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 Psych, HIV/AIDS.

I was a fairly new grad when this experience occurred. It was a Saturday morning and I had been 'elected' to be the group facilitator for that morning's process group. One gentleman (I'll refer to him as S) had been admitted to the unit for depression because he was a dialysis patient (cannula (sp?) was located in his lower right leg) and had recently been told he was not a candidate for home dialysis. He was extremely angry and let it be known to everyone in group by verbally attacking a little old lady who had no idea what she had done to warrant such an attack.

S went to his room for a nap after lunch and expected his wife's visit at 2 pm. His wife went into his room, put the clothes she brought in on the chair which was beyond the bed near the window. Shortly thereafter she returned to the nurses station and asked what was wrong with her husband. She stayed at the station's door and I went to check on S. Never in my wildest imagination could I believe what I had walked into...S was reclining on his bed, his right foot was hanging somewhat off the bed. I looked down and saw an enormous amount of blood! S had cut his dialysis tube and bled out...he channeled his anger inward and committed suicide! (We always referred to it as "the dirty deed".)

(To this day, I am still wondering how his wife 'appeared' so calm when she came to the nurses station, she had to have walked past her husband and see all the blood that was slowly creeping towards the chair where she had placed his clothes.)

Fast forward to a few nights later, when I had the Night Shift to work. I made my rounds and as I walked by S's room (no subsequent patient had been admitted to the room yet and it was still locked)...a COLD BLAST of icy air blew out from under the door and grabbed my ankles!! Too freaky...one I'll never forget.

My brother died from AIDS 4 days before Thanksgiving. My Mom and youngest sister got to the hospital first. I was 400 miles away and driving with another one of my sisters to the hospital.

Quite a while after, I asked my Mom how she was when she saw my youngest brother shortly after he had died. (None of us had been able to be at his bedside when he was breathing his final breaths.) My Mom said he had the look of AWE on his face. Shortly thereafter, I asked my youngest sister about it. She said, "It looked like he had the S#$T scared out of him!!"

On Thanksgiving my Mom decided to have the usual holiday meal, despite the bittersweet circumstances. It was a dreadfully cold, overcast day and I am always cold...to the point of having layers upon layers of clothing with little relief. As we sat, morosely eating our meal, I suddenly became almost TOO warm...almost hot. Later I found through documents I had, regarding my brother's death, that he had been cremated on Thanksgiving...hence the warmth I incurred. He was a chef, and after his death, if I were fixing a meal I would feel a warmth om my riight arm...it was as if my brother was guiding me.

Back to the Thanksgiving Dinner...there were 13 people at the table. I am superstitious and was aware of the 13-people superstition, but was too grief stricken to try to change anything...although I did wonder who would be next.

133 days later...the answer came...my MOM died!! (I still get teary thinking of those God-forsaken events.) While we were on the way to bury my Mom , a mile-long freight train impeded our trek to the cemetery. My 1st reaction was of anger, and I immediately chilled out and telepathically was imparted with "Your Mom was put on this Earth to have 6 children. Also, she was to make sure her youngest son made it HOME. She completed her earthly mission." That totally gave me peace and a complete understanding. (As an aside...and totally appropriate, my brother's ashes were put in my Mom's coffin. I insisted on seeing them...there he was, nestled against my Mom.)

I edit submissions to the Near Death Experiences site, and some of you have asked about animals. A few of the Narratives have mentioned that the NDErs have been greeted by their pets...it's encouraging...at least to me.

Specializes in Geriatric, Geropsych, Psychiatric.

I am new to this site, but what brought me here is the true ghost stories by nurses. I am an RN, worked on the graveyard shift for all my nursing career, but spent 16 1/2 years at a psych facility that was haunted Thanks, all!

