By “not supernatural” I mean stories in which the supernatural is not a key element- you wouldn’t classify it as a thriller or what-not- but there is a single supernatural occurence.
Example:
Slumdog Millionaire is a straightforward story of three slum kids and how their lives wove back and forth and it’s far from mystical in most parts, except that the Muslim main character has a vision of the god Rama
It’s almost non-sequitur to the rest of the movie.
Another example I mentioned recently: Stephen King’s novel Dolores Claiborne is not a supernatural thriller, but Doris has a telepathic link with a character from one of his other novels, Gerald’s Game, and may have heard her employer call to her from miles away encouraging her to kill her husband.
Any other events like these in which something supernatural happens in an otherwise mundane (in the ‘non-supernatural’ sense) story?
The raining frogs at the end of “Magnolia” (though there is some real-world precedent for this).
The Christian medieval knight thing in the third Indiana Jones movie. Or, for that matter, the Nazi-killing fire-sandstorm in the first one. (Yes, there were a thousand IMPLAUSIBLE moments in these films, but that’s different than supernatural.)
I’ve often wondered how real the ghost was. You’ve got a couple of guys on a night watch in a spooky Danish castle in winter. Anyone could see a ghost in those conditions. I’m a rational 20th century boy, but I’ve been spooked walking through dark woods at night. Then Hamlet hears the rumors and starts seeing the ghost himself. But is it really an actual ghost, or is it an inner manifestation of his own guilt and suspicion.
Oh, and in the last scene of “Magnolia” it wasn’t so much the frogs as it was the dispersed characters singing that stupid song in unison (I liked the rest of the film, BTW.)
Depending on your interpretation of Men Who Stare At Goats, it’s possible that there is only one or two genuine supernatural occurrences in the movie, which aren’t central to the plot. Alternately, it’s possible that it’s a fantasy movie filled with supernatural stuff.
Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon contains one scene where a dead character is resurrected. The prequel novels of The Baroque Cycle feature two more resurrections by the same means. These are not the sort of stories where you would expect such things to be possible.
The Hudsucker Proxy is an odd screwball comedy. Towards the end they suddenly, dramatically, throw in an angel. It was a real jolt, and took me out of the movie.
There were also a couple of moments with the headpiece manifesting supernatural effects, and the emblem being seared out on the crate containing the Ark–enough that the Ark lightning didn’t come out of the blue.
You see this a lot in TV shows (and I think we’ve had a thread on such). Example: In MASH*, Radar is slightly precognitive, and always announces the incoming helicopters a little before they’re heard. Happy Days had an episode with Mork, and another where the Fonz made a deal with the devil. And many shows have had a Christmas episode where it turns out that Santa is real after all, or where a character has an It’s a Wonderful Life experience.