"The physics-defying spooky fact of X" belongs to parapsych (and I'd casually bet my life on the null hypothesis under good enough testing).

"Experience of X" belongs to neuropsych (and it reflects poorly on them if they dump it over the fence on the parapsychologists because it just sounds so spooky and unprofessional. Bah humbug.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_lobe_epilepsy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide_poisoning (the "haunted houses" section)

http://health.howstuffworks.com/synesthesia.htm/printable

The link doesn't mention anything like that; if anything, the example of the woman who thought mirror-touching was perfectly normal & universal suggests the opposite.

But it's basically the experience of leaving your body, traveling through a tunnel toward a bright light, and then learning one or more of the noetic truths described here:

http://csp.org/experience/docs/stace-states.html

This experience is said to feel more real than real life, and to be largely ineffable. This is obviously problematic for science for a number of reasons. (For example, if it's true that there is such a thing as an ineffable experience, this means that the basic assumptions underlying all of science are false.)

Anyway in 2006 scientists were able to recreate mystical states in 60-70% of participants using a high dose of psilocybin. These experiences corresponded very well with the traditional mystical states as described by all the world religions. (Basically the vast majority of religions were created by people who had a 'primary religious experience'.)

If you want to experience this for yourself, you can sign up to be part of the next round of experiments at csp.org. Although there are definitely some pretty serious risks, so you wouldn't really want to sign up until reading a few books on the subject so that you understand these risks and can make an informed decision.

There is a podcast called Gnostic Media that has a really good interview with the researcher who did the 2006 Hopkins study. I'd highly recommend it. All of their interviews are actually really good.

Aren't all our subjective experiences ineffable? In other words we can only communicate our experiences to each other because our experiences are shared and by communicating egocentric analogies. Or to put another way: if a bat tries to explain to you what it's like to navigate with sonar it's going to seem pretty freaking ineffable to you! That's why they call it the Hard Problem. :-)

Isn't the fact that these experiences can be induced by using a physical collection of molecules to do something physical to the brain an indication that, actually, they're just the sort of physical processes that are compatible with materialistic science?

I have a couple articles on my site about how the concept of the "supernatural" is incoherent, but that it doesn't matter: we experience such a small subset of "reality" that we need a concept "outside the normal realm of experience." I called it "Hypernatural," for lack of a better term already in use.