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...

[ameriarmybrattLPN]

okay, i clicked on the 2nd link and i really shouldn't have . . . flippin' freaky.

posted by hygiene queen

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread215062/pg1

and...

http://www.ghostlytalk.com/node/502

these are just two i can find right now about the "hat man".

i mean, seriously, what gives?

i never had heard of it before and it just seems... well... plain silly that there is something floating all over the world scaring people and wearing, of all things, a top hat or fedora!

it was scary!!!!!!!!

officially creeped out now!

[kemper1974]

We had a unit secretary who passed away rather suddenly, and she visits from time to time. She had a very distinct perfume (old lady fragrence) and we still smell it all over the unit. She has been gone for 6 yrs now, and it still happens....we just say "Hi Helen!", and sometimes it;s more than one nurse who catches her scent!

[FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I]

When I was about thirteen, I was sleeping over at a friend's house. I came back from the bathroom about 0300... only to see somebody walking toward me from the other end of the hallway...

I just about died of fright before I remembered the full-length mirror...

:hhmth::clphnds::rotfl:

[Nurse523]

Hey everyone.

I few months ago we had a little old lady who was in her 90s. She had dementia but was always able to recognize her family members. Sometimes she knew she was in the hospital and sometimes she didn't. Her dementia always got much worse at night.

She had an older son who lived with her and took care of her at home. He came to visit everyday. Well the day before her planned discharge her son called up to the hospital. I spoke with him and he told me he had a cold and wasn't going to come up to the hospital to see his mom today. He told me to tell her that he loved her and that he would see her soon. I told the patient this and she was quite upset. She was always tearful in the evenings and she cried when I told her he wasn't coming. I work days so I left at 7.

The next morning the night nurse told me she cried all night and kept talking about the house being on fire. Of course they tried to calm her down but couldn't. When I went in to assess her that morning her eyes were blood shot and she looked awful. She turned to me and asked, "Did that boy die in the fire? If he did please just tell me, I need to know." I calmly reminded her that she was in the hospital and that there hasn't been a fire.

Later that morning her other family members were at the nurses station and wanted to talk to me. They told me that the patient wasn't going to be able to be discharged home today because there wasn't any one to take care of her. They told me that her oldest son was cooking the night before and the house caught fire. Her son was airlifted to the closest burn center and his prognosis was extremely poor. They asked me not to tell the patient anything about the fire. I explained to them how she had been acting and the things she had said to me. They were shocked but decided to still not tell her.

I'm not sure if they ever told her b/c I was off the next day, and I'm not sure if her son died or not. But the patient ended up having to go to a nursing home....

Talk about motherly intuition.

Gave me chills

Tiger.

Wow! This story is frightening. I cannot imagine the agony of predicting your own child's death and having them die before you. I feel really bad for that pt.

[FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I]

i love this one. feel free to read this in the bible! in fact i staff church retreats that are specifically to set people free from any oppresive lifestyle and heal their soul,spirit, and physical body! you wouldnt believe the things ive seen at these retreats, god is good and he shows his mercy and glory at every single retreat but oh does the devil show up too! along with his demons. one time we prayed over this women whos husband had commited suicide just 2 months earlier and she was having an extremely hard time healing from this hard time ( he called her and rushed her home because he said he needed to show her something, right when she walked in the door he killed himself in front of her face!) she felt like he was at fault in someway, anyway as we prayed for her she suddenly became unconcious, she was in a locked state of mind (seen this before in oher deliverences) when we demanded the demon let her mind go in jesus christ's name she returned to herself and when we told her to order any demons of depression

, anxiety, sadness, and guilt to leave from her she couldnt do it, she would close her mouth and nod no, and scream and say she couldnt because she saw her husband telling her not to, when i heard that i told her theabove verse; luke 16:26, she instantly was able to see it indeed was not her husband and how it was really a demon, she rebuked him in the lord's name and now lives a happy life. this is just one of the many stories i have to tell regarding demons posing as a loved one. and i definitely believe it.