Specializes in critical care.
nursermk said:
As a young nurse many years ago working PMs on the surgical unit. Only one elderly lady in a four bed ward room who was upset about being alone in there on Halloween so I made sure and rounded every hour. About 9pm she started getting upset saying there were ghosts outside (you could see kids dressed to trick or treat on the sidewalk across the street) and a man under her bed. After the third time in 15 minutes she turned on the call light (I had four other patients as well) I sat with her for a few minutes and she said "LOOK UNDER THE BED, HE'S THERE!" So to prove a point I dramatically lifted the bedspread and looked under and there was some guy looking back at me! He snuck in thru ER to hide from the cops, intoxicated. Luckily we were in a small hospital with the police right down the hall and they took him out. The rest of the shift I had to listen to her go on and on about not believing her, she was right--I was wrong, she told me and I didn't listen...yadda yadda.

OMG!!!!!!!!!!! I think I'd need some lorazepam for me to finish that shift. I'd share with grandma, so she could get some sleep, too. [emoji16][emoji79]

Specializes in critical care.
robred said:
I was told the story by a nurse who worked at a military hospital in North Dakota. She related that a patient of hers, who was a middle-aged man, died unexpectedly in the middle night during one of her shifts. Within a month of that happening, whenever that room (313!) in which the patient had been was vacant and that nurse was working, the call light would go on. Again, the room was vacant and it was the middle the night and the call light would go on... By itself. This began to occur with some frequency, but only when that specific nurse was working. At first, it was thought that someone is playing a practical joke on a very mean level, but then others came to witness the same thing and talk to begin the spread that there was a ghost … Likely that man's spirit. Finally, it came to a point, that one night, again, that that yours was again working, the room is vacant and the call light came on in the middle of the night. that same nurse went into the room and said, " i'm sure you died, it wasn't my fault, we have much work to do, please give us some rest." And never happened again.

We changed our semi privates to privates awhile ago, and the room numbers reflected the old room numbers, which ended up being odd-only numbers. Before this was fixed, an even number in that group (a number that no longer existed) kept ringing the operator as code blue. It was funny the first couple of times, when doctors, lab, RT and nurses would show up and know where that room even existed. After the first couple of times, it was just creepy.

Specializes in Psych, TRT..
morte said:
when you attempt to interject your religious views in a nonreligious thread, you get a response. But you could not maintain you silence, you had to come back and pronounce that you would ignore. geesh.

How is this "interjecting" your beliefs on someone else? Look at the definition of the word first then get back to me. Simply stating what you believe is not forcing you to believe what she does. If you don't believe that ghosts are demonic spirits simply disagree and move on, she's not forcing you to believe that way, absolutely ridiculous logic being displayed here.

Now I will get to my ghost story. I work in a psych ward and there is always good activity in these institutions. There is a doctors office that is haunted and the site was built on Indian grounds (what a great place to build a psych ward.) One of my supervisors told me that he doesn't believe in the paranormal but this strange occurrence happened to him one night when he went up to the doctors office to slip a paper under the door for the doctor to sign in the morning. This was about 2-3 am and as soon as he slipped the paper under the door something from inside kicked the door so hard he almost fell back. His first thought was that a patient had escaped and somehow locked themselves inside of the office. He called security up and they opened the door and no one was inside. He returned a day later and put his ear up to the door and heard a growling and hissing noise. He also told me that other staff have heard knocking, banging, and have seen the door handle jiggle walking by. A security officer told me that he went up there and saw the door kind of "bending" supernaturally. Very creepy stuff, but I cannot get anything to happen for me as I have gone up to the office a few times late at night trying to invoke a response but haven't had any luck yet.

We have also had one patient disappear off the face of the Earth for an hour while a full scale search was going on inside the unit. There is absolutely no where to hide in the unit and this patient was gone for an hour only to just appear out of no where. When questioned, she told staff she walked through a "portal" in the wall and then returned .

Funny that I came across this thread. I was back to work last night after being off work for a month for a radial head fracture. I work in LTC, and we had a resident years ago who had been in prison a few times for various things early in life. There was a rumor he had murdered someone, but I always found that unlikely. He and I got along for the most part, until his later days. He died one day, somewhat unexpectedly. I remember right after he died, I was walking to the back, and saw him in his wheelchair, without thinking I said hello to him and continued on. Only after I got a few feet up the hallway, I realized that couldn't be him. I turned around and he was gone.

