The many wonderful songs written by Joan Sprung and by Jan Harmon almost invariably create these kinds of pictures in my mind.
Joan's "Harbors of Home" puts me on the shore, waiting for the sailors who won't return. I can almost taste the salt air and tears.
Her "Where Have the Dancers Gone" (recorded on Folk-Legacy)captures the spirit of an old-time community dance. Several lines are particularly vivid: "dresses the colors of sunsets and fall, everyone stepping out graceful and tall, call a tune to the fiddler, cause he knew them all..." I can see those dresses, and hear that fiddler playing the dear familiar tunes. Also a verse that talks about the people dancing: "sweethearts whose feet never quite touched the floor, an old man whose partner was just three or four...". When I sing this song, I'm THERE.
Jan Harmon's songs also create visions as I sing or hear them. Her "Wild Birds" is one that never fails to transport me, full of evocative lines, about prairie rain storms ("you can see the rain coming for miles down the prairie, like a great herd of antelope running like fury..."), the amber aspen of Wyoming, and the birds that rise in clouds from the fields beside the road ("And all by the roadside the wild birds fly, out of the thistle and into the sky, red birds, black birds, they sing as they fly..."). I know those places, and see them clearly in Jan's words.
Jan's song about Yosemite National Park, "Loni," which Gordon Bok has recorded and which I sing, paints the most beautiful pictures of any song I know. You can see the shadow moving up the side of Half Dome as the sun moves higher in the sky, "bigleaf maples shined with mist," the moon rising over Tenaya....
So, yes, it happens all the time. The fact that it does makes these songs especially dear and special to me.