What's Your Best Nursing Ghost Story?

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...

[BellaBlackwell]

SawAghost said:

Okay, I have a little time to tell about a few incidents I have experienced involving my grandmother. I never knew any of my grandparents except my maternal grandmother, who died when I was 12. She lived alone in an apartment complex for older folks in a town about 45 minutes drive away. She would come up many Saturday mornings and stay through Sunday evening. She would always get home about 7pm, when Wonderful World of Disney came on TV. Our family ritual back then was to watch Disney and eat Pillsbury turnovers. Anyway, back then anything farther than shouting distance was "long distance" and you got charged up the wazoo to make calls. So to save money, my grandmother would call the house and let the phone ring once, then hang up. That was her signal to us that she made it home.

When she died, things didn't get back to normal for a few weeks as you can imagine. When we finally settled back into our routine a month or so later, we'd be getting ready for Disney, and the phone would ring - once. We all just kinda looked at the phone, then went back to watching TV. After about the third week in a row that this happened, I happened to be next to the phone and answered it when it rang at 7pm Sunday night. There was no one on the line - no dial tone, nothing. It then dawned on me, and I said it out loud to my family.. I guess Mema is calling to let us know she made it home. After that it never happened again.

The second event was years later when my youngest brother had his second son. My parents and I had gone to visit him at his house in Virginia, and I was sitting on the sofa taking some pictures with my point-and-shoot film camera (before the days of 12mp iPhone 7 cameras), and my dad was sitting with their little Maltese dog in his lap, and my 18-month-old nephew was standing in front of him. The dog was gently licking my nephew's nose in a manner that seemed strange for a dog. I immediately raised my camera and took a picture, then I took a second picture without moving the camera. However, between the two pictures, I had this thought that came into my head. The thought was me saying "I wonder if Mema can see her great-grandkids." It was the weirdest thought to have at that moment. About two months later when I finally used the roll and had the film developed, I flipped through the pictures and when I got to the first picture (which was perfectly clear), the same thought came back into my head. Then as I went to the second picture, there was this white mist emanating from the area where the dog was kissing my nephew. The mist took up most of the frame and looked like it had substance, and was densest at that spot. Now I should mention that I had taken several advanced college photography classes by then, and developed my own film and made my own prints, so I am very familiar with film anomalies like light leaks and what have you. I checked the negative and there were no leaks or chemical anomalies. Whatever that mist was, the image of it went through the lens to the film and was within the frame. I think what happened was that my grandmother put the question in my head, then answered it on the second photo.

The third event many years later shares some similarity to the picture event. I had just gotten married and we moved across the country, staying with my parents until we could find a place to live. The dog form the previous story was now old and suffering from lymphoma and had been receiving chemo. She had bladder control issues and had peed on the living room carpet in quite a few places. To help earn our keep, my wife and I were in the process of cleaning the stains with a Bissell Little Green Machine as my dad came home and my mom and him took the dog to the vet because she had stopped eating again. We continued cleaning, and after a while I had this vision that was brief, but as vivid as reality. I looked up into my parents' open bedroom doorway, and saw my grandmother from the side, with the dog at her feet. She bent forward at the waist with outstretched arms, and the dog jumped up into them. As this was happening, I hear this dialogue in my head, where I asked her to take care of the dog, to which she replied "Don't worry, she's here with me." And that quickly, it was over. I am sitting there perplexed, thinking "What the hell was THAT?" About 15 minutes later, my parents get home and my mom runs to my wife and hugs her, sobbing. The vet has put the dog down because there was no hope for her. That kinda freaked me out, honestly. I knew that the vision marked the exact moment that the dog passed, and my grandmother sent a message that took me two weeks to relay to my mom once she was at a point where I felt I could tell her.

I once watched an interview with that medium John Edward. I've always been skeptical of him and people like him, but during this interview he was asked how he gets his information. The way he described the fleeting visions he gets was exactly how I saw my grandmother.

-this story made me cry.

