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SUPER REALITY by Faye Leeper  Must not the question be asked before the answer comes? If a person owns an experience that the general population accepts as out of the realm of common, it could be considered well-named, “supernatural.” Yet, is it not “natural” only because all persons do not claim one? Most of us have gone near enough to the supernatural that we are willing to listen to another tell of some strange experience. When we are watching a television show that we know could not have been true according to our reality, we will still be disappointed if someone turns it off before we see the cause or consequence of the supernatural. My father would never have stepped on a grave. He had more respect for the dead than that—and he had heard folks tell of strange consequences of such behavior. Still, he was not above telling jokes on the dead. He told of a man who died in Tennessee, and two friends were digging his grave. One friend needed to leave before the job was finished, so the other friend assured him he would finish it. About dark he measured and decided that the dimensions were about standard, so he tried to get out. He kept sliding back in on the loose dirt. He finally realized he could not make it, so he sat down in the corner of the grave and wrapped his coat around himself, resigned to spend the night. He fell asleep. Later, a couple of teenage boys were trying to show off for their girlfriends that they were not afraid to cross the cemetery at midnight. One of the boys, half paralyzed with fright, accidentally fell into the open grave. He made several frantic attempts to get out. The man sitting in the corner woke up and realized what was happening. He tapped the boy on the back and said, “You cannot get out of here. I have already tried.” Well, he got out! 247 Why fear a cemetery? And why at midnight? Can fear create a chemistry that can create for one’s consciousness an image that he assumes his eyes detected? After scoffing at folks for years who claimed to have seen a ghost, I saw one. I had never lost a loved one, until I was a student at UT one summer when I was called home to grieve with the family. My father had overdosed on insulin. He was seventy-five years old. I rushed back to summer school after a couple days and was then called home again. After seeing the horrible state my mother was in, the last thing I could do was to go back to class. I was in total denial of my father’s death—so much so that I did not even cry. I actually seemed to feel that he would rise up anytime to show me he was not really dead. Then, two weeks later, I was standing at the ironing board and he appeared for a split second before me in the suit he was buried in, grinning and saying, “But you thought I was dead!” Strange, indeed, how a split-second experience can affect one’s life. I never actually saw my mother after her going; but one day she touched me on the shoulder from behind. I was shocked as I turned to see that she was not actually there. Now, as I am writing this, I realize that the only other supernatural event I recall is the one shortly after my husband died, although it carries a stranger consequence. I had started going to our little cabin in the rustic hills in New Mexico. How I was able to go then, when I was never brave enough to go alone ever before, I cannot explain. Grief, I suppose, can sometimes just push reality out the back side of one’s skull. Anyway, I was drinking a new-made strong cup of coffee there in the living room about 2:30 a.m. with my eyes shut. I saw down a dark tunnel with daylight at the end of it. I identified it as the birthing canal. I think I was agreeing to death. I do not know exactly how to explain this. It was one of those few times I had admitted to the darkened world that I thought I was not “going to make it,” like a sort of contract to go—or consent to...

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