spooky spooky spooky

[babynurselsa]

last nightI worked L&D in my hospital. I usually workNICU. Well, we were sitting around talking and the subject of ghostly inhabitants came up and our scrub tech went on to relate the story of how she can go back to the surgical suites and turn off the lights and return a little later and the surgical lamps over the tables will be on.

We had this med student with us and he walked back with her and they turned off all the lights, waited half an hour and went back to check.

Sure enough, the spotlights were on. well this was where a couple of the other nurses and I came in on this story and of course I jumped right in and so BS! So she did it again with us all with her.

we went back a little later and they were on again.

Of course we had to try it again. This time our med student went back and checked from the hall and the lights were still off, a short time later 3 of us went back and the 1st OR light was not on, but in the 2nd OR the light was on as was the anesthessia machine.

We decided to mess with the whole thing a little and adjusted the light and pointed it towards the wall to the right of the table and left, a short time later I peeked in and the light was on, pointed back to the center of the table and the machine was off. Then I pointed it to the wall at the head of the bed and left. Tight after we counted I peeked in again and it was pointed toward the wall at the foot of the table.

Our poor tech would not even go down there alone to collect instruments for CS without someone with her, after that she wouldn't even go down there with someone.

Now being the eternal skeptic, I tried to be aware where all of us were and watch for someone to go back there and did not ever catch anyone sneaking back.

What do you all think???

[ratchit]

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[hoolahan, ASN, RN]

Well, I had heard several stories about ghosts on our MICU, but I never saw one. What I did see one night is a monitor blink on with a rhythm, from an empty room. No simulators for CPR anywhere to be found. I was told it happened every so often.

WE had one little boy in the SICU who had coded I can't tell you how many times. We all knew he would eventually die. He was even sent to peds on a vent, since there was no hope of weaning him. That was a first on that hospital. Anyway, the night beofre he died, he told his mother that grandmom was talking to him and she was going to come and get him. Now grandmom was still alive, but this family was from Croatia, and only mom was here with the child, initally they couldn't find her husband or daughter, but they located them in a hospital, since their house had been burned. Anyway, mom was kinda freaked about this, so she called home, and found out her mother in law had died the eve before! She became very distraught at her son's words, and turns out she had good reason.

[-jt]

On our telemetry unit one day, an elderly pt who was usually very calm & co-operative kept trying to get out of bed. Her younger roomate called the nurses & said the woman was repeatedly telling her she had to go "over there". She was pointing to the bathroom so the room mate thought the woman wanted help to get to the bathroom. When the staff came in, she said she didnt have to go to the bathroom, she just had to go there (pointing to the bathroom door). She was saying "see the 3 of them standing there? they want me to go over there. let me up"

The nurses chalked it up to confusion & put her back to bed. The woman was obsessed with going over to the doorway of the bathroom the whole day. Nobody would let her. The room mate was getting freaked by the whole thing with the lady constantly talking about the 3 people she said were waiting for her at the door. How nice they were. How they were talking to her & calling her over. And how she had to get up & walk over there because she wanted to be with them. The room mate demanded another room & the staff moved her. After getting report, the next shifts nurse went to the womans room to check on her & found her unconscious on the floor - at the door to the bathroom. They coded her right there on the floor. Pt expired.

[RNKitty]

At our hospital, the pediatric nurses claim that kids always ask who "the nice old lady was that came and tucked them in". The nurses find the kids in bed with the sheets tucked tightly under the mattress. OOOOH creepy.

[-jt]

A favorite pt, 60 yr old Josephine, was in Bed 11 of my ICU & scheduled for a routine hemicolectomy. She was the most stable pt we had & it was supposed to be an uneventful surgery. But Josephine was terrified because she, as she said, knew she wasnt going to make it back. She had dreamed of her mother the night before & she knew she was going to die too. Nothing we said could ease her mind. She kept saying she knew something terrible was going to happen. We reassured her a million times & told her to think positive. She asked for a priest, which we got for her, & she called every one of her family members to tell them she wasnt coming back & to say goodbye. They dismissed her calls and told her she was going to be fine. Her husband got angry with her. She wanted to cancel the surgery but he talked her into doing it. People told her to stop being ridiculous. Josephine went off to the OR at 2:30pm. She was convinced that she was going to die that day. We smiled, tried to tell her it was ok to be scared of surgery but everything would be OK & she'd wake up in the RR wondering what all the fuss was about. She said she knew she wasnt coming back and there was nothing she could do about it. She went to the OR......terrified, crying, & thanking us for taking care of her.

At that time we had 8 hr shifts so we went home before her surgery even started. The next day we come in & bed 11 is empty. We figured Josephine spent the night in the RR so we asked what time she was expected back to the unit. Imagine our shock when the night shift told us Josephine died! Bled out, had an MI on the table, coded & died. Something about a nicked artery. Cant even imagine how her family felt.

[jimminy]

OOOOH, makes my hair stand on end. Sometimes our nights are so bad, freaky codes coming in,, patients more irate than usual. We open the viewing room to "air out the spirits". Believe it or not, things actually calm down ( or a least they appear to). Have never actually seen a ghost, but will whirl around quickly thinking someone has just blown on my neck.

How about near - death experiences? It may already be a thread.

