During a strange, spur of the moment trip to Memphis (long story), I smoked part of a joint, then walked a dozen or so blocks to where a friend was staying, using a map. I finally found The Peabody Hotel and walked into the lobby, where ducks were walking in a line.
For a brief moment I was certain I was the only one who saw ducks in an upscale hotel lobby. I had never heard of it before.
Amazing!
I couldn’t see each item as he was taking it out lf the box. He walked up to me, rummaged through the box, and handed me my silver dollar. The OP asked for things that I could not explain. I named one. You haven’t explained it either. All you’ve done is offer a bunch of possibly plausible suggestions about how a similar effect might have been accomplished.
The psychic left the room and maybe there was no expression on the face to reveal the secret?
Exactly!
While I’m here the one strange thing that comes to mind is when I was about five years old and walking with my older sis and younger brother. It was a residential neighborhood and suddenly my sister points to a something behind a house window.
To my memory it was small and seemed to be siting on all fours but was clearly not a dog or cat, heck it did not look like an animal at all!! It’s face was very narrow and a long nose, and looked like a human face wise.
Maybe my sister was playing with us but the best, most plausible explanation is that was a stuffed doll.
Not me, but my wife told me she had witnessed ball lightning come (down the chimney and) our of the fireplace and into the room. It went up her stepfather’s arm then into a chandelier and finally poofed out. Her stepfather was not harmed in any way.
I was walking out of a Tim Hortons (coffee shop) and coming in past me was a lady holding some sort of carbine/small machine gun draped with ammunition in a belt.
She was holding it all in a non-threatening manner, sort of clutched in a pile in her arms. She was accompanied by two men and they were all wearing business attire.
By their small-talk and general body language it was clear that they were not a danger and were simply getting some coffee and didn’t want to leave the weapon in the car. But man, this is Canada, and you could walk in and out of Tim Hortons locations all across Canada every day for ten lifetimes and you’d never see that again.
RCMP or government, I figure. Or maybe American agents of some kind traveling from Alaska to the lower 48?
When I was a teenager in the 70’s I had a lamp by my bed which could only turn on and off by me unplugging it. It was unplugged, I was sleeping. I woke up in the middle of the night and felt like someone was sitting on my chest. Then I tried to roll over and as I did that the lamp by my bed came on real bright, blinding me for a second, then it went out. The next thing I knew I was face down on the floor and the whole floor felt like it was electrified and I was getting shocked. That hurt like hell. My mother came in my room because she said she heard me screaming and found me face down on the floor.
That was it.
We had other things happen in that house. I asked a classmate at school who lived in the house before we did and asked if the house was haunted and he said yes. He even described some occurrences in our hallway that happened to both of us.
There are people who tell of the conference they went to around 2011, in Colorado, and in trundling tipsily up to their third-floor rooms, encountered a full-grown Holstein cow in the hallway, and reacted by jumping backwards, screaming and piddling their pants.
It’s a true story. My harlequin Great Dane and I were there. 
I was standing in the dropoff/pickup area in the Albany airport when a carload of vaguely swarthy middle-eastern looking people parked their car in the dropoff area and tried to enter the airport. Security personnel quickly told them they weren’t allowed to do that, so they moved on.
Not more than 5 minutes later, a carload of people with payots (i.e. stereotypically jewish-looking) people parked their car in the same spot and tried to enter the airport. Security personnel just as quickly stopped them. I chose to move to the other side of the concrete post I was leaning against just because it was so weird.
Once in the Smoky Mountains of Kentucky I saw this weird cloud formation or maybe it was a jet contrail but it looked exactly like a giant snake with scary head and all. Got a cool picture of it.
I know that. It was my wife who didn’t. My point was we were facing north. The Moon could not have been directly in front of us.
Another one. Visiting my Dad in rural TX I stepped outside for a moment. The air was still and warm. I noticed the streetlights going dim one at a time. When the closest one started going dim I could see grass and leaves and other debris flying sideways in front of it. A minute later a wall of wind reached me. I was still in dead calm warmth, but I could reach out my hand into a strong, frigid wind. I went back inside and watched my Dad’s digital thermometer go down from 75f to 38f in half an hour. “If you don’t like the weather in Texas, wait a minute.” Or so they say.