[karenrussell_rn]

I'd have to say nurse managers. I've heard they exist, but I very rarely see one.

Oooohhh, good one! I have to stand up for my manager though, he comes to work and rolls up his sleeves like he's a staff nurse! In fact, he's often solicited to bathe our modest, older, male patients!

[sunflower777]

OMG!..so far these stories are good..lol!....well I'm a rookie and new to this site (new CNA)..but...while doing my last week of clinicals at this LTC...their was a room and the staff called it the "Death Room" because 3 residents died in that room less than a few months apart so they never placed a new resident in that room again. The CNA that I was shadowing was goofy and fun to be with so I thought she was just kidding and I left it alone.They told me that the call light would come on or they would hear something fall an object in nobody would be in the room. So my instructor insisted that I practice on doing an unoccupied bed in the room..without any hesitation I said please can I do it elsewhere (it was another empty room right next to it)..so as I'm washing my hands (a sink was right next to the room) the light my a** broke camp and was outie!.....:rckn: I couldn't beleive I witnessed that!

[sunflower777]

..sorry the call light came on and I still broke camp (having computer problems today)..LOL!

[StatBlues]

Love reading your stories!:typing

[nursecassia]

I have answered bells of palliative patients who have rang to ask me who the man in black is standing at the foot of their bed...I ask if the man is scary and they always reply no, but wholly man does it ever freak the crap out of me...we also have a 4 bed room on our floor that numerous people have reported seeing something under the one bed..I havent seen it thank god....

There was also this one night shift, which was more of a divine intervention more than anything that touched me so deeply that I cried for 2 days afterwards cause I just couldnt believe it... It was my very first night shift ever, it was supposed to be orientation but since we were short I was just thrown in there...I went on break and set my clock for an hour cause we would usually sleep...I hear my alarm go off and I am panicked because I have this feeling that I have to go back out right this minute like I was late for something..I wake up the others who are mad at me cause they swear they still have 15 minutes, but I am positive we must go back right now...so we go back, I check on my patients, the first door I enter is ice cold my hair stands up and I watch my patient take his last breath...so I call a code, code teams comes so fast and end up resucitating him he goes to ICU....I sit down for a moment to catch my breathe and chart and the alarm I thought went off then goes off, and I swear to this day time stood still for 15 min cause when i checked my watch I swear it was the exact same time it was when I came back from break...it was meant to be, something told me to go back to save this mans life...if it was 15 min later he would have died for sure...

[86toronado, BSN, RN]

My ghost stories are nowhere near as spooky as any of these-I started at the beginning, and have been reading for about an hour, but now have to go to bed. I called my dog from upstairs so he can walk back up the stairs with me in the dark :)

So I work in the oldest of the still populated wings in an older hospital. I used to work on the fourth floor, where one night I was helping a nurse straighten an elderly female patient in bed. This woman had been very lethargic, and hadn't spoken in days, but as we leaned over her, she looked past us into the upper left hand corner of the room and said very clearly "who is that?" The nurse and I both looked in that direction and saw nothing. We told her we didn't see anything, but she insisted that there was someone in that corner. She died the next day.

My other ghost story is probably just a case of me freaking myself out. I was sent up to the 6th floor - which had been the ICU for years, but at that time was deserted - to look for an IV pole. It was the middle of the night, I had only ever been up there during the daytime before. As I made the circuit of all of the empty, shadowy rooms I was just overcome with this feeling of dread. Needless to say, I hightailed it out of there - sans IV pole!

[NuteRN]

This one pt I had had a broken leg and pneumonia. She was complaining to me about the leg injury one shift. She said that she only got it because of an accident the ambulance had bringing her to the hospital. It went off the road into a swampy area. It was in the middle of winter, so the water was extreamly cold. The pt said she just wanted to go to sleep, but a woman was calling her name and telling her not to. She didn't think anything of it until she was in a new abulance going to the ER. She said she wanted to thank the female EMT for keeping her awake, it most likely saved her life. But she was told that the EMT were both men, there was no woman there. I got a chill when I heard this.