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...

[CFitzRN, ADN]

No harm, no foul. Have a great day! :)

[MissJessica,RN]

For those of you who posted things about this thread being so spooky, I've got a funny story for you.

I was reading some of these posts last night before bed and was getting pretty spooked myself. Well, I went to help my five year step-son with his bath and he was talking. All of a sudden, he screams, "There's a human in here!" I screamed to the top of my lungs and whipped around to see what he was talking about. What did he see? A moth! Why is the world he said it was a human I have no idea, but it scared me enough to make me scream!

[carolmaccas66, BSN, RN]

Since my shift got cancelled today I may as well start writing.

My Mum told me this story many years ago......

My grandma used to be a nurse way back in the olden days. She is dead now, & I don't think they ever had formal training then.

Well she used to live & work in an old miner's home (as in mining coal) when she was 15. Nobody really stayed at school in those days - at 14 years old or so you were sent out to work. She had done all her work for the day and was on her bed reading or whatever. Well this miner's home was really, really old & used to be an old mansion or something with a lot of history. Anyway my grandma felt a really cold wind all of a sudden & looked up at her sporificely furnished room, & got the biggest shock of her life. There was an old dressing table in the room, and this spirit/ghost in very old fashioned dress (like a ballgown) drifted through the stone wall, sat down at the dressing table, & started brushing her hair (my grandma couldn't remember if the brush was one the ghost had or the one on the table). Anyway my grandma just stared at this lady, who dreamily gazed in the mirror brushing her hair. My gran wasn't scared or anything but the room had turned very cold. Well this ghost sat there for a few minutes, finished brushing her hair, looked at my gran, smiled and drifted out through the wall. My gran said she could see THROUGH this ghost, & she was never scared. She never told anyone, feeling that it was something private. She ended up moving on, changing jobs, getting married etc but never forgot this experience, because she just felt calm.

She had many ghost stories she told my Mum. I often wish she was still alive so I could get more!

[Aleonard13]

I think that a very creepy but fun thing to do is to visit an old mental hospital that has been shut down for years, and see if there is any paranormal activity there, especially at night.

why? people die everywhere. is it suppose to be creepier because they were mentally ill??

[Aleonard13]

i used to have a friend that lived in savannah GA and i went down there to help her get ready to move out. the reason she and her 2 other room mates was leaving was because every night the one girl would wake up in the middle of the night screaming and feeling as if someone was choking her. she said it felt like a man and he was a dark figure and he would whisper "die b**** die" in her ear. then the room mates would rush into her room and there would be no one there. one day my friend was alone and in the bathroom and she heard a man whistle in her ear and when she looked around and found no one she heard a man's voice laughing. the last straw was one morning they woke up and on the hall closet door was a child's writing all over the bottom half of the door. in the middle was a drawing of a house which looked like kinda like the house they lived in with an X over one of the rooms and all around the drawing in a spiral was the words "i see i see i see i see i see" and in the middle by the house drawing was a big "YOU" so it said " i see i see i see i see YOU". they tried painting over it and it wouldn't disappear. i saw this with my two own eyes when i was there to help her pack. i almost passed out when i heard the story and saw the drawing.

omg.i really wish i hadn't read this one. that's too damn scary to read by yourself

[LeiaT]

I have quite a few stores from working on the Med-Surg and Psych units for the past three years. I'll start with the first paranormal experience that I had (at the hospital, at least):

I was newly out of nursing school and just started being charge nurse on med-surg when this incident occured. On our med-surg unit, night shift charge takes the same patient load as all of the other nurses. On the first night of my weekend trio of shifts, I had assigned myself a patient that I'll call Mrs. G. Mrs. G. was a morbidly obese lady with a small bowel obstruction who had refused to have an NG tube placed. No big deal, really, I guess, since she was NPO and not having and n/v at the time. Anyway, I got the creepiest feeling from her that Friday night for some reason. She said something about how she usually talks to her dead mother (which I don't think is strange at all). Like I said, she just gave me an uneasy feeling.

Fast fwd to the next night. For some reason she had changed rooms, so I didn't mind one bit to assign her to another nurse. At one point during the night, she had pressed the call button. I couldn't understand what she said over the intercom, so I walked down to her room to see what she had asked for. She wanted some water, so I went and got her some. When I came back to the room, she told me something that I thought was awfully peculiar. I can remember exactly what she said: "They had a party for me today." I asked, "Who did?" She replies (with a huge smile on her face) "My friends and family. Some I haven't seen in 20 years!" I say "Wow! They must have come from far away!" I know that my eyes got huge when she clarified-- "No! They have been dead for that long! It was the most beautiful party."

