Hi, I am new here. I needed to share this with people who either have had a similar experience or thinks along the same lines I do.
Background:
I had been rearranging some folders. I came across some very old photos of my father, who died in October of 1988. My son was interested in some clippings I had saved along with the photos.

Later that evening, I was online with my youngest daughter. We could not sleep, it was around 2 am.

The event: I had my black lab lying on the floor next to my chair and my cat on my desk next to me by the computer. My daughter was on her computer less than 4 feet away from me. Out of the blue, my dog jumps up, stiffens up, hair raised, and starts barking uncontrollably. My cat at the same time work up and did the same thing. He got into the attack mode, hair standing, and hissed.
Needless to say this scared me and my daughter. We though maybe someone snuck into the house. I turn to the direction of the dog and cat and did not see anything. I got up to investigate and called my dog to come with me, ,but he would not move. this is very unusal. This dog follows me everywhere, even to the toilet. I grab him by his collar and began moving to the stairs, the direction they were barking and hissing. This dog went nuts. He would not go. No matter how much I pulled on his collar, the more of a fight he put up to back up. Finally, I just let him go, I thought I would break his neck.

My daughter and me went to check things out and NOTHING. the doors were locked. windows were not openned. no signs of a mouse. I telling you NOTHING was there.

Finally my daughter who is 8 said she felt a little weird, so we shut down the computers and went upstairs to watch some tv. My daughter refused to cross the basement door for the rest of the night. She said she felt "creeped out."

My question is this: could this have been considered a ghostly visit from my dad?
What do you think. Please, I would appreciate any opinion. last night I could have sworn I saw a shadow figure and again my dog went nuts. This is so out of character.

If it is my dad trying to communicate, does the shadowy figure mean something is wrong?

I have not had a dream of my father in a very, very long time. I just don't know what to make of this.

It does sound like a spirit visit but whether it's your Dad or not its hard to say. It could be a spirit related to the house from the past or even just a passer byer. Apart from the dog,cat and your daughters reactions to it, how did the experience feel? It can be hard to feel your true feelings when you have been given a fright by something you didn't expect or unknown. If it happens again try and just sense how things feel, and try not get mixed up with how you react..... i think that will give you clues as to whether it's a loved one or not. Does the name Cameron mean anything?

I had a very similar experience with my dog. I posted on UM about over a year and a half ago. This is what happened:

I had been out, into town for an appointment and I arrived home around 2:00 p.m. My dog, a chocolate Lab had come with me. We had been home about a half hour and I was taking a few moments to have a cup of tea, sitting in the family room. My dog is usually very laid back, very friendly, never gets angry and has a great deal of tolerance, even for hyper children. He doesn't get overly-excited about much. The house was very quiet as I was the only one at home, other than my dog and cat. Off the family room is an archway into the hall leading to all the bedrooms. I was enjoying my tea when quite suddenly my dog lunged toward something in the dark hall, growling, barking with his hackles raised. I had never seen him behave like that before. His vision was fixed on an area at the end of the hall, but there was nothing there that I could see. He continued to behave like this so I decided to be brave and look into the bedrooms and bathroom. My thinking was that someone might have gotten into the house while I was out. I could feel the hairs raising up on the back of my neck. I checked every room. Nothing in any of them. My dog was still barking and growling at the same spot, but then he began to back away as though afraid of what he was seeing. He backed out into the family room where he laid down. He continued to growl low under his breath for at least another half hour. For the rest of the day he seemed a bit spooked.

It was shortly after that that we began to experience what we now believe to be spirit activity in our home. We seem to have at least one very mischievous spirit, possibly 2. We don't feel frightened or threatened in any way, but it does get annoying. Our belongings are constantly tampered with. All 4 of us have had experiences in our home, but only my daughter and I have actually seen a manifestation.

It seems pets have a very good sense of those things. I remember when I was living in my grandmother's house (which is known to be haunted) I was eating dinner at the table with the family with all three dogs lying down behind me. Towards the end of dinner, right before my grandma got up to clear the table, all three dogs leaped up and started barking like crazy. I tried to quiet my dog (who almost always listens) but he would not shut up.

