my natural inclination towards esoteric stuff comes from my family on my fathers side, specifically my grandfather whom i met only twice, the second time being the only time i recall. he was an old man with a long white beard and looked exactly like gandalf in lord of the rings, he held a huge big staff and he put his hands upon me and muttered some words which i didn't understand and that's my only memory, i was about five years old. even then i knew there was something special about him, apart from his appearance there were a few family stories floating around, and his wife was said to be very psychic, unfortunately i never met her.
much later when i was a teenager i was helping my father and we were in spain. i was about 15 or 16 not much of an idea about anything really just a young boy with the usual interests. one night i had a dream so strange i awoke in the middle of the night to tell my father.
some of the themes reoccur often in my dream, but this was the first  of it's kind. i was a scout in some sort of exploratory party who were somewhere behind me, i was exploring my way through a dense forest and suddenly came to a clearing and then a massive wall overgrown with vines. i pulled away at some vine and there was a huge doorway made from stone, with an engraving above on a marble like plaque. it said 'spirit' and as i pulled the vine away the huge door opened and revealed a long corridor. the corridor receded into the distance and i could feel something at the end, a presence and there hovering all the way at the end was a huge stick, a staff, my grandfathers staff. i felt a slight breeze, very gentle at first, almost like some one was blowing on my face and this got increasingly stronger, until the breeze was a wind, and as i stood my ground the staff still hovering came towards me, levitating until i reached out and grabbed it, at which time the wind stopped and i woke up immediately knowing it was my grandfather. 
i described my dream to my father and he said it was a spiritual dream, that my grandfather was a very spiritual man who gave away all his wealth and worldly goods to follow a spiritual path. i couldn't really understand much about all that, i was just to young, but i knew that dream was not just a dream, it was a communication, and that staff was more than an ordinary symbol. 
anyway, when i say i have a natural inclination towards these things i think that's where it comes from, in my dna, my grandfather that i only saw twice yet influenced me greatly in a strange unconscious type of way. 
i wish i had spent more time with him, i wish i could have more stories and memories of him of my own, i would have loved to know what he did, learn from his experiences but all i have is this strange experience, maybe that was enough.