Phantom Animals

This is a story about animal spirits or ghosts. It’s two stories, actually, but the first one leads into the second in an important way that gives more weight to both accounts.

I think that most of us, at some point, have had the experience of seeing something out of the corner of our eyes that turns out not to be there.

I think a lot of times we can write this off to being tired or our brain misfiring and interpreting a rock, a tree, or a pile of clothes into a figure of some kind.

The question I often ask myself is, just because it doesn't remain in your field of vision when you look at it, does that mean it never existed? Or, does it mean it doesn't exist somewhere else, in another plane of awareness?

I have a lot of questions about this phenomenon.

Seeing weird things out of the corner of my eyes is something I’ve personally gotten used to. I don’t pay much attention unless something else definitive happens to tell me it wasn’t just my brain being weird or tired.

I’ve learned over time that most of my family members and close friends have these experiences as well, of seeing 'phantoms' that are only visible until you look at them. We laugh about it a lot. Some of the stories are ridiculous and silly, but others are confounding or spooky.

I started to really notice this in terms of animals, and seeing animals out of the corner of my eyes. I became aware of this back when I still lived in the forest. It wasn’t far from where I am now, but it was further up next to the Sierra National Forrest, along a creek.

I would notice them all the time. The fun part was when it would actually be an animal standing there, like a deer, or a skunk, or a squirrel. But, most of the time it was just those strange phantoms that disappeared when you look at them directly.

One evening, my husband and I had decided to walk up the road together. It took us through a beautiful and winding section of the woods. It was just before dusk, lulling in that liminal space of sunset. I had begun to notice about five minutes into the walk that I kept seeing little things out of the corner of my eyes. I knew better than to say anything and just kept enjoying the walk. I almost giggled a few times because there seemed to be a lot of them that evening, but I wasn’t about to mention that to my husband. He simply wasn’t into that kind of thing.

I have become aware that this kind of phenomenon seems to increase at certain times or maybe in specific locations. I haven’t figured it out, but I was amused and somewhat confounded by how much it was happening that particular evening.

My husband had been chatting away about something while we were walking. I was listening and noticing the weird occurrences I kept seeing along the road.
Suddenly, he stopped talking mid-sentence and turned to me with a strange look on his face.

“This is crazy.” He said.
“I swear I keep seeing things out of the corner of my eyes, like animals.”
“I see them too,” I said. He went on to describe to me that he’s been noticing it a lot lately and how strange he thought it was.

This was the first time my husband and I had ever shared in an experience like that. I’m still not sure if it had to do with the energy of where we lived or something else, as I later learned that this kind of thing happened in other places, too.

I didn’t consider my husband to be psychic to a visual degree. He had powerful intuition and a sense about things, but he didn’t ever ‘see’ things. So, this was strange indeed.

The next experience was the weirdest one of them all because we were not at home; it was in the early morning, and the sighting involved more than just us.

We had been visiting a greenhouse in San Francisco, buying plants for our tropical plant store. We always went down late and drove most of the night, so I was used to being tired and a little out of it while I was there. I loved it, though. We would get there right when they opened, when it was quiet and fresh. The misty greenhouse filled with plants in the morning had its own ethereal and vitalizing quality to it, and the rows of varying tropical plants seemed to go on forever.

As I was pushing my big pallet cart through the aisles of plants, I noticed a little dog out of the corner of my eye. He was very clear in my mind, even though I only caught a flash of his image in the main walkway. He looked like a little scragly blonde-haired terrier. I turned to say hello to him and realized he wasn’t actually there. I took note of the occurrence, checked to make sure no one was observing me, and kept on shopping. Only a few minutes later, I saw him again. He looked like a Benji-type dog and seemed to be following me around the greenhouse. Again, I just took note of him and kept doing what I was doing. There wasn’t much else to do. Every time I looked directly at him, he wasn’t there anymore.

Then, just like before, my husband approached me in a hushed tone and said

“I swear I keep seeing this little scruffy-looking dog out of the corner of my eye.”
I smiled at him.
‘You mean the little Benji dog?’ I asked. His eyes got wide, and he was excited.
‘Yes! Oh my God, that's freaky, you saw the same one?!” He exclaimed.

Over time, I have learned to keep quiet about these experiences. I don’t like to advertise that I sometimes see things other people don’t. I just notice and keep calm unless I have a good reason to talk about it. My husband was not as familiar with these types of experiences and didn’t have the trepidation I do about sharing.

I almost died of embarrassment when my he excitedly announced to one of the greenhouse managers what we had seen. We knew this woman by name, and she was very familiar with us. She had seemed like a very practical person.

“We keep seeing this little Ghost doggie!” He said.

To my surprise, the manager smiled calmly.

“Oh yeah. They seem to really like it here. We see little ghost cats and dogs all of the time.”

I could tell she was serious and not putting us on.
“We think it has to do with the environment; it just attracts them for some reason. They like it here.’

I marveled at that experience, and I still do. It makes me wonder what would draw spirit cats and dogs to such a place. Not that I could blame them. It was a wonderfully peaceful place to hang out.

It was also strange to me how matter-of-fact the manager was about it. I suppose it encouraged me at that time to feel a little less weird and validate my experiences a little bit more.

I don't know if these things happen for a reason or if they just happen. I think sometimes they do, but not always. I wonder what you would think about that?