What is everyone's thoughts on sensitivity as far as the paranormal? Long story short, when I was 7-8 years old I know that I experienced certain things. Nothing for the past 15-18 years. I've always had a fascination with the paranormal and the last three or so months have started looking into it more via the net. I've been feeling and experiencing things that I haven't felt since I was 8. I've gone from checking a few websites to almost becoming obsessed with one certain place. I guess my question is, do you think that someone can be sensitive to certain things, shut it off, then bring it back, or is it simply the imagination running? I know what I experienced before, but now I think it may just be myself thinking about it too much. Any thoughts?

I do believe that we need to apply a healthy dollop of critical thinking to the things we experience that we at first believe to be of a paranormal nature.

I also believe that we can and do turn off our abilities to perceive phenomenom. From my own experience I know that I can focus or tune into it more if I decide I want that. Or tune it out.

There are a lot of people who believe that your thought creates your world. What you think not only affects your perception that also your thought draws what you focus on towards you.

Not believing in anything paranormal will not only lead you to dismiss any paranormal experiences but also lead you to not even perceive them.
Mix in the misperceptions based on physiological aspects of the brain and senses and you've got a wonderfully complex matrix of perception possibilities.

Trust your intuition. Filter everything you experience. =)

I agree with Nakis. I believe that we do need that bit of skepticism to maintain a healthy perspective. I think almost everyone at least once in their lives experiences something that they just cannot explain by any logical means.
Just from my own experience, things seem to happen to me in waves -- sometimes it seems like it is everywhere I go and then it all goes away for months. I don't know if this is due to stress or what.
Once again, I just speaking from my own experiences, but I have found that when I do a great deal of reading on the paranormal, it does seem that I am a bit more open to something happening.
So, I guess that our ability to pick up on things can be turned on and off, or at least made more minimal for some of us.

Well as a kid you didn't know that (to most adults anyway) that things like that aren't real. Many people don't believe in ghosts and paranormal things. So as a kid you probably did expierence something, then hearing other adults and just growing up you realized that so many people believe it just can't happen. So because of that you closed yourself off to it. Plus I also think as we age and go through puberty we are focused on other things so we don't notice paranormal things around us. Now you are older and remember things from your past so you are taking the time to question things.

I feel like I've gone through the same thing. Even when I had an expierence with many other people at age 19 I forgot about it for about 7 years. Recently I've realized that things I've passed off as being normal probably aren't. Like thinking at 2am I was hearing my neighbors talking. When all windows were closed, they had every light off and were most likely sleeping, at it was below freezing. Yet the voices were like they were outside in the yard and my window was open. Considering time, temp and all windows closed, I figure it wasn't the nieghbors I was hearing talk. But I'm still not sure what I heard.
You are probably just more at a point where you are questioning things and because of that you are noticeing more things that could be paranormal. Keep note of when things happen. You might find later that some things were natural and other things aren't.

I believe it's possible to be sensitive to the paranormal, but without any knowledge of this sensitivity, you would tend to shrug off the phenomenon. For example, when I'm in a haunted place I'll sometimes feel a disoriented sensation. In the past, before I became aware of paranormal phenomena, I would have that sensation and not realizing what it was, I would just shrug it off as one of those random events. Last year I learned that paranormal occurrences can be "felt" in certain ways, and then I had the disoriented feeling while dining in a haunted restaurant. That's when I made the connection, and realized I can "sense" if a place is haunted, to some degree.

Much like a blind man experiencing sight for the first time, it's hard to understand what you're feeling without learning about it. Sure, everyone is raised to understand the normal five senses, smell, sight, taste, hearing, and touch, but the "sixth sense" is often downplayed. "There's no such thing as ghosts", your mother tells you. I spent 36 years of my life not knowing that "disoriented" feeling was caused by something my mother told me "doesn't exist".

I bet if society were more open to the paranormal, more people would experience such phenomena, and know about it.

I agree with everyone I think that the more you "study" the paranormal the more open you are to recieving and noticing paranormal happenings. It's like buying a new car, lets say you get a new red suv all of a sudden you'll start seeing (noticing) red suv's everywhere. It's not that they weren't there before, you just weren't open to seeing them, but the more you look the more you see. (Hope that makes sense I'm kinda tired.)