EL said:
When it comes to finding natural explanations for "supernatural" experiences I like the following story about Richard Feynman from
feynman online:
The Supernatural Clock
Once we were talking about the supernatural and the following anecdote involving his first wife Arline came up. Arline had tuberculosis and was confined to a hospital while Feynman was at Los Alamos. Next to her bed was an old clock. Arline told Feynman that the clock was a symbol of the time that they had together and that he should always remember that. Always look at the clock to remember the time we have together, she said. The day that Arline died in the hospital, Feynman was given a note from the nurse that indicated the time of death. Feynman noted that the clock had stopped at exactly that time. It was as the clock, which had been a symbol of their time together, had stopped at the moment of her death. Did you make a connection? I asked NO! NOT FOR A SECOND! I immediately began to think how this could have happened. And I realized that the clock was old and was always breaking. That the clock probably stopped some time before and the nurse coming into the room to record the time of death would have looked at the clock and jotted down the time from that. I never made any supernatural connection, not even for a second. I just wanted to figure out how it happened.
Problem is, I don't believe him. Or, at least he's splitting hairs on the duration of time he made a supernatural connection - maybe it was only for about 1.5015 milliseconds, or one cycle of his thought processes.
I remember a kayak class I took where the instructor was giving me 'roll practice'. He'd stand behind my kayak in a swimming pool, flip me upside down, and start shaking the kayak violently. The idea was to just sit tight and remain calm for a few seconds before trying to roll back right side up.
Next day, the last set of rapids we ran was practically a waterfall followed by a series of standing waves. I flipped in the hole at the bottom of the waterfall and the first few explanations that went through my mind for what my kayak was doing were definitely connected to the supernatural. Snake-like sea monster has grabbed my kayak and is trying to shake it to pieces? No, those don't exist, so it has to be a crocodile? No, not in these waters. It has to be an evil female water spirit that's trying to drown me! There's just absolutely no way I'm going to believe I've been shrunk and teleported into a Maytag washing machine, so it has to be the evil spirit of the river! The whole time I'm reaching 'upward' with my paddle getting set to roll and wondering if I'm even reaching in the right direction (I still don't know - my paddle never reached the surface, so I had to bail).
Afterward, I'm remarking that the 'practice' was nothing like the real thing, then realized, "Wait, yeah it was. It was exactly like a person standing behind my kayak and shaking it violently." It's just that the day before, I knew who was grabbing my kayak. In the river upside down, it just seemed inconceivable that there could be any logical reason for what was happening, even having been specifically prepared for it the day before.
I also remember swimming in the Gulf near Hurlburt Air Force Base and seeing a sea turtle. My first impression definitely wasn't sea turtle. It looked like a sea monster out of a horror movie.
There's a lot of things that happen where your first impression is formed by normal human fear and imagination. I don't think there's very many people whose first reaction is cold logic.
And, most importantly, I can post again (I thought I'd been banned
). I went to renew and realized I also needed to update my e-mail. If you change your e-mail address, evidently you can't do anything but read posts until you follow the link in the confirmation e-mail (which I was very slow to get around to reading).
Edit: Added story I was commenting on. (geez, zooby, how could you forget that story already when I only read it about 45 minutes ago?)
But it's not actually just the ghosts i believe in, i believe that your body stays behind as some kind of energy 
