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...

RNPolly said:
All right; I can resist no longer. Not a ghost story, but a kind of premonition, perhaps.

My brother, age 20, had been sick for a week with "the flu" when I left for college in 1972 at age 17. Several days later, I hear from my folks that he is in the hospital and has survived a close call with a ruptured appy. (He had been to the doc at least once, if not twice, during this week. But that's another story, as the doc was later disciplined by the state medical society for failure to provide minimal care - not my brother's case.) I was angry with my folks for years for not telling me what was transpiring, but I am mature enough now to realize that they thought they were doing the best thing by not adding to my stress level.

Anyway, the next day, suddenly, without a shadow of a doubt, I KNEW that he had died. I actually hid in a campus building where I knew no one would think to look for me so I could spend a couple hours alone, crying, before I felt ready to face those who would be coming to fetch me and send me home. Which is exactly what happened. My boyfriend-at-the-time had looked for me on another floor of that building, and, unable to find me, was waiting for me at the bike rack outside my dorm when I returned. My brother's death was totally unexpected - pulmonary embolism after ambulating in the hall with his fiance; they were to be married in one month. A tragedy all around.

Another weird thing that I have shared (until now) only with my sister:

About a month after his death, I had a very vivid dream. On a bright, sunny day, with puffy white clouds in an azure sky, I find myself walking down a street. Obviously a new street, as only new construction is visible. Several houses are going up, with many busy workmen about, and I hear the sounds of their talking and hammering as they pound nails in the wall partitions going up. As I pass the first house, my brother jumps down from the open first floor where he is either working or supervising and steps out to greet me. He motions to the house and tells me that he is building this house and that, when it is finished, I will come and live with him there.

That's all I remember, but it is the ONLY dream I've ever had that I can remember for more than a day or two - and this is 33 years later (yep, I'm "mature"). I cannot share this with anyone, for it makes me cry to think of it, which it does now. A few years ago, I finally shared it with my sister, who says she has had the same dream. I am convinced (and comforted by the thought) that when it is my time to pass, my brother will be there to greet me.

So reassuring. love this.

Specializes in Hospice Palliative Care.

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.

Specializes in Infectious Disease.

I've shared this story on another thread but I believe my daughter gets visited by her great-grandmother. She used to tell us stories about her Nana all of the time which is funny because Nana died two days after my daughter was born. Before she died though, she used to tell me to hurry up and give her a baby girl. She was so excited about having a great granddaughter.

The most alarming story began when my daughter was 2.5 years old. She came to me and told me that her Nana was taking care of her little brother and that he would be coming to live with us soon. I laughed her off because my husband and I were taking every precaution, outside of abstinence, to avoid a pregnancy. I always knew within the first three weeks if I were expecting and there were no symptoms. Anyhow, after a couple of months I started feeling weird. I went to the doctor for a checkup and he decided to do a pregnancy test. The test came back negative. I started taking vitamins and trying to get some extra sleep because I was really dragging. I kept feeling this way for about another month, and I missed my period, so I went back to the doctor. Another pregnancy test, another negative result. We chalked it up to the financial stress we were under. He gave me some medication to bring my period on. After about two weeks the period didn't come but I kept remembering my daughter telling me about her little brother. Even if the tests had come back positive, my husband and I figured we would terminate the pregnancy because we were in no position to care for another child. I actually called some clinics to get information about the procedure because I've never had one and wanted to be informed. After finishing the medication, I went back to the doctor. He gave me another pregnancy test, this one came back positive. I was immediately scheduled for an ultrasound to make sure everything was ok. I found out I was 4.5 months pregnant. Too far along for me to feel ok about terminating. I also found out the baby was a boy. I was floored. Nana told my daughter that she had my baby boy, waiting for him to come home. She still tells us stories about her Nana but she seems to be more uncomfortable now that she is 9 years old.

When I was 13, my great-grandfather was in a Nursing Home, and I was visiting. When it was time to go, I said "I'll see ya tomorrow Papa, I love you!" He replied "I won't be here tomorrow, I'm going home tonight." I tried to reassure him that "this is your new home" He said convinced, "No I'm going to my real home tonight." He passed Away before morning.

I also believe he spoke to me years later when I was 19 years old, when I was traveling a curvy, country road in January that had been icy, but melted for several days. I was in a straight away and heading for a curvy section, when I heard "you really need to slow down!" in a familiar voice. I heeded the warning and hit a 20 ft ice patch at 25 miles an hour and accelerated to 55+ according to State Patrol estimates before hitting an embankment head-on and flipping the car!

