What Did The Dog See?

This is incident happened to me when I was about 17 years old, around 1980, give or take. Timelines start running together as one grows older, but the details of this story are as fresh as the afternoon it happened.

My father, being in the military, was stationed at the large Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX at the time. My parents had purchased an older house, in a long-established neighborhood close to the base. Over the four plus years we lived there, there seemed to be some strange occurrences that happened off and on. To set up the foundation of the story I will highlight a couple of things that happened that lead up to my "interesting" experience some 42+ years ago. On a side note, there is supposedly some history surrounding the old neighborhood i.e. The land was a field hospital for the Mexico Army from the siege of the Alamo but perhaps that is just a story (?).

The garage to the house was converted to a play/living room by the previous owners but my parents wanted to turn it into a bedroom for my younger sister who was 5 at the time. She walked into the large room, took one look around and stated she would not sleep in the room. When my mother asked why, she pointed to the back corner of the room and said a man hanged himself there. Then she left the room.

Other things that happened include a woman that seemed to visit my other sister in her sleep regularly. One night when my parents where in bed, a large crashing sound emanated from the kitchen like all the cabinets flew open with all the dishes crashing to the floor. When my parents when to investigate nothing was amiss.

Other times books would open on their own in front of people and for me only two real things stand out. One was I awoke from a very sound sleep by something and as I was waking up I saw a solid black figure standing/bending by the head of my bed. Needless to say I was instantly awake and swinging my pillow at it. By the time I was fully awake nothing was there. I can never be sure if that is what I saw or just want I imaged as I woke up but something caused me to come out of a sound sleep.

We had two dogs that were very protective of the family. One was full Chow (the mother named Jess) and the other was half Chow (her son named PT). PT was well known in the neighborhood as a very aggressive watch dog for the house, family, and back yard. Occasionally he would escape from the back yard but he would be happy go lucky as he only protected his "property", his "family". He was a very aggressive dog within his boundaries. Case in point, my father tried to give him to the AF for a K9 working dog, but they refused as he as too aggressive. Like all outside dogs, when they both came in the house, they were very happy and anytime the door was open they would not hesitate to run into the house if invited, for scratches and snacks. This is very important to keep in mind for the upcoming incident.

One early afternoon in the summer I was home alone and like most teenagers on the weekend with not much to do, I was just lying on the couch eyeing the TV. I could not even tell you what was on but I do remember that the house was very still (not something I noticed then but looking back after it happened) and quiet with just the TV providing the sound. All of a sudden there was a huge sharp bang on the back door with PT barking and hitting the door again and again wanting to come in. They had never done this before and in fact, having enjoyed the company of a number of pet dogs, I had never seen this type of behavior before or since. My initial thought was someone was breaking in at the back of the house through the window, but we had bars on the windows (remember this is San Antonio) so if someone was breaking in I should have heard them, plus it was early afternoon. That was my young reasoning at the time.

So, I opened the back door and PT ran past me without even looking my way, not even stopping for a pat or snack, just zoomed by me to the front of the hallway. Jess was on the back porch whimpering and running in a circle, again I had never seen this behavior before. PT had run around the corner to the top of the hallway leading to the back bedrooms/bathroom when I heard him growling like a bear, deep and menacing. I tried to get Jess to come into the house, figuring two dogs is better than one but she refused, and I could not even pull her inside the house, as she locked up her legs and refused to move. Hearing PT growling but not barking I carefully made my way to the kitchen wall so I could peek around the corner to see what was going on, figuring the back door was open if I needed to run and dog was between me and whoever/whatever was in the hallway. I looked down the hallway and there was nothing I could see but I did notice it was quiet (except for the continuous growling) and it was darker in the hallway, like a gloomy day but only outside the sun was shining bright.

PT was standing there with all the hair on this back straight up and his tail straight back. I did not know what was going on but in either an act of bravery or stupidly (I was a teenager so it could go either way or a little bit of both) I walked up to PT again figuring he would protect me if something came down the hallway. I called him and he would only glance at me as he had to keep watch on whatever he saw. I tried to pat him and he paid no mind to my hand other to take a quick look to ensure it was my hand. I then preceded to walk down the hallway looking in the two bedrooms on the side, the bathroom and the bedroom at the end. Everything looked fine, did not see any broken glass or anyone for that matter and did not notice any cold spots, touching, etc. In the past the dogs loved to come back to the bedrooms to play and get petted but PT refused to come down the hallway at all, even after I called him, he seemed to be looking straight through me. He just kept still at the front of the hall, with his legs in a ready to attack stance and the deep, from the belly, growling. I tried to grab PT's collar and drag him down the hallway which he fought by digging his paws into the rug, he just locked his legs but kept right on looking pass me at whatever he saw. When I called him and tried to pull him, PT would give me quick glance perhaps a hard plead to leave him alone and get out of there quickly.

So deciding that it might be time to head to the great outdoors and wait for the rest of the family to return I started towards the kitchen and open back door when all of a sudden the dog quit growling. I looked back and it looked like he came out of a trance, he shook his head side to side and looked down the hallway. He then became the happy go lucky dog he was, wagging his tail and wanting a scratch. At the same time Jess came into the house as always-like nothing was wrong, nothing happened. But as a final period to this story as PT started to walk away from the hallway, he stopped and looked back down the hallway, which seemed to be not as dark, gave a hard deep growl that lasted a few seconds, and did the things that dogs do when covering up something bad, he used his back legs to kick out down the hallway like he was throwing dirt down that way. Both dogs were their playful self.

I am not sure what happened and I never been one to pick up on that kind of thing but I can say that was the strangest thing that had ever happened to me until my young daughter was having conversations with something in the corner of our room one night in Korea but that is another story. Never again did anything happen like that again while we were in the house. Just a strange happening and sometimes I ponder about what might have happened if the "protector" dogs had not been there... Nothing I would have noticed but...