I am new to this site and currently am trying to make some sense out of things I am feeling, dreams I am having and things I am experiencing. So in my search, I decided to start here.

When I was in my teens, I had a series of dreams about a man I could see but no one else could see. I would be standing there talking with someone or even a couple of people and I would see this man on the roof of the building behind them. There was something absolutely terrifying about this man. One night, I had this dream where appliances and such kept turning on by themselves. I kept running from one end of the house to the other turning them off. I knew it was this man doing this as no one else seemed to notice this happening. When I woke up out of the dream, I had this terrifying feeling that if I ever dreampt of this man again, I would die. So was this the Grim Reaper in my dreams?

Then, in 1980 my Grandmother died. about 9 months later, I started having dreams about her where we would see her but she was always dead in the dream. Alive, but dead. One dream, we were sitting around a table and my Grandmother was describing what life was like in the here after. Finally, this one night I had this tearjerking dream where my Mother and an Aunt were with me and my Grandmother in what seemed kind of like a cave. I remember we were standing by a pool of aqua water which was in rocks. My Mother and Aunt went to get something to eat and once alone, my Grandmother turned to me and told me it was getting harder and harder for her to come and communicate with me. The dream sent me in to tears and waking up in tears.

In 2007, my wife lost one of her Aunts. Then, I had this weird experience with one of her Uncles pertaining to his death. Finally, I had another dream where we were in communication with the dead. Her deceased Aunt informed us that death was very painful. She wasn't referring to the actual moment of death but the adjustment to death.

Having had so many weird dreams about dead relatives, I can't help but to wonder if they truely are communicating with me through my dreams. I realize people who do not believe in such things as ghosts and such will come up with some excuse or meaning to the dream but I really do think they are communicating with me.

I had an experience once where I felt a memory of someone else's life. I felt a sense of it being close to his death. I even remember having this feeling as if he was standing in the room about 5 feet from where I was sitting.

While I am really puzzled by eevrything I am feeling, I feel a need to communicate with others who perhaps have had similar experiences or who also have felt as though the dead are trying to communicate with them.

And "No" I do not see dead people. But I do at times feel a sense of an unseen presence.

I think that the terrifying man in your dreams is your Shadow - the part of yourself that frightens you and that you try to repress.

This man turning the appliances on and you not being able to turn them off has to do with feeling that you cannot control this part of yourself.

Our teens are a time when we have lots of conflicting emotions, we question our values, and we worry about the type of people we will become when we are adults, so it makes sense that your Shadow would appear to you when you are in your teens.

I posted about contacting the dead after your post on the other thread.

I think the only way you would be able to find out if the dead person was really contacting you would be for the dead person to tell you something that you didn't know, but only a complete stranger knew, and then to have a third, unbiased person, who didn't know you, the stranger or the dead person, check with the stranger to find out if the dead person's statement was true.

The reason a third person, who didn't know anyone else, would have to do the checking would be so that they didn't prompt the stranger to deliver a certain answer.

And since it would be very unlikely to be able to set that experiment up, we will probably never truly know and can only go by what we feel.