What's Your Best Nursing Ghost Story?

What Members Are Saying (AI-Generated Summary)

Members are sharing personal experiences and stories related to ghosts, spirits, and paranormal occurrences in healthcare settings. Some members discuss encounters with deceased loved ones or unexplained phenomena, while others share their interest in ghost stories and movies like "Doctor Sleep" and "The Shining." There is a mix of skepticism, curiosity, and belief in the supernatural among the forum participants.

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...

Seriously, as soon as I starting reading a story on this thread my computer and air conditioner turned off.

Specializes in ICU, Telemetry.

Well, it's not a ghost as in white floating blob kind of story, but....

I had a little guy 2 nights ago, 90 plus, just as demented as he could be, and terrified of going to sleep at night. I mean, he would just scream, "help me, help me!" at the top of his lungs. I asked him what was wrong, and he kept saying "grandpa's at the foot of the bed." Obviously, this guy's grandpa was long gone.

When the family came in, I asked them if he often saw or talked to deceased relatives, specifically his grandpa. His daughter started crying, and said that her dad's brother said the same thing the day before he died -- that "grandpa" was at the bedside. Their father had died as a young man, and Grandpa had raised them.

Well, you could guess it. Grandpa came for his boy this morning. I didn't have him last night, but the nurse that did said the patient said, "hi, grandpa" and stopped breathing.

I was working as an aide years ago in MN, at a dual care facility. the side i worked on used to be a real old tuberculosis hospital from back in the day. they tore down the old building and replaced in with the one i was working in. it was less than 5 years old i believe. anyhow,...

I would be the ONLY one that stayed until about 11p.m on that side of the building. think MILES of hallways. it was independent living with "services" so i was doing my 100mph med-pass and i noticed the radio was on. i looked around (NO-ONE in sight) and flipped it off.....i entered and exited a residents room within 1 minute and there it was, on again.....no kidding.

this happened several times, ALWAYS the radio.....

then everyday all the residents complaining someone walking up and down the halls, knocking on their doors at all hours of the night. 3 and 4 am.....many residents complained of this for years....

i remember coming in one day for shift and they were installing security cameras. this is how often the knocking happened....not sure if anything came of it.....moved back to CA.

MN itself is creepy....

OK, I have to apologize profusely if this is totally rude -- I am not a nurse, I just surfed in here via a ghosty site a few months ago and have been making my way through it off and on since then. But this is THE BEST ghost story thread I've ever read! Wow, nurses are my new best ghost-loving friends ;)

Anyway, first off, regarding the above post, this is the THIRD time on a ghost forum that I've heard someone describe the state of Minnesota as creepy. I've lived in MN my whole life and I LOVE that! Of course, I don't think it's creepy (now, New Orleans, Boston, San Francisco, they seem to have a creepiness in parts, but MN? The whole state?) But it's home, so of course to me it's normal. But I think that's great to hear :)

OK, and my actual, nursing-related story/question: I work in film and TV production, and was shooting a movie in a closed-down nursing home in south Minneapolis called First Christian Residence.

If there is ANY long-shot chance someone here knows anything about the place, I would die to hear it. Please please post if so!

The facility is attached to a church via a weirdly roundabout, looong hallway, with a door locked on both sides (key left in door for us), etc. We had to go this way to get to the bathrooms and it was a good 10-minute round-trip if you hurried. On the way back from my trip to the restroom, I saw a door in the hallway close. Odd, as we were the only people there as far as I knew (the staff member/minister was with our crew back in the nursing home area), but maybe it's a janitor. I didn't hear anyone walking away (and where would they have come from, they weren't ahead of me in the hall?), but I didn't think much of it.

A few minutes later, I was standing outside, and a normally funny, smirky, happy-to-be-there crewmember came rushing out the door looking positively sick. I asked what was wrong, and he said, "This place is haunted!"

Of course, I was excited and badgered the story out of him (he didn't even want to tell it at first). He too was coming back from the bathroom and heard someone coming up a set of stairs, the open kind where you can look over a railing and see down to at least the first landing, if not most of the way. He stopped and waited to see who it was, and NO ONE APPEARED.

I dragged this poor kid back in and made him show me (he was scared -- I'm evil!). It wasn't far from the door I had seen close. As we were standing there, we heard footsteps coming up those very stairs -- eep! Well, a living person appeared. We asked him about it -- he was with a theater group rehearsing in the basement. They had just arrived and hadn't been upstairs and had never heard of ghosts there or seen anything strange. But as we were walking away, my crew friend said that was exactly the sound he'd heard of feet coming up the stairs. At least this had shown up that there was no way you wouldn't see the person as they came up, and there was no other stairway nearby that would have been as loud and clear.

