Blogocentric Formulations

The Supernatural

"30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  | May 16

Prompt ▼

Do you believe in ghosts or other supernatural entities? Have you ever experienced something you could not explain?

I'm somewhat agnostic when it comes to the idea of ghosts and the supernatural. I don't have any personal experience with them, and I certainly think that some believers attribute a little too much to the supernatural rather than looking for a more natural explanation, but at the same time I can't rule out the possibility that the supernatural might exist. There are far too many inexplicable occurrences in this world to fully disregard the possibility that there may be things in the universe that we don't understand.

I wouldn't say that I've ever experienced something that can't be explained, although I've definitely been in situations where completely random coincidence would have infinitesimally long odds. Things like running into friends while on vacation halfway around the world, or having an employment or financial situation work out in just the right way, or having a near-miss in what would have otherwise been a catastrophically bad accident or mishap of some kind.

For example, my wife and I took a honeymoon nearly a year after we got married. We booked a trip to Hawaii and, when I told my boss about where we were going, he was like, "Oh Hawaii is great! In fact, we're headed to our timeshare there in September."

The rest of the conversation:

Me: "Oh we're going in September too!"
Him: "When?"
Me: "We leave on Monday the 15th."
Him: "That's the same day we fly out."
Me: "LAX?"
Him: "United, 10:45AM."
Me: "OMG that's our flight too. We're in Row 22, A&B."
Him: "Seriously? We're in Row 23, A through D."

This is a completely true story. My boss and I booked flights to Hawaii completely independent of one another, and ended up on the same flight sitting in adjacent rows. Although we were staying on separate parts of the island, our families met up for dinner one night and it was honestly the point at which that boss became a friend and mentor rather than just the executive whose phones I answered for a paycheck. As it happens, this is also the person who I bake cakes for every day, as referenced in my prior entry, "Cooking Submissive" , and in retrospect, I truly believe this extracurricular connection was at least in part responsible for getting our professional relationship to the point where he's played an instrumental role in a number of professional opportunities I've had over the years, including landing my dream job at Marvel.

Even though I'm technically a Christian, I don't proclaim to know with any degree of certainty what causes these things. What I would attribute to God, someone else might attribute to karma, or fate, or benevolent spirits. I don't have any practical experience that confirms for certain who is correct or why these things happen. All I know is that they do and, as previously mentioned, that means there's either a supernatural explanation for them, or we are all just walking around having statistically improbable things happen to us with highly irregular frequency.