A touch of the supernatural

As a young adult, I was totally science and didn't believe in the supernatural. I can't say that I believe much of it now, but there is room for it in my mind. The reason for this is simple: our tiny little brains are just not designed to comprehend everything. Our senses are not capable of detecting everything that is going on in our environment.

As I sit here in this room, typing this post, millions of particles called neutrinos from the sun are passing through me now. They flew right through the earth and through me and on to the next solar system or wherever they go. A neutrino can go through a light year of lead without hitting anything.

There is radioactivity all around me. It's very mild but it's there and my senses can't detect it. While I can see light, I don't see infrared, ultraviolet or even the radio frequency energy around me. It's all there, I just don't see it. I only see a tiny little sliver of "reality".

Quantum mechanics is all about probabilities, not certainties, so particles can pop in and out of existence all the time. Everything is moving all the time. Everything is changing, all the time. Whatever is composed must decompose. The cups in my cupboard are decomposing, just not at a rate that I can detect.

Given that there is so much going on around me that would take years, maybe even decades to fully understand, I'm willing to make room for supernatural events and phenomena. I will extend the benefit of the doubt.

I was a pretty hard science guy until a friend of mine showed me The X-Files, a television series that ran for about 10 years on Fox. I have seen every episode and have enjoyed all of them. The show is based on evidence from real X-files maintained by the FBI. Thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests have brought out events and phenomena that the FBI has actually investigated, and those files were used for many of the stories presented in the X-Files. That was my first step into this part of the world, the part of the world that even scientists and seasoned investigators find difficult to explain.

My friend who introduced me to the X-Files also had another friend, a couple, actually. They were married by their hearts, not on paper, not with a license. The husband was a horse shoe guy, not sure what the word is, but he took care of horse feet and made sure that horse feet were in good shape and had good shoes. I never did learn what his wife did. They were very cool people and they made me laugh.

Anyway, the story is that they booked a room in a haunted hotel in Central California. They didn't really believe in ghosts or anything like that, but they wanted to see for themselves if this hotel they stayed at was really haunted. After driving many hours to get there, they checked in. They took their luggage up to the room and settled in long enough to freshen up for dinner.

As the wife surveyed the room, she noticed a waste basket in the middle of the room. "That doesn't belong there. I'll put it back here by the desk." Then they departed the room for dinner downstairs. When they returned, they found the waste basket was back in the center of the room. They put the waste basket back next to the desk and checked out that night to sleep in another hotel.

I actually have my own experience to share, too. Long ago, I used to perform stand up comedy as a hobby. I really enjoyed the process of writing jokes, telling them and seeing if people would laugh at them. For a few months, I made a bi-weekly venture of performing at the Queen Mary Hotel in Long Beach, California.

To get the stage time, I had to set up the stage. I set up the mic stand, the sound system and the lights. Now the auditorium was at the bottom of the ship, near the back. It was always cold there because the thermostat in the room had a leak and the staff had tried repeatedly to fix it. I tried to fix it myself and as I approached, I could hear it hissing away. After making a few attempts to sort that out, I just let it be.

I had also heard that near the auditorium there was a swimming pool and that a few people had died there. That was always in the back of my mind when I was there. I've even talked to a few people there to learn that there was one room in the hotel that caused a lot of trouble. No one could get any sleep in that room, so they put the accounting office there.

One night, as I was setting up the stage, I noticed something. I had set up the lights and they were shining on me, on stage. No one else was there. I was working on the microphone and stand, wrapping the cable around the mic stand and connecting the mic to the cable. I was looking down to make sure it was just so, and as I looked up, a seat flipped. That is to say, that just as I looked up, a seat that was down, as if someone were sitting in it, flipped up!

"Okay! Time for some music!" And I turned the music on to entertain the spirits in the room (and to give myself a little more comfort). I also continued on to run sound checks to make sure that the system was ready for the show.

Now I'm not a true believe in ghosts or other stuff like that, but I have always allowed some room in my mind for the supernatural. Not necessarily because I can prove it, but because I can't disprove it.