[DocWorkaday]

Here's a really creepy ghost photo from an old hospital:

Ghost Photobombs Group Photo at Haunted Newsham Park Hospital

[NuGuyNurse2b]

lol the article says the images haven't been manipulated. that's exactly what it looks like to me!

[Looshmal]

I was returning to work, as a night nurse, after my first vacation in over a year. I was employed by a home for the developmentally disabled.

Finishing my work for the evening, I stepped outside of the nurses station to catch a smoke under the breezeway that runs along side the building. Passing on the same walkway, headed toward the "official" smoking area, was "Ms. Sandra", an older (in her 60's) but sweet nurses aid who was a long time employee of the facility.

She asked me for a cigarette, not unusual since she always seemed to be out, and I gave her one. We smoked under the breezeway talking about work, what this patient was doing, normal work-stuff. I flicked my smoke out and went back inside after saying my good byes and proceeded with the rest of my shift.

Leaving out in the morning, I passed another nurses aide "Ms. Mary", another long time employee. "Tell Ms. Sandra that she owes me a carton by this point", I said with a smile as a way of greeting "Ms. Mary".

The look I got from her could've frosted ice. "That's not funny", she replied. "What?", I answered both to her look and to her statement.

"Ms. Mary" then informed me that while I was out on vacation, "Ms. Sandra" had passed away from a stroke at her home. Her funeral had been held the day before I returned to work. No one had told me.

I felt the blood drain from my body, like someone pulling a plug from my feet. I was not mistaken. She was standing, literally feet from me the night before and just as real as the brick wall. I actually became a bit nauseous and walked back inside and straight to my Directors office.

No notice, no warning, I quit right then and there and left and I haven't been back since.

I can't tell you what or who I saw and spoke to that night outside the nurses station, but I knew that I wasn't going to be around just in case "Ms. Sandra" wanted to bum another smoke off me.

[BrightnessFalls]

jhenry said:

I worked for a while in a residential hospice facility...often, before one of our residents would die, many of the staff nurses would see a little child (sometimes boy, sometimes girl) playing in the hallway. The timing was never consistent...sometimes it would be minutes before a death, sometimes it would be hours or days, but always a death would follow. Seeing the child never was really scary..except that you knew it was something freaky. The whole place has a peaceful feel..not scary usually. Often, patients would speak about angels at their side. Once we had a nun as a patient and when she died we heard singing...checked all the rooms for a choir on tv and found nothing to explain the singing.

Not really a ghost story, and not really a story about nurses, but ...

I saw an incredible psychic for many years until he crossed over last year -- first and only one I ever saw; it was a birthday gift to me back in the late nineties. He was incredible. Anyway, I was talking to him about my guilt, having to put my father's wife in a Long Term Nursing Facility. She was a major sunsetter/wanderer, and it had reached the point where she had to locked in (how I hate that word!) for her own good.

My psychic was asking questions about her earlier life and I had to admit that I really didn't know very much about her -- I was an adult when my father married her, and she was always very remote; I don't remember her ever sharing any aspect of her life with any of us kids.

And my father, may he rest in peace, was a terribly difficult man to live with. I told my psychic that I did not believe she had a pleasant or peaceful life; my father told me several times that she had abandoned her first husband and two sons for another man; he never said this without adding that he would not have married her had he known she abandoned her children. He felt very strongly about that, but if he told me so willingly, I'm sure he threw it up to her as well, which makes me sad.

Especially, since I found out when cleaning out their house that she was married, and presumably pregnant, at age 14 or 15. I strongly suspect abuse, but, of course, she never mentioned it. She had no contact at all, ever, with her older son, and her younger committed suicide about the time she developed Alzheimer's Disease.

And my sister and I were shocked beyond belief to find that she had a daughter (she loved baby girls, was more or less indifferent to my sister and my sons, both of whom were born shortly after she married my father). Her daughter died as an infant and apparently -- I do not recall now how I know; I think her niece may told me the one time she called after hearing my stepmother might have an inheritance -- but her second husband was horribly abusive toward her. I don't know if he was involved in the death of the baby girl, if it were SIDS, or what. He apparently had a lot of clout and money for his area. I believe he owned a car dealership or two.