Of course I went around telling everyone the place was haunted :) Most laughed, but one guy immediately said, "I know, when we were here scouting a couple weeks ago and were the only people in the building, I saw a door close by itself!" Another simply said, "I know, I've shot here before." He wouldn't give me any more details.

This might be the power of suggestion at this point, but later I was going back upstairs -- you walk in glass doors and there's an elevator right ahead of you. Most of the fixtures have been ripped out of the building, so it's pretty empty. There are rooms and hallways all around the elevator (hard to describe so I won't try more than that). I SWEAR I saw someone dressed in black walk through a doorway next to/behind the elevators, so I ran back to see who it was (assuming it was a crewmember -- we wear a lot of black -- and hoping to find someone who wanted to explore with me). I got to the room the door led to and no one was there...

Anyway, this is the closest I've come to seeing real ghostly activity (if it was real, of course I'm always skeptical, but also excited to see something). I've tried researching the place online, but the only mentions are about how it closed, etc. If anyone has ever heard of, or even worked there, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to hear more!

Thanks!

Thanks for sharing your story with us.

Specializes in LTC, CPR instructor, First aid instructor..

I enjoyed reading it as well.

Specializes in LTC, wound care.

time for a shameless bump of my favorite thread here....:nurse:

LOVE this thread! My story is nothing really freaky, but worth mentioning. I should mention that I work by myself (nights), so this makes it even more strange.

I have worked in my current job for about 3 months now. About a month ago, 10 minutes before the morning person arrived to take over, our "Nurse Call Alarm" system went off. I thought, "Of course, right at the end of my shift when I want to go home". Just my luck! ;)

I went to the control panel expecting one of my "regulars" to be buzzing.....the alarm panel read: "Tub Room". ?

I had never seen this come up before. In fact, I couldn't make sense of it, considering that the new system relies on call buttons that Residents wear around their neck and not the older "cord pull" system that the Tub Room has. I didn't even know it worked, let alone thought it was connected to our new system.

I ran to the tub room, thinking that just perhaps, someone had wondered in there and/or fell. I got there...no one. No lights, no residents, no light flashing on the cord pull panel. Nothing.

I shrugged it off and sort of laughed, I figured that I must have been dreaming. That's what you get for working nights! ;)

But I knew I wasn't. When I mentioned it to the day staff, she got a strange look then laughed awkwardly. She mentioned that it was a "glitch" and that it freaked another girl out so much that she left. There has been a very high turnover rate at my work. I thought it was due to invisible management, not a ghost. ;) Funny, it had never happened before nor since.

I didn't think much of it until I noticed something REALLY strange. On at least 3 separate occasions, I had left a room with the lights on or off. These are rooms in another part of the building where there are no Residents, like our med room and staff washroom. For instance, I was in the washroom. I had left the office light on. I walked out of the washroom and turned the corner and saw that the light to the office was off. No one was in sight (it was 3 am) and I would have heard them if they were. The switch was down, so it looked as though someone had physically turned the light off. I knew it was on when I left, as I never bother to touch it.

Similar incidents have happened at least 2 other times.

I am not freaked out yet, but I am curious if something paranormal is going on.

Or I am just going crazy from working nights! ;p

There is rumor that our building is built on an ancient Native burial ground. Since I live in a province with one of the highest rates of Aboriginals, this could very well be true.

Interesting...

Specializes in Med surg, Critical Care, LTC.

I love the show "the Haunting", I watch it as often as I can. I live in a haunted house, long story short, a lot of what I've seen and heard has been verified by a retired nurse I work with on occasion. Two of her best friends grew up in my house, and she was always over here. I told her about "Mary", that's the name I named my Ghost and that was when she told me she practically grew up in my house. She asked me "How did you come up with the name "Mary"" I said "I don't know, she just seems like a Mary". The abstract to my home over the 107 years of it's existence, has no Mary's listed as owner or part owner. Anyhow, this nurse, Stella, spoke with her two friends (all are in there 60's) and was telling them about me purchasing their old home in 2000, and about the ghost I have that I call "Mary", the sisters told her "Our mothers name was Mary" Stella, said, "No it wasn't your mothers name is Isla (there is an Isla on our abstract) her friend said "No, my mother went by Isla, but her real name was Mary". I asked Stella to bring her friends over to the house next time they were in town, but Stella said, "I already suggested that, but they don't want to talk to their mother!" LOL I could tell more stories, about my house, but I won't for now.

