History MaybeMagicMaybeMundane / LiveActionTV

* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'': In "[[Recap/MidsomerMurdersS8E5 Second Sight]]", Emma Kirby insists that Baby Christine can't possibly have psychic powers although her father's family claim they do, screams her head off every time she's in the vicinity of someone who means harm (or her mother thinks is a threat). Turns out that Emma is the child of a Ransom and that family does have some ESP abilities.

** For a few episodes, Alice dates professor and vampirologist [[SdrawkcabName Uta]] [[{{Alucard}} Refson]]. Alice believes that she is actually a vampire due to her unwillingness to go out during the day, love for only red wine, sharp teeth, and [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers ability to lift her two feet in the air with no visible exertion.]]

** Another one involving the Klingon religion shows up in "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS7E13Prophecy Prophecy]]" when some Klingons believe Tom and B'Elanna's unborn daughter is essentially their messiah. On the one hand, her DNA does provide a cure for a virus the Klingons had, but on the other hand, some of them believed that since B'Elanna is a HalfHumanHybrid and Tom is a human (therefore, the baby will only be one quarter Klingon), this means she can't be the messiah.

* ''Series/{{Castle}}'':

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': The episode "Tapestry" involves Picard seemingly dying on the operating table, then getting whisked away by Q on an adventure through time to show what would happen if Picard prevented himself from getting the artificial heart that would have failed and killed him. Picard decides to die rather than live this new life, relives the incident that gave him the artificial heart and the scene cuts back to the operating room where Picard ends up living after all. At the end of the episode, Picard talks to Riker about it and wonders if Q really did take him through time and saved his life or if the whole thing was a DyingDream. While being true would explain why Picard was laughing in the incident where he got stabbed, having now known it was crucial to his path in life, the show never elaborates on it further and neither Q nor Picard refer to it in any future encounters.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E40AThingAboutMachines A Thing About Machines]]", a guy believes machines are coming after him and we do see them do just that. He dies when his car comes after him and he falls into a pool. While we see the car there the next morning, the closing narration however, implies that it could have just been in his imagination.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E43NickOfTime Nick of Time]]", the protagonists consider whether a penny fortune-telling machine can truly answer any yes-or-no question correctly, or if it's merely on a lucky streak. People who continue to believe in the machine are shown to stay in town and continue feeding in pennies for fear of their lives. Is it only paranoia, or does the mystic seer use real power to gain addicts?
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E72TheGrave The Grave]]", apparently based on a similar well-traveled urban legend, a cowboy in the Old West visits the grave of his enemy on a bet, the dying man's own last words having been an assurance that if he went anywhere near the grave, the dead man would reach up and grab him. As proof, he has to plant a dagger into the plot. When he finally musters the courage to do so, you can't see what's happening, but ''something'' snags him and he goes down stiffly, mostly off-screen. The next morning his corpse is found there by the townsfolk. He’d had a heart attack and the dagger was pinning his garments to the ground, perhaps having been blown into his path by the wind, causing him to have mistaken the situation for the obvious supernatural substitute when he found himself snagged upon trying to turn away. But one of the people observes that "the wind was blowing in the opposite direction". The closing narration says that it's up to us to decide what to believe.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E104TheThirtyFathomGrave The Thirty-Fathom Grave]]", a U.S. Navy destroyer crew investigates a strange knocking sound coming from a submarine sunk years earlier. One of the ship's crew escaped the sinking sub and feels SurvivorGuilt: he thinks his old crew is angry at him because it was his mistake that caused the submarine to be torpedoed, and he survived while they didn't. At the end it's revealed that a dangling periscope inside the sub ''could'' have been making the knocking sound... but they also find that one of the dead men in the submarine is holding a hammer.

** In "The Beacon", it is never made clear whether the Beacon is truly controlled by the spirit of Seth Janes as the people of Mellweather believe or whether it is simply an old lighthouse with a faulty mechanism as suggested by Dr. Dennis Barrows.
** In "Many, Many Monkeys", Jean Reed and later Nurse Claire Hendricks come to believe that the plague of blindness spreading throughout the US was caused by [[ApatheticCitizens people being cold and heartless towards each other]]. The government's explanation is that it was caused by the release of bacteria into the atmosphere after an accident in a top secret biological research lab in Alaska. It is not made clear which theory is correct.

