Nursing and the supernatural

[nursingaround1]

Just wondering if anyone has seen some patients near death/in the process of dying, have something supernatural happen. I can't say I've ever seen anything with the deaths I've seen, in fact generally it hasn't been very pleasant at all, but within the last year, some spooky things began to happen when a new nurse joined our team, and the school bought an run down old people's home and renovated it, to use as our new health center.

Two things happened recently; the first was on the night shift, when the clinic was empty, with my new colleague. She was just about to go to sleep, when there was a loud bang, and her bed shook violently. She was pretty freaked out, and refused to sleep there, and every night shift stayed up all night with the light on, reading or on her laptop - unless of course students are in for observation, whereupon she's busy.

The second thing happened soon after this first event, which we were both discussing one evening, was she got a phone call saying a friend had died in an accident. She was naturally upset, and we were discussing whether we thought there was more beyond this life, when the door between the offices swung closed and clicked shut. Sent a shiver down my spine, and hers too. It's an enclosed space, with no breezes. We were quite freaked out.

Anyway, we find in a cupboard in the bedroom some salt, incense, candle and big crystal rock, with a hole cut out to put the candle in, and talk about this with the other nurses, and one admits to being a 'spiritualist' and the noises in the night are nothing to worry about.

Anyway, the new nurse is quite upset, and we agree to get the local minister in to have a look around. He blesses the place, and since then nothing has happened.

Just wondering if anyone else has experienced anything.

[DarkEyed]

I say we go with this! Time for a new one! I can't wait to read the comments! :)

[Cruz.Cookie, BSN, RN]

Yes! Love these stories

[GhosttRN]

In my old hospital we had just one room where the pts would all call around 1-4 in the am complaining about the kids playing with a ball outside the door and asking us to keep them quiet. Never were any kids but it was an old Peds floor years prior.

On a different floor we had a guy die from CA and it seamed he stuck around in his room and the adjoining room. The call bells for those two rooms would always go off and the beds never stayed made-up when they where empty, like someone was always sitting/laying on the made bed. He would also turn on the water faucet. Really freaked out one of our CNAs one night when she was restocking. She refused to go in there at night after that.

[Carolll]

The first night that I worked in one of the Hospice Houses, about 3 am I saw someone in a red top walk through the kitchen, I went to look and there was no one there. The next morning, I mentioned it to the cook and she said that the volunteers wore red tops and that it was probably one of them as many had passed. This isn't new for me though, I've always heard and seen things. I questioned my mother before she passed and she told me that they had a dog when I was little that had to be put away, she said that she continued to hear the dog walk around the house and then lay down. She told me that it goes away in about 6 months if you ignore it......she's come back to visit several times and even left her butt print in her bed once.....

[NanaPoo]

In my 12 years of hospice, both inpatient and home hospice, it was very common to have patients in their last 2 days or so report seeing deceased family members in their room and particularly at the foot of their bed. They would also say they see a beautiful lady or a beautiful angel. All of the patients who had these experiences had professed to be "believers" or Christians prior to the end of their lives. As hospice nurses we always addressed all aspects of their lives including the spiritual. Being in the South, it wasn't uncommon for our patients to be Christians, particularly Baptists.

I've been at the bedside of many dying patients who appeared to have a painful and frightening experience but 3 stand out in particular. One was a professed atheist, one was hubby's family member who was a lifelong Baptist, and one inpatient hospice who was a young cervical CA patient whose spiritual status I cannot remember but whose pain was uncontrolled until her demise. Hers was the most unsettling for me as a nurse because I felt my job wasn't done properly even though her doctor ordered unlimited medication and I stood by her bed for hours pushing medications. That day will haunt me until my own death.

