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...

[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!

[msbfree]

I'm not certain that this qualifies as a ghost story. But on a Med-Surg unit that I worked on several years ago there was a light that would dim really low, then flicker. When it happened we would say "go check you patients", you know as a sort of joke. Well after a while, there was a real noticable correlation between that light and the deaths that occured on that floor. I would say about 99% of the time on the 11p-7a shift when if dimmed then flickered someone was about to die or already gone. The floor has since been turned into a day surgery unit, and is closed at nights.

[CoffeemateCNA]

I need to STOP reading this thread. Every time I come back to it I end up sleeping with the lights and TV on because I'm terrified.

[vhern246]

That link has too many stories! Anyone got any new ones?

[CoffeemateCNA]

At a former facility I worked at there was a room that was haunted by a "singing ghost." Every resident that stayed in it, whether they were AAO x3 or demented, would put on the call light in the middle of the night, freaked about the singing ghost. There were even some staff that REFUSED to go into that room at night (including myself). Management finally stopped putting people in it and just used it as a storage room.

[sirI, MSN, APRN, NP]

Threads merged.