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...

[Teleflurry, DNP]

I took care of a pt, big overweight Spanish guy named Mr. L He had DM1, amputated right foot and a big crush on me. I remember him very well because we both had the same watch we both got at Walmart. He was sent to the ICU and I never saw him again.

A month or two later I get a phone call at the front desk. It was him. He told me, "I've been trying to call you on your Vocera for weeks, I want to take you out for a date. It's me Mr. L". I pretended I didnt know who he was. He said, "But you have to remember me. Your Margarita, and we both have the same watch, from Walmart..please remember." I knew FOR SURE it was him then because only him and I knew that, and his voice was dead on. I apologized and told him he had the wrong person and i had to get back to work, and I hung up.

I told my nurse manage jokingly about the call in the morning, and she told me Mr. L died weeks prior. I thought she was joking until she showed me the obituary the family sent in with their thank you card...

I still havent figured this one out, but I get chills every time I remember the panic I heard in his voice on the phone when I hung up on him.

[lpnstudentin2010, LPN]

I took care of a pt, big overweight Spanish guy named Mr. L He had DM1, amputated right foot and a big crush on me. I remember him very well because we both had the same watch we both got at Walmart. He was sent to the ICU and I never saw him again.

A month or two later I get a phone call at the front desk. It was him. He told me, "I've been trying to call you on your Vocera for weeks, I want to take you out for a date. It's me Mr. L". I pretended I didnt know who he was. He said, "But you have to remember me. Your Margarita, and we both have the same watch, from Walmart..please remember." I knew FOR SURE it was him then because only him and I knew that, and his voice was dead on. I apologized and told him he had the wrong person and i had to get back to work, and I hung up.

I told my nurse manage jokingly about the call in the morning, and she told me Mr. L died weeks prior. I thought she was joking until she showed me the obituary the family sent in with their thank you card...

I still havent figured this one out, but I get chills every time I remember the panic I heard in his voice on the phone when I hung up on him.

He did not want to think that he was going to be forgotten

[embarrasingfield]

I have way too many great Nursing stories to count.

Despite the fact that I am leaving this field, I would encourage others to be in it. Just CYA, cause its going to continue to be a rough ride no matter how excellent your patient care is.

[FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I]

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 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.

No need to be freaked out. The person liked you and wanted to say goodbye. How wonderful.

[FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I]

I took care of a pt, big overweight Spanish guy named Mr. L He had DM1, amputated right foot and a big crush on me. I remember him very well because we both had the same watch we both got at Walmart. He was sent to the ICU and I never saw him again.

A month or two later I get a phone call at the front desk. It was him. He told me, "I've been trying to call you on your Vocera for weeks, I want to take you out for a date. It's me Mr. L". I pretended I didnt know who he was. He said, "But you have to remember me. Your Margarita, and we both have the same watch, from Walmart..please remember." I knew FOR SURE it was him then because only him and I knew that, and his voice was dead on. I apologized and told him he had the wrong person and i had to get back to work, and I hung up.

I told my nurse manage jokingly about the call in the morning, and she told me Mr. L died weeks prior. I thought she was joking until she showed me the obituary the family sent in with their thank you card...

I still havent figured this one out, but I get chills every time I remember the panic I heard in his voice on the phone when I hung up on him.

Why get chills? Then we all are different, aren't we. Poor guy must have liked you a lot, and wanted to share with you before he left. How sad.

[StatBlues]

TenCat

What a wonderful gift you were given. I am glad you shared it with the family.

I think she knew you would. Was a message for all..........

hugs*

:zzzzz

[Fathappychap]

Send me YOur Email and I will send the pics of the head wound

[Jo Dirt]

I took care of a pt, big overweight Spanish guy named Mr. L He had DM1, amputated right foot and a big crush on me. I remember him very well because we both had the same watch we both got at Walmart. He was sent to the ICU and I never saw him again.

