What if I experienced an undeniable objective religious experience, a self-evident example of psychic phenomena or a ghost? How would I handle such a reversal and attack on my world view? I'm not talking about an encounter with Bigfoot or a UFO, I don't believe in them, but they pose no threat to my core beliefs, such things are unlikely, but do not violate the laws of physics.

I am talking about an experience I cannot fit in or explain away. What if I were haunted? Or had a clairvoyant or prescient episode? Or bewitched in some way and couldn't brush it off as an ordinary experience perceived under extraordinary circumstances?

It might make a great plot for a novel, a psychological and philosophical study of a self-consistent and complete world-view suddenly turned on its ear by an irrefutable inconvenience in reality. Writers, especially science fiction writers, often bring in the impossible to bring out some deeper point about the human condition. You don't need to believe in ghosts to have the shit scared out of you by a good horror story.

However, it might be hard for me to write about that convincingly because I don't see that type of phenomenon as making the world more exciting, more strange, or more wonderful. On the contrary, a world where the supernatural is possible is too simple to be real, and too easy to be true. I find a universe where strange things happen just as a result of the laws of physics as already being totally incomprehensible and impossible! Magic just seems like an easy excuse to explain away the real issues. A way to avoid facing the truth, and admitting the true cosmic proportions of our loneliness.