So .. such a tragic life. As I said, my father would never be physically abusive but he could be very difficult to get along with. She was an incredibly good wife to him.

My psychic listened silently (more like a psychologist!), and suddenly interrupted me, saying "there are so many people waiting for her on the other side!" He sounded really excited about it and went on to say, "They are going to celebrate her when she comes over, they are going to have a party and they are going to sing and sing and sing! They will sing for her until she knows nothing but pure happiness!"

He had been right about so many things that it really made me feel better, although I have to admit that I wondered if he was just trying to comfort me. Anyway, I would try to go see her at lunchtime several times a week (I drove my father to see her each weekend, but it was a rather long drive to pick him up, take him there and drive him home, whereas, I could dash out to her nursing home at lunch and spend a half an hour just making sure she knew I was there for her). I actually forgot about what my psychic said.

Then, several months later, I went to see her at lunch and she was sleeping. I whispered her name a couple of times to see if she was dozing or really sleeping, and then sat next to her for awhile. After a bit, she opened her eyes. She seemed so far away, as though she were somewhere else. I whispered hello, and asked if she was still tired and wanted to go back to sleep. She still seemed to be in a faraway place, staring at the ceiling, and after a couple minutes, she murmured, "there was a man singing all night long." I made a noncommittal reply, and she said, "he just sang all night. I didn't sleep once all night long." Well, that upset me! I asked her, "he kept you awake? Didn't anyone stop him so you could sleep?" She didn't even hear me. Still staring at the ceiling, still seeming almost unaware of my presence, she whispered, "It was the most beautiful thing I ever heard in my whole life."

I had completely forgotten what my psychic said, and I didn't remember until I got back to work and then I just got the chills. She lived another four years, steadily getting worse, and when she died, all I could imagine was the choir of voices awaiting her. She had heard a bit of the angel's choir while she was still semi-lucid and it comforted me to no end to think that this woman with her unbearably tragic life was being serenaded from a world that was really so very cruel to her.

[amoLucia]

The year 2006.

I had been looking for something in my desk and was just shuffling things around when I found an envelope of numerous family photos. We had had an 80th birthday affair for my Dad and had asked attending family & friends just to bring old photos of my Dad/family however far back they could provide. My sisters had made a collection from the 1900's thru the 2000's and we had made multiples of many of the photos. So I had my envelop of duplicates.

I was enjoying reviewing the photos and I came across one professional photograph from my folks' 1948 wedding. Such a nice picture. Dang! My Mom was pretty in her wedding gown, but my Dad ... he was one good looking dude. Like a young Elvis Presley, honest! Now my Mom had passed away in 1997 but my Dad was still with us, but starting to have serious health concerns and slow decline.

Looking at that picture ... I remembered their anniversary was November 20. Any guesses what that date was ?????? Yup, November 20!

I'm getting goosebumps again now. My Mom was present. My Dad passed away a year later - almost made it to the next November.

Not quite an occurrence in my nsg career but it reaffirmed my personal belief that there is so much intangible but unexplain-able 'power' out there.

[Davey Do]

I was hit head-on by a drunk driver in a pickup truck when I was 19 back in 1976. I suffered internal injuries, several fractures, and a closed head injury. I was unconscious for about 3 weeks.

During the time I was unconscious, I had what I called dreams. Some were probably just that, but as I became more conscious, some of the dreams were my family and loved ones talking to me which became intertwined in these dreams.

One of the earliest dreams that I remember involved my younger brother and sister and I going through a an old Victorian style house. As we entered each room,

TuggaWar said:

there was a big, black shadow standing there.

in the corner. I walked up to touch it and it disappeared. Finally, as we approached the last room, knowing the shadow would be there, I ran into the room and dove at it. Still, it disappeared.

Having been so close to death, and experiencing an NDE, I've always interpretted the shadow to symbolize death.

