If a bat swooped past you at dusk, the bat spiritual meaning most people give it is change, and a nudge to trust your instincts in the dark. In Chinese tradition, a bat is even a sign of blessing. That is the best documented reading we found, so we would not take a bat as a bad omen.
If a bat is inside your home right now, the meaning can wait a few minutes.
Keep your hands off it and start with the steps just below. As the CDC points out, a bat bite can be so tiny that you may not even know it happened.
You will find foxes, frogs, wolves and many other animals in our guide to what animals mean spiritually. For signs of every kind, and a simple way to start reading them, see signs from the universe.
Bat in the House: What to Do First
First, take a breath, because you have time to handle this carefully.
The CDC says bats do not all carry rabies. In the United States, though, bats are the animal most often reported with it, so a bat indoors deserves your full attention for a few minutes.
The good news is that rabies in people can be prevented if you get medical help quickly. The CDC counts fewer than 10 deaths from it a year in the US.
- Stay back and stay calm. Never touch the bat with your bare hands, and do not swat or hit it. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health warns that harming its head can make rabies testing impossible.
- Shut the bat into one room of your home. Close the door, and keep your children and pets out.
- Ask yourself one question. Could the bat have touched anyone, such as someone asleep, a child or pet alone with it, or a person who could not tell you?
- The CDC’s rule is to call your local health department or animal control about any bat in your home, before the bat goes anywhere. If there is any chance it touched someone, that call is the step to take.
- Massachusetts allows one exception: if you are certain nobody and no pet was touched, the bat can be let out. Read the two official answers below to see both.
- Wash any bite or scratch with soap and water for 15 minutes, as the CDC advises. Then get medical help right away.
○ Two Official Answers, and How to Choose
The two health agencies we read do not say quite the same thing, so you deserve to see both.
The CDC’s advice is to contact animal control or your health department, so the bat can be caught safely and tested. Do not let it go, the CDC says, until you have talked with a public health expert.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health is a little more forgiving. If you are certain the bat had no chance of contact with any person or pet, it says the bat can be allowed to leave on its own. It counts a bite, a scratch or any other touch on you or your pet as contact.
To let a bat out, Massachusetts says you should close the room and closet doors and open the windows. Turn on a light if the room is dim, watch the bat until it goes, and then shut your windows again.
We think the whole choice comes down to one word, certain.
If you were awake in that room the whole time, nobody else was there, and the bat never once came near you or any of your pets, you can probably be certain. If you are anything less than sure, follow the CDC and make the call.
Massachusetts itself notes that most of the time, treatment is not needed when the bat is there to be tested. So keeping the bat can spare you a lot of unnecessary worry.
○ If Someone Was Asleep in the Room
This is the case where you should not open the window.
The Massachusetts health department says contact is possible if a bat was close to a sleeping person or a child left alone. The same goes for a person with a sensory or mental impairment, or your pet.
Public Health Madison and Dane County in Wisconsin explains why the bedroom matters. If you find a bat there in the morning, it raises the worry that someone was bitten in their sleep.
That does not mean anyone was. It means the bat should be tested, so keep it in the room and call your health department.
If your dog or cat was near it, call your vet as well. The CDC says keeping your pets up to date on rabies shots lowers their risk.
○ How to Catch a Bat Without Touching It
You do not have to do this yourself.
The CDC says your health department or animal control can capture the bat for you. If you cannot catch it safely, the CDC adds, your public health department can advise you.
If you do want to catch it, here are the CDC’s steps, shortened.
- Put on leather work gloves.
- Wait until the bat lands. Then walk up slowly and place a box or jar over it.
- Punch a few small air holes in a piece of cardboard. Slide it under the container and tape it in place.
- Call your local health department so the bat can be tested.
○ What a Bat in the House Means Spiritually
Once the bat is outside or in the right hands, you can turn to the spiritual side.
Many people read a bat in your home as change arriving. Others take it as something hidden, in the family or in you, that is ready to be looked at.
The practical side can help you here too. The CDC says bats can squeeze through gaps as small as a quarter of an inch. The Massachusetts health department says they turn up in homes most often in late summer.
So a bat in your living room in August may simply be a lost, frightened animal.
You can still take the change reading from it, if it fits something happening in your life.
What Does It Mean When You See a Bat?
Bats come out as the light goes, and their habits shape almost every spiritual meaning you will read. Britannica says bats are the only mammals capable of true flight. Most of them hunt flying insects by echolocation, and most hang upside down to rest, according to Britannica.
- Change. A bat sleeps upside down and wakes when the day ends. Many people see it as a sign that something in your life is about to turn over.
- Trusting your instincts. A small bat finds its food in the dark by sound. You can read that as a nudge to trust what you sense before you can see it clearly.
- Hidden things. Bats move while most people sleep, so they are often tied to a secret, a dream or a feeling you have not named yet.
