Did I meet a ghost? The weird supernatural experience I can’t explain

I don’t believe in the supernatural. But I can’t explain this

Ghosts have always been a slightly silly, if fascinating concept for me as someone brought up by a rigidly secular scientist father, and someone born and bred into the scientific method. Believing in evolution, neuroscience and ghosts at the same time is logically challenging: are there ghost dinosaurs? Ghost trees? Ghost Neanderthals? Do the spirits of squashed hedgehogs come back to wreak their revenge? If ghosts exist, why is it that they’re only experienced in heightened states of suggestibility or hysteria? Why are most ghosts the ghosts of famous people and not, say, Bill from Dagenham? How would the spirit of someone stay with us after all the synapses, brain tissue or cells of a person had decayed? I’m not trying to mock you if you do believe in them: I’m just trying to illustrate the source of my scepticism.

All of this places me in a rather frustrating space as something very strange happened to me in the last few months. Don’t worry: I’m not having a psychotic break. I’m not having a meltdown. I’m sitting here having a coffee in my dressing gown and listening to Radio 4. If there is a rational explanation to all this, which I’m sure will correctly be ‘coincidence’ for many, then I’ll readily accept it. I’m not hearing voices and I don’t think I can commune with the dead. I just can’t explain this. And as we approach the solstice, I thought it would be fun…