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...

[murph]

mdrkan said:

First I want to convey that all of the stories previously posted have been unbelievable and truly awesome to read.

My stories do not take place in a hospital but..............

When I was a little girl my bedroom was always very cold no matter what the thermostat for the house was set at. Our house was a new construction, in other words our family was the first to inhabit our home. I recall so clearly as I was growing up that I always felt as though I was not alone. So much so that I began talking to the whatever it was. At times I would feel something brush by my arm, but of course there was nothing/no one there. I never told a soul. I just dealt with it. Well now to fast forward to many many years later my best friend had some friends over her house to hang out. One of the guests claimed to be psychic and said she would do complimentary readings for everyone. Well, when I sat down and did the card thing she required she looked me in the eyes and said, "You must stop speaking to the spirits in your bedroom" I freaked out. I was embarassed and crying and Scared. Like I said, I had never told anyone, including my best friend. The psychic said that they were not necessarily bad spirits but that I should not encourage. SHe advised me to go home and rebuke the spirits from my room or something like that. I did do what she advised. Not long after that I moved out of my parents house and got my own place 2500 miles away. LOL

Next story............I was about 9 years old and was attending my Uncles wake. While sitting there staring at him, I totally saw him get up out of the casket. I screamed. Of course everyone said it was my imagination but I know differently, especially after reading all these awesome posts.

Thanks for the opportunity to share!!!

Karen

Florida RN

I just saw "the sixth sense" again recently. Sounds like you have a gift.

[Zoomer]

I have a couple. One night while working in the oncology unit we has a dying patient whose family was all around him comforting and telling him it was all right for him to move on that they would be fine. The daughter at one point asked him "what are you waiting for Dad?" and her father who had been pretty out of it , opened his eyes and said clearly "4 o'clock". Sure enough at exactly 4 AM he was pronounced dead. It gave me chills.

We had a patient who was a frequent call button pusher who died and while we were doing post mortem care the call light went off. after that happened the light went off frequently in the middle of the night for no reason. We always said is was "Mrs. Jones" wanting the bedpan.

At my current hospital they say there is a Nurse Betty who roams around PCU at night and has put on call lights for patients who are in trouble but can't get to the call light. One time a patient was found on the floor of the bathroom and the light on the bed was going off. Another time a patient was found in respiratory distress and the call light was out of reach and the patient said she had been trying to reach the light and couldn't but that she didn't turn the light on herself.

[Cute_CNA, CNA]

Zoomer said:

At my current hospital they say there is a Nurse Betty who roams around PCU at night and has put on call lights for patients who are in trouble but can't get to the call light. One time a patient was found on the floor of the bathroom and the light on the bed was going off. Another time a patient was found in respiratory distress and the call light was out of reach and the patient said she had been trying to reach the light and couldn't but that she didn't turn the light on herself.

That is cool ?

[medsurgnurse, RN]

I used to work in an old catholic hospital. Where the labor and delivery unit is located now, it used to be the convent for the nuns that worked at this hospital. One of the nuns died of natural causes years ago. This nun loved and raised numerous varieties of roses. Ever since the OB department was moved to this area, anytime a mother or baby is having difficulties you can smell the scent of roses throughout the whole unit. The OB nurses know to be prepared when they start smelling the scent of roses. If a mother or baby dies, the room suddenly fills with rose petals. It is one of the creepiest, but also loving things that happens. I was standing in a room one night when the baby died. The room filled with white and pink rose petals. The nurses and family was creeped out.

I worked at another hospital where you would see a nurse in the old white dress and cap walk down the hallway and smile at you. Then she would walk into a patient's room and apply wrist restraints. All the nurses knew her. It was just Mildred who died 60 years ago. You just had to follow her so you can take the wrist restraints off.

I do have other stories that are a lot creepier than these.

I know this is an old post. But I wanted to reply to this. diffinately, call a catholic church next time this happens. Such things when documented are considered miracles by the Catholic Church. Of course it a little more complicated than that, but the church will have someone investigate. The persons who witnessed it would need to be able to tell what they saw.

[goober]

One of the weirdest things that has happened in my nursing so far ( im still a student) happened on my very first night as an HCA on a med/surg ward, and an elderly gentleman was one of my patients.

This man was actually what is called in my country a Kau Matua.. which is like the elder/ head of the family of the indegenous race of people here. A Kau Matua has significant importance to the family and so there were about 20 family members on the ward to see him at any one time.

This ward was actually very good for this situation as it had a whanau (family) room for when such events occured.

The family was a very loud bunch and after several hours of asking them to keep the noise down I was surprised and a little glad that they went quiet.

I checked the Whanau room and noone was there so I went into the room where this client was.

The family were all huddled around the bed.. most were silent and one or two were exchanging whispers.

I asked if there was a problem...

one of the family members asked ' can you see that?'

I couldnt see a thing...

a few minutes later the elderly gentleman passed away due to a complication that had arisen post surgery.

I overhead the family in the whanau room talking about seeing the ancestors of this man coming to collect him....

I thought it was very strange that a whole family of people could recount seeing the same thing...

bizarre, but true

[onesmallspark]

My grandpa died last Feburary and as he was dying my mom was sitting with him and he called out to his cousin who died years ago. My mom said it was like he was seeing her and told him to go see her, which he did as he died minutes later.

I don't think he went far though as my grandma woke up a few weeks ago to "hear" someone humming a song she knew. She got up and turned all the lights on in the house but she could still hear it, then she realized she could hear my grandpa singing a hymn that they both loved. She started singing with him and they sung the whole hymn together and then the sound stopped. She said that she was not scared at all and just feels that grandpa was telling her he was alright and was still looking out for her. The thing is that grandma is totally deaf without her hearing aids in and doesn't wear them to bed but she heard grandpa and knows she was fully awake durring this experience.

