Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane

"Everything Merlin did, my Lady, had another explanation."

— Derfel Cadarn, adopted son of Merlin, The Warlord Chronicles

Sometimes you track down the monster and pull the rubber mask off to reveal the janitor.

Sometimes you try that, and the monster gobbles you up.

Sometimes you don't get either way. You are left with nothing except the tracks, the sightings, and hypotheses. Two characters can argue for the alternative explanations, supernatural or naturalistic, without either one of them carrying the Idiot Ball.

How this is done affects any reaction to it. Sometimes it invokes The Chris Carter Effect or Kudzu Plot. Sometimes it is an eminently satisfactory way to create an open ending (generally when the question has not been the focus of the plot).

A common effect is to offer a mundane explanation of how something could have happened, but not in fact establish that is how it did happen. (Such as never trying to eliminate the purported cause and establish that the effect does end.)

The verifiable presence of magic in the world does not preclude this trope; in Fantasy works, this may come into play for divine intervention, or rare forms of magic (vs ordinary forms as well as mundane). Or some apparently-magical things may be clearly magical, and others more ambiguous. Conversely, the presence of high technology or other non-magical special powers extends the possibilities of this trope by allowing a greater range of "mundane" phenomena. It can also effectively come into play when characters ponder whether an effect was natural or extremely high tech.

Usually the author won't confirm or deny a solution. If they do, see Doing In the Wizard (or Scientist), Jossed, "Magic A" Is "Magic A", all of which tend to exclude this trope. When magic and weird science are both potential explanations, magic is usually treated as more "impossible" and surprising to the characters which can sometimes get a little bit confusing if the "scientific" explanation is still pretty out there such as alien abduction. Especially in settings where magic is pretty common and known to everybody besides a Flat-Earth Atheist. Similarly, in settings with scientific strangeness even stranger science can still be treated as "magic". Aliens, again, are often "magic" in settings where they are not common place.

Often comes into play with Angel Unaware, and does when characters say Because Destiny Says So about situations that could be interpreted as Contrived Coincidence. Any apparent Dead Person Conversation (particularly if Talking in Your Dreams) may fall under this, if the conversation contains nothing that the character could not have known. Prophecies Are Always Right does not preclude their looking like dumb luck. In non-fantastical settings, Twins Are Special is often powered by this trope.

Sub-Trope of Riddle for the Ages. Super-Trope of Santa Ambiguity. Or Was It a Dream? is related, but isn't a subtrope, since not every Or Was it a Dream? scenario involves magical things happening within the "dream".

Compare Ambiguous Ending; and Fantastique (from The Other Wiki), a genre of fiction typified by supernatural phenomena that is not explained to the reader or the main characters, hinting at a magical occurrence.. Also compare Through the Eyes of Madness, where the audience sees evidence in favor of the weird explanation, but remains unsure of whether it's real or not because of the possible unreliability of the narrator.

Contrast Real After All, which often involves a mix of mundane and magical explanations, but usually makes it clear at the end which incidents were which (at least to the audience, Gave Up Too Soon is common for the characters).

This may also happen in adaptations. The original character may have a certain ability to do a supernatural thing, but the adaptation never openly states that he has such a power. And yet, at some point something happens, that may suggest it, but with no clear explanation. Those familiar with the source work may be free to consider it a Mythology Gag to the original work, and others may suspect a mundane explanation for it.

See also Domino Revelation, In Mysterious Ways, and Magic Realism. If it's subverted by revealing that some dangerous magic was actually mundane, see Shock-and-Switch Ending.

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Advertising

Ever since Mr. Clean was first introduced in Procter & Gamble's advertisements in 1958, it's been subtly implied that he might be a genie — hence his distinctive bald head, gold earring, buff physique, perpetually crossed arms, and general air of mystery (in early live-action ads, he would unexpectedly appear to aid people with their cleaning tasks before vanishing without a trace). Of course, he's the namesake of a product that comes in a bottle. Despite all this, however, the company has never definitively confirmed whether this was meant to be the case, and you generally wouldn't know it just by looking at his illustrations.

Anime and Manga

After God: The Institute has at least deduced that IPO are composed of specific types of bacteria, but it does nothing to explain their mass-scale transformations and psychic abilities. Vollof also remembers being a bacteriophage that mutated after oil extraction at the North Pole.
Azumanga Daioh features an unnamed yellow cat creature who claims to be Chiyo's dad. While he mostly appears in Sakaki's dreams, plush toys exist of him in the real world, and Osaka once met him in a dream independent of Sakaki's description. Additionally, the anime sees him fly around in establishing shots and has one of his plushies glow when Sakaki isn't looking, and one Supplementary Lessons strip from 2009 outright shows him hovering up to her bedside in the real world. Of note is that Azumanga Daioh shares its continuity with the explicitly supernatural Wallaby, which depicts a dead schoolboy's ghost possessing a stuffed animal.
In the world of Afro Samurai, it is widely believed that the Number 1 and Number 2 Headbands are divine relics, with the Number 1 Headband in particular being said to bestow immortality or even godhood upon whoever wears it. This belief is so common that one of Afro Samurai's enemies is a religious order called the Empty 7, which worships the #1's bearer as a god. However, neither headband displays any overtly supernatural properties in the series, and it's subtly implied that all the stories are just that — stories. Given the setting's cynical tone, it would be fitting that the supposed ultimate relics that everyone is willing to butcher each other over are nothing more than two ordinary pieces of cloth.
The whole hanma bloodline from Baki the Grappler can be defined by this very trope. The origin for there Bizarre Human Biology has been speculated in both directions (be it scientific probability in the realm of biology to demonic influences) by everyone but often leans more on the supernatural.
In Berserk, the Hellhound entity that resides within Guts. Its presence being hinted in the early Black Swordsman Arc and having a full physical debut in the Lost Children Arc, fans speculate what the Hellhound is and where it exactly came from. Is it an independent spirit that latched onto Guts during the Eclipse event, or is it merely a trauma-induced hallucination spurred by the traumatic Eclipse? Is the Beast a separate and malevolent force that has always resided within Guts since birth, or is the Beast in fact Guts himself and is just an anthropomorphization of his darker nature? As the setting of Berserk has Clap Your Hands If You Believe in full effect, it could have started out as an abstract idea but then took a life of its own through Guts' constant contact with the supernatural world. We just don't know what the Hellhound is and might never know. Chapter 385 insinuates the Hellhound is a byproduct of Guts being an interstice being, neither of the living world nor the astral world since birth.
Ryou from Bokura no Hentai can see his dead sister's ghost. It's left ambiguous whether she's real or not but it's implied he's hallucinating it and it's his subconscious.
Death Note:
- In the manga's final chapter, it's noted that Mikami mysteriously died in prison ten days after Light's defeat, leading Matsuda to theorize that Near wrote in the Death Note so as to restrict Mikami's actions, enabling Light's conviction. The anime includes no such speculation from Matsuda, and Mikami instead commits suicide on the spot, casting doubt on a supernatural interpretation.
- Then, there was that part where Light's archenemy L appeared during his death, both staring at each other and lampshading L's own death. This almost drove fans insane with their theories, riots and flame wars. Although the author has made it quite clear that the afterlife doesn't exist in the Death Note mythos,^* there is still speculation that it wasn't Light's hallucination but L actually staring at him supernaturally.
- The notebook itself is a subject of debate. Does it contain some sort of sentience that can actually bring out the worst in people's egos, or is it just an (extra)ordinary notebook?
The main point of Miki Yoshikawa's one-shot The Demon's Classroom. An elementary school class gets a new teacher who claims to be Diablo de Mon, the former king of the underworld. At first, he acts quite weird and seems oblivious to the customs of human society, making the kids think he really is a demon. When they decide to try and bust him as a demon, they are unsuccessful as now he acts like a normal human. By accident, they set fire to his house, and the next morning, the house is whole, and de Mon himself is unharmed. He claims he used his powers to nullify the fact that the fire took place. Then the main character notices that he has burns on his hands. At the end of the story, the narration states that the kids grew to like de Mon, but never actually found out if his claims were true.
In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, by claiming all elemental effects for the Breathing Styles are merely visual flair, the setting is trying to make the human Slayers be all about "realistic" self-improvement, getting super human strength without losing your humanity, unlike the Demons who lost theirs, getting magical abilities while at it. However, the endgame abilities the Slayers can achieve clearly push the evenlope, the Marks, the Transparent World and Crimson Blades are pretty much supernatural, as much as the setting tried to explain them through biological terms, their true nature is never fully explained, remaining mysteriously magical.
Denpa Teki na Kanojo: The Because You Were Nice to Me scene that is Remembered Too Late by Juun could perfectly explain Ame’s Past-Life Memories of being King Juun’s knight. However, it could not explain the Psychic Link Ame has with Juun.
This trope is a major theme in Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl. The title character, Erio Touwa, believes she's an alien and eventually secludes herself from almost all human contact. Then her cousin Makoto Niwa moves in due to his parents having to work outside of Japan, and he brings her back to reality. She slowly starts to reintegrate into human society, and then a strange girl named Yashiro Hoshimiya appears and berates him for causing her to stop believing in aliens. He constantly ridicules her as well, thinking she's got the same psychological issues Erio went through. At the end of episode 13, Yashiro tells Makoto to move slightly from the position he's standing in. Shortly after he does, a meteor crashes into the exact spot he was just standing in, causing him to wonder if she really was telling the truth about being an alien.
Dragon Ball:
- The Ultra Divine Water. Korin says that it's magical and can unleash a fighter's latent power. Yajirobe claims that the water is just poison after tasting it. In the anime, the Darkness, the entity who guards the Ultra Divine Water, states that the water is poisonous, but it does bring out a fighter's latent abilities if they can withstand the pain and have latent power to bring out. In Z, it appears that the Ultra Divine Water was just really powerful poison since as a Saiyan, Goku gets stronger from near death and no one before Goku has ever survived drinking the Ultra Divine Water, so we don't know if it can make a human stronger.
- Goku himself is this during early Dragon Ball, which is more mystical, as it's unclear how a seemingly human boy not only has a tail but will transform into a giant ape monster during the full moon. This is coupled with moments when Goku's friends like Bulma and Krillin question what exactly Goku is. In another scene, an enraged King Piccolo claims that he's a monster, to which Goku replies "that makes both of us". Subverted in Z, which does a lot of Doing In the Wizard, revealing that both Goku and Piccolo are aliens. Although Dragon Ball DAIMA goes back to other way, establishing Namekians are actually demons who just migrated from the Demon World to space.
- The Legendary Super Saiyan Broly is a case of this. He's unique for a Saiyan, supposedly being a mutant, but his power and nature is far more monstrous and terrifying to be solely just a genetic anomaly — he can counter god ki through his own power, and even Beerus, a God of Destruction, is genuinely freaked out by him. His original Japanese incarnation claims to be "a demon", which may just be a Badass Boast... or maybe it isn't, as there’s plenty of other supporting Humanoid Abomination traits to his character, from his skin breaking apart as he transforms to his eyes glowing red upon reaching his full power. Then again, there's other Saiyans like Kale who can enter a similar state, meaning "The Legendary Super Saiyan" could just simply be a unique genetic strain for Saiyans — although considering the existence of Cumber, the idea of dark demonic Saiyans isn't out of the question.
- The Hyperbolic Time Chamber definitely counts as this in the anime of Z. It's a Pocket Dimension created by Kami where time runs differently, allowing for fighters to achieve a massive amount of training in no more than a day. Other than that, it appears to be a Blank White Void that appears to go on forever but nothing else... or is it? Trunks describes times where it would be boiling hot and then ice cold in moments. At one point, he sees Vegeta on fire, but upon rushing to help his father, he's punched down, with everything going back to normal at once. Trunks speculates that the fire came from Vegeta himself, suggesting that the Chamber psychically projects people's subconscious — or Trunks was just undergoing Sanity Slippage due to the void of the Chamber. Mr. Popo does warn the heroes that the Chamber can make you go crazy, but this is coming from an overtly mystical person. Additionally, when Gohan is in the Chamber, he wakes up one night to see Goku training in an icy wasteland, but considering that Gohan has lucid nightmares in the Chamber, what he sees in the place is questionable.
Fullmetal Alchemist: During the final battle, Wrath has cornered Scar, an Ishvalan, and is about to kill him, when a ray of sunlight reflects off his sword and blinds him for a moment, allowing Scar to fight back. On the surface, this seems like Scar was saved by a lucky Contrived Coincidence. On the other hand, Ishvalan religion associates the sun with the divine, and Wrath had been ranting throughout the fight that divinity doesn't exist and mocked the Ishvalans as superstitious fools, implying that Wrath was hit by divine retribution for Tempting Fate.
Hayate × Blade: Did Wanko really curse those two girls in her debut fight, or did they just freeze from fear at her sheer creepiness?
Himouto! Umaru-chan: It's left ambiguous if Umaru turning into a cartoonishly deformed version of herself is just a visual gag for the audience or she really is somehow shapeshifting. Characters who know her outdoor persona in-universe will take notice of her indoor persona and question who that is.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable has Mikitaka Hazekura, a young man who claims to be a shapeshifting alien who's studying humanity in secret and hypnotized an ordinary Earth woman into believing she's his mother as part of his cover story. Mrs. Hazekura tells Josuke not to mind Mikitaka, claiming that he's been playing pretend games like this since he was a child. Further complicating matters is the fact that when someone tries shooting an unaware Mikitaka with the Stand Arrow, it simply bounces off his body, something that never happened before and never happens again in the entire franchise. The series deliberately goes out of its way to avoid revealing whether Mikitaka is just a very eccentric Stand user (which would be mundane by JoJo standards) or if he really is an alien (which would be "magic").
The title dog of Junkers Come Here can speak and is able to grant Three Wishes to his owner, Hiromi. By the end of the movie he loses his ability to speak and is now a normal dog and Hiromi wonders if Junkers was really a talking dog and if everything that happened was because of his magic or just a series of coincidences.
One of the themes of Kaitou Saint Tail involves the ambiguity of things like this and whether one should choose to believe what they see or try to find a realistic/"scientific" explanation for everything, with both sides represented by Stage Magician Meimi (whose entire specialty involves getting people to not think too hard about the technicals and see it as magic) and Agent Scully Asuka Jr. (who is specifically interested more in the internals of how things work than the surface). Straddling the line within the story itself includes Meimi's magic being way beyond what normal stage magicians should be able to do, a "good luck charm" that apparently leads to Meimi getting to dance with Asuka Jr., and a mirror said to show one's "true self" instead of their normal reflection and works so well that even Asuka Jr. can't come up with an explanation for it no matter how hard he tries. The finale also has something that suggests divine intervention working in favor of Meimi.
Goshiki Agiri from Kill Me Baby is a ninja, yet most of the actual ninja tricks she uses are either obviously accomplished or purely jokes.
Komori-san Can't Decline!: At first Komori just seems to be pretty strong from years of helping people. Then it seems like she has Super-Strength. Then it seems like just being asked to help with something gives her a Determinator status that enables to her to do it against all logic to a level even other characters consider almost supernatural. Considering that this takes place in the same world as Cool-kyou's other works, this isn't really so implausible.
This is an integral part of Johan Liebert's character in Monster (1994). Although he appears to be human on the surface, the series heavily implies several times whether or not Johan is The Antichrist, something that is backed up by his whole shtick regarding his modus operandi but is otherwise never stated outright, making him all the more creepier than what he already is.
My Hero Academia:
- The epilogue has Izuku see Shigaraki smiling at him in approval at the improved world Izuku helped make. It is ambiguous whether he was a hallucination or a ghost.
- The epilogue also as Ochaco constantly have dreams and visions of Himiko Toga, who urges her to forgive herself for failing to save her and to find love with Izuku. It is ambiguous whether she was a hallucination or a ghost, but the part where Himiko playfully shoves Ochaco into Izuku's arms leans towards the latter.
A number of things that Big Bad Altena does in Noir don't seem possible unless she has some manner of magical/psychic powers, with one scene in particular involving her watching three candles that represent the "saplings" or candidates for her plan to recreate the titular Noir, a duo of two girls who "govern death" on behalf of an Ancient Conspiracy. When one of the candles goes out representing how one, Chloe, has just died Altena not only seems to know what it means but which sapling it was referring to. Not to mention how Altena is generally pretty unsettling and vaguely supernatural, and lives in an Eldritch Location somewhere between Spain and France that happens to feature an active volcano.
One Piece:
- During the Loguetown arc, is Luffy being saved from Buggy's wrath by way of a convenient lightning bolt due to fate? Does it have something to do with Dragon? Or is it just what happens when you hold up a metal sword on a high platform in the middle of a thunderstorm?
- Nami’s ability to detect the weather is most assuredly this. Initially it could purely be her navigation skill since she’s studied for years since she was a child. Except at one point during the Alabasta arc she’s able to divert the Going Merry away from a freak cyclone that came out of nowhere (the Grand Line is full of Weird Weather), at which Vivi realises with amazement Nami can detect changes in the weather just by feeling it with her body. It’s entirely possible Nami is using Observation Haki to achieve this as other East Blue crew members like Luffy, Zoro, Sanji and Usopp had early signs of Observation pertaining to their skills and personalities, so there’s a likelihood she could have it as well, or maybe it is really supernatural intuition which is many ways more mysterious than just Haki.
- Sanji's Diable Jambe falls under this, to the point of being actively questioned in Wano arc. Initially Diable Jambe had a rational (if ludicrous) explanation of Sanji simply spinning himself around fast enough to ignite his leg, yet after the Time Skip (and a few times before) Sanji can simply enflame both his legs along with the rest of his body to almost the same level as the Mera Mera no Mi, without the need for friction. There's other characters like Hannyabal and Kine'mon who can produce fire from their weapons, as well as Luffy when using his Haki-empowered Red Hawk punch but Diable Jambe appears to be unique and unrelated to Sanji's Haki (albeit it can be boosted by it). Queen Mad Scientist henchman of Kaido in Wano claims while fighting Sanji that only Lunarians can generate fire from their bodies like that, given the Bio-Augmentation of Sanji's birth it's entirely possible he could through the "Linage Factor" indeed have Lunarian DNA inside him but Sanji claims it "comes from his heart". It's also worth noting Zoro can generate auras (as well as multiple heads and arms) with his Killing Intent spirit so it could be a similar case with Sanji projecting his Hot-Blooded spirit via Diable Jambe.
Some of the things Break does in PandoraHearts fall into this. We've seen him use actual magic to bind Alice right at the beginning. But he also produces things from nowhere (or out of his hat) which could be illusions or could not. And is Emily ventriloquism or something else?
In Peach Girl, an otherwise fairly realistic slice-of-life/Drama series, resident Alpha Bitch Sae sometimes displays... interesting abilities, such as becoming paper thin, usually when she's depressed. You'd just chalk this up to artistic effect, except sometimes it affects the plot — she walks right past a security guard by turning wafer-thin and hiding when he tries to stop her, and he reacts as you really would in that situation. Another time she hides under a box no human could reasonably fit into, by once again, slimming herself down.
Pokémon:
- Pokémon the Series: In the episode "The Poké Spokesman", the titular spokesman, named Simon, claimed to be able to speak with Pokémon and understand them. Many people considered him a conman, but he explains to Ash and company why he insists he's not. He tells about how, as a child, he was trapped in a cellar during a storm. During this, a Rattata, Pidgey and Oddish appeared and actually spoke with him. He spent hours talking with them, but when he fell asleep and the storm was over, the three of them disappeared and he couldn't understand Pokémon in human language anymore. He does admit it's possible he was dreaming and he's fooling himself, but he truly believes he can communicate with Pokémon.
- The Electric Tale of Pikachu: In the chapter "I'm Your Venusaur'', the gang stops at a town with a gigantic tree. Legend has it that there's a Venusaur spirit that lives at the top of the tree, so Pikachu, Bulbasaur and a local Ivysaur climb up to see it. They find a gigantic growth that's Venusaur-shaped, and assume that was the source of the myth. But when the Pokemon fall of the tree, the tree inexplicably lets off giant blossoms that catch the 'mon and let them drift gently to the ground, making them wonder if the spirit was Real After All.
Rurouni Kenshin: While training to master the Futae No Kiwame, Sonosuke is visited by the image of his deceased mentor. Even Sonosuke himself isn't sure if what he's seeing is a ghost or a hallucination brought on by exhaustion, though he's grateful to speak with him once again.
The encounter with Heike Shige in Samurai Champloo may have been the result of the accidental ingestion of psychedelic mushrooms, or he and his men may have actually been undead. There isn't really anything that confirms or debunks either theory, and no mention of the incident was made after that.
School-Live! makes readers wonder whether Yuki can actually see the ghost of her teacher, Sakura-sensei AKA Megu-nee. The readers know that Yuki is delusional and an Unreliable Narrator (and that Megu-nee is Dead All Along), so the most likely explanation is that it's just another hallucination. However, the apparition always seems to know what's going on and to actively help the girls. It's also implied somewhat that Yuki's helpful (if apparently strange) suggestions come from her.
Shi ni Aruki: The bizarre mix of accidents, suicides, and murders surrounding Tokiko. The Kurosu family, as well as occult researchers Kaoru Akiyama and Professor Mitsuki Kisaragi, believe that the deaths are caused by some supernatural curse that is related to Tokiko in some way. Meanwhile, other characters such as police detectives Shuichi Yashiro and Ryouta Koga, as well as investigative journalist Sou Aoya, insist that there must be a more grounded explanation. Come the end of the manga, while the remaining characters are now willing to entertain the "curse" idea as plausible — and for what it's worth, the final death tally does list Tokiko as "dead" rather than "died", and the manga is littered with imagery of her with an exposed skeleton — it still isn't an agreed upon conclusion and even Kaoru admits that his assessment isn't as definitive as he'd like.
Sound of the Sky thrives on this. Are the main religions right and "Them" supernatural beings? Are the ghosts real, or just a hungry owl and a PTSD induced hallucination?
A Silent Voice: How did Shoya while comatose hear Shouko crying on the bridge causing him to wake up? Putting aside Rule of Romantic it could possibly be a coincidence that he just conveniently woke up at the right time. The wrinkle is that Shoya was just dreaming about Shouko at the bridge before he awakened and Shouko in the dream even had the exact same clothes and her arm in a sling (something Shoya wouldn’t know about). This along with the fact it’s Tuesday, the day they routinely meet at the bridge to feed koi, seems imply some greater force is keeping them together. The fact everything else about the story is steeped in realism makes this scenario all the more out there.
Stardust Telepath: The manga's central conceit. Umika is a painfully shy girl with zero communication skills who longs to meet telepathic aliens so she can finally find somebody who understands her. One day, a girl named Yuu Akeuchi enters her classroom claiming to be an alien stuck on Earth with a broken spaceship. She is unable to offer any proof of what she says; she has no memories of her time before "arriving" and only has a travel log written in an alien language that's copied right out of a book Umika also possesses. She also claims she can communicate telepathically just by touching foreheads, but never says anything that can't be deduced from body language and her words are vague enough that Umika may be jumping to conclusions and offering up the details herself. Umika, though, is so desperate to be friends with somebody who understands her that she overlooks the ambiguity and pledges to help Yuu fix her spaceship so they can travel the stars together.
Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online: When in a tournament, LLENN's P90 "Pi-chan" suddenly starts talking to her. While the obvious explanation is that LLENN is just hallucinating, Pi-chan is able to give LLENN some crucial information, and violently misfires when someone else tries to use her. And of course the whole thing is inside a game, so it's possible (though certainly strange) that the governing AI decided to give LLENN some help.
It's left vague if Yuuki post-episode eight in Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 was a ghost or Mirai hallucinating. He did have hope Mari's daughter was alive even though he saw her presumed daughter's body, which could mean he has a knowledge of the dead, and we see him disappear later. However it's possible that was all in Mirai's head and she was imagining what Yuuki would do.
The first season of Tsukiuta. The Animation seems to abuse this trope. Shun, the leader of idol unit Procellarum, calls himself the "Demon King", and at several points tells the other characters he's casting a spell, and they appear to believe him. Is it magic, or is he just chuunibyou? Well, it turns out the rest of the franchise is quite the Fantasy Kitchen Sink, with Yōkai, trolls, demons, and multiple isekai adventures. And Shun definitely has powers — as does Hajime, the leader of Procella's sibling/rival unit Six Gravity, who Shun has a major crush on. Those mad scientist girls really are moon goddesses in training, and that palm-sized reindeer that looked like a plush toy? He's actually a fairy.
When Marnie Was There: Is Marnie a real ghost, or just a hallucination/fantasy of Anna's based on Anna's desire for a friend and her half-remembered memories of the stories she heard from her grandmother as a child? Since Anna is the only one who sees and interacts with Marnie throughout the film, no conclusive proof is given either way.
The ending to Your Lie in April has Kaori's death happen during a piano performance of Kousei's. It's left vague if her playing the violin alongside him and later bursting into light is another one of the artistic interpretations from Kousei's head while he plays music, or if that was really Kaori's spirit playing one last song with Kousei.