- The in-between. Dusk is neither day nor night. A bat out at dusk is often taken to mean you are between two chapters, like graduating from school and starting a new job.
- Luck. In Chinese tradition, a bat stands for blessing, and you will find that story below.
Here is a small test you can try. Write down the one thing you have been putting off or feeling uncertain about this month, then read the list again.
The reading that makes you wince a little is usually the one that fits.
Say you are walking home from a late shift in July, worrying about whether to move to a different city. A bat flicks past the streetlight above you twice. You could take the in-between reading from that moment, a reminder that not knowing yet is part of the change.
Is a Bat a Good or Bad Omen?
Both answers exist, and they come from different places. In Chinese tradition, a bat is good luck. The bad omen idea comes mostly from European folklore about witches and vampires.
We side with the blessing, because it is the reading that museums can actually trace.
○ A Bat as a Blessing in Chinese Tradition
The luck comes from a pun. The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco explains that the Chinese word for bat, fu, sounds like the word fu that means blessing. So the bat became a symbol of blessing.
That is why you will see bats on old Chinese hairpins and other traditional good luck designs. The Asian Art Museum also notes that a bat pictured upside down means blessings have arrived.
It is a sweet play on the way real bats rest, hanging upside down.
Five bats together are an especially famous design. Jan Stuart of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art told DailyOM that five red bats stand for the five most common good wishes. She names them as good health, long life, wealth, virtue and a peaceful death.
You will see slightly different lists of the five on other sites, so do not worry if yours does not match.
Bats also stand for long life in Chinese lore. Stuart told DailyOM that immortal beings were said to live in caves, as bats do. Over time, the two became linked with the idea of long or endless life.
○ Vampires, Witches and the Fear of Bats
In European folklore, bats belong to the night, to witches and, later, to vampires. The Halloween decorations you see every October still carry that picture. We could not trace where the fear first began, so read any confident origin story you find with care.
The real animal is far gentler than its reputation. DailyOM notes that only three of the 1,400 different bat species eat blood.
Britannica adds that bats are not blind, since smaller kinds rely mostly on echolocation while larger ones see well. So “blind as a bat” is a myth too.
○ What Does the Bible Say About Bats?
The bat appears in two of the Bible verses we read, and neither one calls it evil.
Leviticus, chapter 11, verse 13, opens a list of birds that are not to be eaten. Verse 19 closes that list with “the stork, the heron of any kind, the hoopoe, and the bat.”
Isaiah, chapter 2, verse 20, pictures a day when people throw their gold and silver idols away “to the moles and to the bats.” We read the bats there as a picture of dark, forgotten places, where you leave things you no longer want.
None of the verses we read treats a bat as a sign or a warning. So if you are a Christian and a bat crossed your path, you do not need to fear it.
○ Is a Bat a Sign of Death?
No tradition we could trace says so.
You may have read on spirit animal sites that a bat in the house means a death in the family. Others say a white bat in a dream means a relative will die. None of them gives any source.
We think these ideas grew out of the old fear of the dark rather than out of any written tradition. If a bat appeared around a funeral or a hard loss, you can let it simply be a bat. You can also take it as a quiet sign that one chapter of your life has closed.
Bat Spirit Animal
If you call the bat your spirit animal, you probably feel at home in the in-between times, such as late nights, big changes and the quiet hours when you think best. The traits you would name are the ones above, mostly change, instinct and noticing what others miss.
You will also find claims that “bat people” are psychic, or that a bat points to a twin flame. These are modern ideas (fine to enjoy), but nobody can trace them to any traditional teaching.
If you feel uncomfortable with the words, “animal guide” or “animal sign” work just as well, and many people prefer them.
○ The Bat in a Cherokee Story
One real story shows the bat at its best. It is the Cherokee ball game story, as James Mooney set it down and the Native History Association prints it.
In Mooney’s telling, the animals challenge the birds to a game. Two tiny four-legged creatures, hardly larger than field mice, ask the birds if they can play, because the animals had made fun of them and driven them off for being so small.
The birds, Mooney’s version says, cut two pieces of leather from their drumhead and stretch them into wings. They fasten the wings on one of the little creatures, and that is how the bat came to be.
In Mooney’s account of the game, the bat dodges and doubles back with the ball and keeps it away even from the deer. Then it scores the winning goal for the birds.
So here the bat is the small one nobody wanted, who wins anyway.
It is one nation’s story in one man’s record, though, and it does not tell you what Cherokee people think a bat sighting means today. Broader claims that “Native Americans” took bats as helpers of shamans name no nation and no source, so we have left them out.
Seeing a Bat at Night or During the Day
When you see a bat matters, both for the meaning and for your safety.
○ A Bat at Dusk or at Night
A bat out at dusk or at night is doing something completely normal for a bat. Britannica says bats are nocturnal, resting by day and feeding at night to avoid predators and save water.
The National Park Service adds that bats pollinate plants and eat insects. So the bat circling your porch light is busy with dinner, not haunting you.
