Can a Rational Person Believe in the Supernatural?

I pride myself on being a rational, well-educated person. I have three graduate degrees and have written more than two dozen books, all of them non-fiction. I own no crystals and have never had my chakras aligned. In short, I really do believe that truth is stranger and more interesting than fiction.

So then, why do I also believe that people can sense an actual supernatural presence?

I’m hardly alone in this view. More than 40 percent of Americans believe that ghosts, demons, and other supernatural beings exist, according to a 2019 YouGov.com poll, a surprising statistic given that we are known around the world as a generally reason-based society. But we are also quite a religious people, with many of us taking a leap of faith that there is a God or some other kind of divine entity. To that point, I’ve never understood why organized religions are considered sacred while the supernatural is the Rodney Dangerfield of belief systems, getting no respect.

With no hard evidence to definitively prove that a single supernatural or paranormal event has ever occurred, however, it’s remains curious to me that so many of us choose to believe in another world. Based on my own experience, I think that at least 99.9 percent of such sightings or hearings are purely imaginary, but that the remaining one out of a thousand or so is real.

Some years ago, I wrote a book called Supernatural America which explored our long fascination with the unknown. I feel I presented a fair and balanced view but the reaction to the book was incendiary. Believers (sometimes referred to as “sheep” in the field) thought I took the skeptic's position, while non-believers (or “goats”) thought I took the other side. People have very strong feelings on the matter, I quickly learned, a strange thing given that nobody really knows.

In retrospect, a reviewer of the book nicely captured my own take on the controversial subject. He wrote that in my mind I was a goat but in my heart I was a sheep, explaining how I and many others can somehow straddle both sides of the supernatural fence. I like that idea, as it addresses what may very well be the most puzzling of all questions with which we are faced: Is there life after death?

For what it’s worth, here’s my entirely personal and subjective theory on all this. The first thing is whether one believes that a person’s spirit or soul can exist independently of a body. I do believe this, taking the position that a soul or spirit occupies a body, and, after death, the entity is freed to go, well, elsewhere. This view is, of course, entirely consistent with the concept of an afterlife in many of the world’s religions.

My next supposition is that our world and this other one operate separately, meaning it is very difficult for spiritual entities to make their appearance known on our plane of existence (and, conversely, for us to recognize them). This is probably a good thing, as having ghosts around all the time would be, if nothing else, distracting.

But in certain circumstances, I propose, a spirit can, with great effort, traverse the boundary, allowing for a sensitive person to feel its energy. This can only happen in a special place at a special time, making such occurrences extremely rare.

The supernatural and paranormal is a huge business, so it’s not surprising that marketers have capitalized on our openness to the possibility of it being real. Almost all of it is pure entertainment, and I’m as big a fan of a good spooky ghost story as anyone. But I also like to believe there is another actual world out there waiting for us, if for no other reason than it helps puts the ordinary travails of this life in proper perspective. And I don’t mind if you call me a sheep.