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 Critical Care.

I used to work in a 6 bed PICU and was there late one night with another nurse and a CNA. The room on the very end was unoccupied and we were fairly quiet that night. As we sat at the nurses station we heard this beeping sound twice in a row. We knew this sound but couldn't recall from where. It happened every few minutes as we hunted for it and kept telling each other that it was a sound we heard daily, but what from?? Then we followed it down the unit into the vacant room. The sound was the double beep our beds made in the mornings when we weighed our patients. Spooky thing was..no patient in the bed. OK, so it's malfunctioning, right...nope the bed was unplugged from the wall and the plug lay on top of the mattress. That could be explained away with the battery was low........except these beds don't have a battery in them. When they are unplugged nothing works on them. That along with the crying baby we heard from that room occasionally really freaked us night shifters out.

Chad_KY_SRNA said:
The best I have heard is from a nurse who said that one night she was floated to oncology at the hospital she used to work at. She was given a patient who was passing away and had been unconscious for several days. At one point during the night the nurse went into the room and the patient was at the top of the bed and looked at her and said, "don't let them take me!", the nurse was freaked out and asked her who was going to take her and she said that black thing up there and pointed up in the air. This patient died within minutes.

Come on now share your stories, I know you have seen and heard freaky things.

While working the night shift in our ICU/CCU we had several patients die in Rm. 11 in the past week. This night, the room was empty, the glass door was closed, and the ICU was quiet. Suddenly the call light for Rm. 11 started going off and then the light came on over the bed. I looked at the Montior Tech , she looked at me, and then we both shivered. Why was the call light :uhoh21: going off in an empty room and how did the light turn on by itself???

Definitely spooky!! After that , we called it the haunted room for several years.

There have been many times over the years when a patient has told me they were going to die, or that a dead family member was there to get them, and then quickly died. This does not seem spooky, it just makes you realize that people often know they are about to die and we should listen to them.Often they are not afraid. These "visitors" seem to be a calming presence.

I had one elderly woman ,who was doing well post AMI, tell me she was not going to make it. I told her she was doing fine at the moment and asked her what made her feel that way. She said that the angels were coming for her and then she immediately went asystole. We were not able to resuscitate her. That is the quickest I have had someone die after telling me they were going to.

Specializes in MED/SURG, ONCOLOGY, PEDIATRICS, ER.
kbclary4 said:
I am so easily scared, I would leave and never come back. Seriously. I am actually getting uneasy being in my apt. alone and reading this stuff. I really would have to quit my job if I saw anything like that or have someone go with me everywhere I went. My husband and I were watching The Shining the other night (I had never seen it) and I made him get up and go to the bathroom with me and I wouldn't let him go anywhere unless I followed him because I didn't want to be left alone. He was so aggravated, but I really scare easily.

Hahahahahahah!! :rotfl: ohhhh! you make me laugh! Right now i've been reading all these scary stories, not done yet :uhoh21: it's 9:30pm i suppose to take a bath and i am soooooooo scare that i do not know if i can go( to the bathroom) by myself...my husband is sleeping!! :crying2: Should I wake him up? :rotfl:

Bori

student4ever said:

I'm with you all who say that ghosts, or the spirits who stay behind after death are not here to harm us. I haven't seen a lot of ghosts, but I have felt the presence of several. In fact, there is a ghost in my house. I haven't ever seen him/her, but this ghost likes my screwdriver for some reason. No matter how many times I put it back in the drawer, it's never where it needs to be when I want it. My boyfriend is not handy be any means, and he never uses it, so I know it's not him. I hear this "Ghost" walking around in the house when I'm home alone, but I've never seen him/her. Maybe I will, maybe I won't.

I used to work the late shift at the movie theater, and theater number 9 has a ghost. It's a little girl, around 3 years old, with long curly blonde hair, in this frilly little blue dress from I would say late 1800s kind of period. The story is, she was killed on that site back around the turn of the century, and she was killed (hung I think) by her parents. She's scared to go on to the afterlife because she's afraid her parents will be there. There's no explanation for it and most people don't believe me, but I have seen her. Theater number 9 is always cold, no matter what temp you set the thermostat on, and last night my bf and I went to see batman in theater 9, and my r hand was cold the whole time. I think she was holding my hand. One of the projection managers who worked with me when I worked there used to talk to this little girl all the time. This little girl likes to hang out by the projector, and the manager was trying to reassure her that if she went on to heaven, jesus would protect her, and her parents couldn't get her if she went to heaven, but I guess her paranormal psychotherapy wasn't working, 'cause I know I felt the presence of this little girl last night while we were watching batman. Haven't seen any ghosts or spirits at the hospital yet - still waiting.

