What's Your Best Nursing Ghost Story?

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Members are sharing personal experiences and stories related to ghosts, spirits, and paranormal occurrences in healthcare settings. Some members discuss encounters with deceased loved ones or unexplained phenomena, while others share their interest in ghost stories and movies like "Doctor Sleep" and "The Shining." There is a mix of skepticism, curiosity, and belief in the supernatural among the forum participants.

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...

Seems that there are a lot of ghost stories in LTC facilities, and no surprise, with all the deaths. I am now working at a place that was built in the 60's, and one of the new 11-7 nurses told me that one night some of the nurses who had been there a while were trading creepy stories about the place....of course, I started asking around, and I got the usual stuff - call lights going on in rooms that patients had recently died in, the occasional late night sighting of a figure that on further inspection had disappeared - things like that.

By far the best story is the one I will tell here.

The building is one story, somewhat modern in the 70's style. Each unit has 4 halls radiating out from the nurses station, with 2 of the halls ending in glass exit doors. My unit is at the back of the building, facing the woods. Patients rooms have one outside wall of large windows. About 3 years ago, a new resident with mostly physical issues, only slight dementia, was admitted. She was in the last room at the end of one of the exit halls. After she had been there about a week, she started complaining about a man outside, looking in her windows. At first the nurses blew it off, thinking she was just confused, being in a new place, etc - I mean, some of the things the patients say are pretty wild, we are used to hearing all kinds of crazy things. But, with this lady, the complaints of this man became regular, and did not differ - always a man, standing right outside her window, looking in at her. They thought maybe we had a peeping Tom, and one of the male nurses started going outside to look every time she said the man was there. Being a heavily wooded area, there were a lot of places someone could hide - and he never found anyone out there. When one of the nurses questioned the resident more closely, she just said the same thing - a man, standing outside in the dark, right up close to her window, looking in at her. What really creeped me out is that she said she could see his eyes shining. Eventually she was transferred somewhere else, and no one else has complained about this man...but I am always on the lookout for him when I have to go in that room at night.....

Specializes in Gerontology.

geslina! That one gave me chills!

Love this thread! I have a few stories, none nursing related so far, but I can't resist sharing. I'll post them intermittently. This one isn't mine, but its my favorite.

My best friend's family is very devout Catholic. Her mother "Pat" is a very level-headed woman, has no flair for the dramatic, is just an all around straight shooter so I don't think she would make this up. In the summer of 1980 she had given birth to her fourth son. Although she had three other children, this baby was the first child of her second husband's. Her new husband was very excited to take on the father role of his newly blended family, but the birth of his own blood heir brought him some sadness. His mother, who he had been extremely close to, had recently passed away after a long battle with the after effects of a stroke, before she had a chance to meet her daughter-in-law or new grandchildren. At the time, it was something that he really struggled with and Pat said her new husband's sadness was often palpable.

One night, long after everyone else in the home had gone to bed, Pat heard the baby making a fuss and got up to nurse him in his room. After she was done feeding him and he had drifted off to sleep, Pat laid him in the crib and sat back down in the rocker instead of going back to bed. Pat was just sitting there rocking and looking at the crib when all of a sudden the entire right side of her body went numb and then became paralyzed. She sat in the chair for several minutes, unable to call out, trying to will the right side of body to move to no avail, panicked. Then, for reasons unknownst to her, Pat felt this overwhelming sense of calm and then a strong urge to grab the baby. So she struggled out of the rocker and dragged herself across the floor to the crib using only her left side. Pat was eventually able to grab the baby out of the crib and lay with him on the floor, holding him in her arms, rocking him while he slept. This went on for the next couple of hours. Pat says during this time she was completely lucid and calm but had no control over her voice or body, so she just stayed in her own head at peace and prayed. Eventually Pat drifted off to sleep and woke up the next morning able to move and speak again, on the floor with the baby.

Once she gathered herself, Pat woke her husband to tell him what had just happened and he was moved to tears. He explained to Pat that it must have been his mother visiting them, wanting to spend time with his first biological son, her grandchild. Prior to this, Pat had heard many stories about the woman who would have been her mother-in-law and knew she had passed because of a stroke, but she hadn't known until that morning that her mother-in-law had been paralyzed on her right side while she was alive. To this day, Pat just glows when she shares this story. She feels blessed that she got to "meet" her mother-in-law and could be the vessel that allowed her mother-in-law to "meet" her first grandchild as well.

Several years ago, shortly after my grandpa died, I was sleeping and it was about 3 a.m. I woke up to balloons popping (just had a birthday party for my son) and musical toys playing in the living room. I woke up and said "hi grampa. I'm trying to sleep". The noises stopped right away. I wasn't scared at all and went back to sleep.

