Haunted Hospital??

Nurses Spirituality

Published

Just in time for Halloween, have you ever sensed something unusually unexplainable happen at your facility that seemed to be outside of typical reasoning? Miracles, premonitions, ghost stories, or spiritual experiences, if you will? :wideyed:

Specializes in School health, Maternal-Newborn.

I used to work on an SNF in the old wing of a hospital. more than one confused patient complained that they could hear babies crying. I spoke with an old salt, who explained that that floor used to be Maternal Newborn...

I also heard ghost stories about Sunmount in Tupper Lake NY, it was first a veterans hospital, then a TB hospital before it became a "State School" It's still used as such, as well as a prison for intellectually challenged folks who've committed crimes... I've never been there after dark, not sure I'd want to be!

Who doesn't like a good ghost story? There is a good show called "Haunted Hospitals". I found it entertaining even though some of the special effects and noises were a little overboard. If you have an Amazon Prime account it's free right now.

Specializes in Instructor of Nursing and Med/surg nurse.

Years ago a Native American woman passed away and her uncle performed a right with smoke and an eagle feather (the hospital allowed this back then). This was like at 3 am in the morning and we were instructed to open all of the exit doors to the outside so her spirit could leave. I was her nurse and this process was so beautiful, but she was in great pain with an open abdominal fistula from cancer. The doors slammed shut out of our hands when she died and the smoked zoomed out. No joke

Then her appearance was beautiful and at peace when prior she was in so much pain her whole body was distorted and her skin pitted and mottled. After death she looked absolutely beautiful and her skin was supple. I never had that experience either with a body looking better after death.

I will never ever forget it and it supported my advocacy for patients.

2 Votes
Specializes in Oncology, ID, Hepatology, Occy Health.

As a student nurse on night duty (1986!) we heard a woman screaming in pain. Running down to where the noise was coming from, that room was empty. Patients in surrounding rooms sleeping peacefully. Nobody visible outside looking out of the windows. Nobody heard anything on the ward next door or on the floors above and below. Seemingly nothing going on.

We didn't know but when the day staff came on and we told them, one of the older staff said that many years ago a lady had died in that room who had terrible uncontrollable pain from ophthalmic shingles. Intermittantly, night staff report hearing screaming coming from that room when it's empty.

I DID hear something that night, but I don't believe in ghosts. I'm quite prepared to accept it could have come from outside or a neighbouring patient could have been screaming out during a bad dream. I'm equally prepared to accept that perhaps there are cybernetic fields, energy fields etc. or some other scientific explanation that we don't yet fully understand for these kinds of happenings. I was once interviewed on this incident by a guy studying such phenomena for his PhD, but we lost contact and I never got to know what his conclusions were. Sure, people really do see and hear strange things, but ghosts? No, I really don't think so.

1 Votes

Not a haunted hospital, but a haunted room.

(Pre-COVID) Pt gets their personally written DNR revoked by their parent - brought to the ICU to 'treat' their terminal neuro-oncological condition. Every provider consulted for this patient explains the poor prognosis and lack of treatment to the family, family continues to keep the patient a full code and rotate 24/7 family supervision on the patient so that no staff might try to 'pull-the-plug' on the patient. Providers that try to enter the room to assess the patient are trapped in the room by family in attempts to start treatments they look up online - security is called every time to rescue said providers. That patient was in the ICU for almost 3 months - patient finally codes and we need to call security to get the family out of the room. This patient is weeping, edematous, DIC - initial compressions on the patient spewed fluid all over the place before we could finally get any actual force on the heart. After 2 cycles of CPR, pt remains in literal asystole. Provider finally calls it after 30 minutes. Family brought back to patient's room, family is violent and accusatory with staff - family needs to be chaperoned by security in the room.

After this patient is cleaned and brought down to the morgue - the code blue alarm and examination lights go on and off intermittently. This continues to happen for about a month and ONLY when there is no one in the room - despite engineering and staff going in there several times to troubleshoot the code blue/light panel. The chaplain is called to bless the room and the random code blues/flickering lights stop.

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