But my hubby's family member did not go peacefully as most of my patients always had in hospice and over and over she said, "it's so awful! it's so awful!" about the things she must've been seeing behind her eyelids. It was not a peaceful death. It was just weeks after my atheist patient's death which had been in a cold, dirty trailer in the middle of winter. I'd had to step over holes in the floor to get to his bedroom to care for him. He was an incredibly intelligent man and I'd loved our long conversations through the fall of that past year and getting to know him. But through his death he was racked with pain and anger and frustration and fear. He hadn't had enough money for a burial and had donated his body to science. I waited alone with him in a dark trailer park for the coroner to pick up his body at 3 in the morning. I felt like I failed him because he hadn't gone peacefully like either of us wanted and there would be no service to remember him in a couple of days.

I don't know where I was going with that...I've never felt any spiritual presence in the room of my dying patients but I have had many of them tell me someone was there or noticed a difference in their dying experience. I don't know if their dying experience is related to their own spiritual experience. I used to think it was but I don't know anymore.

[hayleyh31]

I work in the NICU and we were sitting around telling ghost stories around 3 am one night. Nothing was going on and we were directly in the center of the unit. Someone had just finished telling a story about seeing something go into one of our sleep rooms when the locked, badge-only front doors of the unit opened. We were watching the hallway camera and there was no one out there and no way for those doors to open without the badge. We were all freaked completely out!

[CelticGoddess, BSN, RN]

I work on an Onc/Palliative unit, and all the nurses who work nights with me have a story. One night, one of my co-workers was standing down the hall (She was about at room 6) She says she saw a shadow out of the corner of her eye down by room 1. She would look over and it would be gone but a few minutes later she saw it again.

I have a patient who was dying of CA. She had been with us for quite some time, getting treatment for the CA. Finally she and her family made the decision that palliative would be better. One morning, as I was leaving work, I peaked in to her room to see how she was doing. I saw a shadow in the corner of her room. Oddly, her room felt very peaceful. She died that evening.

When I worked LTC, one of my residents was a snippy little Armenian woman. She would drive us nuts but she was lovable all the same. She died at the facility, after promising that she would haunt us. Well, a few months after she passed, I was sitting in the common area, watching a football game (it was close to the end of my shift). I saw something pass me that out of the corner of my eye looked like a person. I asked one of my techs if she had seen where the person had gone. She told me that no one had walked by. On a hunch, I went down to this residents former room (her former roommate was still alive). I peeked into check on her and her room was very cold. (Normally it is very warm). Resident A was sleeping well. I went down the hall towards the other unit and half way there, something very cold passed through me. By the time I got to the nursing station on the other unit, I was cold and per the nurses on that unit, white as a sheet. I still maintain I had a close encounter of the "Jane" kind.

My grandma and my great Aunt both saw their deceased sister and mum when they were close to dying.

Yes, Virginia, I believe in ghosts.

[Islandgrrl, ADN, BSN, MSN]

My father passed away in November, at home, after 2 weeks of hospice care. The night he died, friends down the street were having a candlelight vigil - just one candle, indoors. My sister, brother and myself were with our dad as he died. Our amazing hospice nurse was present, and pronounced his death at 1955. My brother called our friends about half an hour later to let them know he had died, and the friend said, "At 7:55? Because the candle went out at 7:55."

Gives me goosebumps every time I think about it.

[alaskacj]

During my ortho rotation in Nursing school,I had a patient talk to "Joe" all through her morning care. When I went to leave, the chaplain was coming in. He asked be briefly about my studies then went into the room and she was dead. When talking with family I found out "Joe" was her deceased husband. She was ready to go with him!

[Jbryson79]

I work in a pediatric ER and between the hours of 0400 and 0700 it's pretty quiet in there. So there are two rooms where you always feel like someone is in the rooms. You may hear the tv go on and off, drawers open and shut and lights going on and off. It's a little creepy.

[animatedimp]

Not hospital, but when I was working at a group home I ha some seriously freaky stuff happen. The best one was I was working alone one night and had just put my last resident to bed. I started washing my hands and just so happened to glance up into the mirror above my shoulder. Not even kidding, there was a white face right behind me. I spun around REAL quick, but there was nothing there. I turned on all the lights in the main room and sat there the rest of the night.