Fast forward a week from his death. His room is empty, and I just got a new resident into his bed and settled for the night. The new residents call light goes off, and I go down. He asks me to get "that man out of the room. He's spitting on everything." Shocked, I walked out, not really knowing what to say or do. The former resident, chewed and would spit tobacco all over the floors.

Last night, I was working the same hallway the resident used to be on. There are two women in his old room now. The one woman, who is rarely confused told me multiple times to "help that man with the beard... He can't find anywhere to get rid of his chewing tobacco." It has been years since that man passed, and all night I heard things and thought I saw things.

Maybe he's still around, who knows.

rynzoRN said:
We have also had one patient disappear off the face of the Earth for an hour while a full scale search was going on inside the unit. There is absolutely no where to hide in the unit and this patient was gone for an hour only to just appear out of no where. When questioned, she told staff she walked through a "portal" in the wall and then returned.

I love this one.

Any chance the "portal" was actually the ceiling or a vent?

A long time ago, a kid thought he was going to be clever and make a grand escape through the ceiling. Well, he didn't make it far before he crash landed at the feet of the staff who were looking for him :sarcastic:

Specializes in Psych, TRT..
Hygiene Queen said:
I love this one.

Any chance the "portal" was actually the ceiling or a vent?

A long time ago, a kid thought he was going to be clever and make a grand escape through the ceiling. Well, he didn't make it far before he crash landed at the feet of the staff who were looking for him :sarcastic:

At this facility there was no access to vents or any type of orifice. The patient mysteriously showed up in an area that was checked a dozen times by staff claiming they went into some sort of portal, weird stuff.

However at another facility I work at there is access to the ceiling and we had a patient go up there and wouldn't come down, he also took a dump up there which was cool of him =/. Cops had to taser him and bring him down.

Specializes in Psychiatric nursing; Medical-Surgrical.
morte said:
when you attempt to interject your religious views in a nonreligious thread, you get a response. But you could not maintain you silence, you had to come back and pronounce that you would ignore. geesh.

Have a good day.

Specializes in Psych, TRT..
morte said:
when you attempt to interject your religious views in a nonreligious thread, you get a response. But you could not maintain you silence, you had to come back and pronounce that you would ignore. geesh.

It may be a nonreligious thread to you, but to others this is very much a religious/spiritual deal and you are not being tolerant. It is certainly within the realms of paranormal and a lot of people are going to have different views on the cause of this. She just merely stated her opinion about what these things are and a few of you went off on her. Is she not allowed to have her opinion about what they are? She didn't try and FORCE her opinion on anyone either, just made a comment about what she believes this stuff is.

A close friend related this to me about a close friend of hers. His widowed mother was in the hospital, at the end stage of some chronic illness I can't recall right now. His brother was at her bedside when he noticed her looking past the foot of the bed very intently. She just stared and stared, there was nothing there, no TV, no paintings on the wall, no window, no nothing.

Finally he asked her, "Mom, what are you looking at?" And she answered in that maternal tone that brooks no argument, "Why, your father, of course, who has come to get me". She died a few minutes later.

Now whether that was a hallucination caused by the last firings of her brain, or her late husband truly had come to get her, I don't know. I hope it was the latter.

SnowballDVM said:
A close friend related this to me about a close friend of hers. His widowed mother was in the hospital, at the end stage of some chronic illness I can't recall right now. His brother was at her bedside when he noticed her looking past the foot of the bed very intently. She just stared and stared, there was nothing there, no TV, no paintings on the wall, no window, no nothing.

Finally he asked her, "Mom, what are you looking at?" And she answered in that maternal tone that brooks no argument, "Why, your father, of course, who has come to get me". She died a few minutes later.

Now whether that was a hallucination caused by the last firings of her brain, or her late husband truly had come to get her, I don't know. I hope it was the latter.

My Mom saw my Dad's parents and her Dad before she died.

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