Supernatural – Page 2

The Spirit of the Forest

“Can a forest really behave as a whole in a way that seems intelligent and also protect itself and its contents?”

I rarely get to visit a large forest, but I have noticed even a small forest of a few acres seems to have a “presence” about it, like a hint of consciousness. Being in a forest can even give me the feeling of being watched. I don’t think this watchful presence feeling is from specific plants or animals in the forest, but maybe all of them together, possibly in combination with the land features as well. Or maybe it’s something else in the forest, something not visible.

Continue reading “The Spirit of the Forest”

Coming Back From the Dead

“Nature can of course surprise us.”

We find stories of people coming back from the dead in fiction as well as legends, myths, and religions. Coming back from the dead tends to mean becoming alive again, after being dead long enough to remove doubt about being dead. At the more real end of the spectrum, common sense suggests it’s not a safe bet if we’re talking about being dead for a long time, at least outside of religious contexts. Fiction, on the other hand, has no problem with having people walking and talking again after being dead for years or even decades or centuries. How possible is it for someone to come back from being dead for years, without preparation like cryogenics? Continue reading “Coming Back From the Dead”

Ghosts, Luck, And Curses

“While alive, we all have effects on our environment that have varying degrees of permanence.”

Yes, I’m discussing ghosts, luck, and curses – and just in time for Halloween. Utter nonsense, you say? We’ll see. These things are more related – and possible – than you think. What exactly is a ghost? The Merriam-Webster web site defines a ghost as a disembodied soul.[1] I’m going to use the term spirit instead of soul and focus on the consciousness aspect of it in this discussion. So I would expect a spirit to contain a person’s thoughts, feelings, and memories but without physical sensations or requirements such as hunger or tiredness. In my opinion, a spirit is what we generally interact with when we interact with someone on a psychological or intellectual level. Continue reading “Ghosts, Luck, And Curses”

Could Unicorns Exist in Nature?

“My question is not whether they do exist today, but whether unicorns have had enough time to evolve as such and breed that way consistently….”

With the help of fairy tales and entertainment companies like Disney, many people have some idea what a unicorn is. Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary says that a unicorn generally looks like a horse with a single horn on its forehead.[1] This agrees with popular fictional media, except this popular fiction tends to depict unicorns only as horses with single horns, instead of also allowing (e.g.) cloven hooves. In my definition, I’m siding with popular fiction and including only members of the genus Equus, whose only known living members are horses, zebras, and donkey relatives. None of these happen to have cloven hooves. (A genus is a level of taxonomy, a means of classifying living things. The traditional taxonomy levels – taxons – from top to bottom are: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.) Let nature genetically put a single horn on the head of any species of the genus Equus, and I would call it a unicorn. Continue reading “Could Unicorns Exist in Nature?”