Specializes in Med-Surg.

Was caring for a patient who was entering into the dying process. He kept staring across the room, so I asked what he was looking at. He said, "Look at all of them.. It's so beautiful." He died within a couple of hours. Made me smile. :)

I first read this thread in 2009 and rediscovered it here lately. It's awesome to see it survived!

I don't consider myself a religious person nor am I sure I believe in ghosts. I've never actually seen one....just and a few random experiences.

1) My dear old grandpa had dementia/alz for many years (diagnosed in '97....passed in '09). Needless to say, his illness was not a short journey. To make matters worse, my family lived in Indiana and my grandparents lived in California. We didn't get to see them very much other than holidays and I was extremely lucky to have spent two childhood summers with them. It was no secret that I was the favorite grandchild, mad I loved my grandparents dearly. As grandpas illness progressed I was growing up and becoming too concerned about things that most young adults are concerned with (ie: college, friends, boyfriends, etc). When I graduated college, I was working as a CNA and it occurred to me one day that I was taking care of old ppl and needed to go see my FAVE old people ASAP! As a graduation gift, my mom sent me to see them. Gramps was in a home in CA at this point and nearly unresponsive and in a wheelchair. He never spoke or made contact with anyone anymore. When I saw him I held his hand and told him Shannon Bird was here. That's was my grandparents nickname for me. He immediately grabbed my hand and sort of stroked it, but still had his usual glazed over look in His eyes. I swear he knew I was there. During the same visit my grandmother told me that my non responsive had been randomly asking for his brother John out loud and appeared to have been addressing someone. John had been dead for many years. I flew home and he passed away two weeks later. I was the last of the grandchildren that he hadn't seen in a while.....coincidence that he passed away after seeing his Shannon Bird? Idk!

2) My SO (significant other) had a childhood friend who's house was haunted. He used to hang there as a kid, and oddly enough, I was also friends with that guy so I hung out at the same house occasionally. My SO claims to have been playing video games one night with the friend and looked out in the hallway to see an old lady just walking down the hallway. He questioned his friend immediately who just said "oh yeah that's our ghost". The family had seen her before. Apparently they had the house blessed at some point in time. My SO's friend now owns that house. I wonder if he still sees her?

3) last one! I have a nephew, who was 2 at the time this story occurred. We live in a rural area with no neighbors that could have been within eyesight. My nephew and I were outside just messing around and he stopped and look down the long driveway and said "I see you". It actually really creeped me out bc there was literally no one or anything he could have been talking to other than me. And I've always heard kids were sensitive at early ages. He also said "call me!" To the same thing about two seconds later haha so who knows!

Just wanted to share those few things after years of reading this thread!

I have a friend at work who tells this story:

Shortly before my friend became pregnant with her daughter, her mother passed away. She was very close with her mother and upset that her mother would never get to meet her only grandchild. When the child was about 2-3 years old, my friend was sitting in a chair rocking her daughter and told her daughter that she wished she had been able to meet grandma. Her daughter replied that she had met grandma. When questioned farther, the daughter said that grandma came to the hospital the night that she was born and held her while my friend slept.

I love this and think its such a sweet story!

Specializes in Medical Surgical.

I recently moved into a apartment next to a graveyard. A few months ago I jumped up on my bed and after a few minutes was typing something on my computer when I noticed something moving out of the corner of my eye on the floor. I looked down at the floor and my shoe was the only thing on the floor, and it flipped all the way over and then didn't move anymore. It scared the heck out of me. I looked all over my room for a rat or something that might have been on the floor to cause the shoe to flip...I couldn't find a thing. But I never did figure out why I could see it moving out of the corner of my eye either.....

Specializes in ICU.

I love this thread so much and I need more NOW, kthnx. :)

No nursing stories yet, but I'm relocating from NC for my first RN job to a place in Georgia. It's such a long drive there and back that I've been finding places to stay along the route for at least the way back, because nine hours is too much to do more than once in three days - I'd rather do one nine-hour stint, a five-hour, and a four-hour, you know? I've been staying in Savannah lately. Let me tell you - that city is haunted as all get out! I just love it and I wish I'd managed to find my first job there. That would have been fantastic.

