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...

Specializes in MED/SURG, ONCOLOGY, PEDIATRICS, ER.
Tinkerbell2 said:
?????? Sarcasm ??????

Sarcasm??? I don't think so....but if that makes you happy.....i am not that kind of person, it's just that i was in the same situation with kbclary4 and makes me laugh...just an explanation, sorry if i did offend anybody it wasn't my intention. :))

Anyway, go on with those scary stories...scary but i like it!

BORI-BSNRN said:
Sarcasm??? I don't think so....but if that makes you happy.....i am not that kind of person, it's just that i was in the same situation with kbclary4 and makes me laugh...just an explanation, sorry if i did offend anybody it wasn't my intention. :))

Anyway, go on with those scary stories...scary but i like it!

Ohhh Ok LOL

I wasn't sure, that is why I put the ??? marks. I thought you may have been making fun of her for getting scared after reading the stories. Most of them were sending chills up and down my spine.

There was another reader who seemed to think that all of the stories could be explained by someone experiencing tricks of their minds or eyes. There

are alot of skeptics out there. It is easy to be skeptical when one has not experienced something like that themself.

Me, myself... I have not seen a ghost (to my knowledge), but I do believe that departed spirits walk among us.

Specializes in ABMT.
sbergetlvn said:

Would Nurse Betty count against the day's PPD?

Maybe it would depend on if you could see through her or not??? :chuckle tee hee.

Keep em comin, keep em comin! These stories are great! I wish I had one. Or maybe I'm glad I don't! I don't want to see rose petals falling from the ceiling unless I put them there!

Specializes in MED/SURG, ONCOLOGY, PEDIATRICS, ER.
Tinkerbell2 said:
Ohhh Ok LOL

I wasn't sure, that is why I put the ??? marks. I thought you may have been making fun of her for getting scared after reading the stories. Most of them were sending chills up and down my spine.

There was another reader who seemed to think that all of the stories could be explained by someone experiencing tricks of their minds or eyes. There

are alot of skeptics out there. It is easy to be skeptical when one has not experienced something like that themself.

Me, myself... I have not seen a ghost (to my knowledge), but I do believe that departed spirits walk among us.

? Yes, you're right! There is a lot of people that not believe in ghost and make fun of these kind stories....I haven't seen a ghost, thanks God!:uhoh21: but i agreed with you that departed spirits walk among us......:stone

Specializes in NICU.

Not a hospital story, but told to me by my mum. She used to work at a photographers, when she was in her late teens or early 20's, so this would be around 1924. A young woman came in to have her photos taken, but when they were developed, something had gone wrong, as another woman was in all the pics, standing just behing the girl. When she came in to look at the proofs, they were very apologetic, showed her the photos and told her that they would do a retake.

"Oh no! That's my mum! She died six months ago, and we don't have any photos of her!"

luv your nurse said:
Where do these petals come from? the roof? like appera out of thin air? have you seen this?

As I said in my post, I was standing in the room when this happened. The rose petals just started floating down out of nowhere. It went on for a little while and then they stopped.

I've worked in several nursing homes since 1997, so I've had plenty of run-ins with restless spirits.

At this one nursing home, there were three different wings. North, East and West. West wing was the "heavy" hall. Mostly tube-feeders and total care. East was the Medicare/short-term rehab wing. Then there was North. North had a pretty ecclectic mix of patients of differing levels of acuity. There was a short hall and a long hall. However, to the back of North wing, there was a long hall that had about ten private rooms, a day room on one end and a small dining room on the other end. The residents back on this hall (called 400 hall) were all ambulatory and even a few "wanderers".

Now, I generally worked from 3-11, but on this particular night, the 11-7 girl was sick so I was asked to stay. As I was off the next night, I agreed. Since I was working a double, I was given the assignment on 400 hall. It was an easy assignment as most of the residents were continent and the few that weren't were really light weight.

Anyhow, I was sitting in the dining room with the lights off, charting by the dimmed hall lights when I caught something out of the corner of my eye moving down the hall. Thinking it was one of my "wanderers", I looked up and saw what to this day I still believe was a toddler on a tricycle.

