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...

Specializes in CEN, CFRN, PHRN, RCIS, EMT-P.
sirI said:
Hello,

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Thank you, I just want to leave this thread alone "agree to disagree" principle.

Specializes in RN, CHPN.

Night Terrors on 9 NorthWest

I was a brand new nurse working graveyard shift on an oncology unit. We also sometimes got sick inmates from the prison; they were placed on our unit on the 9th floor, which was the highest floor in the hospital, so that if they tried to escape it would take them longer to make it out the door.

On this particular night we had no inmates as patients, and all was quiet at 11 PM as we took over for the evening shift. We anticipated a bad night, though, because a full moon shined brightly in the clear, dark November sky.

At 1 AM everything was still calm and quiet. Me and Mary, an older, gray-haired nurse who still proudly wore her white cap, were at the nurse's station doing our charting. A call light went on. It was one of Mary's patients, a very elderly gentleman in the room at the far end of the hall. Mary rose immediately and went to answer the light. A few minutes later my heart constricted in fear as I heard a man's savage, gurgling yells coming from the room down the hall, the room where Mary had gone. I jumped up and ran halfway down hall when Mary came stumbling out of the room, gasping, with her hands around her neck and her eyes watering. She ran to the nurse's station and calmed herself, and then told me that as she bent over his bed to ask him what he needed, he reached up and grabbed the ends of the stethoscope hanging from her neck, wrapped them around, and began choking her. She managed to break away, but she was shaken.

I called security and they came right up. The patient was sound asleep when they entered his room, and he said he had no recollection of the incident. Mary said that he was not confused on rounds, and that she was surprised at his strength for being so frail. He was discharged back to the nursing home the next day. What had happened was unsettling, and the unease stuck with us.

One night about a week later I was at the nurse's station with Nancy, a competent nurse with a lilting British accent. It was 1 AM and the unit was quiet...that is, until we heard a man's constricted screams coming from the room at the far end of the hall. The patient was a man around 80 years old, and his wife was spending the nights at his bedside in a recliner. They had been married for 55 years and couldn't stand spending a moment apart. So imagine our surprise as we ran into the room and saw her bent over her husband's bed, her hands around his neck, attempting to strangle him. It was not easy for the two of us to stop her -- it was as if she was absolutely determined to choke him to death. In the dim light I could see her fierce expression, her browns knit together tightly and her lips pulled back revealing her teeth. Our CNA ran and called security. The moment her grip was released from his neck, she looked dazed and perplexed and asked what was going on. The patient was gasping and he looked at his wife with abject terror.

First thing in the morning, Nancy and I met with our head nurse, a big-boned, no-nonsense woman who was the type that wasn't afraid to roll up her sleeves and get things done. She decided that the patient would be transferred immediately, and that the room would be kept empty for the time being. She called the chaplain assigned to our unit and asked him to come up. She wanted to talk to him about blessing the room.

She told him this:

Two weeks earlier, a prison inmate had been a patient in the room where both choking incidents occurred. The prisoner died. At 1 AM.

He had been convicted 25 years earlier of strangling three people to death.

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Specializes in Gerontology.

That gave me chills!

I work at a LTC for people with intellectual disabilities. One overnight shift, I was mopping the kitchen floor when I looked up and saw one of my coworkers, call him Jim, sitting at the kitchen table working on his documentation just like he always did. The only reason there was anything strange about this was the fact that, well, Jim had died two months previously. I'd attended his funeral, so I was pretty darn sure he was dead. I jumped about a foot straight up in the air, dropped the mop, and yelped "JIM??" Somewhere in there I blinked or glanced away for a split second or something, and when I looked back, Jim was gone, like nothing had ever been there. But he had BEEN there, in the same spot he always was, doing his books just the same as he always did when he was alive! My personal theory is that he came back to help. Earlier in the night, we'd had to send out a resident that he'd been particularly close with to the ER. The resident wound up being OK, just a minor injury, but I still feel like Jim came back to check on them and make sure we didn't need any extra help. That was just the way Jim rolled.

Specializes in RN, CHPN.

Once upon a time, way back in 1987, I was a travel nurse with a cushy job on a telemetry unit in Hawaii. I worked night shift, and this particular hospital allowed nurses to sleep for two hours (with pay!) during our shift.

