For me, I've had a slew of crazy 'spiritual' experiences that I can't quite reconcile now that I've stepped away from the church. In a sense it can be quite haunting.
In my late teens I had a bunch if warts on my hands. It was really gross and I was appropriately self-conscious. The church I was part of had these INSANE / aggressive faith healers or whatever come through once a year. A bunch of crazy stuff would happen each year (e.g. people quitting smoking en masse after smelling an overwhelming stench of cigarettes followed by something resembling fresh baking...)
The overall tone was 'spiritual' -- either through anticipation or expectation, I'm not certain.
We were sitting around and my buddy suggested I go up re: the warts, but I really didn't want to. He said that he had warts as a kid and his Dad prayed over him for healing. The following day the warts turned black and fell off (gross) -- and that was it. No scarring, etc.
So we prayed for healing over these warts and I didn't think much of it. I'd seen this sort of fruitless petition many times, so it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
The following day I was getting out of the shower and noticed that all of the warts had turned white. I washed my hands in the sink and sure enough, the warts all came off.
These days I chalk this up to persuasion / placebo -- as if somehow something clicked in my mind to trigger some sort of targeted healing... but it's still extremely hard to reconcile this experience.
When you're in this environment for years on end, or even a weekend (church camp), everything is spiritual -- and even normal things like a bag of salad that seems to last longer than expected is made out to be something it isn't. I don't view it as healthy, but regarding your friends' experiences, I can totally understand the experience, emotions, etc that make something like that seem real.