“I Saw Her With My Heart”: Supernatural Experiences and Continuing Bonds After the Death of a Dog

ABSTRACT

Experiencing the ghosts of the departed is a common, cross-cultural experience of grief; such interactions are part of so-called externalized continuing bonds and represent an ongoing relationship with the departed. This paper characterizes people's reported supernatural experiences with the spirits of their deceased dogs and analyzes them in the context of bereavement, externalized continuing bonds, and disenfranchised grief. Using a thematic analysis, 544 candid online comments from social media where people shared their supernatural experiences were studied. These comments fell into two major themes with six subthemes: physical experiences (hearing, seeing, and touching the ghost of a dog) and interpreted experiences (seeing signs in nature, receiving visits from the deceased dog in dreams, and attributing feelings and phenomena to the spirit of the dog). How people described the feelings associated with these supernatural visits were also studied; three themes were found: Positive Feelings, Mixed to Sad Feelings, and Messages. The vast majority of reported feelings (74.6%) were positive, bringing people comfort, reassurance, and a sense of protection. While psychology largely characterizes externalized continuing bonds – particularly seeing ghosts – as negative and even maladaptive, this is in conflict with the findings. These supernatural experiences may serve a different role for grieving dog guardians. Given that disenfranchised grief is common due to the lack of cultural support for people mourning their dogs, and grief over companion animals is often complicated by guilt, these supernatural experiences may serve as an important source of comfort and a way for the bereaved to engage with loss.

KEYWORDS:

• Dogs
• grief
• human–animal interaction
• supernatural

The vast majority of dog guardians (85%) consider their dogs to be members of the family or a best friend (Geller, 2002). After a dog's death, humans experience loss and grief in much the same way as they do for other close friends and family (Archer & Winchester, 1994; Cohen, 2002; Compitus, 2019), and that grief can be profound (Gosse & Barnes, 1994; Sharkin & Knox, 2003). The typical grieving period lasts from six months to a year, with an average of 10 months (Wrobel & Dye, 2003). The grief begins to abate after around six months, with a decline in symptoms like crying, guilt, and anger. Still, after one year, approximately 22% of people still have some symptoms of grief. Because society does not often validate grief over the loss of a pet, this can lead to disenfranchised grief (Doka, 1999): grief that is not acknowledged as valid by social norms. The disenfranchisement of grief among people mourning dogs is well established in the literature (Cordaro, 2012; Hughes & Lewis Harkin, 2022; Packman et al., 2014; Park et al., 2023; Spain et al., 2019).

So called “sensory experiences with the deceased” – feeling, seeing, or sensing ghosts – is a fairly standard experience after loss. These will be referred to as “supernatural experiences” throughout the paper. In their review, Kamp et al. (2020) report that they happen in all age groups, across cultures, regardless of the type of death or the relationship with the deceased.

These experiences are understood by psychologists as one type of externalized continuing bonds. Continuing bonds (CB) are an ongoing relationship the living have with the dead (Eisma & Nguyen, 2023; Klass et al., 1996). They take the forms of perceptions, beliefs, hallucinations, and experiences. For example, visiting the grave of a deceased loved one, celebrating their birthday, talking to them, or seeing them in a dream, are all types of CB. Field and Filanosky (2009) separate CB into externalized and internalized types. Externalized CB include experiences of the dead in the world of the living, including feeling the spirit of the departed and “illusions and hallucinations” (like seeing ghosts), while internalized CB encompass reflection and contemplation.

CB are not restricted to grief over human loss; they have been documented between people and their companion animals (Habarth et al., 2017). However, these studies generally have not considered supernatural interactions with companion animals as a CB experience, even though this is widely studied in the loss of human companions. Packman et al. (2011) surveyed 33 grieving companion-animal guardians in a study of CB, and noted 48% sensed the presence of the deceased, 39% experienced “intrusion” (mistaking other sounds or sights for deceased), and 52% had dreams of the deceased – all externalized CB that could correspond to self-identified supernatural experiences. However, they did not specifically address these supernatural elements in their analysis of the impact of CB on mourners.

