SBC: That's a bit of a strawman, isn't it? Who ever made that claim?
Mary: Surely you jest. This is exactly the claim made by many on this board over the years(and elsewhere) to downplay the possibility of something 'supernatural'. They demand evidence that can be verfied and studied in physical terms. If that is not available, then the stories are pooh-poohed as being nothing more that someone's over-active imagination, the result of mental illness or an old house making weird noises.
I do jest but not right now. It may appear to be only a slight difference in what you said vs what most scientists claim but please think about the implications. You said...
"Just because something cannot be measured, studied, dissected and observed in a controlled laboratory and then written by someone with a PhD in a peer-reviewed journal, doesn't mean it can't happen."
... but that is not the thinking of the scientific community. Who says real, unexplainable events can't happen? I've never heard a real scientist say that. There's so much that science has yet to discover. The issue is when people slap their own explanation on an unexplained event just because they can't explain it any other way. This is why ancient peoples thought that deities lived in volcanoes and demons caused convulsions. They knew no other explanations so they assigned their own: spirits.
My opinion, and this subtlety may not make much difference to you but it's massive to me, is that before something is stated as a fact, I feel it should survive the consistent scrutiny of the scientific method. Well, not everything (like what I ate for lunch)... but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, IMO.
Otherwise, what standard should I accept claims that people make?
I do think that many occurances can have a rational explanation, but many experiences that people have do not. I'm unsure as to what I believe at the moment, but I don't concede that everyone who has these experiences are off their meds, or on too many meds, or paranoid delusional. Strange shit happens that defies what we know of in our present physical world.
I agree 100%! Did you read the Ghost in the Machine, cited earlier? To me it is an example of how even a very rational, logical mind can be persuaded to think the unexplained is an invisible entity.
Lowkey-lysmith's experience is an excellent example. I will assume that he is of sound mind, does not take hallucinagetic drugs and is not mentally disturbed. How exactly do you explain what happened to him?
There are SO many variables involved that it would be senseless to try to explain it, other than to say I'd go with Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the right one. The laws of physics (ie, low frequency standing wave) could be responsible for all of it. My point is that his experience is unexplained and, for the open-minded thinker, should remain so until further evidence becomes available.