childhood experience, (channeling of some sort?)

[jafar]

Such capability ('seeing', 'hearing', 'feeling' things / spirit) is commonly normal.
Actually everyone has such capability, they just do not focus their attention to it, during their wakeful state.
Every living human being is basically a spirit 'inside' a human body, in the same manner as every web forum avatar is human consciousness inside a web forum avatar.

Thus you do not need to worry about your 'normality'.

Everyone have 'spiritual senses' but how the physical mind 'interpret' the signal coming from physical senses might vary, when one in fully conscious / wakeful state.
Some might visually see, thus the signal coming from the eyes and 'spiritual eyes' / 'third eye' is being mixed into one channel. One saw it as two things overlaying each other, a usually 'transparent figure' with background of signal coming from physical eyes.

Some others do not, but he/she get a 'feeling' of a presence like there's 'something' / 'somebody' there.

And it's also common to find, when two or more people who 'visually see', the 'transparent figure' that they see have different appearances, each are having their own 'perception' of what they saw from 'non physical eye', while they have agreement on what they see from their physical eyes.

Some might hear, thus the signal coming from the ear and 'spiritual antenna' is being mixed into one channel.

Some others do not, but he/she get a 'thought' that contain the message being sent.
In which sometimes this can be more 'powerful / immersive experience'.

It might be interesting for you to test this with a person where you don't speak or understand his/her language.
Can you hear his/her thought?
If yes in what language?

Because if it's truly 'spiritual communication', language is not a barrier at all.
You might hear it as if they're talking in English, or any other language that you're comfortable with.

And this 'communication' can also be done not only between human, but with animals or even plants as well.