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...

[ICUenthusiast]

A pt died 2 nights ago suddenly, after a handful of codes. The family finally said no more, and changed him to DNR so he could pass peacefully. 24 hrs passed, no one in that room since him because of low census. It was a very easy going night so many of us were gathered near the code pagers etc. when one pager went off. The paged called a code blue from that patient's room. We all looked at each other, realized no alarms were going off (technically our alarms WILL go off before the pager if a code is on the unit), and proceeded with "what the hell is going on" looks. At that moment, we realized that 24 hrs earlier, exactly, our pt in that room had passed.

Queue the whole unit rubbing the goosebumps on their arms..

That's not even the haunted room of the unit!

[snapdragon928]

Second hand telling (worked night before and after) and not a ghost, per se, but supernatural. Pt had been CTD for a week after coding a few times in the ICU, DNR/DNI. The night he finally died, he would be mumbling and talking to his wife, who'd died suddenly a few months before. He'd be alert and saying that's who he's talking to, even after confirming she'd died. Finally, he passed. Doc called it. Looked at his telemetry and his last heart beat was the same time his wife was declared.

My mother was dying of cancer at the same time as my ex father in law was dying of emphasema. My mom died first. We informed my ex father in law and he said to tell her he would see her in a weeks time. He died exactly one week later.

[raincitynurse]

I was a CNA before I was a nurse...and witnessed some truly SPOOKY things.Here is my first encounter while working as an aide:

It was a weekend morning, quiet, early.I had arrived on duty to the"easier"hall.Working with another brand new aide (this is why we got the easy hall, we were total newbies)I remember the cool early morning sun shining into the building.The kind of sun you get in really spring when the air is fresh and scrubbed clean from the nights rain.

As we got rounded, working together, we were told by the nurse that Bettie had passed away, and that we would both be staying on the hall while everyone was dining to ready her for the morgue, or a possible visit from family.

One big catch: nether of us had ever seen a corpse, let alone readied a body.

We were already spooked, and soon found ourselves alone on the wing with a dead lady.

She was a favorite resident, so we talked to her and shared stories while we worked, trying to remember our training. It was unnerving, as you could sense you worked with an empty and now very heavy shell.

We finished cleaning and dressing Betties body, pulled a fresh clean sheet over her, covering her face. And then pulled the privacy curtain in the shared room.

Residents returned from their morning meal and we rushed about.The door to Betties room was open, and I couldn't help but to glance at the pulled curtain as I rushed by time after time.

After several passes to and from the linen cart I saw that someone had finally arrived.His dark pants and shoes were visable under the curtain, the attire was indicative of family on their way home from church, or that the mortician had arrived.

Some time later, in that lull after the post breakfast rush,I asked our nurse," what shall we do about Betties room?"

And to me she replied "after the body is picked up, strip the bed, box her things"

"is her family gone?"I asked. "They are not coming"she replied,"the morgue will not be here for a while" she told me.

"No one has been here?"

"No, it is still early"

.......the tailored pressed pants, the formal wingtip shoes....who had been standing at the foot of Betties bed? ....I knew her visitor was not of our realm.

And ofcourse I checked, her corpse was still there.

[snapdragon928]

A little creepy story about one of my guys from the home I used to work at. I was the coordinator, so when things happened wrong, I was often called. Nothing scary happened with him, well what happened was scary but not in a BOO! way. I was paged that he had had a seizure in the bathroom shower and had broken his leg, bone was visable. So I race over, then follow him in to ER by ambulance. He gets checked out and they stay he has to stay and they will do surgery in the morning. So the take them up to his room by elevator. I was likley calling who I had to tell he was being admitted, so I didn't see which way they went. I knew the floor number and found a close by elevatorand got in. I opened the door, and a nurse or aid asks how did i get up their in that elevator. You have to have a khey to open the elevator from that floor and I had no keyand no one was with me. So how did I get in there and was able to go to the second or third floor.with out an empoyee key? they were pretty addiment that You had to us a key to get up to that floor.Theywere really surprised and told me where my elevator was. Got to his room, and he has another seizure so he was helped and settled in bed.

So a nice ghostly worker used her key to let me in, even though I had seen none else there

Things that make you go hmmm.

[exnavygirl-RN]

I had never heard of this until I worked on a Navajo reservation. Interesting.

I work in LTC and an older nurse says to tie a knot in the sheet to keep the resident from passing on your shift. Anyone else heard this before?

[coconuts]

My personal story started out after getting home from working an 11pm-7am shift. After changing for bed, I continued to make my way to my tall windows and shut the blinds and fell into my bed. My eye lids were heavy and burning from being overly tired, but no matter what I did, I couldn't sleep. I constantly tossed and turned only to find myself still tired, but couldn't fall asleep. It was so out of the ordinary as normally I wouldn't have such a hard time sleeping. So, my day went on and I gave up trying to sleep and did chores and ran erands. It was my night off so skipping my morning sleep and sleeping normal hours of the night was fine. Well, I couldn't sleep that night either, and gave up when it turned 5:30 the next morning. I decided I'd head to my parent's house in a few hours and do some laundry there. After breakfast and getting all my laundry together, I headed over to my parent's house with my bf and arrived at my parent's house about 8:45am. When we rang the door bell, my dad answered the door and told us my grandmother had passed away early that morning.