This reveals an open space in the literature. Supernatural experiences have been studied in grief and grief has been well-studied in dog guardians, yet there is almost no research on supernatural experiences among grieving dog guardians. Ghostly experiences are sometimes mentioned as part of a broader discussion of externalized CB but are not addressed directly. One small study of 11 Reddit posts (Knox, 2018) suggests that reports of ghostly visits from companion animals are similar to those of human loved ones. The goal of the present study was to take a deeper look at these experiences, their characteristics, and their meaning to those who experience them.

A thematic analysis of 544 social media comments from dog guardians about their supernatural experiences after the loss of a companion animal was conducted. The experiences fell into two major themes with six subthemes: physical experiences (hearing, seeing, and touching the ghost of a dog) and interpreted experiences (seeing signs in nature, receiving visits from the deceased dog in dreams, and attributing feelings and phenomena to the deceased dog). The emotional responses to these supernatural encounters were also analyzed, and nearly 75% were considered positive. I will discuss what these themes tell us about the grief of dog guardians and argue that, given the lack of cultural support for people mourning their companion animals, these supernatural experiences are an important source of comfort and a way for the bereaved to engage with accepted cultural grieving experiences.

Methods

For this study, a thematic analysis of social media posts collected as part of a student project in a supernatural anthropology class was conducted. The posts that comprise this dataset were collected from Twitter and Instagram in response to the prompt: “If you've lost a dog, have you had an experience like seeing their ghost, receiving a sign, did they communicate with you?” The post was made on July 19, 2023 and data were collected for seven days. This time point coincided with a natural drop off in responses. Because this research does not study the social media users who replied, and the original post was not intended as a research project, the Maryland University IRB determined this research was Not Human Subjects research and approved the analysis.

After filtering out replies that were not stories about supernatural events or dogs, 544 stories remained. A thematic analysis of the replies to this post (Braun & Clarke, 2012) was conducted. This began with becoming familiar with the replies, reading all, and taking notes. From that, we created codes, identifying important ideas, feelings, and experiences in the text. The coding was separated into two categories: the type of supernatural experience (e.g., seeing the ghost of a dog, seeing a sign in nature, being visited by the spirit of a dog in a dream) and the emotional response (e.g., creepy, comforting) The codes were condensed into themes and subthemes, after which they went through a round of structural coding, applying the themes to the replies (Saldaña, 2021). I conducted the analysis, theme development, and coding. The codebook and themes were reviewed by two colleagues before structural coding. After discussion and refinement, there was 100% agreement on the themes and codebook descriptions.

Results

Reported supernatural experiences fell into two themes and six sub-themes: Physical Interactions, which include hearing the sounds of a ghost dog, seeing the ghost of a dog, and sensations of physical touch; and Interpreted Interactions, which include phantom interactions, dream visitations, and seeing signs from their dogs in nature. The Physical Interactions include an actual sensory experience of the spirit of the dead. Interpreted Interactions do not involve direct perception of the ghost; rather, they include interpreting events or thoughts as something that comes from the dog's spirit. Codes and themes are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Themes, subthemes (in blue on top) and codes (in green on the lower layers) from the thematic analysis of social media posts.

Some people reported multiple types of interactions (e.g., seeing the ghost of their dog and also feeling like they saw a sign in nature). In these cases, each interaction was coded individually, so some posts had multiple codes. Figure 2 shows the distribution of themes and subthemes. Physical Interactions were 54.4% of coded experiences (n = 315); Interpreted Interactions were 45.6% (n = 264).

Figure 2. Distribution of themes. Orange wedges with dots indicate physical interactions and solid green indicate interpreted interactions.

Experience Theme 1: Physical Interaction

This theme describes physical experiences of the ghost of a departed dog. It includes feeling the touch of the dog (e.g., feeling the dog lying in the bed with them or feeling their nose touch them); seeing the ghost of the dog (e.g., looking down and seeing the dog curled up in their usual spot or seeing them walk down the hall); and hearing dog sounds, like the jingle of their collar or their nails tapping on the floor as they walk:

I’ve heard my late pup bark from his chair in my office. Clear as day; I know it was him.

This was me with Hopper – I saw her sleeping next to our bed in the dark. I had to miss stepping on her. I guess I was seeing her with my heart.

The morning after our Rose, 15.5 year old Golden, passed, I walked out to living room. I saw her curled up on the floor next to the couch; where she would sleep near the end. Then, after 5–7 seconds, she slowly faded. I firmly believe she was letting me know she was ok.

