A lot of people believe that animals and children have a heightened sense when it comes to the paranormal. Do you believe this is true or are people just reading way too much into things our pets and kids do?
Dave: I thoroughly believe that children and animals are able to sense more than adults. I lean towards not thinking they possess a heightened sixth sense, but I believe their other five senses are so much keener. Children haven't learned to take things for granted. Their natural inclination to learning their world is to see (and touch) everything. Animals can be entertained easily; dogs are fascinated by blowing leaves and a laser light will keep a cat busy for hours. Animals are not predisposed to analyze everything they sense and experience as adults are.
Part of our pre-investigative work is to ask about the activity of children or pets in the home. Often there will be marked responses from both in, or near areas of activity. It would be ideal to be able to as investigators, turn off our adult senses and get back to a more child-like state. But then we'd probably just can the investigation and watch Sponge-Bob instead.
Rex: We've all seen news stories about how animals act strangely just before a major natural disaster. Why wouldn't this extend beyond weather or geological events and into other aspects of the paranormal? We get lots of reports about dogs/cats that won't enter certain rooms of reported haunted houses or that they will follow or look at something that isn't there. The problem is that we can't ask our pets what they are looking at, well we can but we won't get an answer.
Kids on the other hand can tell us what they see, if they are old enough, but this probably gets labeled under the "imaginary friend" phase and we ignore it. Being a new parent myself I am interested to see how I react when my daughter tells me that she has a new friend that only she can see. Will I patronize her and play along as if it is an imaginary friend or will I break out my camera, voice recorder and K2 meter. I guess only time will tell, and I have a few years before that happens.
Dave: I thoroughly believe that children and animals are able to sense more than adults. I lean towards not thinking they possess a heightened sixth sense, but I believe their other five senses are so much keener. Children haven't learned to take things for granted. Their natural inclination to learning their world is to see (and touch) everything. Animals can be entertained easily; dogs are fascinated by blowing leaves and a laser light will keep a cat busy for hours. Animals are not predisposed to analyze everything they sense and experience as adults are.
Part of our pre-investigative work is to ask about the activity of children or pets in the home. Often there will be marked responses from both in, or near areas of activity. It would be ideal to be able to as investigators, turn off our adult senses and get back to a more child-like state. But then we'd probably just can the investigation and watch Sponge-Bob instead.
Rex: We've all seen news stories about how animals act strangely just before a major natural disaster. Why wouldn't this extend beyond weather or geological events and into other aspects of the paranormal? We get lots of reports about dogs/cats that won't enter certain rooms of reported haunted houses or that they will follow or look at something that isn't there. The problem is that we can't ask our pets what they are looking at, well we can but we won't get an answer.
Kids on the other hand can tell us what they see, if they are old enough, but this probably gets labeled under the "imaginary friend" phase and we ignore it. Being a new parent myself I am interested to see how I react when my daughter tells me that she has a new friend that only she can see. Will I patronize her and play along as if it is an imaginary friend or will I break out my camera, voice recorder and K2 meter. I guess only time will tell, and I have a few years before that happens.
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