A month or two later I get a phone call at the front desk. It was him. He told me, "I've been trying to call you on your Vocera for weeks, I want to take you out for a date. It's me Mr. L". I pretended I didnt know who he was. He said, "But you have to remember me. Your Margarita, and we both have the same watch, from Walmart..please remember." I knew FOR SURE it was him then because only him and I knew that, and his voice was dead on. I apologized and told him he had the wrong person and i had to get back to work, and I hung up.

I told my nurse manage jokingly about the call in the morning, and she told me Mr. L died weeks prior. I thought she was joking until she showed me the obituary the family sent in with their thank you card...

I still havent figured this one out, but I get chills every time I remember the panic I heard in his voice on the phone when I hung up on him.

I'd get more than chills. I'd have a priest at my house. I'd be a basket case.

[Nidawi]

i have a story.

[color=#483d8b]i moved into the duplex i live in about 5 years ago. when i first was looking at the place, the whole thing was empty. so i got to choose what side i wanted to live in.

[color=#483d8b]well, about a month or so after i moved in, my landlord told me my smoke detector bateries would need changed soon. she said they were hard wired into the house, with a battery back up. i told her okay, i would get some for them. there are three. one on the top floor, one on the main floor, and one in the basement.

[color=#483d8b]a couple days later, i was sitting at my kitchen table one night doing my bills, and all of the smoke detectors began going off. so i thought i would take out the batteries and put new ones in the next day. i still had to buy some. they took nine volts and i just didn't keep those on hand. i figured they didn't need the batteries, probably anyway. so after i took them all out i returned to the kitchen to the table to continue what i was doing. well, about 20 minutes later all the smoke detectors began going off again. so i thought perhaps they do need the batteries. so i went and unhooked them all from the walls and brought them back into the kitchen with me and placed them all on the top of the stove. they were now without batteries, unhooked from their second power source and laying there. i sat back down again to finish what i was doing. well, about 20 minutes later, those smoke detectors began going off again! i freaked! i grabbed all three of them up, wrapped them in a sweatshirt and put them out on the front porch and closed and locked the door.

[color=#483d8b]well, a few weeks later i came home from work. i worked midnights and nobody else was home. i am a single mom of three and my children were 3, 4 and 8 months old then, and staying with someone else that night while i worked. i would get them after i slept. so, i came in the back door into the kitchen and turned on the light. and there sat a book of matches i had never seen before on my kitchen table. i thought it was odd. nobody else had a key to my house. nobody had been there.

[color=#483d8b]a couple days later i was at work again, and i was telling the girls about the smoke detector, and about the matches. well, another girl had overheard me and asked me to repeat the story to her. so i did. she then asked me where i lived. i told her. she then told me how there had been a fire in my house a few years before and a mother and her little boy had died in it. i told her to shut up! she told me to go ask the officers that frequented the establishment. (i was a server on the midnight shift at a small cafe and we got a lot of the police officers in town who were on the midnight shift come in). well, sure enough they confirmed her story. then about 6 months after that my neighbor came over and was talking about that fire. he said the lady had two boys. and the younger one had gotten up while his mom and brother were still sleeping very early one morning. and he had been playing with matches and set the house on fire. his brother and mother both were killed. there were no smoke detectors in the house at that time to even warn them.

[color=#483d8b]it really creeped me out for a while, i guess. the ghosts of them have never hurt us. although i do sometimes think the child pays tricks and hides things sometimes or gets into mischief! i can't tell you how many times i've set the remote control on the end table, went to get a beverage and come back to find it missing. or have had my car keys disappear! my little dog a couple weeks ago was siiting on this little table i made him by the window, right beside my computer, and my smoke detector chirped and he looked towards the living room door way and immediately jumped into my lap, shaking and just terrified of whatever he saw. i saw nothing. (the smoke detector did this a few times that day already, as well as the day before and he did not react like that!) i figure they're still around living with us! i cannot explain why else my dog would have reacted that way when he looked in that direction.