Regarding the NDE, I was in a place like the Tibetan Book of the Dead described as a gray fog. I was a part of the place without delineation. All who were there, dressed in maroon gowns were so glad to see me. I felt so loved and welcomed.

My grandfather, who passed away in 1964 was there. I remember his smile and wire-rimmed glasses. We communicated without words- just knew what each other was thinking.

I knew that I had to leave this place, as did everyone there. But we were happy for each other.

It was a great "dream"!

[Saturday's Child]

doe9181 said:

I haven't personally experienced anything myslef while at work but 2 of my coworkers have. Last year a few people died in one of the rooms on the south side of our floor within a close time frame and one of my coworkers swears one night she seen a short, dark blob go running out of 62 bed two into the room across the hall from it. Another coworker told me that after a woman had died her and another one of our coworkers were cleaning her up and the nurse that had the deceased patient asked them to close the door and when my coworker went to close the door, she said she felt resistance and the nurse felt it from the other side also, like the door didn't wan to close. Of course it works fine now and always did before that.

Some non-hosptial related stories I have mostly include deceased family and friends coming to let me know that they are okay after they have died. I had three seperate dreams of my grandpa that I remember vividly to this day. We were very close. The one I remember the most and that affected me the most was one where I was at his wake and I was sitting on the couch in front looking at his casket when a phone rang. My grandma told me it was for me so I turned my back to take the call. It was my grandpa on the phone telling me to turn around. I turned around and he was standing in front of me out of his coffin. He hugged me and told me that he was doing fine and missed us. I then said to him, "but grandpa, aren't you supposed to be dead?" And he said, "Yeah, I guess I am." He said it in a really sad voice and then turned around and got back in his coffin. Made me really sad.

Another story I have is one of a friend of mine that died in a drunk driving accident in high school. I was best friends with her sister growing up before they moved away to the suburbs and switched schools. About two weeks after she died she came to me in a dream and told me she was doing alright but that her sister was not. She then asked me if i could please call her sister and have her come stay with me for the weekend to get her out of the house (they shared a room when her sisiter was alive). I felt kind of dumb calling her house but I was compelled to do it. My friend wasn't home but her mom answered and I told her all about it and her mom found such comfort in knowing that Tiffany was alright and was reaching out to her sister. Her sister came over the following weekend and we had a fun, relaxing weekend.

One last thing that freaked me out and then I'm done (sorry this is so long). My boyfriend at the time's sister claimed she could speak in tongues. I didn't believe her and my ex said she should do it to me. They told me how she did it to her other brother's girlfriend and she was crying and really amazed. So I let her "speak in tongues" over me and she told me that my grandpa was in heaven and was doing good. She also told me that he was a police officer when he was alive (she didn't know that before) and how many brothers he had (didn't know that either) and other things she wouldn't of known. She told me that my uncle Solly (one of my grandpa's brothers) was a gruff man when he was alive (he was!) and he wasn't in heaven yet because not enough people prayed for him here on earth. You bet you butt I prayed for that man every night from that night on. I don't know if she was full of it but some of the things she knew, there was no way she would of known without me telling her. Kind of freaky right?:uhoh21::uhoh21::uhoh21:

Your dream, combined with your second comment made me chuckle, Many, many years ago, my sister's best friend died in a single car accident. She was a wild child, and it wasn't altogether a shock, even though she was only about 18 or 19 years old. She had been in a couple other accidents similar to the one she died in already.

Anyway, I had an ongoing beef with my sister and her. My sister couldn't wear my clothes -- they didn't fit her, but they fit her friend just fine. My clothes were constantly going missing and my sister would swear up and down that she had nothing to do with it. Then I'd see her friend wearing them, It caused some harsh words between us, I can tell you (Do NOT mess with a 19 year old girl's clothes that she spent all summer working to buy!), to the point that I threatened to pull my clothes right off my sister's friend's back if I caught her wearing them again.

