it can bring much reassurance to those who
thought
that death was the end.

Over time, I was impressed at the sheer volume of people who had seen departed animals with their own eyes. Not only were these encounters highly unexpected, but they often happened to the staunchest skeptics. Then again, perhaps the skeptics are the ones who need these experiences the most.

Interestingly, the one person in my own family who has always been the biggest skeptic about an afterlife is my dad. So he was the
last
one I expected to have an actual visual encounter of his own.

One morning, he left a message on my answering machine and said he had something to tell me. Based on his voice, I got the feeling it was something he really needed to share, something intriguing, so I called him back right away. He explained what had happened.

The night before, in the middle of the night, a voice had loudly whispered his name (“Joe!”), awakening him from a sound sleep. This is not an uncommon form of after-death communication, but my dad really had
no idea
that such things were possible. He knew the
title
of this book, but beyond that, he basically had no knowledge or experience of after-death communication whatsoever. Had I told him anything about it, he probably wouldn’t have really believed it, anyway. He was
supportive
of my project—or
whatever
I chose to do with my life—but he really didn’t know a thing about the afterlife; and it’s not something we had ever really discussed. So he had no way of anticipating what happened next.

Shortly after being awakened out of a sound sleep by the whisper that so clearly spoke his name, he was in utter disbelief at what he saw right before his now-wide-open eyes. He was lying on his back, and sitting on his chest was the dark form of one of our departed rats (one of his “grandrats,” as they’re lovingly called), looking right at him.

He was in awe. He couldn’t imagine how she could be sitting there, looking lovingly at him … yet there she was. The room was dim, but not at all completely dark. He couldn’t explain it away; he simply saw her, perfectly clearly. He wasn’t frightened, just amazed. He reached out to touch her, but she faded away.

My dad had begun helping me out with the care of our ever- increasing family of rescued rats while I was busy working on this book, and he had become quite attached to several of them, some of whom had died. Apparently, they had become quite attached to him, too!

He had always been quite afraid—terrified, really—of death and dying. He didn’t even like to talk about such things. Yet, ever since this experience, he has had a newfound openness and a sense of peace about the hereafter.

F
OLLOWING ARE MORE STORIES
of people who have discovered that seeing is believing….