I just wanted to share a few personal and non-personal experiences.
A lot of people in my mother's family have some sort of "gift". My aunt used to see spirits around her all the time and my mother and other aunts have frequent prophetic dreams that eventually come true. Not me. I've always been afraid of anything paranormal so I have rejected it.
My husband knew this, so shortly after he died I was not surprised when a friend of mine called me to tell me she had a dream in which my husband came to her and told her to tell me that he was okay. When she asked him why he would not come directly to me his answer was "it would freak her out." Later on that day I was thinking about this and felt "something" in the hallway leading to the bedroom. I asked out loud if it was "D". No answer. Three days later I made an appointment with a medium, and the first thing he said (I was not allowed to say anything) was that my husband said yes, it had been him in my hallway three days before. I was stunned because I had not mentioned this to anyone and he was very specific that it had happened three days before and directly in the hallway in front of my bedroom.
My niece also had an experience a few months ago. She woke up around 5:15am one morning to a clear female voice in her ear that said that "she just wanted everyone to know that she was okay." She shot out of bed and woke up her parents to tell them. When my brother got to work that day he found out that one of his coworkers had died around that time. She was very close to my brother's family because when she got sick and nobody could diagnose her he recognized the symptoms that were the same as my husband's. She had the same type of cancer as my husband. From then on they were all very close. I guess this was her way of saying thank you and letting every one know she was okay.
The last story actually happened to my grandfather-in-law. He was lying in bed one day and when he opened his eyes he saw a lady standing by his bed. He instinctively knew it was his biological mother (whom he had never met). She said to him "I have something to tell you." His response "I don't want to know." And she disappeared. When he told my grandmother-in-law about this she gave him so much grief! But he said he just didn't want to know what it was and refused to ever talk about this again.
One final note, last year I was sitting in front of my computer and felt like someone had pushed my chair hard. The closet door shook for one brief moment and that was it. I was scared that whole night. Then I remembered that one time I was in a minor earthquake while living in California that actually felt like someone had crashed his car against my building. It just felt like a strong quick wave under me. So I looked up seismic maps of my area for the night before and noticed there had been a minor quake in the ocean near where I live at that exact time. (I live on the beach) Why do I tell this story? Because even though I believe in the paranormal, we do have to look beyond sometimes to find reasonable explanations. Once these are ruled out we can assume that there was something more happening.