Anyway, a year or two after she died, I dreamed my sister's friend showed up at our former family home (we had since moved but were still living there in my dream). She was wearing a pair of jeans of mine in the dream that I never did see after she died, and I started telling her off about it. She (we both had hot tempers) told me off right back and suddenly it occurred to me that she didn't even need my clothes, and I told her really snidely that she needed to stay out of my closet and, *** did she need my clothes for when she was dead anyway? She snarled back that it didn't matter, and the dream ended. I know -- not a nursing story or a ghost story, but I hadn't thought of that for years.

And it was weird because I simply do not dream of dead people. Even my father, whose loss was devastating to me: I only dreamed of him twice in the five years he has been dead, and on neither occasion did I actually see him. He was talking to me and we were in places (one day in the car) where, for some reason or another, I was unable to see him. Has anyone else experienced this? Dreams of loved ones where they can't actually see the relative, but can only hear him?

[Saturday's Child]

FranEMTnurse said:

I have never mentioned this to anyone before, but when I was a little girl, I was walking down the dirt road that led to our barn when all of a sudden I had a vision that I had been in another lifetime. in the vision, I was in a coral colonial dress with a high collar and long sleeves. has anyone else ever seen anything like it?

Fascinating! I have to respond to this experience because I've never heard anyone else mention that they had a situation like this. I was quite ill (not hospice or anything even close, but a number of critical health issues led to temporary disability on my part). I spent a lot of time alone, in my quiet condo, often in bed reading, occasionally on the computer, just browsing, especially late at night when I couldn't sleep. I wouldn't turn on the lights, I'd just use the screen from the PC for light, so it was always very dim. One night, very late, I couldn't sleep and got on the computer to read product reviews for appliances -- about as far from romance or mystery as you can get! -- and suddenly, just for a second it seemed, I was somewhere else.

Specifically, I was in a room with a beautiful young man who seemed to be pleading wildly with me. He was so upset, he was beside himself. I was definitely me -- I looked like myself but like a far more beautiful version of myself, if that makes any sense. I was also far far more serene than I really am. In fact, serenity radiated from this woman (me) despite the fact that she (I) was torn up.

It felt as though I had come to a decision and I knew it was the right one, and despite the fact that I was in emotional agony, I was calm because I was so sure my decision was the right one. I believe it had something to do with children and a husband. I knew I had a husband, who was not this young man I was in love with. For some reason, I had the feeling that my husband was much older than I. I can't tell you how strange and yet real this was -- there is no way to express how I knew I was no longer in the 21st century, but I wasn't. I was in another small dark room in another century and another body. I cried out in shock, and I must have called someone's name -- I really don't remember -- because the woman who was also me looked at me without surprise, and corrected me, saying softly, "no, Catherine" as though she were correcting her name. Her voice was calm, unsurprised. And when she said it, I knew, I saw it in my mind's eye, that it was Catherine with a C ... note this was some years ago before the Duchess of Cambridge was even engaged to the Prince, so it didn't have anything to do with subconsciously thinking of Kate Middleton, who, of course, wanted to be known as Catherine. Anyway, I didn't even have time to note the young man's reaction, although I got the sense that he was also aware of me and that neither were surprised that I was there. "Catherine" looked straight at me when she answered, so I assume that she saw me ...

Then just as suddenly as I had been thrust into this tableau, I was back at my computer, back in the 21st century. It probably took you fifty times longer to read my account of it than it actually lasted; certainly it took me far longer to write it than it, than the whole experience lasted. It had such an effect on me! I wanted to get back and see what the story was, what ended up happening, but I never again, at least to date, have experienced anything even remotely like what happened on that late night so long ago.

Here is what I do know. It is fortunate for me that I have always looked very young, because I have been involved with very young men all my life. I don't even care for men my own age. My most serious relationships have been with men who are ten or eleven years younger than I am. In fact, I actually get angry and disgusted with older men who try to pick up on me. I always have. That is the only connection I can think of with "Catherine," and it's obviously a faint one. That, and our similar looks. I've always been considered very pretty, but Catherine was (is?) more beautiful than I. Still, she was very definitely me. In retrospect, much of her beauty was derived from her radiance and serenity -- perhaps I, too, would be that beautiful if my heart was as beautiful as hers!

