[chronotrig]

Spoiler for theory:

Okay, this is just a crazy thought, but has any character ever seen anything supernatural until right before they die?

We know that supernatural stuff happens after people die. The biggest hint is the first tea party, the first time in Umineko when we see something supernatural, and it's happening to people who are obviously already dead.

What if all of the supernatural scenes in ep2 and ep3 happened to people after they died? Off the top of my head, I can't think of anyone who has seen something supernatural, and then been seen alive by someone else, except for Rosa in the first part of ep2 and the people who survived seeing zombie Kanon.

In other words, how we see these people die and the actual murders have nothing to do with each other. In Battler-land, you can die as often as you want.

That way, we not only have a real murder mystery that isn't full of supernatural stuff, but it also means that those scenes aren't completely pointless. Those people might have actually experienced them in something like an afterlife, which we saw way back in Minagoroshi hen.