Audio Plays

Rudon's Plane: Rudon meets Mel's disfigured apparition in the Great Path, but it's not clarified if he's started going mental or something out there like the previous explorers have noted.

Blogs

Dreams in Darkness: It's left ambiguous as to whether or not Slender Man was in the series to begin with, considering how at the end of the series, it's implied Damien was insane the whole time.

Comic Books

The “Goddess” or “The One in the Dark” from Alien (2021) is most certainly this. She appears in the nightmares of anyone who’s had a Facehugger assault them and the ones who’ve had the Xenomorph embryo surgically removed still see her in their dreams, watching from the dark. It’s never made clear exactly what she is, why she appears in dreams and how different people can have the exact same nightmare about her through contact with the Xenomorph species. The protagonists of the comic theorise she is the terrifying primal vision of the end result of humanity discovering the Xenomorph species, while the insane Weyland-Yutani agent Gabriel Cruz believes she exists currently. It is entirely possible this is just a reaction the human brain has to Facehugger and this God of Evil figure does not and cannot exist given how much of the Alien universe is steeped in biological science, but much like the first movie the Lovecraftian elements are too potent to disregard entirely.
Teased in Astro City with the Blue Knight; it's unclear if he's a vigilante with high-tech gadgets and a skull mask, or a policeman empowered by the vengeful ghost of a police officer killed in the line of duty. It's eventually implied to be a bit of both.
A strong theme of the Azrael comic book series is the possibility of phenomena perceived by people to be magical to actually be product of technology more advanced than what's known to modern science or simply a manifestation of superstitious delusion. The protagonist himself is not exempt from this line of inquiry. Is Azrael a holy paladin blessed by the angel of death whose namesake he shares? Is he a lab rat programmed to view himself as such a champion by the system installed in his neural implants? Or is he just a mundane human whose sanity has been shattered?
Batman:
- The villain Scarface, a ventriloquist dummy mob boss, is sometimes teased as something more than a delusion of an unstable mind. The Ventriloquist himself believes that the dummy is possessed by the spirit of a gangster rather than a facet of his own personality; since it was cut from wood of a tree that in the past was used to hang criminals, it is a rather spooky origin for a seemingly mundane puppet. How "real" Scarface is also depends on the continuity. In some, the Ventriloquist is able to free himself of Scarface's influence via therapy; in others, all it takes is destroying the doll.
- Zigzags in Batman: The Cult with Big Bad Deacon Blackfire, who claims to be a 500-year-old Native American mystic. On one hand, his methods of recruitment are clearly shown to be based on psychology and drugs, just like documented cults. On the other hand, evidence suggests Deacon Blackfire really was immortal. Whether he was a complete fraud or merely a partial fraud is never fully explained.
- The miniseries Batman: The Mad Monk portrays the titular villain in this way. On the one hand, he drinks human blood, has pale skin and red eyes, appears to be able to hypnotize people, is never seen in the daylight, sleeps in a coffin, is abnormally fast and strong, and is based on a character who was unambiguously a vampire. On the other hand, he never actually turns someone into a vampire (even his closest subordinate), most of his bites are ragged rather than the traditional pinpricks, he demonstrates no vulnerability to silver, he's (apparently) killed by a lightning strike, and he's the leader of a cult, giving him all the reason in the world to act as if he has real supernatural powers. He's also taken over the castle of one of Gotham's most notorious families, whose last heir, Richard Rallstone, went on a trip to Europe and never returned. So either he's Richard Rallstone running a blood cult with the objective of convincing people he's an actual vampire, and his vampiric powers are just good physical fitness and nonmagical means of suggestion, or he really is Niccolai Tepes, vampire, having pulled a Kill and Replace on Rallstone, and the discrepancies can be chalked up to Our Vampires Are Different and him wanting to stay cautious about creating other vampires. Notably, when Batman accuses him of being Rallstone, he merely claims "And like all crusaders, you understand so very little."
- Batman as a whole tends to take this approach to the nature of Gotham City itself and Arkham Asylum in particular. Is the city cursed, plagued by demons, tormented by Darkseid's Omega Power, by nameless things, or is it just an incurable Wretched Hive of scum and villainy all on its own? Hints at various supernatural origins for the city's woes and the Asylum's troubles come and go, but none are ever confirmed and there's always a mundane or comic-book-mundane explanation for everything else.
- Bat-Mite's whole Post-Crisis existence. Two stories by Alan Grant show Bat-Mite appearing to a criminal named Overdog. Both times Batman (who doesn't find Bat-Mite) rationalizes that these were just Overdog's drug-induced hallucinations, but the reader is left wondering...
- It’s never been 100% clear if Cassandra Cain and her mother Lady Shiva are normal humans or something more. They both have a Charles Atlas Superpower that pushes what a human can do but they’re explicitly not meta-humans. Only the two of them and Shiva’s sister can/could do it. Cassandra went through Training from Hell while neither one of them did, suggesting a genetic component.
- The Joker himself becomes a invoked case of this in during Batman: Endgame. While it’s generally assumed he’s just a bleached white mortal madman with green hair, Batman discovers evidence of Joker having existed since the formation of Gotham, implying he’s some kind of immortal Clown Humanoid Abomination à la Pennywise the Clown which would also explain his immunity to death. But this is Joker we’re talking about, a master manipulator who loves messing with his Arch-Enemy in such fashion and like Batman himself happily encourages the idea of him being supernatural to his advantage. This case turned out to be a mix of both; the Joker had temporarily gained a Healing Factor via a unique Lazarus Pit, and then faked a bunch of "evidence" that he'd always been immortal. Still, there’s plenty of cases before then and since of Joker displaying inhuman traits, like getting stronger from pain while fighting Lex Luthor.
- In Batman: Damned, the Spectre is portrayed as a homeless man in a green hood, preaching about devils and angels in a Fire-and-Brimstone street-preaching manner that has him dismissed by Commissioner Gordon. Much like Etrigan, it is left ambiguous as to whether he is just a normal person or if there is more to him than meets the eye.
- Batman: Urban Legends: The Chaos monsters (who are cultists in masks) occasionally perform feats that make Tim question if they're more than human.
- In a 1981 issue of The Brave and the Bold that used Carter Nichols' "time travel hypnosis" to enable Batman to team up with Scalphunter (and only in that story) Batman doesn't believe the method works at all; it's a useful mental exercise, but all that's actually happening is that his mind is using his knowledge of the period to produce a likely scenario and placing him in it. The story strongly suggests he's wrong, but doesn't confirm it.
- In Batman: Ego, Bruce Wayne renounces his vigilante crusade after a particularly harrowing encounter with an unintentional consequence of his war on crime. When he does so, Batman himself suddenly emerges and insults Bruce for his cowardice and lack of conviction, and argues with him over what it really means to be Batman. Bruce wonders whether he's had some sort of mental break due to stress and anemia (due to having lost a lot of blood recently bringing down the Joker again), although we never find out for sure whether the spectre of Batman was real or something more mundane.
The antagonist of the Blake and Mortimer book The Sarcofagi of the Sixth Continent claims to be the ancient Indian emperor Ashoka the Great, who first "resurrected" while Mortimer was a young adult to help free India from British rule and later during the "present" to torment the 1958 World's Fair. While it turns out that there is some Legacy Immortality at play since the present Ashoka is actually the daughter of the one Mortimer met in his youth, the identity of the latter is never revealed. Also, they never explain his albino monkey guardians that can be summoned via a puff of smoke.
A Tom Scioli-penned backup of Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye retells the origin of Green Arrow so that, as well as spending time stranded on an island and learning to hunt with a bow, he also had an encounter with a gigantic being claiming to be Xeen Arrow of Dimension Xero, who charged him with his mission to fight greed in all its forms and "use Trick Arrows." Xeen Arrow is an existing, if obscure character, but as Oliver was currently smoking herbs he'd found on the island, it's about as likely that he was just zonked out of his mind.
Crossed:
- The titular virus itself is undeniably real, but it's ambiguous whether it is supernatural or merely a disease that science does not understand. In "Thin Red Line" it's shown that the people infected with it experience flashbacks to events in history they have no knowledge of. But even then, it's still unclear if the virus is genuinely supernatural, extraterrestrial, or man-made.
- The "Homo Tortor" arc of Badlands involves an account by an anthropologist describing the titular ancient race of red-skinned human relatives, who ruled an empire in Indonesia and displayed very Crossed-like behaviors, such as extreme sadism and cruelty, but were wiped out by an early appearance from the virus when it proved uncontrollable even for them. At the end of the story, after the account starts taking blatantly supernatural turns, the main character discovers that said anthropologist is currently a Crossed, and may have written the account after having been infected—not to mention, the account's events seem oddly close to the recent escapades of his fellow survivors, which the anthropologist had access to. When he accuses the anthropologist of having written the story on the spot, he receives multiple different answers.
Cthulhu Tales: "Awakened" is about a cult that worships Cthulhu and performs human sacrifices to him after taking drugs. The main character is shown having visions of Cthulhu while on LSD, and feeling a "rush" from performing sacrifices, but it's not made clear if this is actually caused by Cthulhu - it's not even clear if Cthulhu actually exists in this story. Everything could just be the result of LSD.
Dastardly & Muttley revolves around the world slowly being infected with Toon Physics by exposure to Unstabilium-239. When it is discovered the substance was found in caves of a long-dead tribe, that worshipped a pantheon of eldritch gods, most of the main cast assumes these gods are its source. Uncle, however, points out that with how Unstabilium affects the mind, it is possible it just drove its original discoverers insane and they made up these gods to worship in a fit of madness.
Global Frequency #5, "Big Sky", revolves around the appearance of a spectral, otherworldly being referred to as an 'Angel', which is powerful enough to drive the entire population of an isolated Norwegian coastal town mad. The team eventually discover a mundane explanation involving the burning down of a local church and resonance around local rock formations which caused sensory overload — but then, after they've identified this explanation, one of them floats the possibility that the appearance of a real angel might have similar effects involving similar probabilities.
In Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, it's never entirely clear whether Johnny's house is home to an Eldritch Abomination and a set of demonic dolls, or if he's a schizophrenic psychopath. Word of God seems to support both at once.
Johnny: It's possible I'm quite horrendously insane.
In Kid Colt, Outlaw #39, Colt encounters three bandits pulling a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax by pretending to be the legendary 'Ghost of Midnight Mountain'. During the fight, Colt gets knocked off the edge of the cliff and is holding on to a branch. One of the outlaws tries to drop a rock on his head, but suddenly sees someone that terrifies him and he falls off the cliff. When Colt reached the top of the cliff, he finds the other two paralyzed with terror. Colt rides away, wondering if the legends of Midnight Mountain really are true.
In a King in Black one-shot featuring Iron Man and Dr. Doom, the two of them confront a symbiote-possessed Santa Claus. However, Tony ends up discovering a driver’s license suggesting he’s actually a regular man. It’s left ambiguous who they actually rescued.
Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
- In The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: The King of the Klondike, the villains have the young Scrooge McDuck chained up in their riverboat. Eventually it seems as though their Evil Gloating angers him so much that he effectively gains Super-Strength and wrecks the whole ship by pulling on his chains and bringing down the smokestacks they're attached to. The narration says that no-one knows what happened that day and that there are some possible mundane explanations. Though originally left ambiguous (and, if anything, looking a whole lot like it really was Super Strength), the question is apparently solved in another story, where Scrooge remarks the ship's boiler happened to explode.
- In The Golden Helmet, the titular helmet gives its owner the legal claim to all of North America, and anyone who gets their hands on it is immediately driven Drunk with Power. It's ambiguous, however, if this is the helmet's curse, or if it is simply human nature shining through.
Man-Eaters: The werepanthers are explained as either real animorphism or global water contamination and mass hypnosis. The finale brushes it all off as a metaphor.
Magneto: Testament, Magneto's origin comic which fully details his experience with The Holocaust is an example of this. Throughout the comic it's intentionally unclear if he is using Magnetism Manipulation at times or he's just very skilled or lucky. Some things the young Mags performs are very feasible like connecting his father's metal scraps into a fine necklace like a pro, then there's Max (motivated by the racist abuse and the fact Magda is watching) throwing his metal javelin better than any of the German "Aryan" boys in his class and winning the gold — which could well be his mutation or just plain determination. Above all though, there's the scene where Max and his family are gunned down by the Nazi soldiers we get a Bullet Time sequence of the bullets heading towards Max's head and it almost definitely seems like he is subtly redirecting the bullets away from himself, but Mags' father Jakob shoves him out of the way◊ making it again highly uncertain if it was a display of his powers, or just good luck and his father's actions. Given the comic (despite using fictional characters) respects the Real Life atrocities that took place, with the usual Marvel sensationalism not being applied, it's appropriate that the superpower aspect is left vague.
In The Mask, there’s a particularly enigmatic case of this with The Brute Walter, and the titular Artifact of Doom. For dozens of previous issues we the reader have seen the Mask transform everybody who wears it into a Toon Physics Person of Mass Destruction, as the Mask corrupts and twists anybody who wears it into a cartoony psychopath. Yet Walter, the Implacable Man who’s battled the Mask several times eventually puts on the Mask himself… and nothing happens◊. There’s multiple theories as to why it didn’t work on Walter, the supernatural supporters suggest that given the Mask brings out a person’s darkest impulses and Walter is already Ax-Crazy, there’s nothing for the Mask to corrupt or make worse (this idea is debunked if the Crossover appearances outside the original comics are counted, given that both Lobo and the Joker can wear the Mask). It's also possible given the Mask dominates the user’s psyche and bends it towards its own destructive nature, that Walter’s willpower is simply too strong for the Mask to take over, or that he had no personality to begin with. Then there’s the most mundane and arguably most likely theory: Walter’s head was simply too big for the Mask to fit (then again, if one takes the films and cartoon as canon, it fits on dogs, so the shape of the wearer's head doesn't seem to be a factor).
MonsterVerse: Continuing from the entry under the Films — Live-Action folder; in the spin-off graphic novel Kingdom Kong, there are some hints that Captain Burns' visions and night terrors of the Dark Titan Camazotz are not just PTSD from her first encounter with him and that Camazotz really does have Psychic Powers which are influencing her. When Burns is on the brink of despair during Kong's fight against Camazotz, one has to wonder if it's really just her confronting her inner-demons when they emerge on their own or if Camazotz is psychically putting her at a disadvantage. The most eyebrow-rising Maybe Magic is when Burns' friend, who was put in a coma two years ago during her first encounter with Camazotz, just happens to come out of the coma right after Kong has defeated Camazotz for good.
