Abstract
On one or two occasions in the field, I have felt in the presence of some sort of power or phenomenon that I could not readily explain—or explain away. In my published papers, especially in my early years, I tended to gloss over these incidents, assuming the appropriate professorial distance from them. As I aged in the profession, I occasionally talked about these events in a half‐joking manner, probing my colleagues somewhat indirectly to discern whether they, too, had experienced something beyond the ordinary in the midst of their work. Many, it seems, had. Their stories varied from the truly incomprehensible to the somewhat charming. The former, I admit, I still view with more than a modicum of skepticism. The latter intrigue me, and I, at least, wish them to be true. My own brush with the unusual falls into the category of things I wish to be true.