If you’re a pet owner, you’ve probably seen your dog or cat engage in some quirky behavior from time to time. But are they just being weird, or can pets sense ghosts or something that you can’t?

Can pets sense the paranormal? Both dogs and cats definitely have senses of hearing and smell that far exceed those of a human. This allows them to detect things people can’t, which may include things with supernatural or paranormal explanations.

In this article, you’ll learn about the sensing abilities of dogs and cats. We’ll talk about if they can sense things like spirits and ghosts. As well as their more scientifically-explainable but still amazing abilities, like being able to detect diseases like cancer or predict severe weather.

Do Pets Sense Paranormal or Supernatural Things Like Ghosts or Spirits?

We all know just how keen a dog or cat’s regular senses of sight, taste, smell, hearing, and touch are. You just have to crinkle a bag of treats or reach for the can opener and your pet will come running.

I know with my own dog, he can get spooked from hearing distant thunder or fireworks that’s barely even audible to me. Some people say that a dog’s sense of smell is as much as 10,000 times stronger than a human’s too! They can also hear higher frequencies than what the human ear can pick up, as evidenced by the use of dog whistles that are inaudible to people.

But it’s believed that pets also have a sixth sense of sorts. It might be seeing or hearing things that aren’t there, or it might just be a gut feeling that something doesn’t seem right to them. But since we can’t speak to them, it’s hard to know exactly what our dogs or cats are thinking and feeling.

Some people often have a similar sense of intuition. It might just be that dogs are more “in tune” with those feelings and willing to trust them and act on them. As opposed to humans, who often let our rational minds get the better of us, even when we feel that something is wrong.

What Science Says

Author and biologist Rupert Sheldrake has done experiments with dog behavior. He monitored the behavior of thousands of dogs when their owners came home at unexpected times. Usually the dogs had anticipation and weren’t surprised at their owner coming home. His studies have been written off as pseudoscience by some, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

Most dog owners can probably attest to the fact that dogs seem to know when a person is going to come home and will go and wait by the door for them. So if nothing else, they seem to have a keen sense of time!

If pets can sense ghosts is up for debate. But it seems like there is a strong and not yet understood connection between pets and their humans.

The Superhuman Senses of Our Dogs and Cats

Whether pets have paranormal or supernatural abilities is up for question. But most pet owners would agree that at the very least, our dogs and cats have some superhuman senses.

Not sure if you have a poltergeist? Check out my other article, What Are Poltergeists?

Pets Can Sense A Person’s Intentions

You’ve probably seen this happen either in person or in a movie, as it’s also a popular trope in the media. Sometimes a dog or cat will be perfectly friendly to most people. But then one person will visit who for whatever reason, the pets absolutely hate. Your dog may start barking at them nonstop or even try to bite at them. Your cat’s hair might go up on end and they’ll hiss at the person. Whatever the reason, dogs and cats seem to have a better sense of what kind of person someone is than even humans can detect. At least in my experience, it’s never been wrong!

Pets Can Detect Weather Changes and Natural Disasters

Both pets and wild animals alike exhibit stressed behavior before a major storm is going to happen. Some dogs will give vocal warnings or refuse to go outside even before a rainstorm if they’re particularly sensitive. Other animals may only get noticeably upset before a major event like a tornado or hurricane. Before the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, it’s said that a large proportion of animals began acting strange. Scientists believe that perhaps animals are able to sense vibrations of earthquakes, volcano eruptions, or other geologic events before people can.

Pets Can Detect Disease

Animals are being used more and more to detect and diagnose diseases.

Dogs seem particularly good at detecting cancer in humans if properly trained. One study found that cancer sniffing dogs had a 97% accuracy for identifying lung cancer.

Service dogs can also be used to detect when a seizure is about to come on in people that are prone to them. They can do this by detecting changes in body smell, pupil dilation, and other factors that are far too subtle for humans to notice.

Dogs can also detect pregnancy and a bunch of other subtle changes in the human body.

Pets Can Hear Things That We Can’t

Pets can hear sounds from further distances, and they can also hear noises that are more high-pitched than what people are capable of detecting.

Humans can detect sounds between about 64 and 23,000 hertz, while dogs can hear all the way up to the 45,000 hertz range. At the higher end of that range, noise can be uncomfortable for dogs.

Cats can hear even higher noises, up to 79,000 hertz. Their ears are so sensitive that they can hear a mouse walking in grass more than 30 feet away. Not on a loud surface like a wood floor, but on grass!

So if a ghost or spirit or some other type of paranormal phenomenon was making a noise, it makes sense that dogs and cats would be able to hear it before we did. Especially if it’s in the more high-pitched range.

Pets Might See Things We Can’t

Both dogs and cats are known for some seriously spooky and unsettling behavior. Including sitting and looking at a spot on the wall, or staring at the door at night, even when nothing is there. They might also be spooked about going to a particular area in the house, seemingly for no reason.

For cats specifically, they tend to have worse day vision than humans, but their night vision is much better than ours. Cats also seem to have an uncanny ability to predict when a person is going to die and offer them comfort. In one hospital where a cat was allowed, the cat seemed more interested in visiting people at death’s door and sat by hundreds of people as they passed on.

Is your pet seeing a demon? Check out my article Are Demons Real? (What You Should Know About Demons and The Devil)

Signs Your Pet May Be Seeing Something Supernatural

There are some body language signs that you can watch for if you think your dog or cat might be sensing something supernatural. These include:

• Growling
• Showing their teeth
• Staring at nothing
• Acting very alert
• Wagging their tail at nothing
• Hiding
• Whining or wimpering
• Hair on their back standing up on edge
• Tucking their tail between their legs (a sign of fear)
• Tapping their paws
• Being afraid to go in a particular room
• Tilting their head strangely
• Sniffing the air
• Circling in a particular area as if they’re looking for something

Of course some of these can also be signs of medical conditions. So if your pet is acting weird, it’s usually best to take them to a veterinarian to get them checked out. But if they get a clean bill of health and are still acting weird, maybe there’s something more paranormal to explain their behavior.

Conclusion

We may never know if pets can sense ghosts or not. Since cats and dogs can’t talk, they aren’t able to give their own account of what they’re actually seeing or feeling. So we have no way to really know why they behave in certain quirky ways that they do. But if your pet is standing in the corner barking at nothing, I definitely wouldn’t rule out the possibility that maybe they’re seeing some kind of ghost or spirit, or other paranormal phenomena that we just can’t detect ourselves!