Many people who claim that their house is haunted will offer accounts on behalf of the family pet. Sometimes pets are the first to alert the family to paranormal activity.

In other cases, people swear that their deceased pet has paid them a visit from the other side.

One famous example of such a ghostly pet resides at The Whaley House Museum in San Diego, CA. The museum has a resident ghostly terrier named Dolly Varden. She was a pet of the Whaley family in the late 1800′s.  Dolly is not alone. Most members of the Whaley family are said to still haunt their home-turned-museum. The ghost dog is frequently spotted running through the house, surprising museum docents and tourists alike.

There are personal accounts from around the world experienced by ordinary people who claim haunting activity caused by deceased pets. A pet that haunts.

Living pets are sometimes involved in accounts of ghostly activity. A pet that is haunted.

There are ghostly animal tails…er, tales like these, reported from coast to coast, but what about stories from Arizona?

The producers of Animal Planet’s weekly series The Haunted are particularly interested in accounts from Arizona to feature in a future segment of the weekly series.

The ghostly activity doesn’t have to involve a dog or a cat. Any animal involved in paranormal phenomena; horses, chickens, pigs, etc., qualifies for consideration.

Remember, just because the pet is seeing things doesn’t mean that it would make a good story to showcase on the show. There should be human witnesses to the claims of paranormal activity.

Submitting your story for consideration is easy. Simply visit the Animal Planet submission page and fill out a questionnaire. Producers will contact you if they are interested in including your story in a future episode.

For now, stories are currently being filmed for new episodes. Fans can look forward to another suspenseful season of The Haunted.

The Bank of America at 902 North Stone Avenue in Tucson is closed today due to the 4th of July holiday.

That doesn’t mean that there is no activity at the bank. Ghosts don’t work bankers’ hours and they don’t take holidays. The branch is bustling with paranormal activity.

The strange goings on at this location have been reported for several years.

This particular location was established in 1948 as The Bank of Douglas. By 1960, the bank operated under the name Arizona Bank. In the 1990′s, bank mergers and acquisitions brought the names of banking giants like Bank of America and Wells Fargo to town. Banking customers at First Interstate and Arizona Bank underwent the painful process of bank account conversions. Perhaps that is what stirred up the ghost at 902 North Stone Avenue. The ghostly activity at the bank was rumored to have accelerated around that time.

Employees saw apparitions. Doors swung open. Doors slammed shut.

One dreaded door, the door to the furnace room, was avoided as much as possible. Employees considered that room to be the source of activity and simply steered clear of it. In 1997, Alan D. Fischer of the Arizona Daily Star paid a visit to investigate the rumored haunting. He witnessed the furnace door swing open for no apparent reason. He investigated the area and found no prankster around. He examined the door, which was too heavy to simply swing open by itself. He concluded: “I don’t have an answer, but I do have a strong belief that there is something going on there.”

One has to wonder whether there is something going on there today. The next thing to ponder would be whose spirit feels compelled to haunt the bank and why they would haunt it. No one knows the answers yet. It could be someone associated with the bank, or someone associated with the property prior to 1948.

While future dreaded mergers and acquisitions could change the name of the place, the activity of a nameless ghost may remain unchanged.

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In the Fall of 1943, residents of Sahuarita lived in terror.

Paranormal activity plagued the area 20 miles south of Tucson, with most of the activity focused on the home of a 70-year-old woman. Bricks were tossed down her chimney. Rocks frequently pelted her roof in the dead of night. She would routinely find sand mixed in with her coffee.

Not long after the rumors of the haunted house began to circulate throughout the community, a man was robbed. The man could not see his assailants in the pitch black darkness of the night. Two other men were beaten on different nights. Residents started to carry guns, fearful that the ghosts appeared to be multiplying. The residents acknowledged that their bullets were useless against the ghosts, but they didn’t know what else to do.

When the news of the robbery and assaults reached the 70-year-old woman and she made the decision to abandon her home.

Deputy Sheriff Ben Mariscal also had enough of the paranormal activity in Sahuarita. Mariscal wasn’t afraid of no ghosts and was determined to put an end to it.

Over the course of his (paranormal) investigation, he suspected that several area youths were up to no good in the neighborhood. He targeted two boys, in particular, as the “ghost chiefs” of the bunch. One of the boys, a 15-year-old, was the grandson of the 70-year-old woman who abandoned her home.

Mariscal arranged a “ghost hunt” with the two boys at the abandoned home. He told the boys that he wanted to witness the ghostly activity for himself. The boys agreed to participate . On the night of the paranormal investigation, Mariscal arrived at the home with an innocent 15-year-old boy. The boy would be used as a decoy, according to his plan to nab the “ghosts” that evening. The deputy told all three boys to sit on a bench, with the decoy seated between the two suspected ghost boys. Mariscal turned off the lights. They all waited for the midnight hour, which was just moments away.

Through the darkness came the sound of a blood curdling scream. Mariscal turned on the lights to find the decoy with blood pouring out of his busted nose. Mariscal demanded to know which of the boys was the ghost. The two suspected ghosts immediately turned around and accused the decoy of attacking them with a metal instrument. The decoy protested, saying that he felt one of the boys’ arms move just before he was hit in the face. When Mariscal revealed that the bloody-nosed boy was a “plant”, the ghost boys ended their charade.

The boys were put in front of Judge William G. Hall in juvenile court. The “chief ghost” was given a year probation with the guarantee of being shipped off to reform school at Fort Grant, if even the slightest “ghosting” occurred again. The second boy received a slap on the hand.

Judge Hall said about his ruling: “If they had stayed with their pranks and let it go at that, I would have been inclined to show leniency, but when they began knocking down people and robbing one, it was going too far. This one boy is without doubt the leader of the little gang and supplied most of the ideas, I believe, and for that reason the terms of his probation are rather severe. The other lad was not involved to the same extent and I thought if we took care of the chief ghost the difficulty would be solved.”

The 70-year-old grandmother of the heavily reprimanded chief ghost returned to her home. From that point forward, no rocks showered her roof. No bricks dropped down her chimney. No coffee was tainted with sand.

It is assumed that the decoy’s nose healed nicely, though there is no record of what happened to him after the ghost hunt. It is due to him, and Deputy Sheriff Mariscal, that the streets of Sahuarita became safe, once again.

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