A study recently found that man’s best friend could possibly see in slow motion, which may suggest dogs could potentially detect spirits.
Anyone who owns a dog knows that look they give, staring off into the middle of nowhere, seemingly looking at nothing. This gives a lot of people the creeps and makes them feel as if there is something or someone there, but when you turn to look, there’s nothing. You can’t really determine what a dog sees without actually being a dog, so why is this important to us?
A lot of people have the ideas that dogs can’t see in color and all they can pick up is black and white. A new study has come out in the journal American Behavior that claims dogs see in a slower motion. It’s almost as if what they see is just a second behind from what our brain picks up. The human brain moves at an extremely fast rate, firing information away by the millisecond, so sometimes we don’t notice everything.
How does this all tie into a spirit hanging out with you in your room? It’s just like the Electronic Voice Phenomenon theory that the sound frequency of a ghost is too high for the human ear to pick up. Yet, a dog’s ears are much more sensitive and notice things that we don’t. I suggest that what if a ghost’s movement patterns are too quick, and we aren’t able to pick them up right away? This would result in us getting a glimpse of what we think we see, and what may or may not be there.
If we take in the idea that the dog can slow its world down and pick up on faster-moving objects, wouldn’t that make it so that it could slow down the speed of a ghost and pick it up? This is the moment you notice something has caught your dog’s eye and drawn its attention. The dog would make nothing of it, because people believe spirits can’t hold a form for any longer than 30 seconds and it would be gone before the dog thought it was a threat. The dog doesn’t know what a ghost is, so they wouldn’t see it as a threat. Or maybe, the dog has known this ghost before, someone that it has seen in the living world and has come back to pay you a visit.
Dogs are always on the look-out for something that may be a danger to their owners. So the next time that you feel that weird sixth sense going off and you think you see something out of the corner of your eye, try to look as fast as you can. Odds are if something were there, it would get away before you could catch it in your direct eye sight. If you ever see your dog looking up like this, and the chills start to come, you may or may not be alone. Don’t let this frighten you, because it’s just a theory, right? Just keep your eyes open, and watch out for your best bud’s movements.
Adam Wondrely is a junior studying creative writing and journalism. Have you ever experienced something like this and want to share it? Email him at aw922910@ohiou.edu.