[color=#483d8b]the only other thing i've had happen here is one day i left to go shopping, and when i returned and walked into my kitchen, i smelled my grandmother's perfume. and the scent was very strong, as if she was standing there!

[color=#483d8b]thanks for letting me share my stories!

[color=#483d8b]~n

[StatBlues]

I think I would have asked my grandmother to help them cross over.

[MAISY, RN-ER, BSN, RN]

I have several stories that have happened to me and my family.

My great-grandmother was a nurse from Ireland....she also believed that your relatives came to get you when you passed. Right before she died she talked about speaking to her dead children and first husband who died during the Flu 1917. My grandmother(her daughter thought it was nonsense)-she died that night (at home) with a smile on her face. My mother was 10yo and remembered her appearing beautiful and like she saw heaven!

Years later, my grandfather was very depressed and committed suicide-my mother awoke at that exact time shaking and screaming-she said "she felt like death had grabbed her"-my father confirmed it....not something mom wanted to talk about.

When my unbelieving grandmother passed away-she was being treated for kidney stones. My mother had gone home to care for me ( I was a toddler), when she returned she told my mother that she had just missed her father, and grandmother. My father said my mother walked out of the room and went hysterical! Why? Because my mother was a big believer in the supernatural and believed my great-grandmother, especially when she experienced my grandfather's death. My grandmother died that night of uremic poisoning, she was only 59!

When my daughter was two I was cutting the grass-my daughter was safe in her crib napping(or so I thought), I got a bad feeling and heard my name. I stopped cutting the grass went in the house and found my baby hanging from the blind cords-VERY SCARY! I almost disregarded that feeling. She was turning blue and I have no doubt she would have died.

A few years later I was going with my dad and 5 year old to his last soccer game of the year...of course, I wasn't ready, wasn't dressed yet. I kept looking at my dad, and I kept asking him if he was okay. It was weird....I've read books where an author foreshadowed a death, something like " a shadow crossed over his face..." I swear that is exactly what happened. My mother got alarmed and said "why do you keep asking him that?" I really didn't know..it was weird. Crying as I write this, I never saw him alive again. Daddy died of an anuerism-they said he was walking and laughing and that was it! 59yo too and healthy as a horse-it was a family joke that we'd have to hit him over the head with a shovel, he was never sick!

Like her dad, my mom went into a depression...was out two years after my dad's death with the kids....had that bad feeling again, mom had OD'd....got her to the hospital in time. Hate this feeling.

Have had other feelings, weird ideas and thoughts about people..sometimes I don't want to know-and sometimes I believe I shut it off.

Most recently, FIL passed in hospice after brief illness. Even that was weird, DH had checked on dad 30 minutes before I was leaving, but had a bad feeling....found him aspirating on vomit. HATE THESE FEELINGS!

Anyway, the day before he went to hospice he was talking to family, and a friend from his youth that he had kept in touch with-while we sat around watching him. Told us he talked to George, George was coming. Dad did not talk much in hospice, but said George was coming. The day he died we called George's home, we were told that George had passed away 1 year prior on the same day. Coincidence? Maybe George came.

I don't doubt that ghosts, visions, lost souls, evil presences and whatever else you want to call it exists. It stands to the reason that are bodies if controlled by electrical impulses are energy. Energy never dies, so when our body expires-it has to go somewhere.

I have truly enjoyed this thread...keep them coming.

Maisy

PS don't want any feeling anytime soon, mine aren't usually good!

[ShayRN]

This just happened yesterday. I was in the bathroom in a patient's room washing my hands and the door slammed shut on me. Not a easy gentle shut, or the wind pushing it shut, but slammed. I had chills all over and went out to the nursing station to report my latest incident. The other nurse told me that she has had that happen every time she is in that room washing her hands. Just to check one time she put her foot in the door to see what would happen, it stayed open until she moved her foot, then WHAM. :sofahider