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 am not a nurse yet. Still doing my prerequisites. My grandpa was in the hospital because he missed a couple of days dialysis. He ended up being admitted because his potassium was high. So he was in CVICU. When we would visit he would tell us about people laying in bed with him, others being in the room with him, and shadows coming from the tv. He told me it was the scariest room he ever been in. At the time we chalked it up for him hallucinating, but now after reading 24 pages of this post that it was probably patients that died in his room in the past.

Specializes in Gerontology.

We were talking about ghosts at work recently. A bunch of us work in offices that are renovated from an older nursing unit. One person worked as a nurse on the unit before it became offices. So we were asking her about ghosts that may still be around.

she told us about a break room that was named after a nurse that died in a traffic accident on her way into work. Apparently a lot of nurses had creepy feelings while taking breaks at night in that room. Nothing really bad happened, just uneasy feelings and a sense of not being alone.

Not a nursing story, but still weird. When I was a child, even a teen, I would visit my grandmother, and all sorts of things would happen. The light would go on and off when you could clearly hear the switch moving( it was one of the old ones from 40's that you had to push pretty hard to move). Her house had an attic that gave me chills. I always felt presence, and never wanted to stay in the house alone. There were times when it sounded like someone is moving around in the next room. Weird noises coming from the attic. Sometimes dishes would fall and break. My grandmother denied all of these occurrences.

I have another story that happened to my grandmother(fathers side) when she was a child. Her mother passed away before she was old enough to remember her. Her father married another woman that wanted the children out of her life. So the dad bought a very cheap wooden house and let his four children live there alone. Three boys aging 17,15,13 and my grandmother 5. The boys would go out to work during the day and leave grandmother home alone. She told me that evil lived in this house. Whenever the boys would leave something would throw the furniture around, start fires and do damage. My grandmother spent her days outside waiting for her brothers, or if it was too cold, she'd close her eyes tight and not open them for hours. She said that something was dragging her by the foot to the floor. No physical damage ever was done to her, but I think knowing that something that's not supposed to be there is touching you is damaging enough. Then, it started to get worse. My grandmother complained to her brothers, but they were too tired to pay attention to her. One day, when the winter passes and she could wait outside, she was playing when she heard a loud voice calling her, she said it was her brother. When she turned around, she saw a black hairy thing in the window of a house starting at her with an evil smirk. The brothers became victims of this thing soon after. An old woman told them that the house is possessed by evil and that they should leave because no good would come to them. They decided to burn the house and burry ashes in different places so that the evil would not become whole again.

I believe that this story is true because all four siblings recited it to me when I was an adult with a terror in their eyes.

Again, not a ghost story, but one night after I was done for the shift. A lady from one of the rooms( not my pt) called me into the room. I went it thinking she needed something. She told me that my daughter is adorable. I couldn't believe it, I never spoke of my child so there was no way that she'd known. When I asked her how she knew, she just gave me a smile and a half wink. Another nurse told me she practices voodoo. Spooky.

Specializes in Cardiac, ER, Pediatrics, Corrections.

I worked in a LTC facility as a dietary aide in high school. The place I worked at was an old orphanage and next to it was an orphan cemetery. Residents would often complain of children running around the dining room or in their rooms. Even my great-grandma who was with it talked about children talking to her in her room. One woman said she would watch children run in and out of her closet at night. THESE WERE THE "WITH IT" RESIDENTS! You always felt like someone was watching you and always saw things out of the corner of your eye.I was once cleaning up the dining room where there was a piano. The piano is up on a stage so I would have seen if someone approached it. I heard a few keys play on the piano. Turned around, nobody there.

Specializes in LTC Rehab Med/Surg.

I was a new hire at an old hospital. I was still on orientation, and knew nothing about the stories about ghosts. I was waiting at the elevator with several other nurses, to go down to lunch. I smelled roses. Rose is my favorite scent and I'd recognize it anywhere, no matter how faint. We were in the hallway and there were no flowers in sight. It wasn't perfume.

I said something like, "Do you smell roses?"

The other nurses looked at me funny and told me the story about the ghostly nun who wondered the halls of 3rd floor. Seen sometimes and accompanied by the smell of flowers. I think they thought I'd heard the stories, and was just having some fun. Honestly I didn't know anything about a rose scented ghost nun until they told me that day.

Went around to collect vitals for 3am

Thought I heard something moving in an empty patient room and got excited/scared like "yooooo my first hospital ghost experience!!!"

Turned out it was the night PCA curled up in the recliner snoring.

Specializes in Critical Care/Vascular Access.

I've never seen a "ghost" personally, but my surgical floor has had quite a few strange sightings and happenings as reported by patients, family, and occasionally staff.

The most recent story this thread brought to mind was patient we had a few weeks ago who had gone to a wound clinic to have an ulcer on his foot taken care of, where he started having bloody stool, then came to our ER where we later found out he had colon cancer that had already metastasized to his liver and testicle, and I'm guessing possibly his brain too. He was an otherwise perfectly alert and oriented patient, but on the second or so day after admission, he began insisting that we move him to another room because he didn't like sharing his room with the "little people" that were in there. He realized that no one else could see his little roommates, but we moved him anyway. Needless to say, the room change didn't fix much. I decided to inquire a little further about the little people one night I was in there, and he proceeded to describe the 3 of them that were currently in the room with us. He went into great detail about where they were sitting, what they were wearing, what they were doing, and their demeanor, etc. He said, "it's the weirdest thing, I can see them as clearly as I can see you." Otherwise he was a normal, oriented patient.

It was an odd feeling looking at the window seal and knowing this guy saw some little woman sitting there smiling at us. Some of our staff were convinced they were "from the other side", as some near death patients report seeing.

I had the summer off (school nurse) and I went out of state to help take care of my aunt who was dying of cancer. My mom who was a retired nurse was trying to attend to her and I worried she would hurt herself. I stayed the duration. The day after my aunt passed and the coroner had taken her body away, I walked through the living room and saw my aunt sitting in a recliner wearing a white nightgown. I told my mom and she said that my aunt would sit in that chair before she became bed bound.

Specializes in Critical Care, Neuro-trauma.

We had a lady who worked night shift at our facility and she was well known and liked by residents and staff alike. A very very hard worker. Always willing to lend a helping hand to anyone who needed it. Unfortunately this last fall she passed away quite suddenly. Well one of my newer residents doesn't like to get up to go to the bathroom himself during the night. He will wait until 2 hours checks/toileting to go. Well I ran upstairs to grab something and when I came down, his bathroom light was going off. I thought of It weird but didn't really second guess it until I walked in. I was like hi buddy, did you have to go so bad you just couldn't hold it and wait for Me? He's like oh know, Becky took me. I said Becky? What's she look like? He described her to a T As the lady who just passed away. If he had been here when she worked I might now have been so creeped out, but he never even met her. Haha

Specializes in Cardiac, ER, Pediatrics, Corrections.

nursehaley91, that is amazing! Very touching.

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