I had a cousin who had been hiking through Tibet and in one of the monastaries he and the friend who told me this passed through, there were these clay figurines in niches in the walls, that were made of the ashes of dead monks.

When they got back to LA, my cousin pulled three of them out of his luggage. The friend freaked and said that was really bad karma. My cousin laughed it off, but started getting really bad dreams and not feeling well. In one, there were three figures asking how many he took. He was killed not long after that, in a freak auto accident. Apparently someone he'd given one of them to died as well.

This is one of various events I've had and heard of, that make me think it's all a lot deeper than our subjective focus on the events and our common denominators of communication would have us believe.