I didn't believe it. I went to her room and she wasn't there. I cried my eyes out all morning, afternoon, and night. Instead of doing laundry that day, I helped run erands and help with funeral arrangements. I got home and in bed that night about 8:30. I was extremely tired, sad, upset, etc. While I was deep asleep, I felt a sharp finger nail scratch from the heel to toe of my left foot. It was such a strong scratch that it woke me from my sleep. I couldn't explain it other than my bf being an inconsiderate jerk by playing a really mean joke on me. I called out his name and he walked out of our bathroom, which is in our room and to the right of the bed with a big space in between the bed and walls, and I asked him what the heck was wrong with him to do that and that I was so tired and finally fell asleep and that he was being a total jerk for playing around like that. He says he didn't know what I was talking about and had been in the bathroom. I didn't really think he did it either because if he was hiding under the bed and crawled his way to the bathroom doing that joke, I would've seen him. I was just looking for a logical explanation and decided, well...maybe the cat did it, but he said the cat was with him the whole time. We looked at each other a little strangely, but I was too tired to argue and he was just so creeped out to even talk about it anymore. I went back to sleep and decided to discuss it another time.

The next day, I called my dad up and mentioned this to him and he says it was probably my grandmother's way of saying goodbye one last time before she left......

[snapdragon928]

Not with my children, but I did have this connection just as you describe to my mom. We could finish each others sentences and I would answer her questions before she asked them sometimes! It is really hard to describe but we were just like on the same wave length or something. It was great and we were so close. Sadly she has been gone 16 years.

My daughter and son had that connection when they were young. My son is autistic and only speaks small words out of the blue, sometimes they are appropriate sometimes not. He is twenty seven now. As a young child he could say family names, pet names, when he would want to see them. He has lost his speech as he grew older. It grew garbled. He calls hi sister mae mae, which is mandarin Chinese for little sister, which she is. He could say agua from watching sesame street. I have heard him say phrases and one sentence out of the blue like three to four times in his whole life. He said bye bye see you later, before he was two and basically stopped talking. He said sissy down when she stood on a table when he was about three. When he was five he said is bobby in bed? His longest sentence. He said Laura babysit? when he was about twenty two when we talked about his step sister watching him for the summer. So you see, very limited speech.

My daughter could decode what he was thinking and tell me what he wanted when they were young. She can no longer do this anymore, but it was eerie. She has also seen a toaster float in the air and crash to the floor at my mothers house along with my brother. She has also seen faces floating around her room of family members who had passed on in her room. Interesting thing is, it was the same bedroom that her father used for some time when he was a teen and we were dating. He seen the same thing, faces of his sister and brother and other family members who had past floating in the air. He grew up in that house.

Other ghost stories from that house, A close friend of mine seen a woman in the kitchen one morning, she came out of the kitchen and asked my ex who was in the kitchen. He said no one is here. He asked her to describe the woman and it was his mother, who had died in that house.

Ok that's enough for now.

[AlisRN]

Well, this happened before I became a nurse but it happened in a Skilled Nursing / LTC facility. I worked for a Fire Alarm/Security System company where our techs also serviced Nurse Call Systems.

We had a report of a specific call light going on at all hours. The tech went to the site and chased wires, checked the switch, checked the boards, etc. He went up above the drop-ceiling and turned his head to find.....

... a rat chewing on the nurse call system wire....

I'm just saying some of the nurse call light "ghosts" may have had a rodent explanation. LOL

I'm absolutely NOT saying this stuff doesn't happen and ghosts don't exist because I've had my share - just not in my place of work as an RN yet....

I love love love reading these stories though!!!

Alis, RN

[GHGoonette, BSN, RN]

I had a weird experience a couple of weeks ago in our less than two years old hospital. I've heard people swearing blind the Theater is haunted, but I've never seen anything, although there are places where you get that scalp-crawling, gooseflesh feeling that something's not quite right. Other staff members and patients have seen strangers who mysteriously disappear when they go looking to see who it is who just walked through the unit, but until this one Friday night, I hadn't seen them myself.

I was last one out, and was in the change room when I decided I needed to use the loo before I left, and as I was sitting there I saw, through the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor, a shadow passing by as if someone had just walked past. No doors opened or closed, and when I emerged there was no-one there, and I got that same creepy feeling as if all the hair on my body was standing up.

I was told by one of the staff members that the police morgue used to stand on this property, but I haven't been able to find any records proving this. I do know that it used to be a wagon stop up to about 100 years ago, and that the police station stood almost next to where the theater wing is. This I can say, although some deaths have occurred in the wards, no patients have died in theater.