My Daddy told his sister and brother in law that he was going to have the family all together for Halloween in Oct. 2003. (He had been diagnosed with prostate and bone cancer in Jan of 2001 and given only 6 months.) On Oct 30th, (week after my sister from Maine, and 1 day after her husband arrived) he took his last breaths. He had ACTUALLY "planned" his death so to speak. He had only his wife, children (and husbands), grandchildren and a few chosen others by his side for his death.

My mom is convinced that daddy kicked her in the shin, causing her blood clot in June of 2004 when she was telling my uncle about her plans for fixing up the house. She said she felt like someone kicked her in the shin, and two days later she was in the hospital with a blood clot.....no one saw anything, and she was sitting on her front porch! She convinced herself it was Daddy telling her she needed to slow down!

I BELIEVE WE ARE WATCHED OVER BY LOVED ONES!!!

It was the middle of the Month of April 1995. I was working at a LTC facility, and had gone outside to smoke a cigarette with a coworker. Being the middle of April in Oklahoma you tend to see some strange cloud formations. My friend and I saw these clouds that looked like the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and they were headed toward OKCity. We thought nothing about it except it was a very strange cloud formation. The 19th of April (which was about 3-4 days later) we had the bombing of our Federal Building. Coincidence? I don't know. But like my heading says-this is the first time I have ever told anyone except my husband. I don't know if Sharlene told anyone or not. I'm not sure if any one would believe me or not!

Specializes in Oncology, Hospice, Research.

I have to add a quick story here though while not about a ghost, it still gives me goosebumps.

Several years ago while working as a hospice RN we received a referral for a lady dying of breast cancer. I called her for weeks trying to get her to allow me to come to her house and tell her about hospice. She politely refused each time, assured me that she didn't need help, blah, blah, blah. I'd call again and again and get nowhere. Her PCP was frantic and insisted that I go anyway and show up unannounced, which I did. Her husband answered the door and let me come in after I explained my mission and he led me to her bedroom. She started laughing when I came in and introduced myself and said "Oh, it's YOU. I would have let you come out weeks ago if I had known it was YOU!" I was totally confused as I had never laid eyes on her so I ask her how we knew each other. She calmly replied "you don't know me but I know you, I dream about you every night". She then went on to tell me that for weeks she'd been having dreams about me and the husband agreed that she had talked of little else.

Let me tell you that I was FREAKED OUT but I kept my composure until I left and then I was just shaking. The patient was very nonchalant about it and didn't think it at all odd. The end of the story is that I did indeed become her hospice nurse and cared for her for several months until she died. Lovely funny woman that I will remember until I die! :)

Thanks for the thread....it is interesting to hear all of the stories. :)

gapeach674 said:

The only thing that I can come up with (even to this day) is......... the bumps caused by the railroad crossing, "jolted" her heart to start beating again!

Any other thoughts or ideas about this?????

I know this was from a while back, and while this isn't a ghost story, I do agree with your theory.

My mom and dad were on the way to the airport, when my dad started veering over to the other lane and crashed into a church sign. My mom, who is a nurse, looked over at my dad. His face was white and his lips were blue, and he had vomited. She reached to check his pulse and got NOTHING.

Although she had quite a few injuries from the accident, she ran around to the other side of the truck, opened the car down, checked his carotid pulse. Still NOTHING. She reached in to grab him by the shoulders to extricate him from the car. My dad's a big man and he hit the ground with a pretty good "thud." Before my mom had a chance to perform CPR, dad started coming around. Since she had confirmed 3 times that he had no heart rate, we are pretty sure that the jolt to the ground from the truck was enough to restart his heart, thank God!

Yes, my dad did have an MI. I shudder to think if it would have happened an hour later. They would have been in the air on the way to Chicago, and this was before they had AED's installed on aircraft. Dad was very lucky.

My dad used to be a chef and he made the best homemade gravy!! Well after a long illness he passed away last july and for thanksgiving that year, everybody was quite bummed that he wasn't here to celebrate with us. So I decided to try to make the gravy, and I'm standing at the stove trying to remember how he did it when i just got the overwhelming feeling of someone standing behind me and looking over my shoulder!!. I really think my dad was coaching me on how to make gravy. Also about 4 months ago, I had a dream with my dad standing in front of me at a party and even though i could hear him talking and laughing, his lips were not moving, then he held out his arms and we hugged and i could smell his aftershave and he said it's all right now. I mean my dad was not one for hugging and showing his love but you always knew he did and i believe that he just wanted to finally show it.