Moon Knight: Is Moon Knight really an avatar of Khonshu, or is it just his general battiness manifesting a split personality that thinks it's Khonshu? The Avengers (Jason Aaron) arc "The Age of Khonshu" partially answers this: Moon Knight is indeed Khonshu's avatar, but whether all of Moon Knight's previous interactions with Khonshu were with the real thing or not is left unaddressed.
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: The illustrations portray Karen as a monster, resembling The Wolfman, and she describes herself as such. It's left deliberately unclear if this is literally true or a metaphorical representation of how other people perceive and other her, and how she perceives herself. It's paralleled with the abuse the sympathetic, marginalized characters face, such as Holocaust survivor Robert Silverberg being called a monster to his face.
Providence deals with this trope and hangs a lampshade on it. The approach to Lovecraftian horror in the books is to present it this way to Robert Black, while the reader knows the truth. Robert Black, being an aspiring writer, lampshades the trope by describing it in his commonplace book at the end of Issue 4:
Robert Black: Now, if something supernatural were to actually occur to someone in real life, anyone normal would just run a mile. They wouldn't have the author and reader's interest in unraveling the mystery and getting to the story's end. They'd simply flee. I know I would, and I like to think that I'm a normal person underneath it all. I suppose the only way to handle it realistically is to rely on people's tendency not to believe that anything out of the ordinary is going on, even if evidence is mounting to the contrary.
Puerto Rico Strong: The comic i Dream Of Home is about a woman whose mother would often say she was sent dreams from a traditional Puerto Rican goddess. The woman never believed her mother, but after her mom died she had a dream featuring her mother's spirit. It's left ambiguous whether the dream was a coincidence or whether her mother's spiritual beliefs were real after all.
Punk Rock Jesus reveals towards the end that Rebekah, secretly the protagonist's sister, was given a massive dose of drugs and appeared to be drowned as an infant. The characters of Thomas and Sarah briefly debate if her survival was a scientific anomaly or a religious miracle. The readers are left to decide for themselves.
In Sasmira, it's unclear if the titular character really did temporarily die and saw that there was nothing after death. Bertille theorizes that she might have been in a coma, but no one at the time could tell.
The Secret Garden (2021):
- The three children believe in The Magic. Mary feels it's the spirit of Lilias who led her to the garden and helped her and the others discover it; Colin believe he can scientifically study it to help him grow strong and shake off his sickness.
- Mr. Craven hears Colin's declaration of living forever carried on the wind from hundreds of miles away, which is then followed by a dream of his wife telling him to come to the garden. This prompts him to return home.
Spider-Man:
- The Amazing Spider-Man (J. Michael Straczynski) introduces a character named Ezekiel who claims that Peter's powers aren't a mutation caused by an irradiated spider bite, but are in fact "totemic" powers carried by the spider which it felt compelled to pass on after being hit by the lethal radiation beam. It was written in a way letting it be totally ambiguous if either this version or his classic origin is the real one, and even suggesting that both might be true to some extent. When Spider-Man asks an ally of Ezekiel which explanation is true, he simply responds that one explanation doesn't necessarily contradict the other.
- Kraven's Last Hunt is a magnificent case of this. Throughout the comic, both Kraven and Spidey experience Mind Screw events that are clearly supernatural but for the most part have perfectly mundane explanations behind them — such as Peter simply suffering fatigue and grief after Ned Leeds's death causing him to hallucinate and Kraven taking jungle potions that cause him to have a Mushroom Samba. Yet the hallucination Hand Wave doesn't explain how Vermin can "feel" Kraven planning to hunt him before he even steps foot in New York's sewers, nor does it explain why MJ can tell that Peter is in danger with her own premonition. Not to mention that the Spider-Sense doesn't warn Peter about Kraven attacking out of nowhere — while that could be chalked up Peter's mind being in turmoil over Ned and death in general, the spider sense still has an autonomous response to danger regardless of Spidey's conscious thoughts, making this occurrence where it fails him all the more spooky and uncertain. The idea that there's some greater primal jungle mysticism at play here wouldn't at all be out of Spider-Man and Marvel's wheelhouse, yet at the same time it could purely be Through the Eyes of Madness.
- When the original Mysterio comes Back from the Dead, he appears to have supernatural abilities, supposedly gained in Hell. Given that he was already a Master of Illusion, it's impossible to be sure how real these powers are, and in the post-One More Day timeline, he's been sticking to his usual special effects fakery, implying that his demonic phase was more special effects. In general, however, Mysterio has often pulled off things that go well beyond any rational explanations — including being able to fool and escape from Doctor Strange, who has universal awareness, suggesting that Mysterio may actually have great powers... or his smoke and mirrors tricks simply that good.
  Mysterio: They call me Quentin Beck, the one and only Mysterio. Or maybe the real Beck is dead? I wouldn't trust me on this. I lie about everything.
  - The first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man (2018) picks this plot thread up again by revealing that Mysterio did make a deal with a certain being to get out of Hell, and that said being has grown fed up with Quentin's inability to live up to the deal. It almost drags him back to hell until Mysterio makes one final desperate plea to be given a bit more time.
- The exact nature of Green Goblin, much like his aforementioned Alternate Company Equivalent Joker has been put under question Depending on the Writer. Generally, Norman has an explicitly scientific explanation for his superpowers and Split Personality i.e the Goblin formula he discovered in a Freak Lab Accident; several comics afterwards, however, broach the idea that there’s something genuinely supernatural spooky and demonic about the Goblin persona, with it talking to Norman like a seperate individual and being able “to take him over”. Not to mention that Norman can come back from certain death in ways that other people who took the Goblin formula couldn’t. The Amazing Spider-Man (2018) truly commits to this supernatural angle by Doing in the Scientist, revealing Norman had made a deal with Mephisto prior to becoming truly acclaimed, and the demon had a hand in the accident that made him the Goblin. However, it’s important to note A) Mephisto is an Unreliable Narrator who lies all the time and B) Norman had actually developed the Goblin personality during his childhood, well before he even made this supposed deal. The Green Goblin could’ve been brought about by Mephisto’s machinations, or he’s really just a troubled broken man who found himself down a twisted path and Mephisto is playing off/reveling in that personal darkness to make the currently reformed Norman feel worse about The Soulless state of Harry. There’s also no getting past the fact Norman was pretty evil from the start, so the real ambiguity is whether it was Mephisto who nudged him in the right direction or not.
- Black Cat claims to have the power to "cause bad luck" but writers vary on whether she is just pretending or whether she actually has supernatural powers to cause bad luck.
Smut Peddler Presents: Sex Machine: The Egg and its ability to possess empty sets of armor in "Bodywork" has both the aesthetics of a spirit being able to possess inanimate objects, and an AI program able to control machines through a physical interface. It references a "creator", but that can mean anything from a scientist to a sorcerer, even a god.
One pre-Disney Star Wars comic named “Defenders of The Lost Temple” had a clone trooper named "Glitch" (the story was set during the Clone Wars). Throughout the story, there’s a few things that hint at the possibility of Glitch being force-sensitive without actually confirming it directly. Glitch genuinely believed that he was force-sensitive and the story deliberately leaves it up to the reader to decide if he was right or not. His fellow clones think he’s crazy, while others are more keen to believe him. In any case, Glitch was never seen again after that story, so we’ll never know if he could actually use the force or not. He did manage to use a Sith artifact, but those are usually rather inconsistent in whether non-force sensitive can use them.
Smut Peddler: 2012 Edition: The black stain on the protagonist's arm in "The Hand" has no given explanation, and it's also unclear whether it's real In-Universe or just a visual metaphor.
Spook: The series deals with ghosts and the spirit world but introduced entirely as a result of technology obeying certain scientific rules. It is ambiguous how technology based the spooks actually are or how much is truly supernatural and beyond the control of the CIA.
Superman:
- During Kryptonite Nevermore, Superman confronts a villain who uses an ancient artifact — called the Devil's Harp — to steal powers and abilities. After breaking the Harp, Superman ponders on its nature: Was it a magical device? Or just a piece of forgotten technology? He concludes that he will never know, the story does not tell, and both answers are possible in this setting.
  Superman: I guess we'll never know what this thing was! Magic — or the relic of some forgotten science — or how it took musical talent from Timos Achens and super-powers from me! A pity... such a device could have been a great good!
- The Krypton Chronicles mini-series tells how in ancient Krypton, Jef-El predicted Rao would turn the Sun yellow as a sign of its power. After listening to that story, Superman guesses the sun appeared yellow because that was the time of the Gold Volcano's first eruption which spewed vast quantities of gold dust into the atmosphere; but he adds Jef-El couldn't have known about one mountain suddenly erupting on the opposite and uninhabited side of the planet, so he can't rule out some kind of divine intervention.
  Supergirl: "That's odd... If the Sun turned yellow, why didn't the people gain super-powers, as we do under Earth's Sun?"
  Superman: "Because it was merely an optical illusion! I've learned something about Krypton's geological history— This is the period when the Gold Volcano is believed to have been formed on the opposite side of Krypton, which was then uninhabited... And it spewed vast quantities of gold dust into the atmosphere, thus making the Sun appear yellow..."
  Supergirl: "Then the color-change wasn't a miracle!"
  Superman: "Wasn't it? Even on Krypton, which was rich in gold, that volcano was unique! And Jaf-El did predict the change, though he couldn't have known about the volcano!"
- Drang the Destroyer: It is unclear whether the powers of the titular villain can be scientifically explained or are magical in nature. On the one hand, he claims to being able to cast spells. On the another hand, he also gloats about his incredible gadgets and has built several labs in his lair. On the, er, third hand, Drang feeds off evil, becomes weakened when there is not enough evil energy around, and after he gets blown up -by absorbing too much evil-, Kara feels his spirit lingering, and fears that Drang is able to come back as long as there is evil. The fact that Drang's nickname is "Dr. Supernatural" obviously doesn't help matters.
- The Hunt for Reactron: During a flashback, Thara is praying when she suddenly knows that Kara is in danger, and she suddenly knows how she can efficiently use a rare plant to save her friend from a giant predator. In the aftermath, Thara is wondering how she knew what she had to do, and Kara states she does not care whether their god Rao subtly influenced Thara (which, given later revelations, is an actual possibility) or her friend got lucky or whatever. The only thing that matters to her is that Thara saved her life.
  Kara: I don't know if it was voices or Rao or luck, but you saved my life.
- The Day the Cheering Stopped: Although the Sword of Superman seems definitely mystical — a weapon forged in the dawn of Creation which has travelled across the galaxy for eons, waiting for its chosen wielder — the nature of its origin is deliberately kept obscure. Nobody knows whether its creation was by divine design or strange happenstance.
  ...And one piece of primeval matter formed in the Great Creation that through some quirk of blind chance— or some miraculous circumstance...took a shape that one day became not that of an undefined piece of molten sludge... But through the foundry of space and the temperance of time— untouched by living hands— took the form of a sword...and came to be known— through that selfsame quirk or miracle— in millions of languages across the stars as... the Sword of Superman!
Thanos Rising: It's made deliberately vague whether Thanos is insane or not and whether his visions of Death are real. No one except him can see her so others just see him talking to empty air or corpses. According to his father's scanners, there's nothing to prove that someone is really talking to him. However, Death is a Cosmic Entity with powers far beyond any mortal, so that wouldn't really be a surprise. At the end, Thanos ignores her.
Ultimate Marvel:
- The Ultimates
  - The series began with an unclear origin for the powers of Thor. Is he a real God from Asgard, attacked by a rival god with reality-warping powers? Or just a madman with delusions of grandeur, who stole high-tech weapons produced in Europe? In the first two story arcs, both options seemed plausible to the reader. The final answer only came at the end of the second arc: he's the real deal.
  - Was Thor really fighting the Midgard Serpent? Or was it an excuse he just made up?
- Ultimate Galactus Trilogy: Sam is explaining that the captured Heather Douglas is a clone, and she suddenly says "I'm a priestess" inside her cell. Does she have mind reading powers, as mainstream Moondragon? Or are the cells not as soundproof as they should be?
- Ultimate X-Men (2001): Is the "Dark Phoenix" some kind of universal force, or just an aspect of Jean's mental crises? As with Thor, this is initially left ambiguous, and resolved later.
Uncanny X-Men #357 has the original five X-Men fighting a swarm of crows that has seemingly spontaneously started attacking a town. Iceman meets a Native man who claims to have summoned the Crow God, but the local sheriff says he claims credit for every natural disaster to hit the town. Angel and Beast look for where the birds are coming from, and find they've been drinking toxic waste. Jean and Cyclops head for the centre of town, where Jean notices one of the crows doesn't have a psychic signature, and Cyclops sees the central mass of crows apparently forming some kind of gestalt. Iceman knocks out the shaman, who turns out to have a satchel full of birdseed, Angel and Beast shut down the polluting factory, Jean decapitates the strange crow which proves to be mechanical, and Cyclops blasts the centre of the gestalt. The crows dissipate, but the X-Men still don't really know what happened. (The epilogue where a crow made of smoke emerges from the shaman's eyes doesn't really clarify matters much.)
The Usagi Yojimbo story that introduced Jei left it ambiguous as to whether or not he was sent by the gods to cleanse the world of sin as he claims or just a homicidal madman good with a spear; there's no real evidence for the former, but his Monochromatic Eyes and strange speech bubbles imply there's something off. We never get an answer in the original story, as he is fried by a bolt of lightning without a trace left behind...and then the character got popular, returned for other stories, and put himself firmly on the "magic" side.
Vigilante: Volume 1 (the Adrian Chase saga) features genuine supernatural forces that give Adrian his Healing Factor, but over time, he gradually starts to believe that his suit might have some supernatural forces within it as well. It seems to have a pull over him and other people that ensures it's nearly impossible to throw it away, and even if someone does manage to take off the mantle for good, someone else immediately picks it back up and immediately gains Adrian's combat ability, even when that person is someone who normally wouldn't do such a thing or possess such abilities (such as Dave the bailiff). Notably, after Adrian does take it off and abandon the moniker for good, countless coincidences line up to ensure that other people wear it and accidentally convince him to put it back on, dooming him to a life that ends with his suicide. It could just be him and all the other wearers attributing their various mental issues to the suit, but the possibility is raised that it's a genuinely malicious entity on its own.
In the Wonder Woman Vol 1 storyline Judgment in Infinity, the Adjudicator owns a scrying ball which allows him to spy on different dimensions. Is it a magic crystal ball or some alien technological device? The story does not provide answers.
Zatanna provides an in-universe example. Zatanna is a famous stage magician, who also is well known for having genuine magical powers. She uses both in her performances; part of the appeal of her shows is the audience trying to tell what's mundane, sleight-of-hand magic and what's genuinely mystical sorcery.