I love these stories, keep them coming.

Chilling! to my knowledge, I've never seen a ghost and happy not to.

BORI-BSNRN said:
Hahahahahahah!! :rotfl: ohhhh! you make me laugh! Right now i've been reading all these scary stories, not done yet :uhoh21: it's 9:30pm i suppose to take a bath and i am soooooooo scare that i do not know if i can go( to the bathroom) by myself...my husband is sleeping!! :crying2: Should I wake him up? :rotfl:

Bori

?????? Sarcasm ??????

ShirleyR said:
I've been a hospice nurse for 5 years. I have been with hundreds of people at the time of their death & I can tell you first hand that if the patient isalert enough to speak, you'll hear them talking to loved ones that have already passed over. I had a patient last week that kept saying where did the precious baby go? His grown children were at his bedside kept naming off grandchildren's names thinking he wanted to see them one more time. He kept telling them no, that wasn't the baby he was talking about. Finally one of the daughters asked him if it was Randall he was talking about, his face face lit up & he said "Yes, my precious baby. Your Mother brought him here & now I don't see him". Come to find out Randall was a child of his that only lived 6 hours after birth & his wife died 6 years ago. It gives me a kind of peace knowing we are not going to be alone at the time of our "transition".

I had a pateint doing this who was talking to me and said she could see her father and mother, then started talking about packing up "enough diapers and bottles to take with me". It turned out she had given up her son as an infant but kept two daughters when she left the kids Dad for another man. Nobody caring for her knew about the son...he didnt appear in any family photos or anything. Good news is that they tracked him down and she got to say goodbye before she died.

Laura

Specializes in MED/SURG, ONCOLOGY, PEDIATRICS, ER.
Tinkerbell2 said:
?????? Sarcasm ??????

Sarcasm??? I don't think so....but if that makes you happy.....i am not that kind of person, it's just that i was in the same situation with kbclary4 and makes me laugh...just an explanation, sorry if i did offend anybody it wasn't my intention. :))

Anyway, go on with those scary stories...scary but i like it!

BORI-BSNRN said:
Sarcasm??? I don't think so....but if that makes you happy.....i am not that kind of person, it's just that i was in the same situation with kbclary4 and makes me laugh...just an explanation, sorry if i did offend anybody it wasn't my intention. :))

Anyway, go on with those scary stories...scary but i like it!

Ohhh Ok LOL

I wasn't sure, that is why I put the ??? marks. I thought you may have been making fun of her for getting scared after reading the stories. Most of them were sending chills up and down my spine.

There was another reader who seemed to think that all of the stories could be explained by someone experiencing tricks of their minds or eyes. There

are alot of skeptics out there. It is easy to be skeptical when one has not experienced something like that themself.

Me, myself... I have not seen a ghost (to my knowledge), but I do believe that departed spirits walk among us.

Specializes in ABMT.
sbergetlvn said:

Would Nurse Betty count against the day's PPD?

Maybe it would depend on if you could see through her or not??? :chuckle tee hee.

Keep em comin, keep em comin! These stories are great! I wish I had one. Or maybe I'm glad I don't! I don't want to see rose petals falling from the ceiling unless I put them there!

Specializes in MED/SURG, ONCOLOGY, PEDIATRICS, ER.
Tinkerbell2 said:
Ohhh Ok LOL

I wasn't sure, that is why I put the ??? marks. I thought you may have been making fun of her for getting scared after reading the stories. Most of them were sending chills up and down my spine.

There was another reader who seemed to think that all of the stories could be explained by someone experiencing tricks of their minds or eyes. There

are alot of skeptics out there. It is easy to be skeptical when one has not experienced something like that themself.

Me, myself... I have not seen a ghost (to my knowledge), but I do believe that departed spirits walk among us.

? Yes, you're right! There is a lot of people that not believe in ghost and make fun of these kind stories....I haven't seen a ghost, thanks God!:uhoh21: but i agreed with you that departed spirits walk among us......:stone

luv your nurse said:
Where do these petals come from? the roof? like appera out of thin air? have you seen this?

As I said in my post, I was standing in the room when this happened. The rose petals just started floating down out of nowhere. It went on for a little while and then they stopped.

Mulan said:
Is that like the help that never shows up?

How refreshing! Nurses who have a grasp on the real reality on nursing!

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