The Purrfect Folklore of Ghost Cats
A #Caturday look at spectral mousers, fairy felines, and the soft pawprints of ghostlore
Once, while investigating the haunting of a museum that used to be a jail, I was walking through a dimly lid corridor between rooms and something suddenly sped towards me from the shadows. My heart leapt into my throat, I yelped, and then I realised it was the resident mouser. I’d scared the cat and the cat had scared me (but we soon both forgave one another).
Although I am sceptical about the existence of ghosts, I enjoy a good ghost story as much as the next person, and none more so that ghost stories featuring animals - and as a bonafide cat lady, ghost cats hold a very special place in my heart. Folklore is full of stories about phantom tails brushing past ankles, feline omens, unseen cats jumping onto beds, and mysterious meows in empty rooms. Some of these tales are attached to specific buildings and beloved pets while others belong to older layers of myth, where cats slip over the border into fairyland or yōkai territory and never quite come back.
This #caturday, here are a few of my favourite ghost cats padding around in legend and lore.
Morris, Manager of the Crescent Hotel
At the famously haunted Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, the real star isn’t the Victorian architecture or the ghost tours – it’s Morris, an orange tabby who once held the entirely serious job title of general manager. Morris moved into the hotel in 1973 and greeted guests, posed for photos, and generally ran the place in the way only a resident cat can. When he died in the 1990s, staff buried him in the gardens and put up a little headstone… and that’s where the ghost stories began.1
Visitors still report seeing a ginger cat lounging in his old favourite spots, feeling a weight jump onto their bed, or noticing a furry shape slip through doorways that no living cat is currently using. It’s a very gentle kind of haunting - a beloved hotel cat still doing his rounds, still inspecting the guests, and presumably still taking up most of the office chair.
Seamus, the Pub Cat of York
York is already drowning in ghosts, but even there, a pub with its own spectral cat stands out. The Snickleway Inn – one of the city’s older timber-framed pubs – is said to be haunted by Mrs Tulliver and her cat, Seamus. Locals and visitors alike tell similar stories about the distinct sensation of a cat weaving around their ankles or jumping onto a lap, only for them to look down and find nothing there at all.
As pub hauntings go, Seamus is delightfully low-stakes. No poltergeist tantrums, no cursed mirrors – just a ghostly pub cat still doing his patrol between the barstools, occasionally gracing someone with an invisible head-butt. If you’re going to be haunted while trying to enjoy a quiet drink, a friendly phantom cat is probably the best-case scenario.
The Black Cat of Killakee House
Not all ghost cats are cosy companions; some have a touch of gothic drama about them. One of Ireland’s most striking feline phantoms is the Killakee Demon Cat, said to haunt Killakee House near Dublin. The site has long been linked (fairly or unfairly) to the old Hellfire Club, and in the late 1960s workers renovating the property began reporting encounters with a huge black cat with blazing red eyes that appeared in empty rooms, staring them down. According to the stories, it would materialise silently, glower with deep, ancient resentment, then vanish as abruptly as it came. Later visitors claimed similar encounters with a black cat “as big as an Alsatian”.2
It’s a more dramatic haunting than most, but there’s something oddly compelling about it: the sense of a house cat wronged by centuries of human nonsense, still stalking the halls with the offended dignity of a creature who very much remembers what you did and will glare at you about it for eternity.
The Demon Cat of Washington, D.C.
One of the best-known feline phantoms is the Demon Cat of Washington, D.C. – often shortened to “D.C.” because of course it is. According to local legend, the Capitol’s basements served as a bakery to produce food for the Union armies in the area. The grain attracted mice and rats and so cats were brought in as pest control and one mouser simply refused to clock off.3 Witnesses claim to see an ordinary-sized cat in the corridors of the Capitol or White House which suddenly swells to the size of a tiger (or even an elephant) before vanishing. Some people say the D.C. of D.C. appears before national crises or presidential assassinations.
Whether you read it as an omen, a mascot, or a story invented by bored night-shift guards who really wanted a day off, there’s something very on-brand about America’s political heart being haunted by a cat that shows up at dramatic moments, makes itself enormous, then disappears without explanation.
Cat-sìth, the Fairy Cat of the Highlands
Not all ghost cats are former pets. In Scottish and Irish folklore, the Cat-sìth (or Cat-sidhe) is a fairy creature said to resemble a huge black cat with a white patch on its chest – sometimes said to be as big as a dog, and not necessarily inclined to purr. If nobody is watching, it walks on its back legs like a human, if it’s observed the Cat-sith arches its back in a hostile show of dominance. Some stories say it’s a fairy while others claim it’s actually a witch who has transformed herself.
Around Samhain, households are said to have left out a saucer of milk so the Cat-Sìth would bless their home and livestock rather than curse them. There are darker tales too, involving the stealing of souls from corpses before burial by walking over the deceased - functioning as a sort of supernatural cat-psychopomp, slipping in and out between worlds. You can imagine that flash of white on a black chest just visible at the edge of the firelight, watched out of the corner of someone’s eye on a long Highland night…
Bakeneko, Japan’s Shape-Shifting Ghost Cats
Japan, being Japan, doesn’t stop at one ghost cat – it has an entire category of supernatural felines known as bakeneko, which translates to changed cats. These yōkai begin as ordinary cats who live to a great old age and quietly absorb enough uncanny energy to sort of level up. Once transformed, a bakeneko might walk on its hind legs, speak human language, change shape into a person, or dance with a towel on its head to seduce men before drinking their blood.4
Some legends are cuter, with bakeneko throwing parties, gossiping, or sneaking around in disguise while others are darker, featuring vengeful cats who return to punish cruel owners (I’m on board with this). Should you see a cat on its hind legs licking lamp oil, it’s said to be a bakeneko omen of strange times ahead (it doesn’t matter that traditionally, sardine oil was often used in lamps.) Either way, the idea that your seemingly normal house cat is secretly a centuries-old shapeshifting spirit with opinions about your life feels… strangely plausible to anyone who has ever been judged by a feline from the arm of the sofa.
Why We Like the Idea of Ghost Cats
You could spend a long time arguing about what these stories really are – misinterpretations, memories that have grown legs, warnings about not mistreating animals or else, folklore doing its usual thing. But taken on their own terms, ghost-cat tales are surprisingly tender. They give us hotel managers who never quite retire, pub cats still threading themselves between familiar bar stools, and mythic fairy creatures who demand a saucer of milk in exchange for good fortune.
If nothing else, they’re a reminder of how much emotional space cats occupy in our lives. Even in death – or maybe especially in death – we like to imagine them still here: patrolling the corridors, claiming the comfiest chair, judging us gently from the other side. And if you feel something brush against your ankle next time you’re in an old pub or historic building on a quiet evening… well. Happy #caturday.
https://crescent-hotel.com/blog/history-of-the-crescent-hotel-cats/
https://www.spookyisles.com/beast-of-killakee/
https://boundarystones.weta.org/2023/03/17/dc-really-stands-demon-cat-which-haunts-us-capitol
Taulbee, C, (2021) “BAKENEKO: A Look Into The Origins of Japan’s Supernatural Cats” (2021). University Honors Theses. Online: https://doi.org/10.15760/honors.989
Most excellent! I, too, love ghost stories, folklore and Frips. Good show.