I have a question...I have never seen a ghost while I was awake, that I am aware of anyhow. But, what about in sleep? What if someone that has passed visits you while you sleep? Would it be considered just a dream? The reason I ask is this... My brother in law passed four and a half years ago. Earlier this year, while asleep, I dreamt that I was sitting on the edge of my bed, looking out my bedroom door, through the laundry room, through the kitchen, to the entranceway between the kitchen and dining room. Standing there, was my Brother-in-law. As I sat there totally dumb founded, I watched him walk through the kitchen, through the laundry room, and stand in the doorway of my bedroom. While I watched him walking, open mouthed and in total shock, I was first thinking, but then stated to him "This can't be real...I can't really be seeing you. I know that you are dead!..." When he got to the doorway to my bedroom, he said to me in his midwestern drawl (of which sounded exactly like I was hearing it straight from his mouth!) "Hey Heather" and he smiled and chuckled the way that he always did and said as he nodded in my direction "I like it". Which I knew he was referring to the fact that I had colered my hair bright hot pink (lol). Then he said, "Tell my brother that I said hi". And then the alarm clock to wake my son up went off and I was jolted awake. But I sat immidiatly up and sat at the edge of my bed, and I didn't know what to feel. I wanted to wake my husband up and tell him what happened because I was excited, sad, amazed, shocked, and a few more emotions that I cannot begin to explain. When my husband woke several minutes later and saw me just sitting there he asked me if I was okay. In a flood of tears, I told him what had happened, and told him that it had to be a dream. He was quiet for a minute, and then he said through his tears "If you see him again, you tell him that I said hello...and that I love him and miss him very much". I still see it so vividly, and I get emotional everytime I go through it. My head tells me "you were sleeping, it had to be a dream"...but my heart tells me "you know he was here". Then I'm angry with myself, because there was so much that I wanted to say! I didn't even go get my son up, I let him sleep and laid back down and went back to sleep, hoping that he would come back again. But he didn't. So, tell me...am I nuts?? Did it happen? Or was it a dream? Because it seemed so very real... But, if it was real...I ache to get another chance...

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From what I can gather from your posts I am going to say that you weren't dreaming. I think your mind in an effort to make the experience seem like a dream, so you could more easily accept it, made up you getting up and moving to sit on the end of your bed. Or maybe you actually did do that but before you had the experience. Either way your mind was trying to make it more acceptable. Just me take on it.

Spirits have been known to visit people in their dreams, so it's quite plausible your bro-in-law visited you.

[font=Times New Roman]Thanks I was hoping that I wasn't goin bonkers...lol..I do appriciate hearing other peoples opinions on it. It makes it easier for me to trust in myself a little bit more[/font]

Either he visited you, or a spirit pretending to be him wanted to get an emotional reaction from you... But probably not since it was a positive emotion.

I have to agree. Sounds like it was him visiting you and wanted to get a message to you both. Especially if either of you had been thinking about him a lot. It could have also been his way of saying, in your sleep, that he's around.

(06-12-2009 12:01 PM)now and zen Wrote:  Spirits have been known to visit people in their dreams, so it's quite plausible your bro-in-law visited you.

Really now. I was not aware of this. Makes ya wonder if the person you speak to in the dream is your character that you yourself have created or is actually an entity.

I used to live in a haunted house for seven years. Towards the end of my stay there, I had dreams about the ghosts that haunted me. Then I moved to a house on the other side of town and the ghosts still haunted in my dreams.

My dreams would include seeing them in same state as I saw them while I was awake. For instance, one dream was where I was standing in the kitchen of my old house and I was looking at the corner of the kitchen where the table and chairs were. The corner of the room is right behind the table the chairs. Then I would see the ghosts in their ghostly white-grayish appearance. Not really an outline of a person, but merely an apparition of some sort. Then I would hear them talking to me, trying to communicate. Most of it came out to be gibberish but you could roughly make out what they were saying.

They haunted me in my dreams for many years, until finally I blocked them out.

Today, some ghosts do visit me in my dreams because I have made a mental note to ignore anything strange in my current house, as to a fear that I might leave for work and never want to return. lol

I believe when we're sleeping we're in a state of least resistance and this allows communication through dreams. It sounds like your brother-in-law wanted to say hello and let you know all is well with him. Don't be angry with yourself about not saying all the things you wanted to say because I'm sure just seeing him was such a surprise that you were somewhat speechless. If he came once, it's very possible he'll come again. As you're lying in bed ready to go to sleep, start thinking of all the happy memories you have of him. Once you get going, one happy memory after another will come to you. Just play them out in your mind and drift to sleep. Don't focus on trying to communicate with him, just replay the happy memories in your mind. Doing this may attract him to you again in your dreams.

Although spirits can communicate through dreams, the fact that your surroundings were so natural suggest that either your mind processed it as a dream to cope, or you were having an out of body experience (OBE) which would explain the jolt like you were waking up afterwards. When something physically stimulating occurs around your body, it can quickly call your spirit back to your body, leaving a feeling that resembles a dream. So that would explain why you tell yourself its a dream but it doesn't really feel like one.