I have been making an effort to go on ghost tours every time I've been. There are probably at least 15 different ghost tour companies doing tours every single night, and they will all each have two or three times per night that they run, so I feel like I'll never run out of things to entertain me while I'm there. My favorite tour has been of the Sorrel-Weed house, and I've been there twice. Some unusual things have happened both times I went. The first time was very tame until the very end. The tour people give out EMF detectors right before setting us all loose in the basement and visiting the carriage house. We passed through the basement uneventfully and moved on to the carriage house. The story with the carriage house is that the owner of the house had an affair with one of the slaves, who had her own private room in the carriage house. The wife found out about the affair and threw herself off the house balcony and died instantly, and a couple of weeks later the slave woman was found hanged in the carriage house. It was originally thought to be a suicide, but many people believe she was murdered to help cover up the owner's affair with her. Anyway, when we were all sitting in the top floor of the carriage house, four people sitting next to each other had their EMF detectors go off simultaneously. It seems like Molly the slave is a very active ghost - but I would be too if I was murdered to keep me silent so I am unsurprised. Nothing else happened.

The second time I went I'd dragged my mother with me on the whole shebang, visiting where I'm going to work and all. This time, when we went into the men's parlor I went into a really violent coughing fit. I didn't think about it much at the time, because I've had some sort of lower respiratory infection and have been coughing for weeks, but my mother pointed out later that that was the only part of the house I was coughing in and I hadn't been drinking or eating anything. Then, I made the connection that it was a smoking parlor and I always cough incessantly around the presence of smoke. Now, I didn't actually smell smoke, but maybe my body was reacting to some ghostly smoke. Now, my mother had a much more definable experience in the house - actually in the carriage house. The guide had told us about how some people feel dizzy or like they can't catch their breath when they walk into the room where the woman was hanged. My mother clutched onto me the second she walked in the room and told me she was feeling dizzy. We didn't have EMF detectors this time, but other people in the group were getting crazy amounts of activity on their meters in that room, so I guess Molly was saying hello again.

I know I'm going to go back to that house again one day. I just love it there. I really need to think about seeing other places in Savannah, though... ;)

I work in a LTC Facility as a CNA. It is an older facility and a little creepy at times. We have had call lights go off in rooms that are empty. We've also had patients wake up with night terrors screaming and pointing at the ceiling.

On one particular night I was helping another aide change a bed with a resident in it that had spilled her cup of water. As I was changing the bed I was facing the door and the other aide had her back to the wall the door was on. I looked up and saw the end of somebody's shadow walking by the door. It was change of shift time so I figured it was either one of the other aides coming on to their 11-7 shift or there was someone out of bed. Naturally I went running out into the hallway just in case it was the latter of those options. No one in sight. I look up at the top of the hallway and the 11-7 girl was just starting to come down the hallway. I walked back into the room and the other aide asked who was walking in the hallway. She heard someone walk by when I saw it. The 11-7 girl that was coming up the hallway said she didn't see anything or anyone in the hallway. Definitely creeped us out.

I worked in a family practice that was horrible. You could tell the demonic forces were working on all the employees (about 25) and the patients. It is a very depressing job in healthcare when you see sickness and death frequently, and considering that the doctors for the most part just want to keep the patients coming back for drugs to increase their productivity levels. We even had patients attack doctors and jump them in the hallway and threaten them for dependency meds. Nurses were blockaded in the parking lot prevented from leaving by patients showing up for demand drugs after hours. The friction amongst coworkers was enormous. I worked nights and frequently left the building alone. I felt I needed the Lord to bless the place and its inhabitants. I went around the building outside after work and blessed the place and asked God to cover it and everyone coming and going with the Blood of Christ. I walked the perimeter of the building on the sidewalk. We had an extensive front and back parking lot beyond the sidewalk to the building. I only walked the sidewalk. As I walked I smelled rotting garbage or the odor of roadkill. I could feel something there that was frightening but could see really nothing, only sense it and feel a wind. I was scared, but said to myself, keep going, that's what they want you to do is stop. By the time I closed the perimeter of the building with prayer, the stench was noxious. I knew it was evil. I went to church thereafter and told a priest friend what had happened. He told me that was the smell of the devil, and that he had smelled the same stench himself. He also said another parishioner of his awhile ago had the same experience. He told me to continue what I was doing because the devil hated it and it would work against him. Shortly thereafter, I went back to work and found that a patient had committed suicide by shooting himself in his car in the parking lot just outside of the perimeter I had walked in blessing! He was a depression patient and could have crossed that line with a gun and gone into the building, but he never got past the line of prayer and the blessing of the Blood of Christ....I have continued to do this for the rest of my life for myself and family....Thereafter, while working nights, I would hear strange sounds like a person sighing somewhere in the building. I was the only one there.

It was probably a practical joke from some coworker. That's the title to an old Billy Preston single that was a hit in the 70s. Or maybe a ghost who liked old soul music. Having a ghost that liked classic soul wouldn't be so bad!

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