Visual ADCs with Corroborating Evidence
We covered simple one-on-one encounters, which don’t have additional validity indicators — you basically have to take the person’s word for it. I pointed out some reasons to give them the benefit of the doubt, but ultimately those cases come down to whether you believe the person or not.
But that’s only 37% of the cases. In the other 63%, there is additional corroborating evidence, beyond just the person’s word. Let’s talk about those.
But before we do that, I want to run through how skeptics typically try to explain away these reports. It will help you to appreciate these cases, because they defeat the skeptical explanations.
How Skeptics Discount ADCs
Skeptics typically dismiss ADCs by saying they are imaginative fantasies or hallucinations brought on by intense grief, coupled with the desire for reunion. That is, they say the person reporting the ADC is so grief-stricken that he/she is unconsciously generating the experience to make themselves feel better.
There are several problems with this counterargument:
First, it’s patronizing. Skeptics are portraying the people who report ADCs as so overwhelmed by grief that they’ve lost touch with reality and are inventing fantasies to make themselves feel better.
Second, it assumes a hypothetical subconscious process (concocting a hallucination in order to relieve grief) which cannot be investigated. How can you defend yourself against the charge that you are subconsciously doing something?
Third, hallucination is a symptom of psychosis. In general, people who are experiencing grief do not hallucinate, unless the person also has a major pre-existing psychiatric illness (e.g., bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, in some cases a severe major depression). Without evidence that these people are all suffering from severe mental illness, explaining away ADCs this way seems facile and insulting.
Fortunately, we also have a range of cases that run counter to these skeptical claims about grief and wish-fulfilling hallucinations. There are several types of these cases:
- Cases in which the person does not know the animal is dead (21)
- Cases where there are multiple witnesses to the ADC (18)
- Cases where the person has no emotional attachment to the animal (12)
- Cases where an animal also reacts to the phenomenon, in addition to a human (6)
- Other validity indicators, such as appearances to skeptics, “rescue” stories, or ADCs with co-occurring physical movements (9)
We’ll deal with the first two types in this article, and the others in the next.
Didn’t Know They Were Dead
In these cases, the person experiencing the ADC does not know the animal is dead. These cases defeat the skeptical argument, because the person is not experiencing grief, so they would not have any need — conscious or subconscious — to supposedly generate fantasies or hallucinations to make themselves feel better.
I’ll give you two examples. I found 21 such cases, so see the references if you’d like to read more. Scott Smith also shares a number of these accounts in The Soul of Your Pet.
The first comes from Sylvia Barbanell.
Judy in the Hotel
Mary Bagot lived in England, but she was vacationing at a hotel in France. Before leaving England, she had left Judy, her terrier, at home in the care of the gardener.
Sitting in the dining room of the hotel [in France], Mrs. Bagot suddenly saw her dog run across the floor. Unthinkingly, she exclaimed, ‘Why, there’s Judy!”
There was no dog in the hotel. When Mrs. Bagot went upstairs to see her daughter, she told her of the experience.
A few days later, she received a letter telling her that Judy had been suddenly taken ill and had since died. The dog had been quite well, even on the morning of her death.
Sylvia Barbanell, When Your Animal Dies
In this case, we also have a corroborating witness and document. The daughter confirmed the mother’s account and provided investigators a diary entry, which she had made the day Mrs. Bagot told her about the experience.
I distinctly remember my father and mother and sister and my cousin coming into my bedroom and all laughing and telling me how my mother had seen Judy running across the room. My mother was so positive about it that one of the others (I think my father) had asked the waiter if there were any dogs in the hotel, and he had answered in the negative.
She made that entry several days before learning of of the dog’s death, which she also recorded.
Bounce
Vincent Gaddis relayed the following account.
Anne Grazebrook was visiting her sister. She felt sorry for a dog named Bounce, “a stray of mixed breed,” who had been “given asylum” on her sister’s estate.
Bounce received very little attention and petting, since he was an ugly, common-looking animal, in harsh contrast to the beautiful pedigreed dogs belonging to the family. Miss Grazebrook noticed that Bounce seemed cowed by inferiority and was especially kind to him. He soon developed an affection for her.
Sometime later, while she was staying with friends in Aberdeen, she was awakened about 5 in the morning by the barking of a dog in her bedroom. “I sat up in bed,” she said, and to my surprise I saw Bounce. I put out my hand and felt him. He had his collar on, and he was warm and solid to the touch. In utter astonishment, I exclaimed, “Bounce, how did you get here?” and a human voice replied, “I was shot yesterday – I have come to say goodbye!” Then the dog was gone. How he came, how he went, whence came the voice, I could not say. I was left in a state of complete bewilderment.
