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...

[angelique777]

eightB said:

Hi everyone

Where to start? Well I work for a city hosptial in New York as an LPN. I have just about as many ghostly patients as I do living. It's true the ghostly ones don't ask for much but they tend to scare my co-workers.

I think my favorite two are the Walker and the Watcher.(these are nick names I've given them.) :uhoh21:

The walker is a woman who comes down the hall nightly. She's pushing or pulling an IV pole because I can hear the wheels squeak as she makes her way down the hall. ( this usually happens when I'm alone. Go figure) If I look right at her I can't see her but if I look with the corner of my eye I can just make her out. She's wearing a house gown, not hospital gown.

Now just in front of the Nurse's station is a large pillar. My ghostly visitor walks to the pillar and disappears behind it.

My other ghostly client is the Watcher. This one is a middle age gentlemen. He looks hispanic and has a small mustashe. He is dressed in a hospital gown and I usually see him in room two, but only is its unoccupied. This rrom is located right next to the nurses station. Most of the time he just stands by the doorway watching the nurses. Some of my co-workers have seen him and are scared, but I tell them he can't hurt them. :chuckle

Where is this I am in new Yorkwhat hospital or nursinghome you talking about curious to know if I have been there

[lvn2be]

I can't stay away from this thread...I woke up from a dream last night and couldn't get back to sleep because I kept thinking of all of these ghosts!!

kris

[Chad_KY_SRNA]

Last night at around 0100 I was changing a resident and had my back to the door. I heard the knob turn and the woman I was working with said "Come In" and nothing happened, I turned around and opened the door but there was no one up anywhere on the unit but the two of us. She told me that she had seen the knob turning and I heard it very clearly.

[Angie_Baby]

Just bumping this to the top because I'm having such a good time reading these accounts!

[RNMedic1977]

If you like to read ghost stories, I just started reading a ghost (fiction) love story....it is pretty good too! I got it at Amazon.com, it is called "The Gettysburg Ghost" by Philip Ragone.

[StatBlues]

These stories make me sad.

That these souls are not at rest...........

[kurtzmobile]

This occurred when I was approximatelly 3 or 4 months pregnant. I had a dream that I was sitting in a rocking chair nursing my infant. The room was warm and encapsulated by a soft summer days light. This dream was so vivid, I can remember every detail to this day. Anyways, as I look down to gaze upon my little one, he pulled away from nursing and looked up into my eyes w/ a beautiful smile upon his face. He had reddish fine, curly hair, fair complexion, and a small gap between his two upper front teeth.

Well, what do you know, my son to me appears just as I dreamt about him now. He looks now just as he did in my dream. The bizarre thing is that I was clueless in regards to the bonding that occurs w/ breast-feeding and how babies will all of the sudden look @ you as if saying "Hi, Thank-You for feeding me, I love you." You mothers out there who have experienced this can attest to this. A new thread could probably be started on dreams here, but I thought this was appropriate to share. Thanks for all the wonderful stories, I have a couple of my own that I'll share another time. :)

[Angie_Baby]

http://www.nderf.org

The link is to the Near Death Experience Research Foundation's website, which lists accounts of near death and out of body experiences. While not ghost stories, the accounts lend even more weight to the concept of a soul, spirit or energy, that persists after bodily functions cease. I find these accounts very comforting and reassuring, that the essence of who we are continues to learn and grow. :)

[Cute_CNA, CNA]

lvn2be said:

I can't stay away from this thread...I woke up from a dream last night and couldn't get back to sleep because I kept thinking of all of these ghosts!!

kris

This made me chuckle.

Keep up the good stories, folks.

[stevierae]

kurtzmobile said:

This occurred when I was approximatelly 3 or 4 months pregnant. I had a dream that I was sitting in a rocking chair nursing my infant. The room was warm and encapsulated by a soft summer days light. This dream was so vivid, I can remember every detail to this day. Anyways, as I look down to gaze upon my little one, he pulled away from nursing and looked up into my eyes w/ a beautiful smile upon his face. He had reddish fine, curly hair, fair complexion, and a small gap between his two upper front teeth.

