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...

[StatBlues]

i am enjoying this entire thread. i recall some ghost stories as well once i started reading, but my weirdest thing is right before someone dies i will smell this sent that reminds me of funeral home flowers.

usually within the next day or two someone i know dies or if its on a patient hallway, one of the patients will go sour and end up coding and dying. it is the weirdest thing. it used to creep me out but after so many years i just acknowledge it and keep my guard up and on ready.

how long have you special sense of smell?

[carolmaccas66, BSN, RN]

i am enjoying this entire thread. i recall some ghost stories as well once i started reading, but my weirdest thing is right before someone dies i will smell this sent that reminds me of funeral home flowers.

usually within the next day or two someone i know dies or if its on a patient hallway, one of the patients will go sour and end up coding and dying. it is the weirdest thing. it used to creep me out but after so many years i just acknowledge it and keep my guard up and on ready.

wow! are you fay like my grandmother?

[carolmaccas66, BSN, RN]

My uncle (my Mum's brother) told us all this weird story when he moved to live near us after his marriage disintegrated.

When he was very young he was kind of told by the police to go into the navy, because he had a bad childhood (drunken, abusive father, very poor) like my Mum, and he'd got into a lot of trouble. Anyway in the navy in those days, every guy (there were no women in the navy then) drank heavily - it was kind of like a tradition.

My uncle had got off his boat which had docked late, and he was making his way back home to go see a few people. Well he'd missed the last bus (bus services - in the Scottish highlands especially - were few and far between then), so he decided to hitchhike out to the country. Well a car eventually came along, it was a fairly old-fashioned type and he got in and this guy chatted to him for a while. My uncle said he only realised later that this guy was dressed very old-fasioned as well, which in the highlands and outlying areas was not so uncommon then. They talked about different things (my uncle can't remember what), but he said this guy was a bit strange, didn't know some of the expressions my uncle used, or things he mentioned. Many people out there then lived fairly isolated lives, so it wasn't too unusual. So this guy drove for a while, then stopped near this cemetary and said: 'I can't take you any further.' My uncle thanked him and got out, the car drove off and kind of disappeared, but because it was so dark, my uncle thought his mind was playing tricks. He was near a town so walked to the local pub and got a drink, and was telling the publican how this old-fasioned guy had kindly given him a lift. Well the publican & his wife looked at each other and described this guy and his car down to a tee. My uncle was curious, asking: 'How did you know what he was wearing, is he a local around here?' The publican's wife told my uncle the guy's name and said he used to be like the shire land owner many years ago, who was driving one day, picked up a hitchhiker and was murdered! They also said: 'Did he drop you off at the cemetary up the road?' My uncle said yeh, and the wife said: 'That's where he's buried, some people have had lifts from him, watched his car drive off, and actually seen him walk or float across the cemetary to where he is buried. He won't drive anyone further than that cos that is near where he died, and where he's buried in the family plot!!'

Well, my uncle said he can remember the smell of the seats in the car, he could have reached across and touched this guy, he could even smell cigarette smoke in the car, but this guy was a bit 'wooden', not really animated very much. And he remembers the car kind of just disappearing out of sight.

He also said that after the car had driven off, he remembered there were no smells of petrol (gas) fumes at all, and and no clouds of smoke from the exhaust in the cold country air. And because there weren't too many cars around at that time, you would have smelled the fumes out in the open air.

I asked my uncle if he'd been drinking before this happened, and he said no, because they had just docked the boat and cos he wanted to get home, he'd decided to hitch hike to get home, instead of going to a pub as he'd normally do. The first drink he'd had was when he'd got to that country pub AFTER he'd seen this ghost.

ADD: Sorry not nursing but just had to put this on here out of interest's sake!

[carolmaccas66, BSN, RN]

I have a fairly recent one! It's pretty mild, but interesting (and to me, touching) nonetheless. Sorry for the novel, I have to include the backstory. :)

I work at a children's home for the developmentally disabled. As such, we have a lot of heartbreaking stories - plenty of kids who were born disabled (which is sad but probably unavoidable), but also plenty of abuse and accident victims, as well. Those are the ones I tend to bond with the most.