It really made me wonder why a 40-something year old seemingly sane woman would say something like this. I got my answer about two hours later when a white-faced co-worked walked out of Mrs. G's room and yelled that we needed to call a code. It was too late for Mrs. G. It looked like she had died at least thirty minutes before we found her. I immediatly understood what she meant by her "party." It must have been a going away party!!

[cupertino]

My story comes from my sister who is an ER nurse. A diabetic guy was brought in who had been drinking and his sugar was so high he should have been in a coma but instead he was physically and verbally abusive and called my sister the C word and other insults. When they finally got him restrained, he looked up at my sister and snarled' "I'll see you in HELL *****!"

She looked down at him and smiled sweetly and said, "We ARE in hell."

He didn't say another word for 2 hours, LOL.

[GD-CNA]

when i worked in a nursing home we had a resident that was unpleasant to say the least. one day i was on bell duty (it was my responsibility to answer all the bells for 2 hours), and the man rang his bell and told me that there was a black dog under his bed. i looked under the bed, but there was nothing there. i thought that he could have possibly seen a dog because it was a hot day, and the front door to the home was open. i told him that the dog must have gone out of the door before i arrived. he rang the bell again a short time later, insisting that he could see a dog under the bed, again i couldn't see anything. this carried on. he became quite hysterical on one occasion shouting that the black dog under his bed was trying to bite him, and that it had red eyes. he looked terrified, and i couldn't calm him down for ages until the dog had disappeared. i handed over what happened to the nurse in charge, and went home as it was the end of my shift. the next day i was on an afternoon shift, and found out that the man had died not long after i had gone home.

it really freaked me out. he was a very unpleasant man, and i often wondered if the dog was there to take him away to you know where. one i'll never forget

emma

what makes your story about the "black dog" so interesting is that the mystic st gemma galgani (1878-1903) wrote about a black dog that would attack and torment her. she was absolutely certain it was the devil (or a demon) in the form of this black dog.

concerning this "black dog" in her diary she wrote:

""today i thought i was to be entirely free from that nauseous animal, and instead he has knocked me about greatly. i had gone to bed with the full intention of sleeping, but it turned out otherwise. he began to beat me with such blows that i feared i would die. he was in the shape of a big black dog, and he put his "paws" on my shoulders, hurting me greatly. i felt it so much in all my bones that i thought that they were broken. also, when i was taking holy water he wrenched my arm so violently that i fell to the floor from the pain. the bone was dislocated, but went back into place because jesus touched it for me, and all was remedied".

she was often attacked by the devil/demons mostly in the form of a small black, hairy man, and then also occasionally the black dog mentioned above, or a black panther-like cat. anyway, there is a great website about her on the internet so those interested can google "st gemma versus the devil" for more info.

[carolmaccas66, BSN, RN]

My Mum used to live in Scotland & her Mum had a black labrador that died (can't remember it's name). Well her Mum always said the dog used to sit next to her, (my Mum couldn't see/hear anything unusual) & she would feel it's breath & it brushing up against her, barking at night (there were no other dogs on this big isolated farmhouse they lived in), and she would see it running over the hills etc at night. But it never harmed her, I don't even think it realised it had died!

When a relative of my mum's died (when she was young), who had been a heavy smoker, it was normal in those olden days to die at home. Well my mum and some other relies were sitting round a coffee table with a big heavy, old-fashioned crystal cut ashtray on it. When their relative finally took his last breath, they were all in the lounge & the death bedroom was at the end of the hall. Anyway everyone was in the lounge, upset etc when they heard footsteps going down the hallway - definite heavy footsteps - & someone said 'That sounds like such-and-such who just died!", then to everyone's amazement, the heavy crystal cut ashtray on the table TURNED OVER once BY ITSELF, then just sat there & didn't move again. Mum said everyone was shocked - was this their relative coming down the hallway to say goodbye? Or was he trying to say something maybe about not smoking?

Very spooky.....

[vhern246]

I've been around hospitals for a little while now and I've already heard a lot of ghost stories already!

Whether you're a believer or not, most people have some sort of experience they can't explain, some terrifying and some touching.

So what's yours?

[sassy_squirrel]

Hiya. Just wanted to let you know there is a huge thread on ghost stories already.

https://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/whats-your-best-108202.html

Enjoy reading them all. :)

[vhern246]

Darn, someone beat my posting! Oh well, thanks for the link!