Several weeks later, Miss Grazebrook received a letter from her sister’s governess. It stated that as the family was going away, and it was impossible to find a home for a mongrel like Bounce, it was thought kinder to have him shot. This had occurred on August 24 about noon, and the dog had appeared in the bedroom around 5 o’clock in the morning of the following day.
“I can only add,” Miss Grazebrook concludes, “that at the time when I saw the dog, it did not occur to me even remotely that he was dead. His bark was loud enough to rouse me from a heavy sleep; he did not look distressed, merely excited as a dog might be at the sight of an old friend, and I can only repeat that when I patted him, he was apparently alive and tangible beneath my hand.”
Vincent Gaddis, The Strange World of Animals and Pets
Vincent Gaddis adds:
With whatever means Bounce crossed the great abyss, it is touching that this lonely but affectionate dog, shot because of his ancestry and lack of beauty, should at death express gratitude for the only love that had ever been shown him.
Note that although Miss Grazebrook treated Bounce kindly, she does not express a strong emotional attachment to Bounce. What mattered was the dog’s attachment to her. Bounce is taking the initiative in this ADC.
I also want to point out that these ADCs happen when the animal dies. That is significant. The person does not know they have died, but that is when the ADC occurs — right around the time of death, or shortly thereafter. Are we to believe this timing is just coincidental?
These cases refute the skeptical explanation. The people are not aware of the animal’s death. They have no grief, and therefore they have no need, conscious or unconscious, to “make up” fantasies or hallucinations to alleviate grief. The skeptical explanation cannot account for these cases.
Multiple Witness Reports
In 18 of the cases, there were multiple witnesses to the ADC — the “deceased” animal appeared to two or more people, sometimes together, sometimes separately. Although a skeptic can handily dismiss one person’s report as fantasy or overwrought imagination, it becomes more difficult when two or more people report the same thing.
I’ll give you a couple examples. See the sources if you’d like to read more.
Coco
Scott Smith reports this account from Betty Smith. Betty had a dog named Coco. Sadly, someone threw a baited, poisoned bone in her yard, and Coco ate it. She became extremely sick, and Betty had to put her to sleep.
A couple of days later, Betty saw Coco curled up in her favorite chair. “She looked at me and then just disappeared. It was very clear.”
Her mother, who lived in the same house at the time, also saw the dog running around her bed and then felt the dog curl up behind her exactly where Coco slept when the family was away, although her hand could feel nothing.
Later, Betty went over to her sister’s home across the street. A friend of her sister’s asked where Betty’s dog was. “I explained that I no longer had a dog, but she insisted that she had seen one fitting Coco’s description following me across the street. She had never seen Coco while she was alive.”
Scott Smith, The Soul of Your Pet
Three people saw Coco after she died — Betty, her mother, and her sister’s friend. Are we to believe that all three people are hallucinating the same “deceased” animal? One of them, the sister’s friend, didn’t even know Coco, yet saw the dog following Betty down the street and described her accurately.
Penn
Vincent Gaddis relates this account from Bayard Vellier. Vellier had to euthanize his dog Penn. He buried him in the back garden.
“Now,” Vellier said, “here is the part I don’t expect anyone to believe.”
Weary from emotion strain, he had gone to bed early. At three o’clock, he was awakened by the sound of Penn barking. It was ‘gay, boisterous, excited.’ He got up and went outside. Clearly visible in the bright moonlight, racing down a hill behind the house to the garden, came Penn – tail wagging, energetic and carefree as a puppy. He ran through the garden and around the lawn several times, then vanished.
The dog was unmistakably Penn, said Veiller. Moreover, he added that he himself is not superstitious nor given to imagining things that don’t exist, nor has he ever thought much about a hereafter. ‘I can’t explain this, and it wasn’t a dream. But I’ll take my oath that he came back.’
The next morning, before Veiller could tell his wife about his experience, she told him she had heard Penn barking during the night and had gone to the window. There she too had seen him romping gaily about the garden and across the lawn until he disappeared.
Vincent Gaddis, The Strange World of Animals and Pets
Note that Veiller’s wife reported her experience — nearly identical to his own — before he told her about his. This is important, because it helps to rule out cross-contamination of the reports.
Are we to assume that both the husband and wife hallucinated the same thing, separately, on the same night? That doesn’t make sense. Even if one person had a mini psychotic break and hallucinated a dead dog romping in the garden, another person would not also have the same hallucination. That’s not how hallucinations work.
That’s not all. There are many other cases that run contrary to skeptical counterarguments. I’ll discuss those next:
https://evidenceofanimalafterlife.com/visual-adcs-with-pets-more-corroboration/