The unit I worked on had one room that was closed and kept empty, come hell or high water, as it had been for two years prior. The reason? Over a period of a few months, several patients in that room (it was a private room) experienced terror as they saw a large, shadowy black figure at the foot of their bed, looming over them and filling them with a feeling of impending doom. Each of them described the same menacing presence, and they had no doubt this apparition was evil and meant to harm them. What's worse is that each of those patients died during their hospital stay, even though they were expected to recover.

At first, I didn't believe the nurses when they told me this -- I figured that maybe the room was closed due to a plumbing problem, and they were just trying to scare me.

But when I saw how they took their two-hour paid naps, I realized they weren't kidding around...

Instead of sleeping in that nice, empty room on an actual bed, they slept on a rusty old gurney that was placed outside on a balcony.

Specializes in RN, CHPN.

Several years ago, my dad passed away after a battle with prostate cancer. Since I was a hospice nurse, I took care of him and then stayed for a while to help my mom through a period of disabling grief.

Two nights after he died, my mom walked into her bedroom and then came out abruptly, walking backward, screaming "Dad's here! Dad's here!" The cog wheels in my brain froze up for a moment as I tried to comprehend what she was saying. I went into her bedroom and I didn't see my dad -- all I saw was my dog sitting on the bed.

My mom came in and pointed out the way the linens were turned down into a fancy W-shape. She told me that she and my dad had gone on a cruise several years earlier, and that each night when they were at dinner an attendant would turn down their linens JUST LIKE THEY WERE RIGHT NOW and leave chocolates on their pillows.

And she said that every single night since then, my dad turned down their bed just like it was done on the cruise, to show her that every day with her was special to him.

I thought that my mom, in her semi-delirious mental state, had done the turn-down herself and just forgot that she had, but she vehemently denied it.

What was curious is that my dog was sitting on the bed......and her footprints were all over it......as if she had done some real maneuvering......

My mom said, "Prissy did it! Now all she needs to do is fluff the pillows." My dog looked my mom in the eye for a few seconds......and then she turned and fluffed my mother's pillow.

So you know I am not lying, I somehow had the presence of mind to take photographs, and here is one taken just as Prissy did her pillow-fluffing stuff:

(Prissy, seen here apparently possessed by my dad's spirit, putting the finishing touches on her fancy turn-down. Admittedly, this turn-down does not meet Royal Caribbean standards, but it's pretty darn good for a poodle.)

When Prissy began fluffing the pillow, my mom lost it and went into hysterics. I looked at Prissy and said, "Dad, please tone it down because you're going to give mom a heart attack!"

Well, dad did tone it down. Every single night for the next six weeks, 'Prissy' only turned down my MOM's side of the bed. No more fancy-shmancy, all-out, luxury cruise ship turn-downs...just simple, modest little turn-downs. Every night, like clockwork.

Now I will say that my dog is no slouch. She's much smarter than the average dog. She can shake hands and she can do a double rollover. But she does NOT do fancy cruise-ship turn-downs, or even less fancy ones. Those are simply not in her repertoire.

One day after 6 weeks of this bed-turn-down phenomena, Prissy suddenly stopped doing it. It was as if a switch had been flipped to "off," and that was that.

A friend of my mom's came from out of town to visit, and my mom told her the turn-down story. The woman gasped and said, "Don't you know? The Tibetan Book of the Dead says that after death, a person's spirit stays in an "in-between place" for approximately 42 days before departing for the next realm." That's exactly how long my dog turned down the bed -- 6 weeks, or 42 days.

What else can explain what happened, except that my father's spirit was acting through my dog, Prissy, to tell my mother how special he thought she was?

Prissy has never turned down another bed since that time. But I guess that's because she doesn't have a clue how to do turn-downs.

But my dad did.

©2014 All rights reserved. Please don't publish this story or photo, as I am planning to at some point. Thank you.

Wow, Missy, that is an amazing story!

All my dogs do is hog the bed...

Specializes in RN, CHPN.
SnowballDVM said:
Wow, Missy, that is an amazing story!

All my dogs do is hog the bed...

That's all Prissy does now, too. If she ever turns down my bed, I will run screaming out the door.