** First off, there's [[CoolOldGuy Will Reeves]] somehow drinking scalding hot coffee without a problem and later reaching into a boiling pot of water to grab an egg [[MadeOfIron without even flinching]]. Keep in mind that Reeves is over a ''century'' old, and he also claims to be the one who [[spoiler:killed and hanged Judd Crawford]] despite being an old man bound to a wheelchair. Though to be fair, the latter is later confirmed to have a mundane explanation - [[spoiler:Reeve's not actually crippled and he used [[MindControl a special strobe light]] to force Crawford to hang himself]].
** Second, there's [[LivingLieDetector Looking Glass/Wade Tillman]]. Throughout the series, he's portrayed as having AwesomenessByAnalysis abilities, being incredibly perceptive and observant of even the smallest details to the point where he can almost come across as psychic whenever he's interrogating someone. However, he's still fallible, and has been hoodwinked more than once, especially when those who are trying to investigate him play on his past as a ShellShockedVeteran.
* The BBC/Starz series ''Series/TheWhiteQueen'' portrays Queen Elizabeth (the wife of Edward IV, not the more famous Liz I with the white collar, nor Liz II), her mother, Jacquetta Woodville, and her eldest daughter, also named Elizabeth, as actual witches with real magic powers. Except the show does leave a little ambiguity, since it is possible that all the spells we see them cast appear to work purely by coincidence. For example, when they cast a spell to cause a storm, it is possible that the storm would have occurred naturally anyway. Still, considering that every spell they cast seems to produce its desired result, this would be an amazing series of coincidences.

* ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'': In ''Series/TheBookOfBobaFett'''s "[[Recap/TheBookOfBobaFettS1E5ReturnOfTheMandalorian Return of the Mandalorian]]", the Armorer attributes the destruction of Mandalore by the Galactic Empire to Bo-Katan Kryze having been given the Darksaber by Sabine Wren in ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels'' rather than winning it in combat. While lightsabers in Disney-era canon are {{Empathic Weapon}}s to an extent, this '''is''' TheEmpire we're talking about: glassing a planet in retaliation for rebellion is hardly out-of-character for them. And indeed, in season three of ''Series/TheMandalorian'', [[spoiler:we learn that Bo-Katan in fact tried to surrender to Moff Gideon when the Mandalorian rebellion failed, and he took the Darksaber from her and then [[KickTheDog glassed Mandalore anyway]] so he could exploit its natural resources unmolested]].

* In ''The Riddlers'' episode "Lights Out", after spending the entire episode in the dark, Mossop decides to try and use his magic to bring the electricity back. At first, it seems that he failed, but it's quickly revealed that the electricity ''is'' back, and the only reason Marjorie's cottage is still dark is because the lights haven't been turned on yet. When Mossop claims credit for the electricity returning, Mr. Grimly expresses doubt and says that the electricity people must have fixed the electric cable, but then starts wondering if Mossop's magic ''could'' have been responsible.

* ''Series/{{Taboo}}'': There's a level of mysticism in the series that's kept fairly low key, but some things stand out. James knows quite a bit about his father and his mother that, according to Brace, he should have no way of knowing. He claims to have heard his father calling out his confessions on the river bank from across the sea, and that he would answer back. Then there's his visions/hallucinations; first of the [[spoiler:drowned slaves]] in episode one, the hunt in the forest in episodes three and seven, and his mother [[spoiler:drowning him as a baby]] in episode six. He also visits his sister Zilpha in her dreams, which may either be supernatural in nature or the result of Zilpha succumbing to James' mind games.

* The BBC/Starz series ''Series/TheWhiteQueen'' portrays Queen Elizabeth (the wife of Edward IV, not the more famous Liz I with the white collar, nor the current one Liz II), her mother, Jacquetta Woodville, and her eldest daughter, also named Elizabeth, as actual witches with real magic powers. Except the show does leave a little ambiguity, since it is possible that all the spells we see them cast appear to work purely by coincidence. For example, when they cast a spell to cause a storm, it is possible that the storm would have occurred naturally anyway. Still, considering that every spell they cast seems to produce its desired result, this would be an amazing series of coincidences.

* ''Series/{{Friends}}'': "TOW The Lesbian Wedding": Was Pheobe really possessed by Rose's ghost or was she just being weird as usual?

* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Dso2m-zU4&list=PL0TNCBNAHEZphA5oYZ2hDiWz1w3QfqHuS&index=6 Paranormal Home Inspectors]]'' runs on the idea that each house might be haunted or the various events might be completely mundane, such as bad wiring causing flickering lights or pets moving stuffed animals around.
* ''Series/{{Proof}}'' runs on this trope, as the protagonist is a surgeon sceptical of the existence of an afterlife, despite having had her own near-death experience once. The billionaire Ivan Turing recruits her precisely because of her scepticism, and each episode deals with a unique mystery (often medical) with a seemingly paranormal bent. Usually, the episode ends with almost everything neatly explained, but some mysteries are left open to interpretation.

** In episode "The Chicken Roaster" is Kramer's ventriloquist dummy Mr. Marbles really a DemonicDummy and moving on his own or is just Jerry's imagination? While sleeping in Kramer's apartment it could be just random noises however while in his appartment a shadow of a dummy is seen in the background.
** In episode "The Andrea Doria" the "bad breaker" is a guy who when a woman breaks with him he tells them some sort of insult based on a physical attribute, however reality seems to warp around the insult some how. He calls Elaine "big head" and out of the sudden everything around her seems to re-enforce this, something never shown before, and this has clearly happened before with other women for the way he is constantly attacked by them. But, it could also be just a series of coincidences and Elaine's own induced paranoia.