Empath? With Possibilities Of Other Abilities?

First, I'm sorry for the length and any mistakes in terms or similar things, this is the first time I have really talked about any of this, much less posted it. However I really want to know if I'm an empath like I believe I may be or a combination of a few different 'abilities' or something entirely different.

Ever since I was younger, I have been so interested in the supernatural and the paranormal. It was just something that amazed me in so many ways. By the time I was 10 I barely left home without a ghost story of some sort on me. I never got into anything I wasn't supposed to though, I never called the spirits to me, nothing of that sort. I knew the possibilities of doing something wrong and paying the price. I still wonder if just the fact that my interest was so strong might have caused some of this...

Since as far as I can remember, I was always sort of sensitive to other peoples emotions. Like I could look at someone and immediately know whether or not we could get along together. Or if they were sad or depressed or happy. I would just sort of know. Its like I could read there personality like a book, of course I never took this sudden knowing alone, I would always talk to them first, see if they were nicer that I perceived, but rarely I was wrong.

Some years later, after I moved away from my closest friends things started getting weirder. When I looked around in the dark, the shadows seemed to move of their own accord sometimes flitting in front of my eyes, other times hanging around in a corner with the shape of a normal person almost. They never seemed to be dangerous but it became normal for me to keep a guard up at all times even though I knew no way to protect myself. It just felt instinctual. Along with these strange shadows, I felt myself start to stray away from the crowds due to the fact that I would get constant headaches and sometimes a sense of overload. Even in small arguments that would happen around my house it was like all the fire they were aiming at the other person they were angry at would be homing in on me and hitting me full force. Sometimes I would get so down because of all the (I'm not sure what it was I was feeling, emotions? Vibes?) to the point that my best friend became extremely worried about me. And had a right to be, but I have a better control of letting these... Emotions effecting me, at least that's how it seems at the moment.

I have noticed however, as I look back to just a few years ago, more things began to show themselves that would make me think that at the least, I'm not what most considered normal. For one, when causally doing a color game with one of my friends, basically naming the first color that came to mind, I was able to say the exact thing he had multiple times, it was as if my mind had just known what he was going to say it without any reason. Out of the close to 10 times we did this, I missed only once. To me at the time, it seemed like dumb luck, but next to the events previously that morning, I wonder why I seemed to think that. That morning at a monastery, because we were currently on a trip around New York, my best friend sort of passed out and hit his head really hard on a nearby wooden pillar and crumpled to the ground, afterward he regained consciousness and it was like nothing had ever happened. Nothing too out of the ordinary, except mere seconds later I had a pounding headache that was like no other.

Understandably, many would say that this was sympathy pain, and I agree that that time it might have been. But could it still be sympathy pain when your friend is injured and you feel pain in the exact same area before you even know of their injury? And have possible bruises where there's should have formed? Not exactly sure, but deep down I very much doubt it.

Over the past few years these events seemed to happen more frequently, though. Yesterday, the day I had originally planned to post this before realizing they wouldn't let posts through at that time. It seemed the shadows were moving more, I felt something grab the back of my shirt lightly and move it before releasing it and a few times it felt like something was trying to call to me, almost. However today everything is eerily still, the shadows are moving very little, their just like a solid wall of darkness in most areas I used to see them move the most and I'm not noticing things as much in the sense of sudden movements of would catch my eyes and I could feel that it was something out of the ordinary (like the wind moving something, that kind of ordinary), but my 'abilities' have come and gone a few times, so I'm not entirely worried, just a little unsettled at the moment