Comic Strips

Calvin and Hobbes:
- Is Hobbes a real person, or (as most people around Calvin think) just a stuffed animal subjected to Calvin's vivid imagination? Careful attention reveals that instead of both being possible, neither is: Calvin could hardly tie himself to a chair, for instance, which Hobbes has done to him (on request).^note The best we're likely to get is the author's comment that "Calvin sees Hobbes one way, and everyone else sees Hobbes another way. I show two versions of reality, and each makes complete sense to the participant who sees it." In the 10th Anniversary Book, he stated that Hobbes is "neither a doll that magically comes to life when Calvin is around, nor a figment of Calvin's imagination."
- This comes up with some of Calvin's other apparent fantasies, too. In one series, he creates several duplicates of himself; no one besides him and Hobbes sees more than one Calvin at a time, but his mother seems a bit perplexed at how she keeps finding Calvin in unexpected places. On the opposite side, there are also fantasies that have very mundane solutions that are pointed out, such as when Calvin imagines a baseball coming to life and chewing up his bat, Calvin's father points out the mundane idea that Calvin had been hitting rocks with it, despite Calvin clearly being scared... Interestingly, these scenarios are often juxtaposed with clear fantasies that even Calvin admits aren't real (such as Spaceman Spiff).
FoxTrot: One story arc had Paige having a late-night close encounter with something green and glowing that dropped out of the sky, came to a dead stop in front of her, then shot back up into space. Her little brother Jason is convinced she saw a UFO, but Paige herself is pretty sure it was just a comet, and the story arc ends without an answer either way.
Whether or not Garfield's "speech" can be understood by Jon flips around occasionally, running purely on Rule of Funny. Most of the time Jon can't, with strips like 2009-08-15 explicitly making it clear there's no communication there; some leave it ambiguous, like the 1987-07-19 strip, where Jon may be reacting to Garfield's story or just his audible scream; and some, like 1986-05-20, have Jon react specifically to what Garfield said.
In Peanuts, does Snoopy's dog house really fly, or is it just his imagination? There's also the question of how it can apparently be Bigger on the Inside, and how he got all the stuff that is supposedly inside it; he and other characters have made claims that it contains a television, a pool table, a book collection, and even a Van Gogh (which he replaced with an Andrew Wyeth after the dog house was destroyed in a fire).
The Phantom: Until one particular infamous story (regarded as non-canon by much of the readership), this is how the supernatural was handled. Any time something supernatural was depicted, there was always an alternative "natural" explanation such as magic tricks, illusions or hallucinations caused by fever or gas.