In particular, there was one boy I just adored. He was born healthy, but when he was 8 he drowned in a wavepool. He was dead, but they were able to resuscitate him. However, the damage to his brain was profound, and he had to come live in our facility. He had to have a trach, he was tubefed, and he was unable to do much with his body. He couldn't communicate, though he was able to make eye contact. He would often get anxious when being cared for and would start to cough or tense up, though he was perfectly relaxed when a few certain people took care of him.

My first day there, I felt an instant connection to this boy. He was the most beautiful kid you can imagine, and it became my personal mission to help ease some of his anxiety and fear. As such, he was always very serene when I was assigned to his group. His mother even commented on how peaceful he seemed when I was there, and she said she never worried when she knew I was working because it was obvious how I cared for him.:redpinkhe

We started to notice that he was just not right. Despite his tubefeed, he was losing weight and just looking awful, and he wasn't voiding or having bms as normal. They did some cultures and labs, and could find no infections or anything. It took the doctors MONTHS to think to do an xray, and they discovered that somehow, his feed tube had moved down into his intestine - no food was getting to his stomach, and he was essentially slowly starving to death.

That day, they sent him out to have corrective surgery. It seemed to go fine, he stayed there and recovered for nearly a week, and then he returned to our facility on my shift. He was a little pale, but seemed okay. I bathed and dressed him for bed, kissed his cheek, and told him I had missed him. About an hour after I left, he passed away.

I was off work for the next few days. I went to his funeral to pay my respects to his family (imagine losing your little boy twice, almost 5 years apart to the day). I said goodbye to him.

When I returned to work a few days later, I was scheduled to work on another wing. The girl who had been scheduled to be on wing 5 (where the boy who passed had been) started having severe abdominal pains on her way to work. She called off and went to the emergency room, and I got bumped to wing 5. (They never figured out why she had the pains...creepy). The girls told me that wing 5 had felt really heavy since the little boy had passed...nothing too weird had happened, but just a strange feeling.

As soon my nurse said I was going to be on Wing 5 and gave me report, an emergency light started going off. Now, my facility does not have call lights...the residents are not able to understand or use them. There are, however, emergency lights to pull in case of seizures, etc.

We saw that the emergency light was going off in the little boy's room. We ran as fast as we could, wondering who could have pulled it, since the aides from that wing were out giving report to us. When I stepped into the room, we saw that it was the light next to the boy's former bed that had been pulled. I glanced at the bed and could have sworn I saw him in it for a second, laying with his stuffed dog, as usual. I first thought another resident had wandered down and climbed into his bed, but when I turned the light on, nothing was there. We turned off the emergency light, and the heavy feeling seemed to lift. Everything from then on seemed normal.

The nurses said he was probably waiting to say goodbye to his favorite aide.

What a lovely story, thanks so much for sharing.

Caz

[carolmaccas66, BSN, RN]

Okay..JW's don't have "exorcism"...Been a JW for 32 years (yes...that means my whole life!) and have never ever ever heard of an exorcism for JW's. My FIL is (and my grandfather was before he died) an elder and um...well...still never heard of it!

However, yes, I fully believe that demons attach to things. I knew an older JW sister that used to be a witch. I mean hard core, make tables walk across the room "witch". She knew that demons were attached to things and that is how alot of "magic" works. Her stories were enough to make your blood turn cold!

I finally got around to catching up with some of this thread.

I had studied with the JWs 20+ years ago, and this elder told me all these fascinating stories re how he helped get these demons out of people. As I said in my posting re this, I don't know the terminology they use (I can't remember the word/s he used), but it was like an exorcism - something akin to that. This elder was so interesting to talk to, and he used to have meetings with JW people with the other elders, to decide what to do to help them.

If you know the terminology I would like to hear about it, otherwise my brother is a JW elder and I will email him, unless the Truth has changed since I talked to this elderly gentleman (he was quite old at the time I met him so he is very possibly deceased now).

[WayneStateKatie]

Well this is not nursing related but thought I'd throw it out here anyway (the glut of ouija board stories a couple pages back reminded me of this story).

As it has been pointed out previously the ouija board was a popular pastime in the 1970s. My mother was invited over by a few other couples for a dinner party. They were all having a good time eating and laughing when someone pulled out a ouija board. They decided to give it a try-- my mother and two other women had their hands on the pointer and one of the husbands was recording everything that came through.

