Guess I hesitate to describe this as a ghost story.
God seems--and certainly did in at least one Scriptural story--to set some rather clear limits on what can and cannot communicate from "beyond the grave" with us in this time/space dimension. Nevertheless, He Himself is want at times to cut clear across even His own little boxes. He certainly allowed David to with the shewbread etc.
The situation you described appears to me to be a clear message that God allowed from a beloved uncle to you. It also was a message to your whole family and perhaps to us hereon that THERE IS life beyond this one. . . .and that we needs be loving while we have the chance in this one.
I think the detail of his death was an added sort of "God thing" wherein He seems to love to toss in very telling or key details of a very literal nature just to clue us in how much attention HE IS paying to us and life here in general.
It could also have served as a point of comfort to the rest of your family as well as you--if God cared enough to communicate so personally and touchingly to you, perhaps He really did care for all of you, including the uncle--and had everything under control regardless of emotions and appearances--and would invite all of you and us to trust Him with all the details of all our lives.
I believe that most ghost stories that have the flavor of ghost stories are not very edifying or comforting. I believe that they involve demons pure and simple and/or demons masquerading as a dead loved one. Given that they have all the details of history at their observant disposal, it's not a great matter for them to pretend to be a deceased person rather convincingly.
One needs to ask what is the purpose as well as the source of the phenomenon. If it seems entirely "nice," is there some sort of seduction going on trying to strengthen a demonic grip on an individual, family, situation, place or habitation. If it seems primarily fear engendering, the source is rather obvious.
The Bible is full of "fear not!'s" and Jesus, the conqueror of the world, the flesh, the devil, hell and the grave has demonstrated with His Resurrection, we really have nothing to fear other than displeasing someone we love and would hate to displease because we Love Him.
I agree that God has His own ways of sending messages of comfort around the heartbreaking events of life. One happened to me about 10 years ago.
I was hiking alone in the New Mexico desert at an ancient Indian ruins at Chaco Canyon, which itself is a rather eerie place. Coming down off a mesa, I could see a coyote standing in the dirt road below, looking up at me. I figured such a skittish animal would be long gone by the time I made it down to the road about 10 minutes later. But there he was: standoffish but nonetheless still there in the road, about 20 feet away, looking at me.
I figured he was looking for a handout, so I tossed him a bit of granola bar. But instead of snarfing it up, he backed off a little. After about a minute or more of this eye contact, he kind of sheepishly backed away, then turned and quickly walked off, looking back once or twice.
It was very wierd. And the Zuni family I had dinner with that night sat in stunned silence when I related the tale. I later learned why they seemed so uncommunicative. Coyotes, in their cosmology, are often the habitation of spirits, and the messengers of omens. Usually bad.
One week later, I got my mom's tearful call that my 70-year-old father, a righteous man of God, had died in his sleep, having never been ill.
One other oddity that day at Chaco: After seeing the coyote, I was driving north out of the park when a brief but violent rain sqwall swept through. And as I was plowing along the muddy dirt road, I was stunned to see not one, but two of the brightest rainbows I've ever encountered. Right in front of me.
God DOES care.