When I worked in the ER, we had this one room that often the light call light would go on even when the room was empty. This was a front line bed, always opened so you could see if anyone "snuck" in and pushed the call light. We had it checked several time, but was always assured "there is nothing wrong with the light". The ER nurses believed it was haunted by their ex nurse manager who died there (before my time), so one day the I was standing in front of the room, and the call light went on. There was no one there. I went in and shut off the call light. I stepped out of the room, and while looking into the room I said out loud, "If this is really a ghost turning on the call light, do it again!" I swear, it went on the second I spoke that line!! My hair stood up!! I went back in and shut off the light, I never challenged the ghost again.

I just had the most amazing thing happen to me today. One of my patients was heading toward death yesterday, so I've been keeping tabs on my work phone by checking it for messages periodically as when one of our hospice patients die, the company usually sends out a message to everyone informing them of the death. I checked my phone at 9:00 AM this morning, and nothing. At 11:45 this morning I checked again. I had a voice mail. I check the message, and it was all hollow sounding with some static. There were only two words....my name and the word goodbye. Then the line went dead. I checked on the time the message was sent and it was at 10:15 AM. I called the on-call service and asked if the patient had died. The on-call nurse said yes, the patient had died around 10:00 AM. I went to the patient's house, and I shared the voice mail I'd gotten with the family. The husband started crying and saying "that's her voice...." She had stopped breathing at 10:15 AM. Several other family members listened to it, and they all thought it sounded like her. It seemed to bring them a lot of comfort.

I'm absolutely floored, as I am the most annoyingly LOGICAL person in the world, and I cannot explain this one away. I've been trying to all day :rolleyes: I've never had an experience like this before where I could say for a fact that there is no other explaination other than maybe the patient called me one last time to say goodbye......I'm still freaked out.

I just had the most amazing thing happen to me today. One of my patients was heading toward death yesterday, so I've been keeping tabs on my work phone by checking it for messages periodically as when one of our hospice patients die, the company usually sends out a message to everyone informing them of the death. I checked my phone at 9:00 AM this morning, and nothing. At 11:45 this morning I checked again. I had a voice mail. I check the message, and it was all hollow sounding with some static. There were only two words....my name and the word goodbye. Then the line went dead. I checked on the time the message was sent and it was at 10:15 AM. I called the on-call service and asked if the patient had died. The on-call nurse said yes, the patient had died around 10:00 AM. I went to the patient's house, and I shared the voice mail I'd gotten with the family. The husband started crying and saying "that's her voice...." She had stopped breathing at 10:15 AM. Several other family members listened to it, and they all thought it sounded like her. It seemed to bring them a lot of comfort.

I'm absolutely floored, as I am the most annoyingly LOGICAL person in the world, and I cannot explain this one away. I've been trying to all day :rolleyes: I've never had an experience like this before where I could say for a fact that there is no other explaination other than maybe the patient called me one last time to say goodbye......I'm still freaked out.

Wow that's creepy

Specializes in L&D, Family Practice, HHA, IM.

:eek:

Wow that's creepy

But what a way to say "thank you for everything"!

You must have been someone special to her. Thanks for sharing your story.

I just had the most amazing thing happen to me today. One of my patients was heading toward death yesterday, so I've been keeping tabs on my work phone by checking it for messages periodically as when one of our hospice patients die, the company usually sends out a message to everyone informing them of the death. I checked my phone at 9:00 AM this morning, and nothing. At 11:45 this morning I checked again. I had a voice mail. I check the message, and it was all hollow sounding with some static. There were only two words....my name and the word goodbye. Then the line went dead. I checked on the time the message was sent and it was at 10:15 AM. I called the on-call service and asked if the patient had died. The on-call nurse said yes, the patient had died around 10:00 AM. I went to the patient's house, and I shared the voice mail I'd gotten with the family. The husband started crying and saying "that's her voice...." She had stopped breathing at 10:15 AM. Several other family members listened to it, and they all thought it sounded like her. It seemed to bring them a lot of comfort.

I'm absolutely floored, as I am the most annoyingly LOGICAL person in the world, and I cannot explain this one away. I've been trying to all day :rolleyes: I've never had an experience like this before where I could say for a fact that there is no other explaination other than maybe the patient called me one last time to say goodbye......I'm still freaked out.

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