Spirit of Conan Doyle's Collie
Spirit of Conan Doyle's Collie is an article published in the Mystery Magazine on 15 july 1922.
Spirit of Conan Doyle's Collie
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in an interview at the Ambassador Hotel said it is certain that animals survive what we call death and that their etheric bodies are inhabiting the world of the spirits.
He once had a favorite collie. It died, but some years after a clairvoyant entered his room.
"What a beautiful dog!" she exclaimed. You and I would have said there was no dog there, but she, with her clairvoyant eyes, could see.
"Tell me the color of it," said Sir Arthur.
"It's like this table," she replied.
"And the color of that table was the color of my collie," Doyle told his interviewer.
"I am sure that animals live on. They tend tt.3. remain around the homes where they have been living."
When Sir Arthur was on a lecture tour in Australia he was introduced to a dog in Christ-church said to possess psychic powers. It was a fox terrier, sixteen years old, blind and deaf, but when admitted to the room in which the Spiritualist was he at once ran to him, extraordinarily excited. When asked how many sixpences there were in a half crown he barked five times ; four for a florin. He gave twelve barks for the pennies in a shilling.
"Have you met any other dogs like the Christchurch dog to which you referred in 'Wanderings of a Spiritualist?'" he was asked.
"No, but there have been very few animals in history like Darkie."
Those animals were a remarkable horse that lived in Shakespeare's time and was burned with his master in Florence. Another was the Boston skipper's dog; a third, the Rurrian horse, and the fourth was the dog Darkie, a dog which, when asked how many males there were in a room, would include himself, but would omit himself when asked how many human beings there were.
In his book Doyle adds this : "One wonders how many other dogs have human brains without the human being clever enough to detect it."
In the middle ages learned theologians debated long whether animals had souls and would survive. Opinion was inclined to be in the negative.
Calmly Sir Arthur replied to this reminder: "They do survive. It is certain."
