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...

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!

Once, when I was working as an LPN on the noc. shift in a LTC in Ohio a very strange thing happened. It was an older nursing home with intercoms in the halls so we can call each other if we need to,. All intercoms were in the off position until about 5 am. that was policy, so off they were. We were alll at the nurses station doing paper work for next "rounds" when a crackling noise came over the intercom an a voice came over "nothing for nothing is nothing" when we went to check it out all intercoms were off an all residents sleeping. werid, huh?

Sorry-I meant to reply to Miss De RN-Nothing' for Nothin' was an old Billy Preston song that was a hit in the 1970s, so it was probably a practical joke by someone on your ward...an older person, maybe (like me.) Or maybe a ghost that likes classic rock.

Has anyone here read "Hallucinations" by Oliver Sacks? (The doctor who wrote "Reawakenings?") Very interesting in that he shows that normal people have hallucinations of all of the senses, that hallucinations are not in any way definitive proof of mental disease or anything like that. And probably the most common hallucination is hearing one's name called. Freud heard that a lot-it isn't necessarily a ghost OR a sign that you're nuts!

Sorry-I meant to reply to Miss De RN-Nothing' for Nothin' was an old Billy Preston song that was a hit in the 1970s, so it was probably a practical joke by someone on your ward...an older person, maybe (like me.) Or maybe a ghost that likes classic rock.

Oooh... spooking Billy Preston loving ghosts, eh?

Actually, the song is "Nothing From Nothing":

"Nothing from nothing leaves nothing

Ya gotta have something

If ya wanna be with meeeeeeeeee!"

***************

This one happened a while back:

Where I work we are required to tape report. One of the nurses was taping her report a bit late because she got a bit behind (imagine that :rolleyes:) and some staff came in a bit early. This meant she had to tape with some of the oncoming nurses and techs sitting there at the table with her.

The room was pretty quiet as everyone let her record. The nurse finished up, the rest of the staff arrived and they proceeded to play the tape. They listened to the nurse's report, that some of them had already heard as it was being recorded... and in the background was an anguished blood-curdling scream. It sent chills right through everybody and they just froze, looking at each other like :eek::wideyed::confused:

Now, we are a psych unit so it is certainly possible someone might scream or yell. However, the scream on the tape was pretty loud and no one had heard it while the nurse was taping. It had been quiet-- nothing unusual-- and if they had heard a scream like that, they would have certainly investigated to see where it came from... but no one heard it until they heard the tape play.

I was not actually there... darnit!

I was in the medroom fooling around at the Pyxis when a nurse came in with her eyes all round asking if anyone had screamed.

Ummm, noooooo...

Now, I was cracking up at how Scooby-scared this nurse was, but I was also rather jealous I had missed the fun because I LOVE creepy-weird stuff!

Specializes in Psych.

I haven't really seen anything but I'm convinced my hospital is haunted. I work in a psych hospital that has been around since the 40s. The hospital is upstairs and there is an elevator/stairs that lead into the dining hall, admissions, the c&a psychiatrists' offices and the ECT suite. The downstairs part used to he the hospital. On the first day of orientation in the nurse educators office, the closest bathroom is downstairs outside of ECT. It was pretty dark and quiet ewn there that day, they only do ECT 3x per week. I swore I felt someone watching me and the hairs on the hack of my neck were standing up. Later I asked another nurse who has been there a long time if she thought our place is haunted. She looked at me like I had just asked her if the sky is blue. I told her about my experience by the ECT suite and she said matter of factoy, "oh yeah, someone hung themselves down there when the units were rwn there". Creepy.

ok little stort about my mom passing away in feb 2010

in a nursing home well i brought her ashes home & put them in my bedroom

closet.

well as time went on we moved stuff around and i.ended u

p

putting the urn in the attic, well i guessmom didnt like that cause the attic light kept coming on nite after night so after 2 weeks i figured maybe it is her so i took the urn back down to the man floor & the attic light never came on again lol

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