Another thing she did during that time:

My mom said the worst time for her was in the middle of the night, when she was alone and couldn't sleep. Unbeknownst to me, Prissy would leave my bed at those times and go sit with my mom, gaze into her eyes, and lick her tears away. My mom said Prissy was more helpful than anyone else had been; she found her quiet, attentive presence more of a comfort than any human was during that time. Perhaps that was my dad too, but it could have just been Prissy, because that's the way she's always been.

I'm all out of ghost stories, unless something new comes up. I'm looking forward to everyone else's stories -- Love this thread!

Dogs can be amazingly comforting. Whether or not they are acting on someone's behalf! I'm glad your mom had you and Prissy and your dad's spirit to comfort her at such a difficult time.

My beagle left the bed last night, unbeknownst to me, and went downstairs, where he pulled a box of cookies out of the grocery bag...typical beagle!

I work in a 60 year old nursing home. A few months ago on the evening shift a resident on G wing put on her call light. When the staff answered her call she said "Get that girl out of here" The resident was asked to describe her. She said that she was about 10 or 11years old with long blonde hair. On the same shift on unit H a resident put on her call light. When staff answered the call the resident said "A little girl had just come out of my bathroom and ran up to me with a ring in her hand. Then she ran out of the room". The resident stated that the whole thing happened so fast that she did not get a good look at her, except that she had long blonde hair. Staff asked her if she may have been dreaming. The resident stated that it was no dream. It really happened. A few hours later on the night shift I was on that night. About 3 AM one of the unit staff (on unit H) told me that another resident put on her call light and informed staff that a little girl came up to her and told her that she was going to come back sometime and when she does she will take her ring. That resident described the girl to be about 11 years old with long blonde hair. When the RN saw me later on that night she said to me "Well, I guess we have some spooks here!" I told this to my husband. He said that before the nursing home was built there was an orphanage in the same area. Evidently many children in that orphanage died of diseases as it was in the early 1900's. There have been previous reports from residents about seeing small children in the nursing home.

I'm not a nurse but you guys have the best ghost stories. I've been a follower for a long time!

I'm so very sorry for all you are going through. All I can tell you is to keep fighting if your not ready. I have to tell you hon, I really have had to get used to having faith in " God's timing in situations like this. When I was a new paramedic, I will never forget after a particularity tragic call, we were all emotionally and physically exhausted, and I was so very frustrated. The call had been for an MVA. It was on a back country road and our response time from town was about 25 mins in good weather. Except this is a mountain snowstorm. No visibility at all. Anyway we had 6 PTs upon arrival. 2 parents 4 kids. They stated they slid off the road and into a tree. I distinctly remember them both smelling heavily of alcohol. There was a 6 year old trauma code. The parents said they didn't realize their son was hurt so neglected to call 911 to report the accident until the boy turned blue. The thing was, bless his sweet little heart, his little thumb had been amputated in the accident, and was barely hanging on by skin, so I call BS. Anyway, the child had been in the back of the pickup truck and the truck had a metal toolbox attached in back. Anyway the boy had flown into the metal toolbox striking his abdomen. He coded several times and we worked him for 2 hours in the ER, trying to stabilize him enough that my partner and I could get the little boy about 70 miles south to where there was a break in the storm and the helicopter could meet us to transport the boy to an appropriate trauma facility as our little hospital was a level 4. Anyway, we just couldn't.i remember at one point having to calm myself mentally because my compressions were getting too fast at about 200 bpm. Anyway when it was all said and done, we brought the parents in to say goodbye. I will never forget the putrid, sickening smell of rotgut alcohol rushing over me as the father bent and said "come on buddy, you will be fine! Hang in there!" I guess completely not realizing he was already gone. I will also never forget the little guy had drawn "chickenpox" all over his body in orange marker. Anyway we were all kind of teary and the ER nurse that used to be a paramedic looking at me and saying, " if you are ever going to be able to get through this career you are going to have to believe that in taking him here in now, God in all His wisdom was being merciful and saving him from some worse fate down the road later on." It has always helped me. So the weird little aspect to this story, was a couple days later I'm home with my then 4 year old son, and he's playing, and I go to take his shoes and socks off for his bath and see he his covered the tops of both of his feet with black marker. He said it was dinosaur feet lol. Anyway I'm not really sure why I felt compelled to share all that but I pray it helps you in some way. Keep fighting and I hope you are able to go on your own soon!

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