They ran into the living room and slowly walked back into the kitchen. They were looking up as if they were following someone in front of them. After a few minutes, they stopped and lied down again. The situation got the family to sit down and talk some more before clearing the table. Finally, my grandma got up again and only seconds later, the dogs went nuts. This time was even worse than the first.

All three looked up towards a shelf that was high up on the wall behind where my mother was sitting. As I looked up, I literally, saw a fancy boyds bears tin can slide off the shelf and fly towards my mother. It missed her by a few inches and wasnt thrown very hard, but was still freaky. However, the dogs payed the tin can no mind and continued to look up at the shelf.

Although, early that night, there was an incident in the kitchen in which a crystal vase full of roses slid about a foot away off the counter and crashed to the ground. No one was near the vase.. and no one touched it. And the thing was very heavy so I dont see how any small vibrations in the room could have slid it off the counter. And the dogs didnt react to it. They were playing in the living room when it happened though.

I dont know, Ive had people tell me that it was a spirit of negative engery or something. See, my grandparents had a nasty fight that day and my grandpa usually brings home some roses for my grandma some hours later as a way to make up. And during that time, my mom had recently gotten herself out of a bad marrage and found happieness with some guy from England. So the roses and crystal vase were thrown.. and a tin can was thrown towards my mother. Some people believe it to be a spirit that dislikes postive energy or something like that. I have also heard from those who dont believe spirits can touch earthly items that it was energy from us people in the room that could have done it.. or something along the lines of that.

But anyway, I do want to say that what the poster went through may in fact been related to a ghost. But like what was said already, it is not known if this spirit was your father or not.
But I was wondering what Anvil or anyone else has to say about my "pet" incident. Ghost, or something else?

Sounds classic to me earthchick. Dogs can sometimes be our best buddies to witness these sorts of things with. There is no doubt that their senses are much more accute and they can detect subtle changes in frequancy and vibration ie - guide dogs for epileptics...earthquakes, approaching thunderstorms.... ghosts/spirit energy is of a different vibration to us so it makes sense that dogs can sense them that way..... I think some dogs are more receptive than others but that could be down to whether a dog feels comfortable or uncomfortable with what it senses. It gets really interesting when you take a recepetive dog into a known active place, a dog of course can't be accused of being biased or having an over active imagination in any way.

My wee dog is pretty sensitive to spirits, he's a parson terrier, very acute and sharp but not a yappy dog. Funnily enough he alerted me late last night as I was finnishing stuff up on the pc, came through to me from another room with his tail between his legs looking quite worried and sat right behind my chair and legs. I recognise it's out of character for him when he does this so I double checked the usual that he didn't need out or anything. But he refused to come out of the study and was constantly looking over to the door with his ears going back and forth. I encouraged him to come out and followed him into the hall when he suddenly started to lowly growl and 'point' towards the stairs, he went slowly towards the bottom steps as if to get a look up and round the bend of the stairs where he must have braved himself to much and took a leap and sprinted back to me lol. While we don't have anything grounded here I know that we have regular visits from a little girl and cat ( have seen both) from the 1890's period, I wasn't able to sense anything new or anyone needing attention so I think it may have been the cat. The cat has often 'spooked' him, esp at night when he's sleeping, the amount of times i've heard him being chased or him chasing it out his basket with crash wallop the whole shebang lol

Hi enuf,

I think it sounds like you had some sort spirit acitivity going on in your grandmas house that day Very interesting that the dogs kept there eye fixed on the spot even when the objects were moved. I wouldn't go as far as saying the moved objects were aimed for specific people with some sort of intent. That is of course one way to look at it, but from what you have said it sounds classically to me like the spirit in question was just trying extremely hard to get all of your attention, to make themselves known to you and this was probaly an enourmous effort for it to do.

Aye, I think it had our attention with the crystal vase.. damn vase was expensive too lol. Really was no need to upset the dogs and throw a tin can off the shelf lol. But, ghosts can be funny that way I guess. *shrugs*