My aunt was a very sociable and grounded person, but she seemed to have a propensity for psychic things happen to or around her.

Seemingly totally unrelated to that, she used to teach yoga - going back a long way. She was good at it and meditated a lot. She practiced leaving her body. She had an experience in which she was "out" and she reached a place in which there were a number of forces (perhaps rushing around her, or perhaps I just imagined it that way when she told me). She felt the forces as presences and they were very real to her and were good, bad and everything in between. She became very frightened and said that she was very exposed and unprotected in that place. It was such a terrible experience she quit yoga. She stopped teaching and never did yoga again, which was really kind of sad.

I wonder if that's similar to what you're calling projection. I don't know anything about the topic, actually. But found your thread interesting.