Oh geez.... that one really made me tear up! (but in a good way!)

[The Gunslinger]

Also, you should consider contacting serious researchers in haunting/parapsychology about that incident. You have multiple witnesses seeing something that cannot be explained by any conceivable rational explanation (a guy floats, speaks demonically, dies, and comes back to life). Were it properly documented and recorded for posterity this would probably go down as one of the most dramatic incidents in parapsychology in American history.

The rose petals just started floating down from the ceiling. It was like someone was just showering the room with them. This has happened several times over the years.

My creepiest and scariest ghost story for me happened about a year ago. It really was more of a posession than a ghost story. I was helping another nurse with a patient that had lived a very hard life. It had numerous things going on with him from cardiac to renal failure. You name it, he had it going on. This man was very much afraid to die. Every time his heart monitor beeped, he would just go into a rage screaming, "Don't let me die! Don't let me die!" The other nurse and I found out why he didn't want to die. About 0200 his cardiac monitor starts alarming V-Tach. We both rush into the room. I am pulling the crash cart behing me. When I get to the room, the other nurse is completely white. This man was sitting about 2 inches above the bed and was laughing. His whole look completely changed. His eyes just had a look of pure evil on them and he had this evil smile on his face. He laughed at us and said, " You stupid b****es aren't going to let me die will you?" and he laughed again. We were kinda frozen. I did reach up and hit the Code Blue button and when I did the man went into V-fib. He crashed back onto the bed. We started coding him, but after 20 minutes it was called. 5 minutes after the code was called several of the code team is in the room cleaning up when this man sits straight up in the bed and says, " You let him die. Too bad." and then begins laughing. The man collapsed back to the bed. We heard a horrible, agonizing scream ( actually every patient in the unit that night commented on the scream), and then you could hear "don't let me die" being whispered throughout the unit. Everyone of the nurses that night was pale and scared. No body went anywhere by themselves. By morning the whispers of "don't let me die" were gone. The night shift nurses had a prayer service in the break room before we left for home and then we all had nightmares for weeks.

[SmilingBluEyes]

it makes me sad beyond belief that it is possible that after life, spirits are that bound and trapped to the hospital/LTC. I would hope desperately to have moved on to the Afterlife/Otherside and have left all that behind me once I have died. These stories just sadden me. I hope I am not doomed to be trapped there after being dead.

[sarahRN482]

I worked in a small rural hospital, on a med/surg unit right out of nursing school. I worked nights 7p-7a, which tends to be somewhat of a "creepy" shift anyway because typically, it's dark everywhere in the hospital at night. Our floor had two halls (evens & odds) and on this particular night I had patients at the end of both halls. The very last rooms at the end of each hall were negative pressure rooms for TB or other isolation patients, etc. We hadn't put any patients in those rooms for probably a month or so, and our ped's unit had been using one of the rooms as a storage room for extra cribs and other equipment. I was making a round checking on my patients at the end of halls and I could see a tv on in one of the isolation rooms that was being used as storage. I walked up and peaked in the window and you could hear the tv blasting; the weather channel of all things! I freaked out and ran down to the nurses station and refused to go anywhere near that room the rest of the night.

Another story that happened in the same hospital: We had a patient on the odd wing that had come in with abd. pain. The docs couldn't really find anything wrong with this guy, but he refused to be discharged, so they kept him there for a while. I came in at 7 one night and got report from his day shift nurse, who informed me that while she had been in his room passing his med's, he asked her if anyone had died in the other bed in the room. She of course said that was very likely that someone had died there, and he looked at her and said, "I kinda figured, cause she's sitting on the edge of the bed right now." The day shift nurse said she got freaked and left the room asap.

We had other stuff on that unit that would happen like the bathroom sink in one room would come on and off by itself with no patients in that room, call lights going off in unoccupied rooms. And the LTC which was the floor above the one I worked on, said their residents always talked about "the man in black" before they died.....

[suzy253, RN]

These aren't nursing-related stories but they've happened to me.

I used to work for this guy--wonderful person and he became like a 2nd father to me (my father having passed several years before). He would give me advice, build up my confidence and we became great friends--also with this wife and the rest of his family. We were all very close. He became sick with cancer and was in the hospital; his wife, wanting to make sure someone would be with him 24 hours started making up a list of people she would ask. I was #1 on the list. During the night, the day before I was to go and sit with him, I woke up saying to myself that I have to get ready to see Jack. I tried to sit up in bed and distinctly felt this gentle hand pushing me back down. It was a very strange feeling but I knew that Jack had died. I lay there crying until morning when I got the dreaded phone call. Broke my heart. I still miss him terribly.

another one--my childhood girlfriend who I hadn't seen in about 25 years--I had a dream that her mom had died (I hadn't seen her mom for even a longer amt of time). Something made me look her up and when I finally did talk to her, I asked about her mom and that's when she told me that she died on the night of that dream.

[General E. Speaking, RN, RN]

we had an elderly 102 yr old in our hospital who kept talking out the "white birds from Jesus" she prattled on and on about these white birds. Later that day I went in to check on her and found her sleeping. I looked outside the window and sure enough a white bird came and landed on the ledge. She passed later that night.

[BabyRN2Be]

How in the world did he hit them twice?

I'm not entirely sure how it happened. My grandmother was hit twice. I think that the driver (a 16 y.o. female) was distracted that she hit them once, my grandmother was actually able to get up after the first hit and went to aid my grandfather when the driver swerved and somehow hit them both again. It doesn't make sense, I know, but they were hit twice.