Traditional accounts of these figures are filled with claims of the extraordinary—visions, miracles, divine messengers, and post-death appearances. However, these can be dismissed as products of human psychology and natural processes, rather than genuine supernatural interventions. Miracles, such as Moses' plagues or Jesus' resurrections, are better explained as hallucinations, exaggerations of natural events (e.g., ecological disasters misattributed), or collective delusions amplified through oral retelling. Angelic appearances, like Gabriel to Muhammad or Abraham, aren't literal celestial beings but hallucinatory experiences triggered by isolation, stress, or neurological factors—similar to how people report "seeing" deceased loved ones in moments of vulnerability.
The idea of a "supernatural form of a human after death"—such as ghosts, spirits, or angelic manifestations of the departed—can be entirely dismissed as hallucinations rooted in grief, suggestion, or brain chemistry. For example, the viral 2023 security video from a Houston facility shows a guard interacting with an invisible "Miss Abigail," who died two years earlier; when informed, he panics and flees. This isn't evidence of an afterlife form but a classic fatigue-induced hallucination, where sleep deprivation causes the mind to fabricate vivid interactions. Neuroscientists explain such events through mechanisms like hypnagogic states, where the brain overlays imagined figures onto reality, much like bereavement hallucinations reported by up to 60% of widows/widowers. In religious contexts, "angels" appearing as deceased humans (e.g., in folk interpretations of Abrahamic or Eastern traditions) follow the same pattern: cultural expectations prime the brain to interpret shadows, dreams, or internal voices as ethereal visitations, not actual post-mortem entities.