Spiritually, a night bat is usually read as a sign that you are between two stages, like the hour between day and night. If you were lying awake over a decision, many people would say the bat came to tell you it is alright not to know yet.
○ A Bat During the Day
A bat you see flying in bright daylight, lying on the ground or clinging low on a wall is a different story.
The CDC lists bats that are active by day, found in odd places like a home or the ground, or unable to fly. It says these behaviors could point to rabies.
Keep your distance, bring pets inside, and call animal control or your local health department, as the CDC advises. However small and harmless it looks, do not try to lift it or help it fly. The CDC also says never to approach an animal that seems sick or hurt.
People give a daytime bat the meaning of something hidden stepping into the light, often a truth you have been avoiding. It will still be there to think about once the bat is in safe hands.
A Dead Bat
If you find a dead bat outside, in the yard or on the porch, leave it where it is. The CDC says never to approach animals that look injured, sick or dead. Call animal control if you need help.
A dead bat inside your house, especially in a bedroom, is a different matter.
Call your health department first and ask what they want you to do. Public Health Madison and Dane County, in an older notice, says you can lift it with a paper towel or disposable rubber gloves, place it in a small plastic container and keep it in your fridge. Never use bare hands, and let the health department decide whether it should be tested.
Spiritually, a dead bat is most often read as an ending, such as the close of a habit, a friendship or a hard season. It is not a curse, and nothing about it is aimed at you personally.
A Bat That Keeps Coming Back
A bat you see night after night may be living close by, in an attic, a wall or a tree. To find out how bats are getting into a house, the CDC suggests watching where they come out at dusk.
If bats are living in your home, do not block the gap in summer.
The CDC says fall and winter are the best times to bat-proof, because most bats have left by then. Between May and August, it says, be careful not to trap young bats inside.
Some bats are endangered, the CDC adds, and local rules about removing them may apply. So ask animal control or a wildlife agency before you seal anything.
Spiritually, a bat that keeps returning is read as a message you have not answered yet. Many people take it as a push to finally make the change you keep putting off.
A Bat in Your Dream
On Reddit’s dream forum, the bat dreams people ask about most are being bitten and seeing a whole swarm. These are the readings that come up for the common ones.
- A bat flying calmly at night. Change on its way, or a part of you that is waking up.
- Being bitten by a bat. A worry, a person or a habit that is draining your energy.
- A swarm of bats. Too much happening in your life at once, and a wish for some quiet.
- A bat flying straight at you. Something you have been avoiding is getting closer, and it may be easier to face than it feels.
One plain note. If you dreamed of a bat bite and woke to find a real bat in your room, treat it exactly like the bedroom situation above and call your health department.
Look Up at Dusk
On a warm summer evening, find a spot near a pond, a river or a streetlight, and wait as the sky turns from orange to deep blue.
Sooner or later, a small dark shape will flick past, turn sharply and vanish, chasing insects you cannot even see.
Watch it from where you stand and let it be. Whatever the bat means to you, it is out there eating bugs on your behalf, and it will be back tomorrow night. Happy bat watching!
Your Questions About Bats
Is a bat a good or bad omen?
It depends on whose tradition you follow. In Chinese tradition a bat is a sign of blessing, because the word for bat sounds like the word for blessing, as the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco explains. The bad omen idea comes mostly from European folklore about witches and vampires, and we found no old text that makes a bat a warning.
What does it mean if a bat visits you?
Most people read a visiting bat as a sign of change, or as a nudge to trust your instincts while things are still unclear. If the bat came inside, put safety first. Keep away from it and work out whether anyone could have been touched before it goes anywhere.
Is it safe to let a bat out of my house myself?
Only if you are certain nobody was touched. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health says that if there was no chance of contact with any person or pet, the bat can be allowed to leave through an open window, with the room and closet doors closed. The CDC’s general advice is to call animal control or your health department and not to release the bat until you have talked with a public health expert, so if anyone was asleep in the room, or a child or pet was near it, make that call.
What does it mean to see a bat during the day?
Spiritually, it is read as something hidden coming into the light. In real life, the CDC lists bats that are active by day, found on the ground or unable to fly as possible signs of rabies, so keep your distance, bring pets inside and call animal control or your local health department.
What does a dead bat mean, and should I touch it?
A dead bat is usually read as an ending, such as the close of a habit or a hard season, and not as a curse. Do not touch it with bare hands. The CDC says to leave sick or dead animals alone and call animal control, and if the bat was inside, especially in a bedroom, Public Health Madison and Dane County says to lift it with a paper towel or disposable gloves into a container, keep it in the fridge and call your health department.
What do bats symbolize in China?
Blessing and good fortune. The Chinese word for bat, fu, sounds like the word for blessing, and five bats together stand for five good wishes, which Jan Stuart of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art names as good health, long life, wealth, virtue and a peaceful death. Bats are also linked with long life, because immortal beings were said to live in caves, as bats do.
