I (Don't) See Dead People: What Constitutes a Sixth Sense?

When I hear the term "sixth sense", the first thing that comes to mind (beyond the film, of course) is intuition. To me, that is what a sixth sense typically is- some manifestation of foresight or a strong feeling. The group that presented on sixth sense made me rethink this fairly rigid definition in my mind, however. What does constitute a sixth sense? Can it be coincidence or deja vu, or in order to call one of these a sixth sense, does a person have to experience them often? What happens if someone experiences both of these often- is one a sixth sense and one a seventh sense? As Emily suggested, do we all have the potential to unleash our own special ability if we only believe that we can?

So, backing up- what constitutes a sixth sense? A lot of our classmates shared their own "grandparent stories" and I'm sorry to do the same, but I've been thinking about this since class on Thursday. In 1985, my aunt was killed in a plane crash on November 25th. Flash forward 24 years- my grandmother (my aunt's mother) is very ill with cancer. Often strange but actually pretty typical of this situation, my grandmother had one last very lucid evening and then slipped into a coma. Already on hospice care, we expected her to pass at some point the next morning. Despite all medical odds, she lived on for days. My whole family was not only exhausted but so confused. She was so ill and at this point had a lethal amount of drugs coursing through her body. We didn't understand why she continued to fight. After a few days of this, I woke up to my dad telling me that my grandmother had passed. It wasn't until later that day that we realized the date- November 25th. Was my grandmother waiting to go on the same day that her daughter did years before? It seemed so, but we weren't exactly sure why. After doing some more snooping and putting dates together, my dad realized that his grandmother had also died on November 25th, in 1989. What this means is still a mystery, but it seems to be chalked up to more than coincidence.

Is that an instance of sixth sense, though? And if so, whose sense is it? To me, deja vu seems more likely to be considered a sixth sense; coincidence is what I like to refer to as the universe messing with me (which says a lot about how coincidences usually go for me). Deja vu seems more like a "sense", with lots of proposed reasons for it, my favorite perhaps being the one from the show Fringe- that deja vu is a situation that has happened to a version of ourselves who lives in another dimension. Regardless of whether or not that is the answer (and how can we prove that it is or isn't?) it is interesting to think about. And deja vu is definitely interesting and jarring to feel. The idea that prolonged deja vu could be a neurological or psychological illness makes me think as well. Is that just our system of beliefs labeling something we don't understand? Or could there be a reality in it? If so, the prolonged quality is what would make me believe that someone's deja vu was a sixth sense, but what if it is just a misfiring in their brain?

Perhaps it's better for all of us to think like Emily suggested- we all have some sort of strong ability inside of us, and we need only focus on it to harness it. Whether for some that is a feeling of deja vu or for another it is experiencing constant coincidences, maybe the definition of a "sixth sense" does not only need to be one thing. That's why it is just a sixth sense as opposed to labeled as something specific, and if we accept that everyone has the potential to experience it, perhaps we wouldn't be naming horror movies after it.