Malkin died in 2016. My other dog, Beans, died in 2017. For 3 months, I had no dogs. But I'd hear tags jingling & the specific cadence of Malkin walking around. I'd sometimes see his giant shadow on the wall.

The night after my Mum's dog, who we kinda shared, I “felt” her jump on my bed, walk up it & settle her weight half on me as she'd done 100s of times before. I just kept my eyes closed, knowing it was both impossible and real.

We lost our boy, Odin Jan 2022, and there have many times I have literally felt him laying beside me exactly how he used to when he was alive. I also have moments where I have literally felt him laying beside me in his favorite spots. It's very weird, but it's also very comforting.

These physical experiences are a type of externalized CB – experiences with the dead in the world of the living.

These are the types of interactions that the CB grief literature refers to as “illusions” or “hallucinations.” Many posts seemed to anticipate this characterization that the experience was not actually real. In the examples above, we can see “I know it was him,” “I guess I was seeing her with my heart,” “ … knowing it was both impossible and real.” Such disclaimers or assertions were common in these types of posts.

Field and Filanosky (2009) explain that externalized CB, which include supernatural interactions, are “most often reported in situations involving reduced sensory stimulation, such as when lying in bed at night.” Experiences in bed were one of the most common supernatural experiences reported in the present study. Of the 315 Physical Interactions, 45 (14.3%) were people feeling their dog lying in bed with them, and 140 (44.4%) occurred at night and/or in bed.

Experience Theme 2: Interpreted Interactions

This theme encompasses interactions where people interpreted events as being related to the spirit of their dog. These include visitations in dreams, seeing signs in nature (like rainbows), feeling the presence of the dog, or attributing phenomena – like objects moving or a living companion animal acting a certain way – to the spirit of the deceased dog. These were not classified as physical interactions with the other ghost experiences because of the difference in experience. With Physical Interactions, people saw, heard, or touched the ghost directly. In the Interpreted Interactions – Ghostly Activity subtheme, people were attributing feelings or phenomena to the dog without directly witnessing the ghost. In other subthemes, people were interpreting feelings or events as related to the spirit of their dog, but the ghost was not present:

My dog Randi has come to visit me a few times in my dreams. I don’t know how to explain the difference between me dreaming about someone and them visiting me in my dreams. I just know.

When we lost our Ellie, a week to the day after she passed, at the exact time of her passing, the smoke detector in our spare bedroom (her favorite place to relax) started beeping.

My Reece a rescued boxer passed on June 6 and later that day I found an imprint of a paw by the fridge door. Wasn't there before.

Hubby picked up the remains of our dog Lucy. I was in Ohio for a family vacation. I was crying when he told me he had picked her up, and looked up to see this amazing rainbow. He saw a rainbow walking our other dog that night. She let us know she was OTRB[Over The Rainbow Bridge] and she was OK.

These Interpreted Interactions could be a mix of externalized and internalized CB, depending on people's experience and interpretation of them. Feeling the presence of the spirit of a dog of believing that the dog is manipulating items or haunting a place would be considered externalized CB. The Ghostly Activity subtheme accounted for 20.0% (n = 53) of the Interpreted Interactions. Dreams can function as internalized or externalized CB (Black et al., 2021). Those that are reflections or memories of the deceased could be internalized CB. However, since these were reported as supernatural experiences or communications with their dogs who had died, they could be considered externalized CB.

Significance Themes

People also offered explanations of the significance of these events to them. Of the 544 responses, 134 had some explicit description of the way it made the person feel. Thematic analysis was again used to code the feelings from each experience.

Three major significance themes were identified: Positive Feelings, reflecting belief that the supernatural experience was a comfort, a message of reassurance, an act of protection, or a gift; Mixed to Sad Feelings, which captured bittersweet, heartbreaking, and spooky feelings; and Messages, where people said they felt the spirit of their dog was visiting to say hello, to say goodbye, or to check in on them. Figure 3 shows the distribution of themes and subthemes.

Figure 3. Experiences with supernatural experiences. Positive are shown in solid blue, Mixed to Sad in orange with dots, and Messages in green crosshatch.

Examples of Positive Feelings include the following (emphasis added):

I hear mine at night – their different shakes and noises they’ve always made when going to bed. It gives me comfort.

