I am not really sure whether or not to consider this a ghost story or not, you can read and let me know. I am 17, I am young and I was younger then. My cousin killed himself at the end of my road (I live at a dead end) when he was 17 and I was 13. He was one of my best friends but I guess you could say this world got the better of him.
Not too long after his death, about 2 months or so I would say, I was listening to music in my cd player and reading a book. I was just laying there and my cd player has a knob on it, the kind you have to turn, and well, it turned down! At first I thought, "oh well just bumped it", but then it happened a few more times. I was thinking "okay that's a little creepy" but brushed it off as nothing.
I got up later and then came back and it happened again, finally after about 2 more times, (I didn't see it happen but I could hear it and then I would turn it back up) I just said "okay matt this isn't funny would you knock it off?" and it stopped. So that was that.
Later I did end up dreaming about him but I don't think it was related, it was just of him walking through my house and I passed him in the hall, and I stopped and was like, "aren't you dead?" He said "no", and went into the bathroom and I followed (strangely my cd player was in there) and he said "you might want to go outside". I went outside and looked, and everywhere I looked there were people being hung, but not from trees or anything, from those things that they used to hang more than 1 person. I looked at the end of the road and there was my family going up on it, but luckily for me I woke up before I saw it.
The weird thing about that though is my mom was up there with my dad and brother and sisters, and she died 4 years before this dream. I love my family so you can see how the dream would scare me. Nothing bad has happened since then, well death wise, so I'm pretty sure I think it was just a dream.
Your cousin is letting you know he is okay, at peace. All of the material and heart breaking happenings in his life are gone now and he is trying to make his own peace, part of that is saying good bye and letting you know he will be alright.
The other instance, the dream. It sounds as if you have gone through quite a bit of trauma. I do not pretend to know about dreams and meanings, but it sounds to me as if your subconscious is frightened of another loss, the gallows representing the fear of something bad, horrible happening to other loved ones in your life.
God Bless!