I would love to see her again and also find out who the young man was and it they ever ended up together later in life ... I don't think it's going to happen though.

[Abby426]

I work as a PCT on a locked medical/peds floor. Something happened last night that really creeped me out.

My unit is shaped like an H with the nurses station and a couple of med rooms in the middle of two halls of patient rooms. I was working with two nurses, and almost all of our patients had a bed alarm turned on. I was on one side of the hall when a nurse asked me to help her with something on the other side of the hall. We walked past a side door of the nurses station when I saw someone out of the corner of my eye. I thought it was my imagination because I was tired and I rarely work nights. Then the nurse behind me asked me if I saw someone. We checked to see if it was a reflection and then we checked the whole unit. The other nurse had been in a patient's room the whole time and there was no one else on the unit.

About half an hour later I was charting in the nurses station alone. As I previously mentioned, my unit is locked. We have a camera outside of the doors, but you can also see into the end of one of the halls where patient rooms are at. The monitor is right next to where I was sitting and I felt an overwhelming need to check the monitor. I look up at it and I see a man walking inside of the unit toward the patient rooms. I only saw him for a few seconds before he faded away. I found both of the nurses working with me, and they had both been in patient rooms on the other end of the unit. I had the same nurse from earlier check the other end of the unit with me, and of course there was no one there.

After we checked the unit, I asked the other nurse if anything has happened at that end of the hall recently. She had no idea of what had been going on. She said that a patient passed away down there over the weekend. Apparently it was completely unexpected and rather traumatic for everyone involved.

Needless to say, I will not be working another night shift any time soon!

[sevensonnets]

I may have posted this before. We had a CVI patient who liked to mess with the bed controls, and he especially liked to reach through the bedrail and push the button that made the bed go up and down. UP was his favorite direction to go. We had to watch him constantly lest he decide out and over the side was his next move. He died early one day. For a few days after that the bed started going up and down entirely on its at random times. It completely freaked out nights! We finally had maintenance replace it.

[marysuehil, ADN]

Ok, I am back with another tale of strange occurrences. As from an earlier post, I was once stationed at a base in NM and the hospital was downsized to a clinic. We still ran ambulance services, Family Practice, Immunizations, Women's Health, etc, just stopped inpatient care all together. When I was working ambulance services, all doors to the building were locked except the door to the ambulance bay. We had a security camera that watched that door and anyone that come in after hours we saw them on camera and they had to pass by us and check in so we could account for them while inside. I was working one night and one of my coworkers was trained in sterilizing instruments so she said she was going up to Central supply to run the autoclave and get instrument packs ready for the clinic the next morning. She didn't believe any of the crap the rest of us told her and didn't believe the story about the night we couldn't keep the doors and windows closed on the 2nd floor. She was on the 2nd floor 2 or 3 nights a week running sterile supply and had never seen or heard anything. We were in the military for crying out loud. Well she came back down a little later and says to me "Who came in while I was upstairs?" I told her no one. Well she had heard some children running around and giggling and heard someone tell them to be quiet. I told her no one had come in and ran back the video tape and let her watch. Nothing. She went back upstairs sometime later to get everything out and packaged up. When she came back down, she was obviously agitated and told me and the other tech that we weren't funny. We didn't know what she was talking about. When she went back up, all the doors and windows were wide open. And she closed them all and went on about the process of finishing up with the sterile supplies. When she came back out of there, all the doors and windows were wide open again and she could hear children giggling. We showed her our log, we had an ambulance call to a house on base and had been out most of the time that she was upstairs, alone. We had only been back a few minutes when she came down. I told her we even called her on the radio and told her we were going out on a run and that she answered back that she would be ok. She said she had put the radio down at the old nurses station when she was closing the windows the first time and forgot to take it with her into the sterile supply area. Needless to say we were all freaked out by that. As far as I know, she never would go upstairs by herself anymore after that.