Someone on this board once posted about seeing the apparition of a man hovering in a recumbent position, inches above the floor, then sliding away out of the room once seen. The very idea of this is both weird and chilling. I wish I could find the post.
There is a set of threads from years ago which you can find if you search for the words “very”, “vaguely”, and “creepy” in the thread titles. It’s quite similar to what this thread is asking for. Actually, the first of those threads didn’t come up when I searched that way, but I found it linked to in another of those threads. Here’s that original thread with 505 posts:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=30758
There’s an old Texas fable that when this happens, you can go bullfrogging with a lawn-mower. The frogs jump in the pond just as it freezes, and you can go across with a mower and cut off their protruding legs.
I was stationed with the Air Force in Alabama, and the base put out a tornado warning. The building I worked in was a prefab, flimsy thing, and we were always told that we had to get out of the building, and walk across the parking lot into the big cement Top Secret building called the Blockhouse. As I watched, three funnel clouds marched across the sky. As far as I know, none of them touched down.
Once when I was like 14yrs, I woke up in the middle of the night…quite dark, but street lamps from outside gave in some light into my room. I wanted pee I remember, so I go out from my room to toilet, half sleepy, just walking almost with my eyes closed (I used to sleep walking. about that later). After all the things in toilet I coming back to my bedroom and my room doors are closed. These are the doors which have glass in the middle of the door, not very transparent, but can see a little bit. SO I thought fair enough, maybe I closed it, but just I touched the handle I saw shadow passing through that glass. I was like damn…Thinking for like 20s. what to do next. I got an idea that if I could open doors really quickly, I can turn lights on fast and see what is in the room. I did just that, looking everywhere around the room but found nothing, even checking the wardrobe…Had pretty hard time falling asleep again. Just convinced myself that I was too sleepy or somehow got illusion from street lamps.
About sleepwalking. When I was around 9yrs old I used to sleepwalking a lot. Remember parents woke me up once while I was brushing my teethes around 3 at night. Anyway, one night I was dreaming about visiting my neighbour, he was like 3 years older than my, we were going along well. And during these years I was in his place almost all the time, he was the kid who got computer very yearly. Every time I was visiting him I just going straight to his room, without noticing about myself…we neighbours were really friendly community. Anyway dreaming about him visiting at home, looking everywhere, he is not there, I thought maybe they are gone somewhere, even if the house was unlocked. Coming back home, opening the doors and just before closing it my mother woke me up. She said what are you doing? And I was like, very sleepy, said visiting friend. So she put me back to sleep and next morning said that doors was unlocked and she heard when doors closed so thats why she woke up. So I still don’t know If I were in my friends house and mother woke me up when I came back, or I was just getting ready to go. Still feeling weird about that.
Once I went to call my brother on the telephone and when I picked up the handset, he was already in the line … spooked us both pretty good let me tell you.
At times, Venus can be seen during the day … you have to know exactly where to look but it’s there. I found it just before and after the Moon occluded her, it was an easy thing to see.
ETA: Total solar eclipse … the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen … for the USA posters, August 21st, 2017 is a MAJOR red letter day for you … don’t miss the spectacular
I remember when I was about 15 and living in Northern Ohio, it was night and we were watching TV. The was a persistent drone outside, it sounded a bit like an airplane engine but much quieter and it seemed to stay steady just outside out house. I finally got curious and stepped outside our front door.
Looking up, all I could see was a huge, dark form moving slowly across the sky. For about 2 seconds I was sure the Aliens had showed up and we were about to have first contact. Then the UFO began flashing a message…
Go…Go…Goodyear
Yep, it was the Goodyear Blimp, at no more than 1500’ altitude passing overhead. We all (family, neighbors) all went outside to watch it for the 15-20 minutes it was in sight.
Been 45+ years and I still vividly remember it.