Well, what do you know, my son to me appears just as I dreamt about him now. He looks now just as he did in my dream. The bizarre thing is that I was clueless in regards to the bonding that occurs w/ breast-feeding and how babies will all of the sudden look @ you as if saying "Hi, Thank-You for feeding me, I love you." You mothers out there who have experienced this can attest to this. A new thread could probably be started on dreams here, but I thought this was appropriate to share. Thanks for all the wonderful stories, I have a couple of my own that I'll share another time. ?

That's a beautiful story.

[stevierae]

lvn2be said:

I can't stay away from this thread...I woke up from a dream last night and couldn't get back to sleep because I kept thinking of all of these ghosts!!

kris

Same here----I get so scared I can't get to sleep---I keep hearing "noises--" but I come right back to the computer and start reading again.....

I've never seen any ghosts, or spirits, but I've had some uneasy feelings in 3 separate, old places-----one was the old Naval Hospital in Newport, Rhode Island; one was the nursing home wing of Long Beach V.A. Hospital, and one was the cadaver lab in one of the old, (vintage WWII) buildings at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital.

We used to have our classes in the classrooms adjacent to the cadaver lab, and we had to go up there at night to study. I always, always felt as if I was being "watched" when I was there alone. It wasn't a peaceful feeling, either--it was really, really creepy. Part of our duties in those days ('70s) was sprinkling those cadavers down with formalin once a week. I always half expected to look up one night and see one of them walking zombie like down the hall toward me, like the zombies in "Night of the Living Dead." There were only 2 girls and 5 guys in our class, and I always tried to get one of the guys to study with me at night--they felt the same sense of creepiness, but somehow it just felt safer with one there.

One last kind of creepy thing---my mom and I weren't particularly close, but I don't think we had any "issues." She died of anoxic encephalopathy after being comatose for several days after having an M.I. when she was just 47. I have had, since she died in 1981, scary, scary dreams about her---in the dreams, she is a zombie, coming at me with long, ugly fingernails, and she has fangs.

Now, when I was about 9 or 10, I remember my mom telling me to clean the bathroom (my Saturday chore) one Saturday morning, and I was arguing with her that I wanted to go play with my friends. She called me an "ingrate." I told her there was no such word. Next thing I know, she had grabbed me from behind by my ponytail, spun me around, and, as she did it, raked her long, pointed fingernails (fashionable in the early '60s) across my face. I think it was purely an accident; she just wanted to spin me around and show me the word "ingrate" in the dictionary. LOL, I had 5 bloody fingernail scratches on my face for days--but, in those days, that wasn't unusual. I can remember kids coming to school with a palm print across their faces after being slapped for "smarting off" to THEIR moms.

My husband tells me I must obviously have unresolved "issues" with my mom, but I really don't---in fact, that incident never bothered me. My mom had a horrific childhood (her earliest memory was coming home from kindergarten and finding HER mom dead; kneeling on the floor; head in a gas oven, a la Sylvia Plath) and she and her brother and sisters were all sent to different orphanages because their father was a long distance trucker and apparently couldn't or didn't want to take care of them anymore. So, I just figured she had her own inner demons----she was never intentionally abusive to any of us, and no one ever would have considered that "child abuse" in the '60s, anyway--in fact, I figured it served me right for "smarting off" to her.

Whoah, now I really AM scared to go to bed!

[tnacRN]

bori-bsnrn said:

? 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.....

I have a friend who doesn't believe in spirits/ghosts. She says that once you die, if you are intended for heaven you go straight there. She believes all spirits/shadows/ghosts are the devil. That he wants you on his side so bad that he will disguise himself as a grandson on a tricycle, a young girl, an infant, a beloved family member, etc.

I would like to believe that you are greeted by loved ones when it is your time to pass. I also believe that we have angels and loved ones watching after us. My grandfather was getting ready to leave for china on a 3 week vacation and the night before he was scheduled to leave,he fell, hit his head on a concrete step splitting his head open above his left eye as well as breaking his left wrist. While in the hospital they discovered a much bigger problem... Three days later he had a triple bipass. He and I both believe that my grandmother helped in his "Fall." he doesn't do subtly so she had to knock him on his butt to get the message. Whether it was her or not, it saved his life. His doctor said he was a heart attack minutes from happening and would not have survived his trip to China.

If you believe as my friend does (and she's a devote christian) then these stories are a whole lot creapier!!