[NurseDennie, BSN, RN]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I find that Houlihan's story was strangely reassuring. I've always said that people get a "hand over" and that people who are in extremis never talk to their aunt in Hoboken, it's always somebody who has already passed over. To have a person seeing/talking to someone who has died but the person didn't know it at the time.... Well, it's just validation, and I very much want that belief validated.

And jt - as I read the story, I was wondering why the patient went through with the surgery with such a horrible fear of it. I understood after you wrote that the husband and family pretty much pressured her into it. I hope that they are able to find some peace with what happened. *sigh*

Love

Dennie

[CARP]

I love these ghost stories, keep them coming...Here is mine:

I was working in a Pediatric group home in Tucson, AZ, as the night RN. I had a CNA working with me, and we usually had between 2-5 kids at the house. When I was hired, they told me about some strange happenings at the very back room down the hall, where a little boy named Bobby had lived for 3 years, and also died in the room. I did'nt really believe it, but one night, the CNA and I heard music coming from one of the baby monitors. I went down the hall, and everyone was asleep, but the music was coming from the mobile above the crib in Bobby's old room. No child was in there at the time. I just turned the music off, and went back to the main room. This happened on and off all night, as well as the hall light being turned on and off. It was very strange, and a little scary at first, but the CNA and I just ended up talking to Bobby. He would come back and do the same things every once in a while. After this experience, I don't really have a fear of the supernatural like some people do. I enjoyed everyone's stories, and Happy Nursing!

[Steeleferg]

This is a personal ghost story...

I received a call from my brother's girlfreind that my mother had checked herself into the hospital late the night before and that the hospital had called her to tell her that my mother would not live through the day (it was approx. 0600) and my brother was in the Yukon. Drove down to the hospital, went to her room and attempted to get her to talk. She was comatose and completely unable to communicate... anyway after an hour or so, while my wife was talking to the Dr's in the hallway, my mother opened here eyes, looked at me and said, "Honey, I'm leaving now." The only thing keeping my mother alive at that time were machines, she was comatose!! Within seconds, the monitor went off, a light appeared in the corner of the room and I sh*t you not, I saw her spirit/soul/being leave the room towards the light in the corner. My mother wished to be cremated, which she was, and her urn was in a curio cabinet in our home for a few months after her death. The items in that curio cabinet are still being reaaranged to this day - being moved to different shelves, knocked over etc. Even weider is the fact that my mother had worked in the hospital (26 yrs) where she died and people I know who still work and knew her say they have seen in her old office and walking the halls.....

[nicola]

Love this thread...

When I was 10, my maternal grandfather died suddenly after a heart attack. I didn't get to say good bye to him. When I was an infant, he'd give me ceramic mice, which I collect to this day, so we called him Granddaddy Mouse.

In the house where he and my grandmother lived, there was an open space, like a window, between the kitchen and the living room. On the shelves of that window were some curios and a mouse that had been given to him shortly before he died. I was sitting in his chair in the living room, looking at the shelf. My brother, then 8, was on the sofa. The grownups were in the kitchen and no one was smoking.

I watched a fog or mist drift from the shelf into the living room and just hang a few feet off the floor. I got up and walked under it, stooped over, knowing it was from Granddaddy Mouse. My brother was looking at me like I was nuts - he saw me get up and walk, but didn't see the mist! To this day I believe that was how my Grandfather said good bye to me.

My paternal grandmother died 5.5 years ago. She said she had to die near the end of the month (she had CA and knew she didn't have lots of time left) so that my aunt could keep one of the benefit checks that month. Two weeks before she died, Grandma went into the hospital and was basically comatose, so didn't know the date. She died on May 30! She also promised to come for me when it's my time. I'm holding her to it!!!

[KatWright]

One of the posts reminded me of 2 patients that I took care of YEARS ago.

Thei first was a 50ish y o man scheduled for a CABG the next day, and he wanted to be sure that all of his affairs were in order. I asked him if he was having premonitions and he said no not really. I let him and his wife know that if he wanted to put it off for a few days it would be OK. He was not critical.

So his lawyer came in and he signed his will and DPOA, I was one of the witnesses.

The day after surgery, I asked one of the PAs (that work with the cardiac surgeons) and he told me that the pt died on the table !!! I told him of my conversation with the patient. The PA said that they tell all of their patients to have everything on order and that this man kept putting it off.

The other one was a man that was to have an amputation (below the knee --diabetes) In the afternoon. But in the morning, he was saying that I should pack up his stuff because he was not coming back....I asked what he meant...he said that he was going to die during surgery, but that he was OK with that....Very calm....very strange...It made me uncomfortable, so I called the doctor and told him. He came to see the patient and said that what the patient was saying made him uncomfortable and cancelled the surgery!!

The patient had a major stroke at dinner time and died !!! :eek:

I had forgotten about these things, isn't there a song that says thanks for the memories ? ;)

[LilgirlRN, ADN, RN]

I've never seen ghosts at the hospital where I work, but I have had patients who knew they were about to die, postpone their own death until so-and-so could get there so that they could tell them good-bye.

We coded one of our own doctors about 9 years ago in the ER, he had terrible heart disease and we couldn't save him. The doors to the back of the ER will go crazy from time to time and we always blame it on Dr. Moughon.