Let me tell you now, I lost it. The ADL book went flying and I skittered up the short hallway to the nurse's station. I relayed my story to the charge nurse and she just sort of chuckled at my expression and explained that one of the residents that had passed away years ago had a grandson that was killed by the back tires of her car. He was in the driveway and she didn't see him and backed right over him. The night the lady died, she was calling out "Tyler, oh my baby Tyler. Nana's coming.". Then she passed.

Everyone has come to the conclusion that the toddler on the tricycle still haunts that hall, looking for his grandma.

Either way, I never worked another 11-7 on 400 hall.

Specializes in Labor and delivery, same day surgery.

I had a pt in the delivery room one day. She was crowning and pushing as hard as she can, grunting with the effort. The doctor, the resident and myself were all giving her encouragement. She was pushing like a trooper! Just as the baby was being born the pt gasped and turned her head to the left toward the open scrub room door. She just stared in that direction. (I thought she had a stroke) When I asked her what was wrong she said "Tim" (don't remember the actual name) was standing in the door way. I looked over and did not see a thing. She was so intent on "tim" she did not even ask if it was a boy or girl!

After the delivery was completed we went to the recovery room. All the family came in to see Mom and the new baby. All the Pt could talk about was seeing "Tim". She described to them what he was wearing. I aked the family who Tim was and they said it was her brother who died 6 months before!

I had goosebumps twice that day. Once when the pt said someone was standing in the doorway. And again when I found out who that someone was! In all my years in nursing that was the spookiest thing to happen. But in a way it is comforting to know that those that have passed on, do know what is going on in our lives.

I used to work in a nsg home that had a new part that was only like 4 yrs old and the old part that we called the "getto" that was about 40 yrs old. Wierd stuff always happened in the getto part. Like we had a pt that was dying and we had gone in to clean up the room after the family had left for the night and there was a chair that I specifically remember putting against the wall on the other side of the room and every time that we came back the chair was up next to the bed like someone was sitting with her.

Another thing that happened at that place was there were two comatose pts in the same room at the end of the hall and one noc, their call light kept going on. I kept going in and shutting it off thinking that there was a short or something. I took the nurse down with me to show her that there was nothing going on in the room and then after a couple more times the nurse came back down with me again and the pt had a fiberoptic angel on her top shelf and it just came on by itself and we were like, there must really be a short and the nurse went to unplug it in case of a fire hazard and it wasn't plugged in, no lie.

Mulan said:
Is that like the help that never shows up?

How refreshing! Nurses who have a grasp on the real reality on nursing!

ShirleyR said:
I've been a hospice nurse for 5 years. I have been with hundreds of people at the time of their death & I can tell you first hand that if the patient isalert enough to speak, you'll hear them talking to loved ones that have already passed over. I had a patient last week that kept saying where did the precious baby go? His grown children were at his bedside kept naming off grandchildren's names thinking he wanted to see them one more time. He kept telling them no, that wasn't the baby he was talking about. Finally one of the daughters asked him if it was Randall he was talking about, his face face lit up & he said "Yes, my precious baby. Your Mother brought him here & now I don't see him". Come to find out Randall was a child of his that only lived 6 hours after birth & his wife died 6 years ago. It gives me a kind of peace knowing we are not going to be alone at the time of our "transition".

That is so true. I, too am a hospice nurse and when pts. start talking to their dead relatives, you know that they have about a week MAX before they are gone. My own grandfather, when hospitalized and dying, told my father that it was so nice of the staff to bring his brothers and his childhood home from Germany over to cheer him up. When my father asked him what he was talking about, he said, "Look out the window there, you see that house? That was the house where I grew up in Munich, and those two little boys playing are my brothers Karl and Marc." My father knew that Karl and Marc were both dead of course, but he looked out the window and saw a small workmans shed and no children. My grandfather died that night. :stone

Rosie- said:
We had a woman the the 3-11 RN sent for the funeral home 3 different times before she actually died and stayed that way. We'd get her over on the cot on the body bag and she'd start breathing. It got to be a big joke well is she really dead this time?????? They stayed quite a while the last time even after she was in the body bag "just in case".

The vitals were probably so low as to be not able to detct them. But it sure makes you wonder. :rolleyes:

Why can I not stay away from this thread!!!!!!!!!!! :uhoh3:

Your post makes me wonder how many people have been buried alive. Ugh, that makes me shiver.

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