It wasn't a dog, but I heard my cat, Tyson, in another room after he passed. Several times. I hope it was him saying he's okay now.

When Pottsie passed away, I saw him. I had waited a few months before getting a new pupper, and one night MacKinley woke me up growling. He was facing out of the bedroom towards the living room. I looked out and saw Pottsie with my house ghost hanging out together. I told Mac, “don't worry Mac, it's only Pottsie watching over us.”

Examples of Mixed to Negative Sad feelings include:

I saw/ felt my dog rush past the armchair I was sitting in to go outside … only the door by the chair was closed and my dog was dead. For sure just a physical memory of my dog doing that action so many times, but it felt spooky.

I lost my golden in February this year, for months now I’ve been dreaming about her and I’ve woken up super sad because it felt so real and I had to realize she isn’t here anymore, it felt like I had my heart broken every morning. but I decided to do some research on what it could mean and the first thing I read was that dogs who pass usually visit us in our dreams.

For about 10 yrs after my first dog died, he kept visiting me in my dreams, crossing back from the great beyond to just stay with me a while. In the dreams, it used to break my heart because I knew he'd have to go again each time.

Examples of Messages include:

I lost my best friend in March. I’ve dreamt about him almost every night since then. Even in dreams where he wasn't a key figure he’ll be there and say hi to me. I’m not religious but I like to think it’s him saying hi and making sure I’m ok (I’m not, but I will be).

We had to put our 13 y/o golden to sleep last September. I was heartbroken and still am. I couldn’t have her suffer any longer. When I got home I had the most beautiful monarch butterfly approach me and then lift off. I know it was her saying goodbye.

My old dog Muzzy came to me in a dream a few years ago, I could feel his fur under my hand and it felt so real! I have his collar on my bedside table and I think he came to check up on me.

The majority of experiences were Positive Feelings, representing 74.6% (n = 103) of responses. Mixed to Sad Feelings were 8.7% (n = 12), and Messages were 16.7% (n = 23).

The role of guilt should be considered in these feelings. Hughes and Lewis Harkin (2022) found that externalized CB were positively associated with the feeling of responsibility for the death. More than humans, responsibility for death is especially prominent for dog guardians. Nearly 80% of dogs die from euthanasia (Lewis et al., 2018), a choice that their humans must make for them. There is rarely a perfect time to make this decision. Even when euthanasia is the clear, correct choice, people often feel like they could have done more to prevent the illness or accident that took their dogs’ lives, adding an additional layer of responsibility (Davis et al., 2003; Golbeck & Colino, 2023). This responsibility for the death of a dog may explain why the majority of supernatural experiences in the present study were physical experiences, which map to externalized CB. Furthermore, we see Reassurance accounting for 25% of reported feelings, and all of the Messages – where a dog is checking in with the guardian – have a reassuring aspect to them. These types of messages serve a clearer purpose when considered in the context of guilt complicating the grieving process.

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to understand the range of supernatural experiences people have after the loss of a dog, what the subjective feelings of those experiences are, and what that says about the grief process. In psychological studies of grief, supernatural experiences are considered externalized CB, and the vast majority of research on this topic focuses on these as intrusive, negative, and maladaptive. These results show that bereaved dog guardians experience a wide range of supernatural encounters with their dogs and that they are considered positive by the vast majority. These results also highlight a conflict between common descriptions of and results on externalized CB and the experiences of bereaved dog guardians.

Externalized CB are largely considered to be negative. These connections are often described as “intrusive,” where people are involuntarily reminded of the deceased (Black et al., 2022). In fact, Black et al. (2022) explicitly argue that the internalized CB tend to comfort people while externalized CB distress them: “ … given that internalized bonds tend to be comforting and externalized bonds tend to be distressing … ” Externalized CB are also linked to decreased posttraumatic growth. Paranormal experiences, like seeing ghosts, are common in grief and a well-defined externalized CB. However, despite the arguments in the literature – almost to the point of being definitional – that these are distressing, unhelpful experiences, the results in the present study oppose this. Visitations from the dead need not be distressing; the meaning of such interactions vary across cultures and between individuals.

