Hutson, Matthew. "Magical Thinking." PSYCHOLOGY TODAY (March April 2008).

Emotional stress and events of personal significance push us strongly toward magical meaning-making. Lancaster University psychologist Eugene Subbotsky relates an exemplary tale. "I was in Moscow walking with my little son down a long empty block," he recalls. Suddenly a parked car started moving on its own, then swerved toward them, and finally struck an iron gate just centimeters away. "We escaped death very narrowly, and I keep thinking magically about this episode. Although I'm a rational man, I'm a scientist, I'm studying this phenomenon, there are some events in your life that you cannot explain rationally. Under certain circumstances I really feel like someone or something is guiding my life and helping me." (Personally I would have felt like something was trying to kill me and needed to work on its aim.) . . . Read the rest either here (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20080225-000003&print=1) or here (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20080225-000003.html).