A LONE rider is galloping through the woods towards his destination. Suddenly, his horse comes to a halt for no apparent reason. The rider pulls at the reins, coaxing the animal to go forward but the horse neighs loudly and refuses to budge. If forced more, the incident might result in the horse throwing off its rider.

Now, the horseman has two choices; either to turn backwards or get down and walk ahead on foot to find out what is the reason for the animal’s reluctance to go forward.

Then there is another instance of a dog barking loudly at something or someone; the owner comes out of the house and looks around. He sees no one and nothing unusual. What made the dog bark as if he had witnessed something dangerous or was he scared? And then there is the cat that looks in a certain direction and freezes in its position with its hair standing up as if it has seen a ghost! Maybe it has!

Do animals see things we do not? Can they communicate on a higher level than us? We do know that certain, if not most, animals can sense danger but how much of a sixth sense do they have?

Let’s look at some of the stories shared by people who are certain that animals are not only psychic but can even talk, I mean like us! Hey, I am just as surprised as you are. In an article “Are pets psychic or just super sensitive?” many stories came to light where pet owners related incidents of strange and mysterious behaviour of their animals.

We start with Oscar, the American cat with a remarkable sixth sense. It lives in a nursing home and can sense death. When any patient is near his/her death, Oscar jumps and sits on the bed of that patient. The staff at the nursing home has now become quite used to the cat’s unique ability and asks relatives of the patients to come visit if the cat hops and curls up beside a patient. There are more sick patients but it doesn’t matter to Oscar because it only bothers with people who are about to die. Many people think that Oscar can sense some chemical changes that occur in the body before death, but other than that, no one has an explanation.

A cat owner, Don, relates an interesting incident from 1972 about his family pet Calico. On a very hot afternoon in July, he relates that he was sitting on a chair near the stairway. As their cat started to get on the first step to go up, a chilly blast of air came from the top of the stairway. The cat stood where it was and would not go any further. It hissed loudly and stopped in mid-position. The icy air was so strong that it even blew the curtains when surprisingly there was no air-conditioning in the room. He got up to look up the stairs but could see nothing. What was the reason for the icy chill and the cat’s hair standing upright, he wondered? Then the icy air stopped. The cat too got relaxed and went up the stairs normally.

Don’s entire family was quite surprised and sat discussing the event. Then his father related an incident from his childhood, when he was three years old. His two older brothers were playing cowboys and Indians around the house. His brother Buell was the cowboy with an old rifle (no longer used) and Boyd, another older brother, was the Indian with a bow and arrow. They had an older brother Joe. The rifle had been handled by Joe who had repaired the firing pin and left one shell in it.

Buell chased his brother who had run behind his mother sitting on a chair. As he came out to shoot a toy arrow at Buell, his brother aimed and shot Boyd not knowing that the rifle had a shell in it. Boyd fell on his mother’s lap, right in the same spot where Don was sitting. The same spot that the sad accident had happened 41 years ago. Did the family cat see Don’s uncle Boyd’s ghost? Who knows?

Now we have the story of “Sister”, the pet dog. In 2001, on New Year’s Day, Sharon’s husband took photographs of their daughter posing in several areas of their house using a digital camera. So when it was all done, they put the disk into their computer to see the pictures. The images opened with the numbers and codes that automatically come with images, one image said ‘Sister’. They were more than astounded as they had assigned no names to any of the images. When they opened the image, it had their pet dog’s picture curled up near the counter right where it always sat. ‘Sister’ had been put to sleep in March 2000!

All three of them were so shaken and sad to see their beloved pet that was maybe ‘still around’? According to Sharon, she thought it was their pet dog’s way of telling them not to forget her.

And then there is the story about a cat that sat on the steps in a lane and when chased by the neighbourhood dog, did not run away in fright but turned around and said ‘Go away’! The two boys who saw this could not speak for a few minutes and as for the dog, well, he froze in his tracks. No one believed their story but they still remember it and insist that it is true.

Animals do have sharpened senses, some stronger than ours, often called “survival instinct”, which is also there in humans while both have different arena’s of danger. But connecting with the unseen or ‘the world beyond’ is definitely an enigma.