The Rocking Chair

I have had extra "abilities" since I was an infant. My mother and father used to tell me stories of when I was a baby, and my mother would put me down for a nap with a stuffed animal, then when I was asleep she would remove the toy and place it on the dresser, so I would not suffocate or anything. One Saturday afternoon, she and my Dad were watching TV in the living room, and they heard me giggling and laughing and making noise. My Mom went in my room to get me and when she walked in, she screamed, causing my Dad to come running. When my Dad got to the doorway, he froze. According to them, that teddy bear was floating a couple of feet over my crib, and I was laughing at it. When my Dad walked in the room, I looked at him and the bear fell. My Mom snatched me up and took me out of the room, certain there was a ghost of some sort in the room.
This happened many more times, according to them both. My Mom was terrified, but as my Dad had "gifts" of his own, he did not worry to much about it.
The next time something happened, I was three, and old enough to remember. Mom was a stay at home mom at that time, and my Dad was a paint contractor, who owned his own business. He would come home around 5 every day, and would eat dinner in his chair and wait for the 6 o'clock evening news to come on. At 5:30 back then, Sesame Street came on the local PBS channel. It was my favorite show, and usually Dad would let me watch a few minutes of it before Mom would bring me to the table for dinner. For some reason that day he did not want to let me watch, and I pitched a fit. He was unmoved, and was watching something else. I looked at the TV and thought about the show and that I wished the channel would just change. Imagine my surprise when it did just that. Imagine my surprise when Dad flipped it right back, without moving, and there were no remote controls in our house back then. Now imagine my Mother's terror when we basically had a war, flipping the channel back and forth for several minutes, until my Dad told me "ENOUGH, now stop it or you can go to your room with no dinner!"
I stopped.
Other little things would happen, I could turn lights on and off, move things around, things like that. As I got older ( when I started school and was taught these things were bad and unaccepted ) I lost the ability to do those things, but I gained others. I can hear people's thoughts at times, ( which is actually not that great of a thing, because it is hard for me to filter them out so I can't hear them, most of the time I have no desire to do such a thing ) not ALL the time, and it is not something I actually focus on to be able to do it, I focus on NOT doing it. I have an uncanny sense of intuitiveness, I just KNOW things, with no prior knowledge of whatever it is. I do not fully understand all my gifts, as I spend more time trying NOT to use them than I ever did trying to develop them. Except for my intuitiveness. I would not squash down or trade that for all the money in the world. It has kept me alive in a life that has done it's best to make sure I did NOT survive.
All that leads me to this. I was ten years old when I first realized I could see "ghosts." My great Uncle died, and he and I were very close. I was devastated. His was the first funeral I ever went to. For a couple of weeks afterwards I was distraught. I was not sleeping well, I did not want to eat, I was taking it very hard.
I had an old antique rocking chair in my bedroom. It was over 100 years old ( my Mother worked in an antique store at that time ) and whenever my uncle would visit, I was always dragging him in my room to show him this or that, a picture I colored or a new toy or something, and he would always sit in that chair. I never did, it was very uncomfortable. One night after his death, I was laying in bed, crying my eyes out, missing him terribly, when I heard that old rocking chair start to squeak, as it did when it was being rocked in. I froze, and slowly turned my head to look at the chair. It was slowly rocking, all on its own. I was terrified, and tried to scream, but my throat closed and no sound would come out. I sat up in bed, ready to leap out and tear a path to my parent's room, but suddenly I could smell Pinaud Clubman cologne...which is what my Uncle wore every day of his life. I froze, confused. The chair stopped rocking and suddenly the scent was gone. I hopped out of bed and went to wake my Dad, and tell him what happened. He told me that my Uncle loved me very much, and he was just visiting me, letting me know he was still thinking of me, as he knew I was still so upset. I asked about 200 questions after that of course, and my Dad was patient with me and answered me. I went back to bed and started at the chair for what seemed like hours, willing it to move again, yet terrified at the same time that it would.
The next night the chair started rocking again, always at the same time, 10:23 PM ( I had a digital alarm clock for school ) and the smell of his cologne would fill my room. After the third night, I started talking to  him as if he were there. After the 5th night, I saw a glimmer in the chair...a hazy shape, no definition to it. For some reason I was not afraid of this, I could FEEL his presence in the room, I knew it was him. I talked with this hazy blob for a week, and each night after that, the hazy shape would become more and more tangible, until two weeks later, what looked like a projection of my Uncle was sitting right there in that chair. He never spoke, just smiled, and nodded. This went on for a month and then he started fading, regressing back into that hazy shape, until there was nothing but the chair rocking and the smell of his cologne...and finally a couple of weeks later, the rocking stopped and the smell faded for the last time.
I was okay by that point, his presence there helped me to heal. My talking with him, sharing my grief over losing him, helped me, and when I was better, he left. I have not seen him since.
That experience opened a doorway of some sort in my opinion, because ever since then, I have seen spirits on several other occasions. Not all of them nice, and most of them were strangers, but there, none the less. It is not always pleasant, and sometimes I have gotten nasty visits that frightened me terribly, but most of them are just passing through for the most part. My husband can see and hear them, and our youngest daughter can feel them, so our family is used to the comings and goings of the ones who filter in and out of our surroundings. Since our daughter was born, we get even more of them, so we have both wondered if she is a beacon, or if she is calling them to her somehow, or if they are just attracted to her in some way, so they make themselves known. I guess we will see how it turns out as she gets older and growing up might get in the way, as it can do for young ones with abilities. Time will tell!