What's Your Best Nursing Ghost Story?

Nurses General Nursing Nursing Q/A

Nursing is a profession that often involves long lonely night shifts in eerie hospital wards. It's a perfect breeding ground for ghost stories. These stories often involve sightings of apparitions, strange noises, and unexplained events that are said to have taken place in hospitals, hospices, and other healthcare settings. Some of these stories are believed to be based on true events, while others are purely fictional. Regardless, they continue to captivate and intrigue both nurses and non-nurses alike - providing a spooky glimpse into the world of healthcare after dark.

I know you have seen and heard freaky things. Share your nursing ghost stories...

Specializes in SNU/SNF/MedSurg, SPCU Ortho/Neuro/Spine.
The best I have heard is from a nurse who said that one night she was floated to oncology at the hospital she used to work at. She was given a patient who was passing away and had been unconscious for several days. At one point during the night the nurse went into the room and the patient was at the top of the bed and looked at her and said, "don't let them take me!", the nurse was freaked out and asked her who was going to take her and she said that black thing up there and pointed up in the air. This patient died within minutes.

A similar story happened to my first death, the patient did not want to die... When I went to get her water and call the family in to say good bye, she was gone! When I was leaving the unit I kept feeling her right behind my neck (must have been all in my mind) but it made me run through that huge dark garage at night... I wanted to scream... I think I ran a red light that night.... It took me 6 months to be able to help out with post mortum....:eek:

Past and current residents of a certain room have repeatedly been heard talking to and seeing children in there. The room they are in was the morgue back in the day.

please keep these coming. Have not had an experience with ghosts, etc. but

love these stories from those who have!!!:yeah:

I am absolutely addicted to this thread!

Not a nursing story but i'm sure you paranormal lovers won't mind if I post it anyways :)

Ok so this was told to me by a close friend. We're all uni students and this particular friend does not lie. Plus it's about a house just around the corner from our place -

So my friend's fiance and 3 other friends moved into a brand new 4 bedroom flat. From the very first night they moved in they would hear someone running in the hallway banging on everyone's doors (typical of guys), this would happen when the guys would be in bed. Everyone would be in bed but they would all think that one of the other guys was doing it.

Finally after a week they all had enough and confronted each other about the racket every night. All 4 of them denied it. By now they were all spooked. So that night after they all went to bed, they hear the same thing again - somebody running past their bedrooms and banging on the doors. This time they were really ******* themselves. They heard really loud bangs like heavy stuff being thrown around. They all jumped out of bed and ran out into the living room -

They found all their furniture upside down.... AND, the walls in the living room had been CLAWED. Like really deep huge claws.

THEN as they were standing there thinking what in Gods name happened they saw black footprints appearing on the ceiling coming towards them!!

They took off from the house and rang the landlord trying to tell him that they cant stay there anymore. The landlord comes over and says - well, you guys lasted the longest. The other tenants dont even last one night.

True story :) more to come

My sister is a nurse and her first job after graduating was on the cancer floor of the hospital where she worked. She hadn't been working long at all when the call light came on in a dying patients room she was taking care of on her shift. He was an atheist and was hysterically screaming it's hot, the flames are burning me! I don't want to go with the demons to hell, please don't let me die, please!!! She said within minutes he passed and nothing could calm him.

Her husband is a doctor and had a very similar experience with a patient he was taking care of in a nursing home. Fascinating thread.

I used to work in a very old hospital in London UK - it's since been knocked down and a new one built.

The old hospital had a main building which was only two stories - ground floor and level one - the rest of the hospital was a lot of old nissan huts which were put up during the war.

On level one of the old building were two wards - both general medical - one male and one female originally but when I was there they were both mixed.