The vast majority of the memorates people shared had a tone of comfort and gratitude, occasionally mixed with sadness. Overall, 74.6% of these supernatural experiences were considered positive. Within the Physical Interaction theme – representing the clearest, physical interactions with the supernatural – 77.0% of reported feelings about the interaction were positive, and only 9.8% were Mixed to Negative (bittersweet, heartbreaking, or spooky). Overwhelmingly, people considered their supernatural experiences with their deceased dogs to be comforting or reassuring. The one other existing small study on paranormal experiences after companion animal death also suggests that visitations from “revenant pets” are a source of comfort to their guardians (Knox, 2018). Studies on end-of-life visions also support the idea that visitations from the spirits of deceased pets can bring comfort (Levy et al., 2020; Nosek et al., 2015).

Packman et al. (2011) also found CB generally, which included experiencing and sensing the deceased, were more comforting than distressing. This suggests there is something different going on in the grieving process for dog guardians that makes supernatural encounters operate differently than they do in more typical human mourning. This may be because grief over companion animals differs from grief over people in other ways: namely, that it is often disenfranchised. Because there are few socially accepted rituals around companion animal deaths, no accepted mourning period, and dog guardians’ grief is often minimized or even mocked, this leads to an experience of disenfranchised grief, where the mourner is socially denied the grieving process.

The psychological research commonly refers to supernatural experiences with the dead as “hallucinations” or “mistaken interpretations,” and that terminology alone can be further invalidating to the grief over a departed companion animal. Indeed, there were many comments in the present study where people pre-emptively defended against an anticipated attack about whether their experiences were “real.” While a hallucination or illusion may scientifically explain why someone sees the ghost of their lost dog, it does not explain the subjective experience.

The importance of that subjective experience is of central importance in the study of the supernatural in anthropology. Hufford's Experience-Centered Theory of the Belief in Spirits (Hufford, 1995) posits that some classes of supernatural experiences spontaneously and independently arise across cultures – like the near-death experience or feeling like a malevolent spirit is holding one down in bed. And while science can explain some of the reasons for these feelings (e.g., sleep paralysis explains the malevolent bed spirit), science does not explain the “consistent subjective pattern of the experience.” That subjective experience is critical to the meaning people derive and their belief in the supernatural. The universality of supernatural interactions with the dead among the grieving (Kamp et al., 2020) suggests this is another area where Hufford's theory should be considered.

Hufford's theory would suggest that there is a rational reason for people to believe in supernatural interactions with the spirits of departed dogs in the face of disenfranchised grief. A seemingly magical visit by the ghost of a beloved lost dog offers a feeling of the mystical, the special, and a signifier of the importance of the relationship. Messages of reassurance may assuage guilt. Such experiences would reasonably be seen as validating and comforting in the face of the invalidation of disenfranchised grief.

Future Research Directions and Conclusion

This research set out to understand the nature and subjective experience people have with the supernatural in the context of their deceased dogs. The findings reveal that people commonly report physical interactions with the ghost of their dogs in addition to attributing phenomenon to their spirits. Overwhelmingly, people find comfort and reassurance in these interactions. These results are somewhat in contrast with the way externalized CB – which include supernatural interactions – are seen in the grief research community, where they are generally classified as negative.

This suggests a number of areas for further research built on interviews with and reflections from companion-animal guardians that go deeper than what was found in this body of social media comments. Could the supernatural offer a specific comfort in the face of disenfranchised grief or grief complicated by guilt? Are supernatural experiences properly classified as part of externalized CB, which are generally considered negative and maladaptive? Does the disenfranchised nature of the grief make complicated grief more common and, if so, does this impact the likelihood and impact of supernatural experiences? The vast anthropological literature on the purposes that supernatural experiences serve for individuals and cultures alongside the results in this study (and others) show that supernatural experiences with departed dogs are mostly positive. This suggests that these experiences – at least for dog guardians – should be studied in more depth to measure outcomes and impacts. In particular, studies should investigate the link between supernatural experiences and posttraumatic growth, an area where the results can be directly contrasted with existing grief research. It may be that the supernatural should be separated from other externalized CB given that the impact of these experiences may be much more positive for the bereaved. Furthermore, studying the phenomenon across cultures, religions, gender, and personal backgrounds may shed additional light on the role these experiences play in the lives of the bereaved.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.