Fan Works

Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Although this story is a bit more explicit about the Kaiju's intelligence and Reincarnation, it still follows the example of MonsterVerse canon by using this trope several times.
- It's strongly hinted, but deliberately remains ambiguous, that the newborn Manda might be the late Dr. Serizawa reincarnated, and it's confirmed by Mothra's POV that In-Universe, there's reincarnation after death.
- Does the old galdr that Thor recites really have supernatural power that helps him to fight off the Many, or does it merely fuel his willpower by its psychological relevance to him?
Always Visible: Galbraith does not believe in miracles, but what he encounters cannot be described in any other way. Because of this, the poor inspector has to rack his brains in almost every chapter.
The sandstorm's treated this way in-universe in Afterglow (Unfaithful); there are theories that it could be anything from an inexplicable natural phenomenon to the work of aliens to the literal wrath of God. Also, Walker tries to convince himself that his hallucinations are actually ghosts or some other kind of supernatural phenomena.
Angel of the Bat: In the annotated reupload of Times of Heresy, the writer mentioned the story's Big Bad was operating a plan so logistically difficult to manage that he said there's at least some chance he had some genuine supernatural powers helping to pull the strings.
In Batman: Grudge Match, it is never explicitly confirmed whether or not Bruce Wayne is the reincarnation of Michel Dumas, nor if Selina is Michel's lover Hermione. According to Nyssa, Ra's believed he was, and wanted to make Batman his heir to the League of Assassins for his strength and much as to spit in the face of his rival's legacy.
In Before The Dawn, while many vampires can have unusual abilities, Pythia gets special mention as she may just have a very unconventional ability to see the future or she may 'actually' be communicating with gods.
The Blue Pendrive:
- It's left intentionally ambiguous whether the effects the game has on Gonzalo are the result of actual supernatural phenomena, or just the Epileptic Flashing Lights of the game affecting him really badly.
- The remake still leaves it ambiguous, but seems to drop a bit more hints in favor of the game being genuinely supernatural in some way, including Gonzalo mentioning in an inner monologue that there have been recent reports of many other deaths by epileptic seizure similar to that of Enrique, the more eldritch way the leadup to the final Countdown scene seems to present itself with, and how the pendrive itself glows in a flash of strange, blue light in its last moment in the fire of the grill.
The Bridge (MLP):
- While at first, following the Heisei continuity, it seems the three Godzillas for the three eras of 1954, 1984, and 1995 were all merely dinosaurs mutated by nuclear radiation for a purely science fiction origin. However to the Odo Islanders, Godzilla is a mystical being that is the incarnation of destruction wrought upon the proud. The fact the three past Godzilla are obviously sapient, obviously magical beings like Mothra and ghosts existing, and there is no purely scientific reason for why the dinosaurs turned into kaiju instead of dying or suffering horrid side effects from the radiation do suggest the Odo Islanders might be onto something. On the other hand, the current Godzilla, the grown up "Godzilla Junior" from 1995, has no detectable magic around him when studied by enchanted beings and has a fully biological body. On the other hand, it's shown radiation and magical mana are close enough that beings might share vulnerabilities or immunities to both.
- In the prequel Godzilla: New Era, Hana, an aged Miko from Odo Island, is adamant the current and past Godzilla are incarnations of a primordial kami of destruction; having a debate with G-Force Commander Aso whom favors the scientific explination the giant beast is the result of a freak chance accident. Odo island born scientist, Yuji Shinoda grapples with this ambiguity in a subplot.
  Hana: To the ancients, lightning or fire represented destruction and so destructive dragons breathed it. Is it any surprise a modern beast of destruction would have the powers of the most destructive thing ^note(a nuclear bomb) we can think of now?
A Brief History of Histories: Usagi and Luna discuss this after Sailor Moon saves her father, Chairman Tsukino, and he fails to recognize her. Usagi's convinced he did recognize her, but didn't want to acknowledge her because he thought she wasn't brave enough during the fight. Luna reassures her that her transformation includes magic to protect her Secret Identity. However, she's uncertain whether or not that's actually the case.
Hobbes' revised backstory in Calvin & Hobbes: The Series is as ambiguous as can be — Calvin's mom put him in the trap, but she found him laying on their property, looking brand new.
Children of Remnant: Emerald is apparently able to read Neo's facial expressions so well that she learns her nickname from them. It's not clear if it's meant to be Played for Laughs or imply that Emerald has some genuine form of mind reading.
The Compendium of Forgotten Secrets: Well, relatively mundane at least. Some in-universe speculation about the Forbidden Graveyard and its effects posits that it isn't a supernatural realm, but rather a mental scape accessed at the brink of death, the "spirits" it grants power over are merely animate memories, and that the powers granted by it could hypothetically exist in everyone.
Concerning Us, Janine's encounters with the supernatural. Did John and James really speak to her or was it her damaged brain's attempt to function after the loss of the psychic links? Did she really see something else or was it just an illusion? She even admits her own Unreliable Narrator status, but chooses to believe in it anyway, because the other alternative feels unbearable... which again can be the product of her revived (and certifiably insane) status or just good old human nature.
It's ambiguous whether Destiny (Afterandalasia) consists of the Dying Dreams of various Disney characters or whether they're experiencing their afterlives. It's also ambiguous whether "Destiny" is a real being or just an Anthropomorphic Personification of destiny.
Dragon Ball Z Abridged: Did Nappa really come back to life as a ghost, or was Vegeta just hallucinating? The resurrected Nappa's movie pitch seems to point to the former, but it could just be a coincidence.
Ernesto de la Cruz vs. The Court of Public Opinion: Ernesto appearing to Guadalupe Ruiz in the form of a spectral chihuahua and encouraging her to assault the Rivera family might be a hallucination, or might be a genuine supernatural visitation, given Ernesto's canonical pack of chihuahua alebrije in the Land of the Dead.
In the finale of Evolution II, Cole MacGrath manages to defeat The Beast with the RFI, but goes brain dead as a result. During that time, Cole seemingly meets the spirits of the people he knew in life, key among them being his girlfriend Trish and future self Kessler. Kessler more or less gives Cole instructions on how to resurrect himself by using his electrical powers to jump start his body, which manages to work. After waking up and hearing his story, Cole's friends try to rationalise the situation as Cole's subconscious having figured out what to do and merely used the images of the people Cole knew as an outlet. The story doesn't give a solid answer as to what Cole experienced, but it does seem to lean towards the former theory. Kessler himself Lampshades it.
Kessler: Never gave up for the whole life-after-death-thing. Maybe this is Hell. Or Heaven. Or there is no such thing and everybody who ever died just gets together. Or there is nothing after you die and this here is just your subconscious shutting down.
In FARAWAY LOGS, there are several very brief moments throughout the videos in which Something is visible. Given that the footage is visible to all, this indicates that Something/Mari's ghost is possessing the tape, but much like the game the series is based on, it's left unclear if this is actually the case or merely the characters' imagination.
In the Outlaw Star fanfic A Fistful of Dragonite Aisha's skinchanging ability, if any, is showcased off-screen, and any witnesses killed quickly after seeing it. Whether or not she truly has supernatural powers is left to interpretation. Word of God is that this was set-up deliberately from the start..
In the The Loud House fanfic A Ghost in this House, it’s deliberately left ambiguous as to whether Lucy’s delusional or Lincoln’s ghost has actually been possessing her.
Guys Being Dudes: Whatever Spark did to save Arlo from the falling Abandoned Playground isn't explained. Arlo points out that him seemingly demonstrating Super-Strength isn't implausible for someone saving their loved one, but his hair glowing and the pieces of the playground looking like they were struck by lightning don't have as easy of explanations.
In the Heroes of the Storm fanfic Heroes of the Desk it's not quite clear what items in the Strategic Prevention, Extraction, and Ablation Regiment's arsenal are actually Magic by Any Other Name versus simply being too advanced for "outsider" science to comprehend. There are some items which would presumably be more advanced versions of actual concepts, and then there are other 0-10-4s where despite best efforts the best SPEAR can come up with is A Wizard Did It.
Halloween Unspectacular: The train engine in "Iron Horses", from the eight edition. Does it really contain Gazlene's soul, who was barred from entering Heaven and Hell by the curse on her? Or are all of the engine's temperamental issues just a coincidence?
In Know Thyself, it is never elaborates if wizards are particularly powerful redpills and don't even know it, if magic is some kind of psychic power that was unintentionally created by the Matrix — especially since Harry is able to perform it in the Real World — or if it had existed beforehand in mankind's genetics without the machine's knowledge.
The Many Dates of Danny Fenton: Played for Laughs in the timeline in which Danny Phantom is involved with Makoto Kino, aka Sailor Jupiter. He asks how the Sailor Guardians are able to have secret identities when they don't conceal their faces with masks, nor alter their physical appearances like he does. The girls are genuinely curious about this as well. Luna theorizes it's magic while Artemis theorizes humans are just that thick. This is brought up again when Ben Tennyson is able to recognize Ami Mizuno when she's Sailor Mercury while he was transformed as Brainstorm. Either whatever magic protects their identities had no effect on his alien forms or Brainstorm was too smart to fool.
It's kept ambiguous whether the Maude seen in marge simpson anime is a vision in Marge's head, or whether it is actually Maude's spirit.
Invoked in "Metamorphosis" after Hyrule is saved from an alien invasion by USS ''Voyager'' . When talking with Princess Zelda, Captain Janeway notes the energy readings created by the Triforce fragments possessed by her and Link, but while the Triforce shows signs of being some kind of computer, it is clearly responsive to Link and Zelda in particular.
A Moth to a Flame: It's unknown how The Core was able to turn Marcy from being terrified of it one second to calling it beautiful the next. Whether it's due to dark magic, technology or some mundane brainwashing techniques, it has yet be confirmed how it got Marcy to loosen her moral code and pull a Face–Heel Turn.
One of the biggest plot holes in My Immortal is Draco Malfoy apparently committing suicide, then coming back to life when Voldemort kidnaps him. Did he really come back to life, or was it that his "corpse" was just a dummy?
In My Little Mission: Sneaking is Magic, it's left ambiguous throughout the entire story as to whether Snake really was transported to Equestria or whether the entire thing is an illusion happening in his head. It's implied that Ocelot traveled to Equestria too which would mean that Snake really did go there, but it's never confirmed.
In Chapter 21 of New Horizons, Voldemort claims that Rachel Simmons, Harry Potter's mentor, is not a witch, but a muggle who just happens to know a lot about the magical world. There is evidence to support this claim, such as the fact that Harry has never seen Rachel cast a spell (Rachel taught Harry magic by telling him the instructions). When Harry gets the chance to ask Rachel about this, her answer is that it doesn't really matter.
Personality Swap AU: Izuku is able to perfectly mimic anyone he's told to from speech patterns to instinctive reactions to fighting styles. Initially it's just played as Izuku being an amazing actor and being assigned people he knows rather well (Bakugo, Aizawa, All-Might etc). But later assignments include people he doesn't know very well, such as Snipe, Mirko, and Shigaraki, and he mimics all of them perfectly. Furthermore, while Izuku has been shown getting support gear for some assignments (Hawks' wings for example) and using One For All creatively, there's times where he legitimately appears to use someone else's Quirks, including both Shigaraki's Decay and Best Jeanist's Fiber Master. Finally, Izuku is at times implied to know more than he should. All Might catches Izuku-as-Snipe sharing a story only Sniper and All-Might know and it's implied Izuku knows Hawks is secretly infiltrating the League of Villains. Whether Izuku is just that amazing an actor who does immense amounts of research or whether it's some sort of mimicry Quirk has been left ambiguous. Until the 24th story when Izuku mimics Monoma and somehow copies Bakugo's Explosion Quirk.
When Ember first appears in Phantom of Middleton, the only one at school who's unaffected by her spell (besides Danny and Bonnie, who are wearing Anti-Ghost technology) is Josh Mankey, who claims it's because he's more of a jazz person. However, this claim is called into question with The Reveal that Josh is this fic's version of Valerie Gray, a ghost hunter. So.... was Josh immune to Ember's spell because his Willpower was just that strong, or was it because he secretly had ghost hunting tech on him that prevented him from being controlled?
The Phantom Riders Club: After Shiho Susui becomes part of the Kamen Rider Club, her love of The Beatles has become something akin to a Status Buff and amplifies the field of cosmic energy. JK brings up a theory that perhaps Lennon and Harrison are now demigods who bless her because of her fervent belief in them or it's because the music just brings the Kamen Rider Club together and bonds them closer together.
Loneliness, the first Big Bad of Season 1 of the Pony POV Series could potentially be a supernatural parasite, a Split Personality of Trixie's, a manifestation of Discord's magic, an Eldritch Abomination, Trixie's potential unawakened Nightmare, a Shadow Of Existence attempting to steal Trixie's Light to reconstitute itself, or simply a figment of Trixie's imagination. Support is given for all possibilities and which if any is the actual origin is never explained, either in universe or by Word of God, who intentionally left it ambiguous to make her that much scarier, and she's thoroughly destroyed at the end of the fight with her, so there's no chance for the characters to find out.
When Mokuba is escaping Pegasus' goons in The Power of Friendship (And This Gun I Found!), he jumps out a window and is caught in the arms of a Blue Eyes White Dragon topiary piece, which breaks his fall and places him gently on the ground. Blue Eyes White Dragon is the Ka of Kisara, Seto's love interest in a past life, and the way it's written implies that her spirit may have taken form in the shrubbery to come to Mokuba's rescue.
In Pro Hero Metal Bat, Izuku is Quirkless, but then he pulls off physical feats that he really shouldn't be able to do, like smacking a fridge across the beach with his bat, or caving a hole under the foot of the Zero Point Robot with just the force of his swing. He eventually developes a Healing Factor.
In A Rabbit Among Wolves, Adam regularly speaks to Jaune in his dreams after the latter kills the former. While Jaune thinks it's just his guilty conscience and imagination, Adam's personality perfectly reflects the real one's and he occasionally hints at knowledge Jaune shouldn't have. Then Adam awakens Jaune's Aura.
In Rancor Bait by frodogenic, Luke has a nightmare of being eaten by Jabba's pet rancor. While this is written off as an in-universe rumour and horror story, given that said rancor actually exists and almost does eat Luke alive years later in Return of the Jedi, as well as his father Anakin having Dreaming of Things to Come abilities, one would wonder if Luke also inherited his father's tendency for premonitions.
In the Mass Effect fanfic Resurgence, part 3 of the Parable series, Jane/Shepard often had Silent Hill-esque nightmares that can all be explained as the symbolism of her various fears and regrets from the suicide mission. But in the last dream she had in that part where Jane was chased after by something with unnatural screams and infant-liked wailings, she was saved by two invisible beings whom she described as warm, protective, easy to please, and innocent. When she woke up, she just has been puked out from the Baby Reaper after her husband Garrus killed it and later, they discovered that she's been pregnant, with twins. The author never explain more about it other than the fact that the whole thing was inspired by Silent Hill.
Discussed in Return of the Primarchs when Fulgrim crashes into a planet that remembers his murderous, demonic future version. Seeing that this Fulgrim is heroic, the leader of civilians says that either a miracle happened and past Fulgrim returned, or the man in front of him is a crazy Space Marine who convinced himself that he's the Primarch from Great Crusade times.
Happens in Chapter 13 of the Our Miss Brooks fanfic The Reunion Assembly. Connie dreams that the long-deceased Mrs. Davis and Mr. Conklin pay her a visit. It's All Just a Dream… Or Was It a Dream?
Scarlet Lady: After Marinette tells him how hard it was to defeated his akumatized form, Max wonders if it was because he was an akuma or because he wasn't relying on his prewritten codes.
Partly why Metroid II: Return of Samus "Secret Worlds" is so haunting. Is it all an elaborate hoax and the protagonist merely a sucker? Or was Palm really visited by the ghost of Gunpei Yokoi?
Eric the Hedgehog in Sonic X: Dark Chaos. Is he simply an eccentric and lucky Idiot Savant, or is he a Humanoid Abomination with the power of Clap Your Hands If You Believe? Both explanations are implied in the story.
The Soulmate Timeline: The nature of Soulbounds, where they came from, and why is there such a drastic change compared to the all of the time loops Homura has been through (where outside of one or two small changes have mostly been the same in the broad scope). Homura thinks that it has to be the work of the Incubators granting a wish from a Magical Girl (mostly because she can't stomach the idea that God would allow the Incubators to run freely if He exists), but Kyubey is shown to be completely clueless about their origin, and is outright continuously thrown off by them (to the point that he mostly leaves Soulbounds alone unless they one happens have a large amount of potential or he thinks that he can take advantage of a situation to get one to turn into a Witch) leaving it unclear if Soulbonds are the creation of magic from another source than the Incubators, some divine blessing from divine sources as is the most common belief in-universe among humans, or an unknown, other source, with Homura and Kyubey, both being outsiders to them, being the only ones to give them any thought. And then there is the fact that the Madoka from the most recent timeline that Homura had been in gave Homura a book that fits very much with her current situation in the new timeline and that Homura does not know what that Madoka's fate or if she made a wish before Homura did her reset.
Explicitly how Gnome magic functions in Strike Witches Quest. this is doubly hilarious due to the explicit Magitek and "Magic A" Is "Magic A" of witches.
A Thing of Vikings: There is a lot of debate in the centuries after the story on whether Stoick's visions of the Norse gods are real or just a hallucination.
A Thousand Answers: During the Missouri arc, Dio gambles with an ancestor of The D'Arby Brothers, a gambling man with a supernaturally good winning streak. Dio handily beats him in a bet, but feels oddly uncomfortable when his victory becomes clear. Whether D'Arby is a genuinely talented gambler or using an early iteration of his descendants' Stands is never definitely answered.
In Tony Stark and the Cursed Child, Tony holds an intense attraction to Mary Fitzpatrick. When he finds out that she's going to marry Richard Parker because she got pregnant with his kid, he angrily curses the child for ruining his chances at getting with Mary. Over time, he comes to find out that said child, Peter Parker, had a pretty terrible life and a guilty Tony honestly believes he cursed him, while others believe it's just a coincidence.
The Unyielding Stag: After learning the Drowned God wants him dead, Axel Baratheon sends a warning by flying far out into the ocean then diving to the bottom of the sea and stomping the ground with all his might. After several stomps, various sea creatures attack him, with Axel fighting them all off until an enormous sea dragon pushes him up from the depths and out of the ocean. Axel recognizes the intelligence in its eyes and, assuming it to be a demigod child of the Drowned God, kills the sea dragon (using the tidal wave he accidentally caused). However, Axel never receives a direct response from the Drowned God and the author explicitly leaves it ambiguous if Axel challenged and fought said god's strongest monsters and killed one of his sons, or if he just was attacked by a bunch of startled sea creatures, mistook the water pressure for the Drowned God's presence, and the sea dragon was just intelligent enough to simply want Axel out of its home before he caused more damage.
In Warriors Redux, it's ambiguous if StarClan is real or not and whether seers actually have supernatural powers. The Clan cats believe in their afterlives and believe seers are mystical but, unlike in the original series, there's no concrete proof in either.
Who Watches the Watchmen is a crossover between Castle (2009) and Daredevil (2015) with elements of The Sentinel which reveals that Matt Murdock's enhanced senses are actually because he's a Sentinel; his powers would normally never have manifested when he lived in a busy city like New York, but when he lost his sight, his other four senses were triggered to compensate for the loss of such a dominant sense.
One Young Justice (2010) fanfic involves Robin suffering an electrical attack that stops his heart. Zatanna tries to use a combination of CPR and her magic to restart his heart, but doesn't have any luck. When she realizes that what she's doing isn't working, Zatanna, in a bout of desperation, instinctively unleashes a powerful outburst of magic into Robin's body, reviving him. The general consensus among the more logical heroes is that the energy from Zatanna's outburst simply restarted Robin's heart and revived him from a clinical death, but some of the magical heroes wonder if, instead of "merely" restarting Robin's heart, Zatanna's powerful magic actually brought him Back from the Dead.

