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Another one that is self-explanatory, which makes one wonder if the people who hunt ghosts aren’t that original. Anyway, this can be broken down into two categories:
Ghost of Deceased Animals
It’s the spirit of an animal that died such as a beloved pet or one that suffered a horrible demise. Both require strong emotions to create the ghost. It’s usually the first category though because of the love people have for the deceased pet. This brings up an interesting question of if the animal’s emotions are what made it stay or the ones still held by the human who is having trouble letting go. If it’s the latter, one could say that these are healing spirits that stick around in the hopes of helping their former owners recover from the loss.
Spectral Creatures
Hellhounds, black dogs, ghost cats, phantom horses, and harbingers would all fall into this category. These aren’t animals that had a life prior to death. Some of them came from Hell while others simply exist with no backstory. In olden times, cultures saw these creatures as bad omens and warnings, so the harbinger title could be used for most in this category.
I think the possible existence of ghost animals also brings up an interesting philosophical question. If an animal can become a ghost, does that mean it has a soul with clear emotions? We already know that animals feel things, but most people tend to think it’s on a lesser level than humans. Yet, we can see that human and animal ghosts don’t act differently. Both can interact with the physical world at times, take clear forms, and be created from strong emotions. Any of the ghosts that don’t take on a clearly defined form could even be an animal. For example, nothing says a ghost orb in a forest couldn’t have been created by a deer being killed by a hunter.
So, what do other people think about ghost animals?
Legends of Windemere 
Like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat”? I’ve seen ghostly horses used in stories.
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Cats, dogs, and horses seem to be the most common.
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I have a ghost dog in my next book!
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Awesome.
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I haven’t given Ghost animals much thought. I think it would be a little disconcerting to see a ghost of a pet. Might take a while to understand.
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True. I wonder if it would be comforting on some level.
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Knowing your pet had an afterlife, I think so.
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We have, in the past, thought of humans as being very much superior to animals, and put all their reactions down to ‘instinct’. We are discovering, now, that they are capable of problem-solving and understanding words, rather than, as was said in the past, ‘They pick up what is meant from the body language of their owner.’
So, given this, I think they must have souls, too. Remember, there were societies that thought women didn’t have souls!
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I don’t know. Ghost animals go back centuries. There was always a belief that animals had spirits, but it wasn’t a universal idea. Depended entirely on the culture a person was brought up in. Think it’s more that certain cultures became more prevalent and pushed the soulless animal idea, so ‘we’ moved away from the other side. Many also believe instincts are reactions from the soul, which would mean animals have them.
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Interesting. I’d not heard about the idea that instincts arev reactions from the soul.
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Ghost animals could be an interesting haunting, especially if only the haunted person could see it.
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That would so be a ghost cat tactic.
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I love this. I write a lot of animal characters but haven’t gone down this path.
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Think you would try it?
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Sure. No ideas for it yet, but it seems to fit my wheelhouse.
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