We had a resident that was ill and she told the nurse that she would die on July 4th, this has been a few years back, well July 4th came and they got her up for Breakfast then lunch and then finally at supper time she slumped over in her chair and when they checked sure enough she was dead. Freaky!

Specializes in M/S, OB, Ortho, ICU, Diabetes, QA/PI.

awesome thread!!!!! here are a few stories:

Patients in our psych ward frequently complain to staff that they hear babies crying at night and one patient even saw baby footprints on the ceiling of her room one night - well, the OB department used to be in that space decades ago and is now in a totally different building across town (we have 2 different campuses to our hospital)

My best friend's grandfather died unexpectedly when we were in high school and her older sister, Lise, was very sad because she was 7-8 mos pregnant and her child would have been his first great-grandchild. A few weeks after the baby was born, Lise's husband was working 11-7 and she had the baby in a bassinet at the foot of her bed. She woke up suddenly and saw a figure at the end of the bed looking into the bassinet and she called "Randy (her husband) - is that you?" The figure looked up and she saw it was her grandfather, wearing the old plaid cap that he always wore and he said in his Scottish accent "It's ok - it's just me, Granda. I just wanted to see my great-grandchild. He's just beautiful." And then he disappeared. The baby never woke up at all through all of this.

I had a patient die slowly on my shift, surrounded by family. At various times of the day, he would call out names of family members who were already dead and comment on them in some way. For example, he called out "Hey Joe, you still smell! How about that?" and he started laughing. (Apparently, Uncle Joe had arthritis really bad in his shoulders and used to slather himself with some really strong smelling ointment) All day, he did this without opening his eyes. It freaked the family out at first, but they got used to it and I think it helped them let go of him because they knew he was going to be going to where family was.

My mother's father was comatose and dying. My parents were living literally on the other side of the country (in Canada) and they were hauling butt to get home before he died. (On a side note, my grandfather was very fastidious and always made sure his hair was just so and he was clean-shaven his whole life - which wasn't always easy to pull off since he was a logger and worked away from home for weeks a time in logging camps.) Anyway, my parents got to the hospital and my grandmother told him who had come - my mother is the oldest but the only one who didn't live local. He hadn't opened his eyes for days but he opened his eyes to look at my parents and then closed them again. He lived through the night and in the morning, the nurses came in and cleaned him up and he hadn't been shaved in a day or two so they did that too. 5-10 minutes after he was cleaned up, with my grandmother and all 6 kids around him, he opened his eyes, nodded and died. I think he was waiting for my mom and also didn't want to die unshaven.

This isn't hospital related (I just graduated and I hope I don't run into any ghosts too soon...I have enough to worry about already!), but it is a ghost story. Actually, it's a story that happened to my best friend several years ago. About 14 years ago her hubby was worked for the air force and they were stationed at Edwards Air Force Base (where the shuttle lands). Anyway, her Mom had come out to visit and they were driving off of the base pretty late at night. Well, according to her, at Edwards in order to get off the base you have to drive for miles and miles through the desert and it is, of course, very very dark at night. So, they're driving through the desert she and her Mom and her son is in the back of the car when her headlights light up a guy walking on the side of the road way up ahead. He's got on a flight suit and he's carrying his helmet in his hand down next to his body. When they're getting closer to him, her Mom turned to her and suggested that maybe they should pick him up. My friend agreed and when they both brought their eyes back to the road he had vanished. She said it was the weirdest thing that has ever happened to her. They both just kind of looked at each other with shocked faces. The thing about Edwards AFB is that they do a lot of test piloting for planes out there and several planes have gone down in the desert killing men over the years. Anyway, that's just another story to scare you before you go to bed tonight.

Cindy

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.

I worked night shift. One night, it was 1:00 am we just finished our rounds, so we sat in the nurse station, talking about the resident that just die that day. All of the sudden we heard a little girl screaming and it seems she is running. We just look at each other. and we searched each room, maybe we forgot to turn off the TV somewhere. :uhoh21: We found nothing, so we went back to the nurse station. this time we heard it again, but it seems its running toward us. I did not say anything, :uhoh3: I just want to get out of that station. We told that story to other staff, they just laughed. Well, the next 3 nights they experienced it too. :rotfl:

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