Films — Animation

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad deliberately leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not the Headless Horseman exists, unlike the book, which very strongly hints that the horseman was Brom Bones in disguise. Notably, the Horseman's horse is the same color as that of Brom Bones, and he also carries a sword identical to the one Bones previously wielded. However, Ichabod does at one point look down the Horseman's coat and panics, implying that he doesn't see anything and that what he encountered was the real deal –- although since we don't see what he sees inside the coat, he might also have been reacting to seeing a murderous Brom Bones looking up at him, or seeing the top of Brom's head (as Brom has black hair) and mistook it for an empty void. In another scene, the Horseman's horse jumps from a hill to another that was quite far from the former, as though it were flying — something that a normal horse couldn't have done.
Rasputin in Anastasia (1997) is definitely a real sorcerer now — but was he always, or did he use to be just a conman until he was driven to extremes? The film's vague statements could pointedly be taken either way: the Dowager claims that, although thought a holy man, he was really "a fraud", but does she mean that he was always an evil warlock under his pretenses of sainthood, or that he was a literal con artist? The latter would fit better with the historical Rasputin, and he explicitly only made his Deal with the Devil after the Tsar banised him, later stating that the Reliquary he obtained as part of the deal was "the key to [his] powers". However, his ability to contact the Dark Forces at all might point to him having been a genuine occultist even before that, albeit a weaker one, such that some of the feats he achieved for the Romanovs might have been authentically supernatural after all.
In The Bad Guys (2022), the Golden Dolphin, an annual Good Samaritan award, is believed to end the criminal career of any thief who touches it, and the film shows several criminals who had tried and failed. The titular gang's attempt to steal it ends with them getting captured, and they're sent down a path to reform. Even the greatest thief in the world, the Crimson Paw, had not managed to steal it; as revealed later, Diane had managed to get it, but a moment of Heel Realization made her put it back and abandon her criminal life. It's ambiguous if the award is truly cursed or not.
Encanto: The appearance of Mirabel during the Alma's flashback scene, which explains what happened to her husband Pedro, gives the impression that she actually does have a magic gift — the ability to see into the past — or it could have just been for dramatic effect.
In Famous Fred, Fred appears to be dead like in the book, but then it ends with a ginger and white cat walking away. So either Cats Have Nine Lives or it's a totally different cat.
In Frozen II, is Elsa literally hearing her dead mother's voice calling her from the Spirit Forest or is the voice presenting itself as her mother's because it's a voice she knows? Likewise, Kristoff is moved into this territory with his song "Lost In The Woods", which hints that he might (unknowingly) be some form of shaman channeling Sven instead of him pretending to speak for Sven.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney):
- It's ambiguous as to whether or not the gargoyles are sentient and capable of movement. It's possible they're just imaginary friends Quasimodo created to deal with his isolation. In the climax, another gargoyle appears to come alive, scares Frollo, and breaks. While it's possible that this was a supernatural occurrence, the gargoyle may have just broken off from Frollo's weight (especially considering he'd accidentally cracked its base with his sword earlier), and it making a face could be explained as Frollo just seeing things, especially since he wasn't exactly in the best mental health at the time. The sequel, made by different people, apparently reveals they were Real After All, but that last part may have been an unrelated hallucination.
- There also several moments in the film that seem to imply that Notre Dame is actually sentient, such as in the beginning of the movie when many of the statues seem to be staring menacingly at Frollo for trying to kill baby Quasimodo. But then again, one could chalk it up as Frollo hallucinating due to fearing God's divine wrath since he received a "The Reason You Suck" Speech from the Archdeacon for killing Quasimodo's mother on the steps of Notre Dame.
The LEGO Movie has an example that goes beyond the others; late in the film, it's implied that the whole adventure is just real-life human Finn's playing with his dad's Lego sets... but our hero Emmet is fully conscious and — with some difficulty — capable of moving a little while in the "real world".
The Lion King: It's left ambiguous whether or not animals can speak English in-universe. It's also left ambiguous whether or not the "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" sequence (which, unlike the other songs, uses surreal imagery and thus would be magic if it were real) and Mufasa appearing in the clouds are happening in-universe or are just Simba's imagination.
The Lion King (2019):
- It's unclear whether Mufasa's voice in the rain clouds is real or whether Simba just thinks he hears his father. The same might apply to the original 1994 film too, even though Mufasa can clearly be seen in that version.
- Does Simba's reflection in the water really turn into Mufasa's image, or does he just see his own resemblance to his father, and does Mufasa's spirit really appear in the clouds, or is Simba just imagining his father speaking the words of his own conscience?
- Do the animals really talk, or are they speaking their own animal languages being translated into English? At one point Nala says "Simba, do you speak Bird?" when she can't understand Zazu, muddying the situation further.
It's never made clear in My Neighbor Totoro if Totoro and the spirits that Satsuki and Mei encounter are real, part of their imagination, or if they're real and only kids can see them. Professor Kusakabe also suggests at one point that they're real and can choose who sees them.
The ending of Disney's version of Peter Pan leaves it ambiguous whether the adventures in Neverland were real or All Just a Dream of Wendy's. Unlike in the original play and novel, where Wendy and her brothers spend many days in Neverland and come home to find their parents grieving their absence, here the trip lasts just one night, the children are already back home by the time the parents come back from their dinner party, and while they see what looks like the pirate ship sailing in the distant sky, it's purposefully drawn so we can't quite tell if it really is the ship or just a cloud formation. The sequel confirms it to an extent to have been Real After All.
In The Prince of Egypt, the Egyptian priests' magic is presented this way—they change their staffs into snakes in the middle of a huge Villain Song, with a bright flash that keeps the audience from seeing what actually happens. They also move impossibly far in parts of the song when the screen goes dark for an instant, but that could just be musical convention instead of In-Universe magic, or they could have employed body doubles. They also apparently summon floating glyphs and control flames with gestures during the same number, though again this could be musical convention. Earlier on, their presentation of Tzipporah in tribute to Rameses wouldn't be out of place in a modern magic show, apart from how "the Midian girl" is tied up for real. Them turning water into blood looks more obviously fake, though: they just add some powder that gives it a reddish tint. Of course, the point of the demonstration was to make Moses look like a deceiver. Overall the simplest explanation is that they are pure fakers, but it leaves open the possibility that they have some actual powers as well. This is different from in the actual Biblical book, where the priests are described as court magicians who really were able to match Moses' first two acts.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish:
- Several characters are on a quest to locate the Wishing Star, which is able to grant one wish to anyone for anything they desire. Puss in Boots, Kitty Softpaws, and Goldilocks refuse to tell anyone what they're going to wish for due to "birthday wish rules" (saying your wish out loud prevents it from coming true). All three eventually tell what their wish is going to be, and none of them get to make their wish before the Star is destroyed. Whether "birthday wish rules" were truly in effect, or if this was coincidence, is left ambiguous.
- After Puss sees the wolf and runs for it, he sees the wolf throughout the forest. Puss is suffering from a panic attack, causing him to see the wolf everywhere. Given the reveal that wolf is in fact Death coming for him, it's possible the visions were in fact Death toying with Puss.
Ratatouille: Is Remy really imagining Gusteau so he has someone to talk to when he's alone, or is Gusteau really speaking to him as a spirit? While the movie leans to the former, the fact that Gusteau knows things Remy doesn't and can physically touch him suggest the latter. Interestingly enough, the script doesn't refer to him as a ghost or as a figment of Remy's imagination, only a "sprite". Thus it is up to the viewer what exactly he is.
Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost ends with the reveal that the demon was yet another "Scooby-Doo" Hoax, but also suggests that the real one may still be out there. Velma then attempts to explain away the events of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo as a series of hallucinations. However, there are some holes in her theory and the other characters remain unconvinced. The film's writer latter revealed that this ending was a compromise, as there was endless debate during production whether or not the supernatural should be real.
The Sea Beast: It is unclear if Gwen Batterbie is an actual witch or a chemist of some sort, since she makes the poison without any apparent magical aid, and has advanced technology at her disposal in an underground laboratory below a small witch-like hut. By all means, she is treated as a witch; the hunters consider any exchange with her as a Deal with the Devil, holding it as a violation of the hunter code, and it's said that great misfortune always occurs after making a deal with her. However, it seems that her powers have never been directly proven in-universe, since Captain Crow writes them off as "superstitions", though she does have some level of magic, if not potion-esque magic, since she temporarily moves his tattoo with a red flash of her eyes without him noticing, and it's unclear if it's because of anything supernatural or if it's Through the Eyes of Madness. While Gwen does warn Captain Crow about the cost of making a deal with her, nothing bad actually befalls him or the crew, and it's unclear if it's because they didn't kill the Red Bluster like planned or if it's really just malarkey. The crew also claims she can see through a red moon, though this is not confirmed.
Tangled: Flynn and Rapunzel argue about how the former located the tower where the latter lives:
Rapunzel: Something brought you here, Flynn Rider... Call it what you will. Fate, destiny...
Flynn: A horse.
Up: There are some light hints that Ellie's spirit has come to inhabit the house but it's never confirmed one way or the other. Carl talks to her as if she's still alive at various points (though this may be him trying to Cope by Pretending), and Russell even does the same to ask if he can keep Kevin. In the climax, the house's garden hose dislodges, saving Russell and Kevin, while stray balloons catch Muntz and keep him from grabbing the bird along with causing him to fall to his death. Finally, at the end, the house lands exactly where Ellie wanted it to be in Paradise Falls.

Music

The old folk song "Scarlet Ribbons". The narrator overhears his/her young daughter praying for scarlet ribbons for her hair before bedtime. Unfortunately it is very late, and all the shops are closed, making it impossible to obtain them. When the narrator checks on his/her daughter again before dawn, the wished-for ribbons are lying on her bed. The song ends with the lines "If I live to be one hundred / I will never know from where / Came those lovely scarlet ribbons / Scarlet ribbons for her hair."
The Presence, in the Nine Inch Nails Year Zero ARG. In a dystopian future, suddenly a giant glowing blue human arm is periodically seen reaching down from the sky, in locations all over the world. No clear explanation is ever given for what the hell the Presence actually is, but what is known is that it will never appear on video or photographs intentionally taken of it, while those that accidentally capture it can, and that anyone who witnesses it is unnaturally stunned by the sight of it. In-universe theories range from the Presence being God, aliens, or a government weapon, but none of these are ever confirmed before it destroys the world.
"Rosetta Stoned" from tool. The narrator is clearly having a full-scale breakdown, but the cause is what's open to interpretation. Did he really have a sanity-destroying encounter with aliens who informed him that he had some greater cosmic purpose, or did he just have a really bad trip? Given Maynard's attitude towards giving a straight answer about a song's meaning, either interpretation could be correct.
In "Creepy Doll" by Jonathan Coulton, it's not entirely clear whether the titular doll is magical or merely the focus of your growing insanity.
Job for a Cowboy's Sun Eater is either chronicling a psychedelic trip (based on the nature of the visions and the album's musical flow, probably ayahuasca) or a wisdom-granting seance. "Worming Nightfall" is either where the trip goes very wrong and destroys the protagonist's mind or where the seance goes wrong and leaves her trapped in a dream world. The wording is ambiguous enough that both explanations are equally plausible.
The two most popular interpretations of the song "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon are that it's either about a Handsome Lech type character being compared to a werewolf or about an actual werewolf.
What's unusual in the music video for "Holding Out for a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler is that the outlaws' neon whips are enough to start a House Fire. Who knows?
“The Preacher” by Show of Hands is about a preacher who lives on an island. He falls in love with a woman who is married to a man who works in a quarry. When the man the woman loves finds work on the mainland, the preacher prays to God that something will happen to separate the woman from her husband and make her stay on the island. The next day, the man is crushed by a falling rock and killed while working in the quarry. It's unclear whether this is all a horrible coincidence or whether God really did answer the preacher's prayer in the most terrible way possible, but the preacher blames himself (because he prayed to God to do something to separate the woman from her husband) and falls into despair.
"Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men: Is the female singer really having a conversation with her deceased partner, or is she imagining everything he says? The song hints at both possibilities, and we never get a definitive answer.
"2 Bed, 2 Bath (and a Ghost)" by Bug Hunter is about Robert, an old man who believes his house is haunted by a malevolent spirit. His neighbor is understandably skeptical, and points out that, since Robert was recently widowed, he's probably just not used to being alone in a big, noisy house. Robert insists there's something more going on, citing the fact that his furniture seems to be moving when he's not looking, his medication is constantly being hidden in places he never would've put it, and he keeps waking up with a pillow on his face. The Animated Music Video also adds to the ambiguity, since it shows the neighbor coming over and finding out that Robert's medication can cause memory loss and confusion. Subverted, as the ending has the neighbor also seeing the ghost. Turns out it's none other than Robert's wife.

Podcasts

There's every indication at first that Season 1 of Palimpsest is a ghost story. There's the appearances of Thomas and Ms. Aikmann, the bloody footprints that keep appearing, the increasingly odd hints to Anneliese's sister Claire, and numerous odd occurrences. But then, as the podcast goes on, there's increasing amounts of parallels between Anneliese past and the hauntings, the reveal that Anneliese was either visited by Claire's ghost or deluded herself into believing she was there, the reveal that regardless of the events of the story Anneliese is suffering from staggering amounts of mental trauma. The last of which throws all events of the podcast into question, and could very well mean it was all in her head. In the end, it could all be magic, mundane, or both.
Pacific Northwest Stories and the Public Radio Alliance:
- This is the core premise behind The Black Tapes, in which broadcaster Alex Regan and professional skeptic Richard Strand investigate the unsolved mysteries of Strand's career. Alex is more inclined to consider the supernatural side while Strand has a possible explanation for nearly everything. Alex has noted that Strand's attempts at a logical explanation sometimes leaves too much room for coincidence or are as out there as the supernatural angle might be, but he also just as often has a perfectly reasonable explanation for what seems mystical.
- In the epilogue of the first season of RABBITS Carly Parker is left wondering if her experiences in tracking down her lost friend were truly her participation in Rabbits, a multi-dimensional game played in reality, or an elaborate setup she was led through by someone she considered a friend and ally. Her friend has no memory of the time she was missing, and several little things Carly encountered end up with mundane explanations. The only clear-cut sign it all really happened is an arcade game whose high score list contains the aliases of the previous winners of Rabbits, includes "Parker Carlson" in the ninth rank, and a blank tenth place.
The Storage Papers: "The Duct-Tape Man" leaves it ambiguous whether Officer Diego Castrado was victim to some kind of transferable possession after killing spree shooter Peter Garrett, or if he was simply driven mad by his guilt over killing Garrett and his refusal to deal with his trauma.

Poetry

In Alfred Noyes's "Forty Singing Seamen", it concludes with the narrator's observation that everything might have been Pink Elephants. To be sure, that included drinking the grog.
Across the seas of Wonderland to London-town we blundered,
Forty singing seamen as was puzzled for to know
If the visions that we saw was caused by—here again we pondered—
A tipple in a vision forty thousand years ago.
Could the grog we dreamt we swallowed
Make us dream of all that followed?
We were only simple seamen, so of course we didn't know!
Chorus—We were simple singing seamen, so of course we could not know
In the ballad "The Erl-King" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a sick boy claims he is being pursued by the Erl-King who wants to take him away; shortly after claiming that the Erl-King is touching and hurting him, he dies. The poem does not answer the question whether the Erl-King was real or only the dying boy's fever dream.
In "Lore Lay" by Clemens Brentano, Lore Lay is called a sorceress, and is charged with using magic to make all men fall in love with her. However, the fact that Lore Lay is not actually interested in the attention she receives suggests that she may not be a witch at all, merely a very attractive (but non-magical) single woman.
In the kids' poem "Monsters" by Elizabeth Swados, is it genuinely a monster or a ghost who's making the "Ooooh" and "Eeeee" noises, or is it the wind in the trees making an unusually ghostly-sounding noise, or somebody crying? All these possibilities are suggested by the narrator.
"The Raven": Is the raven a supernatural creature who truly means that the narrator will never see Lenore again even in heaven, is the man hallucinating, or is the raven just a normal bird who is mimicking the word "nevermore" that it learned somewhere?

Professional Wrestling

The Undertaker is wrestling's Trope Codifier. He is originally a wrestling zombie who has powers, specifically lightning summoning and teleportation, and even becomes a demonic overlord at one point. He was Brought Down to Normal for a few years but is eventually restored to his mythical gimmick.
Kane, the Undertaker's half-brother, has pyrokinesis and the same teleportation powers. Depending on the Writer, he's a demon or at least sold his soul to one.
Papa Shango is somehow capable of voodoo magic.
Sting is another wrestler capable of teleportation.
Fergal Devitt is sometimes possessed by a demonic alter-ego who may or may not be just a product of his own imagination.
Aleister Black is also capable of teleportation and is implied to possess satanic powers.
Winter is somehow capable of both teleportation and Mind Control.
Bray Wyatt somehow has teleportation powers, can project holograms of himself, is somehow capable of Mind Control and is said to have a demon living within him.
Broken Matt Hardy is somehow capable of brainwashing other people into an "enlightened" version of themselves.

Radio

One Christmas Episode of The Men from the Ministry ends this way; the episode features One upsetting Santa and the main duo traveling to Christmas Land and escaping eventually with a red carpet. The episode ends with Two awakening One from a sleep, but a new red carpet has appeared in Two's room...

Religion

The Bible:
- Books of Kings: When the Israelites assiege his city, King Mesha of Moab sacrifies his eldest son on the city wall. "The fury against Israel was great; they withdrew and returned to their own land." It's not clear if the Israelites abandoned the siege out of sheer disgust or if a pagan god or a demon somehow granted Mesha's wish.
- Books of Samuel: The Witch of Endor calls up the spirit of Samuel from the grave, and he speaks in a disembodied voice, revealing the disguised Saul's identity and prophesying his defeat. Or did she? Some scholars have observed that the apparition as described would be very easy to fake with the help of a bit of clever ventriloquism^note, and it wouldn't exactly take supernatural aid to deduce that the disguised man was in fact the king known for being the tallest of all the Israelites. When read with that in mind, the text is actually rather cagey on the point of whether a spirit genuinely appeared.
The Book of Mormon: Righteous Jaredite king Shez is threatened by the rebellion of his eldest son — and then the son is killed by a robber, restoring peace. The text makes no attempt to speculate on whether this was Divine Intervention.