The pointed started flying all over the board and spelled out the name of a young man. He gave his name, and said that he had committed suicide. He said he was from a small town in Wisconsin (I forget the name I would have to ask my mother again) and he wanted them to call his mother and let her know that he was ok. He gave a phone number and then the board was quiet after he delivered his message. The ladies on the board were quite shaken up!

They looked at the phone number for quite some time deciding what to do. They pulled out the yellow pages (ah yes, the time before the internet...) and sure enough the area code was for this town in Wisconsin several states away! They finally decided to try calling the phone number but received a recorded message stating that this phone number had been disconnected. Everyone was freaking out at this point and they tossed the board into the fireplace. My mom didn't mention that they did any further follow up with this young man's message, but she will never go near a board again!

[RetRN77]

Well one night we were doing a seance, and we used a glass on a table surrounded by all the letters of the alphabet, and all the numbers from 1-0. My Mum had asked this spirit that was there Who are you? and the glass eventually moved to the letters and spelled out 'devil'! Well we were all shocked, and my Mum was saying something like go away you're not welcome here, and this glass spun around the table ON IT'S OWN multiple times, then shot towards the brick wall and just shattered! Well my older brother and his mates were there, one of his friends was religious (he was not doing the seance), and he always wore a big cross around his neck. He freaked out and held up the cross to the ceiling, and was yelling out: "Begone ye devil!!" (I remember the words he used were really old-fashioned), and he was chanting for Jesus to protect us! Outside just when he was chanting still, there was this MASSIVE crack of thunder and this rain (it had been a still, quiet night) just HURTLED down from the heavens!

After that my Mum either stopped the seances or did them less and less, and my brother's friend rarely came over, but we were all shaken up after that night. I'm sure I didn't sleep that night.

Something similar happened to my friends and I when we were in nursing school. Someone dug up a Ouija board, something I'd never even heard of, and I was asking questions about my fiance and I. It said we would die in a fire on December 7th. Awful. Someone said, "Ask it who it is." So I did, and it spelled out, "Devil." That really spooked me, but at the time I didn't believe in the Devil. I told a friend's mother, and she said, "Of course, didn't you know that? Satan uses those sorts of things to scare and control people who use them." She told me I shouldn't ever use such things, but I thought she was just superstitious. (But it's not superstitious to use them, right? LOL Too ironic.)

Later in life I experimented with Tarot cards, until once again, I was frightened by something they predicted and never touched them again. It wasn't until years later I read scriptures about consulting with mediums and Christian literature complete with stories of others who'd dabbled, which finally convinced me these are not things to be messing about with.

[FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I]

are you ever right. yes, satan is very active right now. just look the mess our world is in. those tarot cards and ouija boards are evil. i refuse to delve into any of that stuff.

[carolmaccas66, BSN, RN]

are you ever right. yes, satan is very active right now. just look the mess our world is in. those tarot cards and ouija boards are evil. i refuse to delve into any of that stuff.

i agree. i will never participate in one again.

carol

[JoanKayRNBSN]

I saw an earlier post regarding the presence of mgmt on the floor as a ghost story. Made my day to see that I am not the only one who sees these things as frightening!

[Nurse_Candice]

I only have one so fa r:)

We (the 2 floor nurses on my unit, and regional manger who was filling in until new DON started,) responded to a code we had been expecting for weeks on our rehab unit,(end of life care). After about 10 min of CPR, EMT's took over and we returned to the floor. there were several lights on so the the mngr went to answer one as I grabbed the transfer paper work for the EMTs. The Mngr came out of a room beside the nurses station ashen rubbing her arms and told me about the conversation she just had. As she walked in the room the resident,(AOx3 soon to be discharged home) was complaining about whoever was in the hall spraying stuff inquiring what they were spraying as she was worried it would aggravate her allergies. Mind you this was approx 10pm, we assured her no one was in the hall and there was nothing being sprayed. She proceeded to insist there was as she had seen a large plume of white mist go past her room, (from the direction of the expired res' room). We of course new that it had to be the passed on pt......

[hecallsmeDuchess]

Wow!! I miss all of these stories, ashamed to say I stopped reading for a while I stayed home alone at night. I'm back now, please keep them coming.

--Ghost stories fan.:)