# Non-supernatural stories in which something supernatural happens **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 2, 2013, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670 "2013-04-02T22:01:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/21 "2013-04-03T01:20:17Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Wait, it _ate_ someone? When? Where? Whoops, sorry. Looks like I conflated some fanwankery I ran across a while back that believed the briefcase had the glowing orb from _Heavy Metal_, or maybe whatever was in the car trunk in _Repo Man._ So, maybe not such a good example. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/22 "2013-04-03T01:21:39Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > _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 Does he, though? I assumed it was just someone dressed up for the festival. ---
**Author:** ![Accidental\_Martyr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/23 "2013-04-03T01:54:35Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > 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. in another Danny Boyle movie, **Millions** , the younger brother has conversations with dead saints as well as the ghost of his mother. This happens more than once in the movie, though. > **[Millions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millions)** > > A million is 1,000,000. > Millions or Million may refer to: ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/24 "2013-04-03T01:59:30Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > You see this a lot in TV shows (and I think we’ve had a thread on such). Example: In _M_A_S_H\*, Radar is slightly precognitive, and always announces the incoming helicopters a little before they’re heard. I think his ability to anticipate Blake’s orders shows it a lot more than announcing the choppers. The latter could just be excellent hearing (in fact, I think that’s what it is in the book). For that matter, the anticipated orders aren’t explicitly supernatural; you could argue that Radar is just smarter than he looks, well prepared, and thoroughly familiar with his CO’s behavior. I don’t recall him ever doing anything that absolutely required advance knowledge of a completely unpredictable event. He could spend most of his day preparing contingency plans and watching where his boss leaves things. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/25 "2013-04-03T02:07:39Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > 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. I know there are multiple interpretations but the recent PBS show Shakespeare Uncovered made a lot of sense. The idea of ghosts and the supernatural was not strange at the time. Ghosts were assumed to be all around. No one at the time would think its strange that a ghost showed up. The episode can be seen here (David Tennent). [Shakespeare Uncovered | PBS](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/shakespeare-uncovered/) ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/26 "2013-04-03T02:09:18Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > I think his ability to anticipate Blake’s orders shows it a lot more than announcing the choppers. The latter could just be excellent hearing (in fact, I think that’s what it is in the book). For that matter, the anticipated orders aren’t explicitly supernatural; you could argue that Radar is just smarter than he looks, well prepared, and thoroughly familiar with his CO’s behavior. I don’t recall him ever doing anything that absolutely required advance knowledge of a completely unpredictable event. He could spend most of his day preparing contingency plans and watching where his boss leaves things. It would have been nice if he told Henry to take a different flight. Dick. ---
**Author:** ![Accidental\_Martyr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/27 "2013-04-03T02:10:42Z")
How about in **Life of Brian** when the alien spaceship swoops down a picks up Brian? ---
**Author:** ![minlokwat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minlokwat/32/2844_2.png) [@minlokwat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minlokwat)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/28 "2013-04-03T02:14:37Z")
Another from Tarantino. In **Kill Bill: Volume 1** , as the fight rages on between Uma’s character and the Crazy 88s, Uma climbs her way to an upper level of the room for a brief escape. Moments later, one of the combatants simply flies through the air after her. This gravity defying maneuver (pretty sure a reference to **Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon** ) elicits nary a reaction from those in mid-battle. Granted there’s lots in the scene that stretches credulity but throwing in a flying guy tips the scale to Pure Fiction. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/29 "2013-04-03T02:22:50Z")
In Sue Grafton’s novel _M is for Malice_, Kinsey Mllhone seems to have a psychic experience of some kind. R.A. McAvoy’s excellent novel _Twisting the Rope_ includes telepathy and a shapechanged dragon, but these elements are comparatively minor. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/30 "2013-04-03T02:34:24Z")
[“Tell 'em Large Marge sencha!”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Pdlxd_rro) ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/31 "2013-04-03T02:43:52Z")
The telekinetic power of the main character in “Time of the Gypsies” ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/32 "2013-04-03T02:58:48Z")
My So Called Life was a normal drama but one episode featured a magical Angel. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/33 "2013-04-03T03:08:15Z")
I never thought Radar was being given ESP. He had great hearing for the choppers, and was very organized and understood his boss very well, so he could anticipate. Nothing supernatural required, and I never took it that way. Now some of the episodes with Hawkeye and the shrink got into some weird territory. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/34 "2013-04-03T03:19:35Z")
Ed McBain wrote police procedurals and a recurring villain was The Deaf Man. He wrote so many books I can’t remember which one - “Hark!” ? - but the criminal mastermind was wounded, cornered, and the squad moved in to capture him only to find - nothing. No one. Just blood splatters. Gone. Thwarted again! ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/35 "2013-04-03T03:38:17Z")
This may be stretching it, but the Bond film _Live and Let Die_ featured precognition/ESP via Tarot reading—and [one character](http://jamesbond.wikia.com/wiki/Baron_Samedi) who may have been the _real_ Baron Samedi. ---
**Author:** ![Barking\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Barking\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barking_Dog)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/36 "2013-04-03T05:14:03Z")
_Frasier_ - The character Daphne being ‘a bit psychic’ was a running gag throughout the show’s run. But occasionally the writers threw in a gag that suggested she might actually be of the ESP persuasion. For instance, the episode where the dog Eddie runs away and gets lost, Daphne has a ‘psychic’ vision of the dog staring at Frasier; cut to the next scene we see the dog sitting on a bus stop bench looking at an ad for Frasier’s radio show with his face on it. _Bangkok 8_ - A run of the mill police procedural/ detective novel set in Bangkok has a protagonist that is sort of half cop/ half buddhist monk (an _arhat_) that speaks of mystical things, like hungry ghosts as if he could see them. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/37 "2013-04-03T14:04:17Z")
> [@Accidental\_Martyr](#): > > How about in **Life of Brian** when the alien spaceship swoops down a picks up Brian? Oh come on, that bit was clearly central to the movie, on a thematic level if not strictly from a plot standpoint. ---
**Author:** ![Wargamer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/df705f/32.png) [@Wargamer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wargamer)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/38 "2013-04-03T15:06:08Z")
Speaking of Daphne on _Frasier_, the episode where Lilith was coming to Seattle and Daphne was stricken with a migraine that lasted until the exact moment Lilith’s plane went wheels up. Seems like a suggestion Daphne was more psychic than we believed. ---
**Author:** ![Sister\_Vigilante](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@Sister\_Vigilante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sister_Vigilante)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/39 "2013-04-03T15:33:19Z")
Quantum Leap has two, so far (I’ve been watching them in order, yesterday he was a girl in a beauty pageant). 1. When he is in a mud show (tiny circus), the psychic medium tells him he’s lived many lives. 2. When he is a ghost hunter in a strange house where people keep drowning mysteriously, there is a very creepy maid working for the family. At the end, when all the bodies who’ve drowned come to the surface (attributed to an earthquake), they are all well preserved due to the deep/coldness of the bottom of the late. One of the dead bodies turns out to be the maid. Cut to the maid looking out the window of the house, she vanishes. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670/40 "2013-04-03T15:34:33Z")
> [@Sister\_Vigilante](#): > > Quantum Leap has two, so far (I’ve been watching them in order, yesterday he was a girl in a beauty pageant). I don’t want to spoil it for you, but I think that QL has more than just those two. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-supernatural-stories-in-which-something-supernatural-happens/654670.md?page=3)