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...

Specializes in LTC, CPR instructor, First aid instructor..
Probably a Photoshop picture, but still cool.

What was it? I couldn't make it out,damn old eyes LOL

It was a man sitting in a chair.

This lady has tried to assist me on late night rounds every now and then. :confused:

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Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
This lady has tried to assist me on late night rounds every now and then. :confused:

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Good Ole Flo!!!!! Always around to lend a hand......:lol2:

Specializes in Obs & gynae theatres.

That would be me without my makeup! :lol2:

Specializes in LTC, CPR instructor, First aid instructor..

Cute :hhmth::hhmth:

Specializes in Hospice Palliative Care.

I have a new one, and if my co workers read this they will know who I am as we have been comparing stories. A few of us have had unexplained experiences over the past few months on one wing of our building. Two of the nurses have distinctly heard a woman's voice calling "help me, please help me" and even using the name of the nurse - no one else was around and all the patients were sleeping. We also had a patient die one night and his mouth was open, an hour later the staff went in to do something and his mouth was closed and he was smiling.

On the same wing I heard footsteps one night and assumed that my co worker was coming down the hall way, which was unusual as he was supposed to be on his break. I looked in all the rooms but couldn't find him and when I went back to the main dining room he was still in the recliner taking a nap, and hadn't moved since I went down the hall. And the other night there was 3 of us standing in the kitchen when we heard the distinct squeek of wheels on the cart. I thought it was the student nurse, but she came out of the nursing station and said no it wasn't her, but maybe the lady in room 9, until we realized that that room was empty. I am sure it is just one of our recent patients who has not quite left us, and they are not there to do us any harm, I am just hoping they find a way to finish their journey peacefully, before they scare too many of the staff.

Specializes in Case Manager.

All this thread does is remind me of my own mortality... :(

Specializes in Med-Swing/Rehab.
I'd have to say nurse managers. I've heard they exist, but I very rarely see one.

Do something wrong and you will! LoL :lol2:

All this thread does is remind me of my own mortality... :(

So true :nurse:

It's funny, I'm not afraid of these stories as much as I am fascinated. This makes me want to work the night shift when I become a nurse LOL.

I've had 2 experiences that weren't in a hospital, but were creepy nonetheless.

The house my family and I moved into whenever I was around 7 had a family that lived in there before us. The man that lived there before us had died in the home, though I can't remember how exactly. Whenever I was around 8 or 9 I'd see him occasionally in my room. He'd sometimes walk up to my bed (I had bunk beds and slept on the top) and just hold on to the railing, then walk through the door and leave.

Whenever I was a little bit older I was sleeping over at a friend of mine's house with my little brother. My friend lives in one of those old plantation homes here in the south (I believe his home was built in the late 1700's) and it always gave me a really weird feeling. Well one night I'm sleeping there.. since my friend is a guy and I'm a girl he slept in a different room and my brother slept in that room too. His mom slept down stairs for some reason, and I slept upstairs. All of the windows were closed, but in the middle of the night the curtains behind me started blowing and I felt it get really cold. The stairs to the attic passed right in front of the door of the room I was in and I had the door open. It was pretty dark, but it was light enough from the moon shining through the window that I would be able to see if my friend/brother/friend's mom passed by. As the curtains were blowing and I felt it get really cold I started hearing foot steps. I looked at the staircase and I KNEW somebody (something?) was there but my friend/brother/friend's mom weren't there. I could hear my friend's mom still snoring downstairs and I said out loud ""C"? "J"?" but neither of them answered. When everything got back to normal I GOT OUT OF THERE lol. I went downstairs and told my friend's mom what happened, we checked the boys' rooms and they were still asleep and my window was closed and the AC and fan weren't even on. We also checked the house for any intruders but nobody was there, all the doors were locked and windows secured.. It was really weird.

Specializes in School LVN, Peds HH.

I'm a home health night nurse. The house I work in is in a secluded area, huge and kinda creepy. About two months ago, strange things started happening with the equipment. The o2 probes would start acting up... that was the first thing. We had a lot of problems with the o2 equipment. So we switched systems. The one we're using now has been fine... except after I fill the o2 tanks. For about a week straight, 2-3 hours after the tanks were full, the valve would open on its own and the tank would hiss wildly.

When I first started this job, I was heading back into my patients room one night after using the restroom and out of my peripheral vision, I saw a woman, wearing all white, standing outside my patients door. When I looked again, she was gone. I was terrified!

Before being a nurse I was a tech in the cardiac observation unit in the ER. One night the pt's pulse ox was alarming because it was reading in the high 70's low 80's with good pleth. So, I went into the room and changed it to a different finger on the pt. By the 3rd time the RN said we could just take it off the pt so I went in, removed the sensor from pt's finger and put it on standby. A few minutes later it began to alarm again. I went in to disconnect the probe and reassure the pt, but when I reached up to disconnect the probe I found it was not connected to the monitor at all. This scared me and the poor pt. What the pt didn't know is the night before a man in his early 40's had died in that bed of a massive MI. :eek:

I am now an ER nurse (still on nights) at a new facility. One night a code bell went off in an empty room. The lever that must be pulled down to call the code from the bedside had been pulled down. There was an RN sitting at the nurse's station and two CNAs watching psych pt's in the rooms next to the one where the code bell went off. No one had seen anyone go into or come out of the room. A few minutes later all the lights in the ER flickered and some of the computers lost power and restarted themselves. Coincidence? Maybe. When dayshifters came on they told us they had, had a code in the room prior to the night shift coming on the previous day. This scared me for weeks! That room is known to be "bad luck" to our patients, and I try to only put my most stable pts in it when I am assigned to it. :redlight:

Most recently I had a sweet elderly lady who was going to be turned over to hospice if not admitted from the ER. She had Alzheimer's/Dementia and thought I was doing awful things to her as I performed ordered tasks. She told me I was going to burn in hell and that she would be there to watch. I didn't like hearing that even though I knew I wasn't doing anything wrong. When I was done, I released her from the restraints and tried to make her comfortable. I left the curtain open and closed the sliding glass door so I could see in the room to make sure she didn't try to climb out of bed and fall. When I came back after checking on my other patients she asked me, "Where is momma? She was sitting right there. Where did she go?" as she pointed to the chair. I told her I wasn't sure. This was my first experience with a pt talking about a loved one that had surely passed although I had heard of it before. I hope she someday finds it in her heart to forgive me, and that she understands my only intent was to help. :redpinkhe

That's pretty much it for hospital ghost stories although I could go on and on about crazy things that would happen in my mother's house where I grew up.

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