Tabletop Games

BattleTech:
- The "Phantom 'Mech" ability, which was displayed in the BattleTech Expanded Universe but also given rules in the tabletop during three different scenario sets. In combat, Morgan Kell's, Patrick Kell's and Yorinaga Kurita's battlemechs became completely invisible to sensors, and targeting systems were completely unable to detect them. Attempting to fire upon them resulted in the weapon missing entirely, unless they engaged each other, or someone got both fancy and dumb. (Daniel Allard successfully hit Morgan Kell by having his 'Mech's computer fire at the flashes of Morgan's lasers; he said himself this was low-probability to work if Morgan had been moving.) It's never explained what exactly it is; whether it be destiny, or a LosTech stealth system. The fact Morgan was apparently able to do it against the Clans again during the Battle of Luthien argues against it having been lostech, though.
- The visions that Clan Nova Cat warriors experience fall under this as well. Are they really glimpsing the future, or is it simply hallucinations that are sufficiently vague as to be easy to find an explanation for them? The fact that they're only ever interpreted after events that fulfill them have happened points to the latter, as does the Nova Cats winding up as a Client State for the Draconis Combine that choked them of resources and used them as cannon fodder before ultimately wiping them out during a succession crisis.
- The Black Marauder, the mech piloted by the pirate Black Kevin Langstrom. Supposedly subtly off in appearance, it's allegedly got the power to grow to a larger and more monstrous appearance in the dark, can move and fire its weapons on its own without a pilot, and consume the souls of people near it. Whether all of this is merely rumor spread by its brilliant but psychotic pilot, superstitious Periphery folk, and drug-addled pirates or it actually is an Eldritch Abomination in the approximate shape of a Marauder Battlemech is never answered.
Dark•Matter (1999) advised the Game Master to take this tack occasionally, as having every plot hook turn into a Monster of the Week or a lead-in to a grand conspiracy would make things predictable. Sometimes, just savor the mystery.
The Fate systems such as Dresden RPG and Strands of Fate have the Aspect system where all characters have a set of "Aspects" which basically causes PCs and other important characters to have a serious case of Plot Happens in their general vicinity. Leaving you to wonder in some settings whether there is something special about these people.
Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition has a Prestige Class that pretends to be a spellcaster, stretching sleight of hand and really good bluff skills right to the edge of the supernatural.
Eberron: The setting loves this one, especially in regards to religions. Divine power is real, and the faithful can tap into it. Everything beyond that is up in the air.
- The Silver Flame is a mystical force that binds some of the most powerful demons. Are the especially powerful Knight Templars in the religion just ordinary terrible people, or is the Shadow in the Flame manipulating them, whispering to them under the guise of one of the more benevolent voices in the Flame?
- The Tairnadal elves believe that each of them is individually chosen by a heroic ancestor, and that this ancestor guides their instincts. Both individually and as a group, they are some of the deadliest people alive—but is that because the ancestors are truly guiding them, or simply because they dedicate the entirety of their long lives to warfare?
- The Blood of Vol believes that every living person has a divine spark, the possibility of ascending to godhood. When a Vol cleric uses divine magic, they believe that they are tapping into their own divine spark—but it could also be that the cult's belief in that spark has created a well of divine energy for casters to draw upon.
Mage: The Ascension has some fun with this too. Any smart mage makes their spells look like coincidences, hypertech, or something else that the general population believes will work (and a fair number actually believe that this is what is happening). With the heavy levels of Clap Your Hands If You Believe used, the odds are very good that there's a bit of both magic and coincidence/super-science/whatever going on.
The New World of Darkness sourcebook Asylum presents a suite of odd happenings and disturbed individuals in the ill-starred Bishopsgate Mental Hospital in one chapter. The book gives each of them one or more supernatural explanations... and also gives a mundane one for each, with the "real" answer in the Storyteller's hands. (For example, one of the patients is a woman with foggy memories and terribly-kept medical records. The book gives two possibilities: she's being used as a storage conduit by the Seers of the Throne, who alter her records to hide their activities... or she's just an ill woman with an aneurysm on the verge of bursting, and the hospital's just really screwed up keeping their books straight.)
Pathfinder ups the ante on this a bit by giving rogues (the "tricky" non-magical Character Class) access to actual spells as class "tricks". Because they're so good at faking it, sometimes even the universe just gives up and believes them.
Remnants goes so far as to quote both Clarke's Third Law and the misattribution to Larry Niven that gave us Sufficiently Analyzed Magic, and offers both magical and technological explanations for the disaster that broke the Broken Lands and left only ruins and self-repairing mechs.
With one of the game's main themes being that all philosophies that promote self-growth are equally valid and worth learning from, Seeker goes to great lengths to make absolutely clear that none of the strange, wonderful, mysterious things Seekers encounter on their Paths are explicitly supernatural. All of their incredible abilities may be construed as simply being the result of amazing skill and self-control, all supposedly supernatural encounters happen in ways that could be explicable as hallucinations, drug effects, etc. and even "demons" function in a way that could be just as explicable as simply being maladaptive behavioral patterns.
Warhammer 40,000 loves this trope as a cornerstone of its setting, especially when the Adeptus Mechanicus come into play. Is that ancient relic so powerful because it was created with long-lost technology of astounding power, or is it truly blessed by the Emperor to protect his children? Do the Necrons invoke some strange techno-sorcery in their weapons and vehicles, or is their understanding of the material world so absolute that we can't even begin to understand how they work? Are the Legion of the Damned mystical undead, or just regular marines suffering from some ungodly mixture of the Black Rage and Nurgle Rot? Did the Techpriest's chanting and ritual application of holy oils appease the machine spirit of the Land Raider, or does the Land Raider just have a voice-activated diagnostic program installed? The answer is very, very rarely made clear in any given case. This is made worse because it has to be on a case-by-case basis since magic and super-tech both exist in the setting, and some tech (especially that used by Orks) is explicitly a mix of real mechanical systems and Clap Your Hands If You Believe.

Theatre

Cross Road: Did Niccolo Paganini's mother die of natural causes, or was she killed by Amduscias, the demon that Niccolo Paganini made a contract with as punishment for his breaking the contract (by playing music for someone other than Amduscias)? Or was she killed automatically by the contract, without Amduscias having had to take any action of his own? In that case, when he sat next to her in Niccolo's concert, was he trying to protect Niccolo from breaking the contract, by distracting her, or by absorbing Niccolo's intention by being close to the intended recipient?
Elisabeth: Some productions, especially the original 1992 version, make it ambiguous if Death is a real character or a hallucination. He's only visible to Elisabeth, Rudolf and Lucheni, none of whom are particularly sane, and Lucheni is an Unreliable Narrator anyway. In other productions he's more obviously a real character.
Harvey: The play and movie chronicle several characters' attempt to "cure" Elwood of his psychosis regarding his hallucinating the titular, gigantic, anthropomorphic rabbit. However, there are many clues that indicate "Harvey" may actually be a Not-So-Imaginary Friend.
In Heathers: The Musical, Veronica sees (and talks to) the ghosts of her boyfriend's victims multiple times throughout the show. But since only Veronica sees them, and she gradually grows more and more unstable, it's left up to the audience to decide if the ghosts are really there or just a hallucination. At one point, the ghosts warn her of danger, but that could also be chalked up to Veronica's gut feeling, especially considering she was Properly Paranoid already. Essentially, it's up to you whether the ghosts caused Veronica's Sanity Slippage, or if it was the other way around.
Macbeth, infamously. While the Wyrd Sisters are definitely real witches, it's ambiguous if Banquo's ghost, the phantom dagger and the Damn'd Spot were real or just hallucinations caused by guilt.
Matilda the Musical: While Matilda is explicitly telekinetic, is she also psychic? She tells a "story" which later turns out to mimic Miss Honey's birth story to a T, but it's unsaid whether this is actual Psychic Powers or just a Contrived Coincidence.
Next to Normal: In the end, although the family does begin to heal and move on, it's left a bit unclear whether Gabriel was just a hallucination or actually was a ghost desperately holding onto Diane to keep "living". The reprise of "I Am the One" could easily support either conclusion.
In The Phantom of the Opera, it's deliberately left ambiguous as to whether the Phantom actually does have supernatural abilities. Some of the things he does, like the mirror, are understandable, but a lot more — causing the piano to play itself during the rehearsal of Don Juan Triumphant, creating fire in the graveyard, making the gates in his lair rise with merely a gesture, disappearing from under his cloak at the end of the show — while obviously stage effects in real life, have no practical explanation in the context of the story. However, the 2004 film version makes it very clear that all the stunts he pulls are merely clever tricks, leaving the more supernatural stuff out altogether and explaining other things away by showing the Phantom pulling a lever to raise the gates, or messing with Carlotta's throat spray in order to make her croak. Also worth noting the original novel also explained away these events through the titular antagonist’s ingenuity, but ironically at the same time the Phantom himself was far more of a Humanoid Abomination than he is in the musical.
Romeo and Juliet: Is the ending the fulfillment of Mercutio's Dying Curse or was it just coincidence?
The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare: At the end, Queen Hermione's statue seems to come to life. It could be that the statue of Hermione really does come to life, or it could be that her servant, Paulina, kept her hidden for years and she only claimed she had died.
Yes Virginia: The Musical: The Santas who come alive for "Santa by the Book" might just be a child's imagination. The Jolly Gentleman might just be a kindly old gentleman who resembles Santa Claus.

Visual Novels

Stage magicians in Ace Attorney tend to blur the line. It's made clear that they do use normal stage tricks (figuring them out is a big part of some cases like 4-3), but several magicians also possess powers that aren't explained, such as Trucy's Hammerspace abilities (it's never explained where exactly she keeps Mr. Hat, for example) or Mr. Reus conjuring fire in his hand (while wearing short sleeves, so he clearly wasn't hiding some mechanism in them).
- Maya's channeling of Mia is this in the first game. The game never clarifies whether characters other than Phoenix recognize Mia when she's being channeled. From the second game onward, though, channeling becomes explicitly real in-universe.
In AIR, Kano may or may not be able to talk to animals.
Whether the events in Along the Edge are supernatural in origin is deliberately left ambiguous so you can develop Daphne's character in either direction. Do the Malterres practice black magic or do they do their dirty work in perfectly ordinary ways? No one knows...
Danganronpa:
- Is Yasuhiro's clairvoyance real, or is he just a con artist who makes some lucky guesses? It's notable that, of the three predictions he makes in-game, one will come true. He predicts that he and Makoto's kids will share a mother (Aoi, in the Bad Ending where they're trapped in the school), no more murders will occur after Chapter 3 (if you get the true ending, and thus Kyoko is never executed on a false charge, this is correct: Sakura's death was a suicide, the murder of chapter 5 was faked, and Junko also committed suicide), and that going outside the school is a bad idea (always false; escaping leads to the survivors joining the Future Foundation, helping fix the world, and getting a true happy ending).
- What was the apparition of Chiaki that appeared to Hajime to give him his Heroic Second Wind? Chiaki had been executed at that point, but might have been Not Quite Dead as an AI, but she also knows things that only the human Chiaki, who was Dead All Along, knew about Hajime. So what is she? A hallucination, a memory of the real Chiaki surfacing, AI!Chiaki doing the same thing as Alter Ego in the original game, or the human Chiaki's ghost?
- Can Angie really hear the voice of her god Atua? She is kind of strange and it's established that she has a lot of difficulty separating "Atua's Desires" from her own, but her 'divine revelations' tend to be absolutely correct, even if only in hindsight. In Chapter 1, Atua reveals how the culprit actually escaped the scene, by returning to the hidden room- something only confirmed in the final trial. In Chapter 2, Atua tells her that the students have no real lives outside the academy, and the last chapter reveals that the students were actually mind-wiped and given fake personas (complete with memories) specifically for the killing games. In Chapter 3, Angie destroys a flashback light and claims Atua told her they were dangerous- the flashback lights actually implant Fake Memories to manipulate the cast.
- There's a lot surrounding Korekiyo and the revelations of the third trial. Is he really possessed by his sister's ghost, or is it just a tulpa and he's delusional? His sprite does noticeably change whenever "Sister" is in control, but the UI only ever refers to him as 'Korekiyo' (despite Toko and Genocide Jack being considered distinct back in Trigger Happy Havoc). The ghost of his sister assists in his execution (which would actually point to Korekiyo being delusional, as the "Sister" persona approved of his murders), but that might just be something Monokuma made up to mock Korekiyo.
Hatoful Boyfriend has Anghel, who is always off in his own bizarre fantasy world and claims to be the reincarnation of a fallen angel. Time spent around others tends to draw them into it and they speak in the same overwrought, Purple Prose-y way he does, about gods and demons and fantastic things. The end of his route in the first game involves confronting the Obviously Evil Shuu, who there refers to himself as Dark Sorcerer Wallenstein and summons Himnesia, Bringer of Death. When Himnesia is defeated Shuu retreats and is never seen at the school again. Bad Boys' Love has a report saying that he secretes hallucinatory pheromones, which he's not immune to, and acts as a neurotransmitter, so he's kind of sucking other characters into his own constant trips... This is an odd sort of mundane, but it seems semi-plausible. Except that Anghel often knows things he should have no way of knowing about — the weird names he uses for people, if translated, often tie in to secrets they hold, and he seems to have a sense for diseases. In Holiday Star a villain draws blood from him and uses it to take the power of otaku fantasies and convert it into a from which powers a Death Ray — and the ray is countered by Anghel and some others taking on a fantasy that they are Magical Girls and using their magic powers to shield. He may be a Reality Warper.
Higurashi does this too; the "Wrap Party" at the end of the first novel has all the characters arguing about whether the events were due to humans or a curse. Amusingly, Ooishi takes the side opposite what he does in the novel, and Keiichi doesn't care, since they're all trying to get him anyway. However, it's resolved eventually: It's mostly mundane, with the weirdness being a combination of a Government Conspiracy and Hate Plague; however, the repeated arcs are due to magic, and Rika remembers all of them. In other words, there is "magic" at work, but the murder mystery is 100% mundane and magic is only used to "explore" it.
In Spirit Hunter: NG, each chapter has an Open-and-Shut Case of a vengeful spirit that came about after a human died a gruesome death. However, the case of the Demon Tsukuyomi is a little more unclear. A person attempted to perform a ritual to summon the Demon Tsukuyomi; however, they died during it and became the 'Demon Tsukuyomi' that the cast face off against. After its defeat, the characters discuss whether the actual Tsukuyomi existed, or whether it was a fool's errand to try and summon it.
The entire premise of Umineko: When They Cry is based on this, so much that the creators have established two distinct camps where the fans can take sides. There's Fantasy, for those who favor the idea that everything was done by witches and magic, and Mystery, which believes that everything was done by human hands, and that witches were no way involved. This becomes increasingly difficult, as more than a few Epileptic Trees are bound to pop up in order to explain everything done by human means. Now, that's the simple part, but with Anti-Mystery and Anti-Fantasy mixed in, everything gets a whole lot weirder. While it's never outright stated whether everything is magic or mundane, there are hints in the second half of the series that make it lean more towards the mundane side. This includes the fact that three characters are actually the same person, and how it's implied that this person created many of the magical beings as Imaginary Friends. There's also the fact that, while Beatrice spent the first half of the series trying to get Battler to submit to her and be convinced that the murders were done by magic, EP5 reveals that she doesn't want to win at all, but to make Battler win.