I was working night duty one night and the two RN's I was working with told me this story of one night duty when they were working with a male nurse. He had gone to the ground floor to the vending machine to get everyone a coke. As he approached the lift on the way back there was a priest coming the other way from the ER. He was in full regalia - wide brimmed hat, long black robes - which 20 years ago in London wasn't unusual. The nurse pressed the button for the lift and the doors opened as the priest got there. The nurse smiled and said hello to the priest - the priest smiled back. The nurse motioned to the priest to go first which he did then the nurse followed, pressed the button for the first floor then stood facing the lift doors with the priest stood behind him. It only took the lift a moment to get to the first floor and in a effort to be helpful the nurse was going to ask the priest which ward he wanted - but the priest had vanished!

When the nurse got to the ward he was shaking uncontollably and could barely speak.

After the nurses had calmed down he started telling them what had just happened the after hours manager turned up - she'd seen the priest from one of the huts enter the hospital and had come to ask why she hadn't been informed that someone was sick enough to receive last rites.

The male nurse never worked in that hospital again - I was his replacement - I always took the stairs!

Specializes in Palliative, Onc, Med-Surg, Home Hospice.

One night, around 10:30, I was sitting at the nurses station talking to a couple of my CNA's. We had turned some of the lights down, so it was dim. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone walk past. I asked the CNA's who had walked past and they both looked at me like was I crazy. I know I saw someone, so I got up and walked down the hall to check my residents. Something possessed me to check on one resident in particular. Her roommate had died 5 mos before. Everything was okay but her room was freezing. It is normally hot. I went down to another unit to chat with the nurses there and halfway down that hall, I saw the form of the resident who had passed away. By the time I got to the nurses station, she was gone but I was freezing. And I am never cold.

One of my co-workers insists that the resident follows her down the hall. She can hear footsteps at night.

Specializes in ICU, Public Health.

I am sitting here reading these stories and an onion randomly fell out of it's bowl, off of the kitchen counter, and onto the floor. It scared the sh!t out of me.

Specializes in Palliative, Onc, Med-Surg, Home Hospice.
I am sitting here reading these stories and an onion randomly fell out of it's bowl, off of the kitchen counter, and onto the floor. It scared the sh!t out of me.

I know I shouldn't laugh, but that was funny. I needed the laugh

I heard this same story before ,and it was a young girl like 19 or something wow crazy.

Specializes in Med surg, Critical Care, LTC.

In 20 years of nursing, I only saw a ghost at work once. I was in PACU, called in for a case in the middle of the night. So, most of the lights in the OR suite were turned off. I was at the desk, putting my purse down and looked up. Across the hall we had a holding area for patients who were next up for surgery. I saw the silloute of a man with a hat standing there, not looking at me, but down another hallway. Even though the OR suite is locked, the main doors next to PACU can be opened by pressing the plate on the wall - so my first thought was this was a visitor who got lost. I started to walk toward the man, when he began walking toward the side hall - I said "Excuse me sir, can I help you?" He went down the hall and I turned down the hall because I knew it was a dead end, the door being locked. But when I turned, he was no where to be found. There was absolutely no place he could have gone - he just wasn't there.

I went back to PACU and realized I had seen a ghost. I live in a haunted house, so it didn't bother me, I was more concerned that I wasn't able to communicate with him and therefore help him.

My patient came to PACU a few minutes later and I was busy with the patient. After I got the patient recovered, brought to the floor and got back to PACU to close up, I checked the waiting area again, this time turning the lights on, but no one was there and nothing was amiss.

This was the "old" portion of the hospital - so who knows back in the 1920's when this part of the hospital was built, what type of ward it was. After that episode, I always looked for the man, especially when called in overnight - but I never saw him again.

Specializes in Urgent Care, MedSurg, SNF, ER..

Once while caring for a nice old lady I asked her of she had any requests before I started to give report and she said "yes, could you please show this little boy back to his room. He keeps waking me up and I can't sleep with him coughing like that." she pointed to the chair next to me. there was no child in that room or on that entire floor for that matter. Later when I told my coworkers I was informed that a little boy had died on that floor 8 months prior due to pneumonia and other patients had c/o the same thing. :0 this patient was on no meds that would cause any type of hallucinations and had no prior hx of having any either. I was scared for awhile after that.

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