Webcomics

Mary/Christina from The Adventures of Dr. McNinja had the ability to perform spells at random to help save the world, but every one of her miracle spells left open the possibility that they had happened by chance.
Parodied at the end of the Avatar episode of Monster of the Week: The complete cartoon X-Files. Mulder and Scully argue about the old lady that was haunting Skinner in this episode:
Mulder: I think she was the ghosts of Vietnam.
Scully: I think she was Mulder's mum.
Discussed in Blindsprings. After the Academists' rebellion, the population suffered a plague that Orphics took as a sign of the spirits' wrath, but the Academists dismissed as poor hygiene conditions.
Blood is Mine: At one point, Jane's friends start wondering why they trust each other so easily, when they all have reasons to be paranoid and some of them even used to be enemies. It could be the result of Jane's blood subtly influencing their minds, or they could be simply Fire-Forged Friends who went through hell together. When Liz, who has Jane's blood but still hates her guts, joins the team, they agree that it's most likely the latter.
Bob and George: So to speak.
George: But you were a ghost! And you yelled at me!
Mega Man: I assure you there's a rational explanation for all of that. I just don't have it.
Word of God is that Dissonance will go this route — there will be a "scientific" interpretation and a "religious" interpretation, and both will be equally valid.
El Goonish Shive:
- While the existence of magic is an established part of the setting, the existence of the divine is kept far more ambiguous. In particular, a certain type of spell, known as a "guardian form" is speculated in-universe to be divine in origin (especially due to the fact that it can only be used in defense of self or others). On the one hand, Nanase was praying at the moment she acquired hers, and it does turn her into an angel, making the possibility of divine intervention sound more likely. On the other, it was well within the established rules of the setting for her to gain that spell at that moment, so it may have just been perfectly ordinary magic.
- Magic users in the comic fall into two categories: "dreaming", where they have limited spells and won't naturally get new ones, and "Awakened", where they Personality Powers spells as long as they keep using magic (Muggles being "sleeping"). Gregg's "Anime Style Martial Arts" blurs the line a bit though. He could be dreaming and using his unique martial arts to access more abilities than a dreaming person could normally, or he could have awakened and started gaining more spells.
Fans! is certainly not "mundane" in all respects, but in a sequence where Guth visits his cousin in the afterlife, one of the first things he does is explain why it can't be a dream (arguing that it's a Lotus-Eater Machine), but when he wakes up in his chair, he promptly takes it as one rather than accept the idea of life after death.
Faraway: A Winged Unicorn appears throughout in the comic and sometimes interacts with Flippy. But it is never revealed if it is real or just a hallucination.
In Faux Pas, the rabbit Stu belonged to a stage magician. How much of it is stage magic is up in the air.
Much of the mystery in Freakwatch is built around this trope. If Uncle Ted only died of a heart attack, why was he holding a gun when he died? And why does the mayor want the investigation into his death closed? And if Jessica's dreams are only dreams, why does she start seeing them in the daytime?
Girl Genius:
- While the setting firmly establishes that people with the spark can bend the laws of physics if they are powerful enough, as the story progresses the feats that some of the characters can do become something less sciency, and much more fantastic. But even the vast abilities of the restored Heterodyne Castle are somewhat in line with the story. Come Queen Albia, which Klaus himself insists everything she does is science, even if inscrutable, and the readers begin to have doubt that what does isn't magic. She can change her size at will, change her appearance, she can possess her agents if they pray for her, she can turn a wreck of an airship into a brand new luxurious vessel, among other things. All of this is referred to as being capable of being done by those who "peer into the Infinite".
- When a new Heterodyne is named in Mechanicsburg, there are a great many purely traditional and ultimately meaningless rituals, as well as a small number of extremely important rituals that help hold back Eldritch Abominations from beyond reality. Unfortunately, no one can tell which is which, so they have to do them all. It sounds like pure superstition, but considering one such monsters starts showing up shortly after these rituals are interrupted by a kidnapping, maybe there's something to them.
All the examples of weirdness in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! have been of a scientific nature — aliens, robots, and the like — with the notable exception of the strange luck that constantly brings them all to Bob's doorstep. It's been established that it is a real force, and as the title suggests, it remains inexplicable. Jean is a scientist and has considered studying it, but admits she's almost afraid to.
Peter, the enemy of the Affably Evil title character in Niels, is regularly visited by and engages in not-always-consensual-on-Peter's-part relations with a demon only he can see. No proof as of yet whether it's real or a product of all the drugs Peter's on. Although the demon in question ended up amusing his creator so much she gave him his own series.
Neko: The Cat: Was Michiko's cat just an ordinary pet, and supernatural events only began after moving to the countryside, or was it one of her stepmother's cursed cats, and her stepmother was responsible for Michiko's mother's suicide in the first place? The comic leaves which it is open to interpretation.
In The Order of the Stick, the deceased Lord Shojo appears to Belkar when the halfling falls into a coma, as a result of triggering his Mark of Justice. Shojo says he could be either the real deal's spirit, appearing to Belkar from beyond the grave, a personification of the Mark of Justice (which makes sense since when it was first activated it also produced an image of Shojo), or simply a fever-induced hallucination.
Out-of-Placers
- The main plot of the comic is set off by Kass getting transformed from a male human into a female yinglet by a mysterious Transformation Potion-like object. Magic does not exist in this setting as far as anyone is aware, but while it is common for people to dig up artifacts of Lost Technology of unknown origin, an artifact being able to do something as magic-like as that is unheard of.
- Patriarch Narklet has an uncanny ability to know exactly where to dig to find treasures which he attributes to listening to the yinglet ancestor spirits. Some other yinglets like Patriarchs Kattajak and Beizel suspect that claims like that are lies that the traditionalists use to keep control of yinglet society, but Narklet's internal monologue suggests that he really does believe he can hear spirits.
Questionable Content managed to pull this off in strip 546, "Arbitrarily Named Comic Strip". Did Hannelore's little voodoo doll of Marten actually work? Or did Dora just grab Marten's butt? We shall never know.
The One Piece fan-made webcomic Return to the Reverie: Joy Boy's last words and The Prophecy that arose from them. Is Xebec/Imu right and they mean that Joy Boy's inhuman Haki will allow him to be reincarnated in the present day? Or is Roger right and the idea is completely metaphorical, and that all it means is that Joy Boy's dreams will be passed down from generation to generation of future pirates through his legend and memories, until someday, someone achieves them?
The Toughs from Schlock Mercenary get the deal they do on the PDCL due to strange voices convincing Petey, the ship's Artificial Intelligence, that the ship he inhabits is haunted, driving him insane. (In Petey's backstory, there was a mutiny, and the rebelling force, in order to dispose of the loyalist's bodies without the rest of the fleet around them noticing the rebellion, flushed them into the plumbing, and hooked a gas line into the plumbing to speed them through — after that, the voices started). Fixing the ship's plumbing fixes the issue, but due to the specificity of the utterances, as well as an incident where a toilet "spat" on the Reverend directly after he tried to exorcise the "ghost", Petey (and the Reverend) are both firmly unconvinced that there's a scientific explanation. In the end, only Tagon ordering Petey to repress the memories and to never think of them again keeps him from committing suicide.
In Shortpacked!, the historical Jesus Christ begins working at the store after Galasso resurrects him. Mike tries to ask him what he really thought about himself and his relationship to God, pointing out that no matter the answer, it will piss off somebody. Before Jesus can answer, he's tackled by Mike's wife.
Amber: Ohmygod, I just tackled Jesus.
Mike: Maybe.
Sleepless Domain: When Anemone is explaining this world's winter holiday of Crimmus, she emphasizes that their Santa Claus figure, a Magical Girl named Holly Jolly, doesn't really exist, and that the presents actually come from friends and family. She then says that that's why she never gets Crimmus presents... and in the next panel, finds a single present under her Crimmus bush, addressed to her.
In Something*Positive, Word of God says he doesn't know for himself whether Fluffmodeus is real or not. Nobody but Kharisma can see him, but someone put that other inmate into a coma...
Stand Still, Stay Silent went through a period of this while introducing its most fantastical elements. The story starts out as a fairly standard Just Before the End plot with a quickly spreading disease, set in modern-day northern Europe. Then, at the very end of the prologue, an Encyclopedia Exposita page from After the End casually mentions Finland having many mages. Chapter 1 introduces a couple of characters as mages, but doesn't show them do anything special. It takes Chapter 3 to see something that may be magical happen, with the following chapters showing stuff that becomes less and less likely to happen by mundane means, eventually lifting all doubt about the fact that The Magic Comes Back actually did happen. And once that is settled, the nature of the disease that caused The End of the World as We Know It and its horribly mutated victims starts falling into this trope. It is also unclear whether The Old Gods have something to do with The Magic Comes Back or the disease, or if it is just the best explanation people could come up with. All we know is that the two surviving nations that haven't gone back to worshipping them are completely devoid of mages (and Word of God points to gods being involved at least for Icelandic mages).
In Suppression, both wizards and scientists are trying to figure out what's up with Ebon Creek. Neither of them have all of the answers in so far.
Wilfreda The Wanna Be Witch: The title character claims to be a witch but many of her classmates just think going overboard playing make believe. That is until they find out her mother owns a candy shop and her birthday is on Oct 31. Then some doubt starts to creep in. Summed up nicely when Victor, one of Wilfreda's more skeptical classmates, asks her mom about that.
Victor: This is all coincidence right? I mean...Wilfreda is not a real witch...is she?
Wilfreda's Mother: (Smiling wryly) I'll have the delight of leaving you guessing. Happy Halloween!

Web Animation

Hunter: The Parenting: The fourth Audiolog brings up the possibility that Marckus might be a fledgeling Mage; all the horrible misfortune that happens to his bully is technically possible, and Marckus insists he doesn't know what's going on, but getting salmonella from a pint of applejack (after Marckus horribly fails to intimidate him by cursing him with "the sickness of dogs past"), having two separate switchblades fall apart in his hand, and getting chased off by a cop who happened to be in the vicinity is very reminiscent of an Entropy Hex, and Marckus's friends lampshade how unlikely the whole sequence of events is.
In Monster Lab (2021) Henry King interacts frequently with the ghost of Chris Kyle, who instructs him to make a blood sacrifice to bring him back to life. Henry has been on leave from police work after a brutality incident and is implied to have always had a screw loose. He himself comes to the conclusion that Chris Kyle is a delusion of his damaged mind and even Chris Kyle possessing him could simply be him hitting rock bottom. Come the final episode, Kyle is Real After All.
On The Edge lives on this trope:
- How Shigeo even gets clients when he doesn't advertise his services, let alone gets caught by the police for killing (scummy) people in the first place seems unexplainable.
- The reason for Jiro's black hair turning red and pointing up before he starts beating despicable criminals is unknown. Heck, Jiro's whole existence is this.
- Hirofumi Satake's strange ability to survive and heal from exotic incurable diseases and poisons can't be explained by doctors.
Tears of the Mountain: Whether the Spirit of the Mountain is a surviving non-avian dinosaur or an actual spirit is left up to interpretation.

Web Originals

In the Reddit short story "Angels of Darkness, Serpents of Light", an old man runs afoul of two drug bandits and flees for his life, all the while praying for Divine Intervention. While running, he accidentally disturbs a Mojave Green Rattlesnake (the most venomous snake in North America) and his leg is subsequently bitten. As the drug bandits are closing in, four angels descend from heaven to aid him (and as it turns out, the drug bandits are being influenced by demons). The old man does eventually kill them with the angels' approval and is soon taken to a hospital afterwards. The old man, disbelieving that angels actually helped him, goes on the internet to see if snake venom can actually cause hallucinations, but is unable to find anything concrete.
What is more logical, that a 70-year-old, 140 pound Vegan who had been bitten by the most deadly snake in North America could defeat two burly drug bandits in mortal combat or that angels came down from heaven?
The Creepypasta Aunt (Warning: Incredibly Squicky language) has the protagonist tied up by her aunt, who recently suffered a psychotic break and is convinced that some evil being is coming to claim her niece and wants to help it. At one point, the protagonist actually sees a shadowy figure in the room with her but isn't sure if it was real or just a hallucination from shock, blood loss and concussion. Later, when her aunt is tied to a bed and locked in her room, she somehow manages to get free. While she appears to have just bitten through her restraints, the door wasn't forced and everyone's sure it was locked, so how did she get out?
In Hector's World, Kui is described as a "spirit" and there are surreal visual effects around her entrances, but there's no hard evidence that she's not just a normal whale.
It's Later Than You Think: It's never revealed whether Gia, the protagonist's sister was simply a vision formed from her own subconscious to allow her to process having killed her and wake up from her coma or if she was Gia's spirit trying to do the same. If it's the latter, she's probably the vengeful type of spirit rather than the kindly one she seems to be at first.
SCP Foundation: Sometimes lampshaded. It is not known whether the effects of certain SCPs on humans are natural reactions or anomalous phenomena. Part of the Foundation's mission is to find out.
- SCP-1933-EX is a Stock Ness Monster supposedly with the ability to make people immediately disregard any evidence of its existence other than absolute proof. It is now classified as explained and the Foundation no longer believes its existence after a live stream of SCP-1933-EX's appearance proved to be an animatronic created by the researcher in charge. However, that same researcher was later found dead after a boat trip to the lake in question went awry, and his corpse was described as partially-eaten... Could the SCP's memory-altering capabilities actually extend even to making people ignore incontrovertible proof? We'll never know for sure.
You probably know the "Unicorn shitting rainbows" meme. A geek t-shirt invokes this trope by suggesting a scientific explanation involving the horn as a solar concentrator and a prism for digestion.
An urban legend that's been making the rounds online and can be read on this Snopes page along with several others: A haughty college professor who's an intolerant atheist stands on a platform and says that, to prove there is no God, he will tell Him to knock him off the platform. Then, a marine knocks the professor off the platform and when the professor asks him why, the marine replies, "God was too busy protecting America's soldiers, so He sent me." Did God really send the marine, or was the marine just offended and trying to Break the Haughty?

Web Videos

Bedtime Stories (YouTube Channel) has a lot of this, given its focus on supernatural and paranormal stuff.
- The Mothman: some extraterrestrial and/or paranormal creature, or just an unusually large bird misidentified by terrified eyewitnesses?
- Did Christopher Case die of a curse? Or did he somehow scare himself to death?
- The SS Ourang Medan. Was it supernatural phenomena that killed her crew and sunk her, or just poorly secured hazardous materials?
- Flight 19. Human and technical error or something more fantastic?
- Was Michael Taylor a victim of Demonic Possession? Or was he driven insane by a religious group alleged to use brainwashing techniques?
- The Lead Masks of Vintem Hill: did the two men transcend their corporeal bodies and transport their minds into a "realm of infinite knowledge and consciousness" after making contact with aliens, or were they tricked into killing themselves by criminals?
- Were the numerous Hmong Americans who died in their sleep for no apparent reason killed by evil spirits known as Dab Tsog, or by cases of sleep paralysis made deadly by factors related to their flight from Laos and life in the United States?
- Did the Atuk script have a curse that killed six celebrities, or were their deaths after expressing interest in the screenplay just tragic coincidences?
- Is the Devil's Pool cursed, or are the deaths that happened there just the result of geological abnormalities?
- Did Granger Taylor really make contact with aliens and leave with them like his note said, or did he just die during the vicious storm that happened the day of his disappearance?
- Was UB-65 really a cursed ship that ended up being haunted by the ghost of Lieutenant Richter, or did a series of unfortunate accidents and the stress inherent to being on a military submarine lead to a case of mass hysteria?
- Does Tsarichina really contain a powerful, inhuman force? Or did the stressed minds of the already on-edge soldiers stationed there interpret every accident as the work of the paranormal?
- Do Skinwalkers really exist? Or does the legend stem from traumatized Native Americans mistaking their fellow Native American attackers, who often wore animal pelts, for supernatural creatures?
Hydra Theory: It's initially unclear what exactly is causing the abnormal weather, and the horror comes a lot from just situations and recordings of people trapped by tornados. Tornados are happenings much more often and stronger than they should, sometimes with a green glow lightning-like glow that is out of place. A key part of the plot is a character creating the "Hydra Theory", claiming to have research some kind of a signular entity is causing them but he doesn't go into the specifics. This trope gets particularly plot-relevant in the second video when he seems to have evidence supporting his theory and even that an Eldritch Abomination is involved, but isn't publishing it.
Last Life SMP: While the so-called magical crystals Scar sells appear to be useless renamed pieces of stained glass, he has a tendency to sell them and then die to whatever they supposedly protect the user from. For example, on Day 5, he falls into a lava pit trap at the Southlands while carrying Luck and Escape crystals, and barely makes it out with less than two hearts left. He then sells both of those crystals as well as his Boogeyman Detection Crystal. Later that episode, he's killed by the Boogeyman and then falls into the same trap at the Southlands and dies.
Lifewasters: Sparky and Blue are trying to summon a cartoon character, DJ the monkey, to the real world. Eventually, Marla, a documentarian, sees DJ in her bathroom. Is he really there, having been successfully summoned? Or is she only imagining him, due to her intense guilt?
In this short story titled Robin's Bedwetting Trouble and the Wake-Up-All-Dry Fairy, a young girl named Robin is having trouble with wetting the bed and, after waking up in the middle of the night having wet the bed, prays not to wet the bed again. She then dreams that she's having a tea party and a fairy named Eureka, also known as the Wake-Up-All-Dry Fairy, comes, claiming that she answered Robin's prayer, and instructs Robin on what to do. However, we never find out if Eureka really exists and is a Dream Walker fairy who can respond to prayers, or if she was just dreamed up by Robin.
Sword Art Online Abridged: When Kirito encounters Don Fluffles (an ordinary house cat who somehow learned to play SAO), he seemingly understands what he's saying (apparently the two have a history). A surprised Heathcliff/Kayaba asks if Kirito can actually speak cat or if he's just messing with them. According to Asuna, "Knowing him, it may very well be both."
Unwanted Houseguest: The Houseguest and the events that happen to him are explicitly supernatural, but many of his "TRUE Scary Stories" fall into this category.

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