[snapdragon928]

ok, guys one more. The other night at work, the guys home this time, not the girls, it was night and everyone was asleep. i went out side and sat at the swing right outside the door to have a smoke break. i left the door open so I could hear anyone get up. The door slowly swung open, ok wind. It slowly swung almost closed, maybe the way the door was hung. Then it continued to swing back and fourth slowly, almost closed to almost all the way open, with no wind the whole time I was outside. Usually when left open by the clients or staff, it stays put, it doesn't swing back and fourth. Interesting.

The next day we were watching a movie with clients and had to pause the movie for a bit. the TV turned off by itself twice. One of the clients who was really afraid of ghosts and ghost shows, but who occasionly has watched ghost whisperer, says it must be a ghost in the house. We all laugh, and then he says it must be a timer on the TV. Just a bit spooky these happening one day after another. Third shift has said she hears strange noises at night. But this is not my haunted home, the ladies is. We did have a gentleman die in the home.

I don't normally spook easy, and the door and the one time I did see a ghost I was more startled than scared. But after reading this until 400 in the morning, I went to bed and had a nightmare about my sister and I at a LTC. There were ghosts in the LTC. I was a patient and I worked there in the facility in the dream and I had to go and check the meds, which was an office way down a long hall. A client came out of the room and yelled at me and threatened me with violence and I was afraid of the ghosts in the LTC. Ecetra until a doctor came around and taught me that the ghosts were produced by this and that, not really dead spirits. The fear in the dream at the begining was the biggest fear I have had in a long time. Kind of silly, when normally I don't scare that easily on this kind of stuff, and wasn't scared when I went to bed.

[LouisVRN, RN]

The other night I had a patient in one of the rooms that everyone swears is haunted. Guy was completely alert and oriented but liked to talk ... A LOT to anyone that would listen. The previous night, he wasn't my patient but I had a patient next door who asked for his door to be closed because this patient was talking so loudly to someone it woke him up. Well after closing my patient's door walked by his neighbor, who is sitting up in bed talking to no one in particular. Well the following night when I have him as my patient I go in there around 2 am to hang an infusion and he says "Where did Lee go?" Me "Who?" "Lee, he was sitting in the chair at the bottom of my bed" "I have no idea" "Oh, well, he must have got his own room finally. How long will this infusion take?" There was no one in his room and we had no patients at that time or staff members named Lee. Gave me the creeps.

[nursemelyn]

I really don't mean to digress, but this thread has led me to my own question on death and the spiritual after life. My father died recently from cancer. We experienced a lot of spiritual stuff--virtually his family members would pray for something, the answer would come from other family members that were unaware of original prayer, my 4 year old would see "angels"/floating objects that followed family members. My father was very angry with God and had been since he was a teenager. He was a wonderful man, but you could almost see the anger in his eyes if a hospital pastor offered prayer. Anyway, all this strange stuff seemed relevant to my father's preparation for death and eventually seemed to pave the way to acceptance/forgiveness of some sort. He even accepted prayer.

Where do nurses think these ghosts come from? Lost souls that didn't go to the light, or didn't even get the light? Demons waiting to take us away? And does any pariticular religion seem crucial to having a positive death experience? Why are their so many ghost stories in this thread?

It seems that hospice nurses often see patients of all faiths experience similar positive visions. What seems to make one death spiritual comforting, while others die in fear?

I know these are loaded questions, but I'm asking as many nurses as I can. ANY thoughts are helpful! Trying to understand my dad's death seems to be a major part of my healing process. I'm going crazy with these thoughts. URGGGH! If I discuss it with church members, I virtually hear : the good things are from God, all bad things (what's considered bad by their theology is from the devil). So if a Christian had a positive death and saw relatives than they went to heaven, but if an "unsaved person" had the same experience it is because the devil is tricking us.) Thus, I want to go to the people that witness death first hand.

Thanks so much.

Me too! The other day I was thinking about ghosts and angels and I truly believe they are one-in-the-same. Angels are people who haven't received a body yet, or who have died and are waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ so they can be resurrected. I believe that all people who have died will stay here on the earth until the Second Coming, and THEN everyone will go to Heaven or Hell (or whatever you believe). I think that is why there are so many ghost stories!

I believe that demons are those lost souls who follow Satan, whose sole purpose is to tempt us and make us turn away from God. I believe that once we die, our eyes and minds are opened to the truth, allowing us to see everything as it is. Thus, religion is important, but if we don't find the truth while on earth, we will learn it when we die. Death is really just another step in our existence. It's not meant to be scary (unless you were evil while alive). But people die with terror on their faces because they don't know what to expect. Death is unknown to them, unknown to all of us. Oh, and I don't believe that individuals are "saved" or "damned" from the very beginning of their lives here on earth. What would be the point to this existence if God didn't give us a chance to return to Heaven? I think that if we live our lives the best we can, with the knowledge we've been given, then God will judge us AFTER we die, not before.

Just my thoughts :)

I've never seen a ghost, per say, but I've felt watched my whole life. My dad died before I was born in a plane crash, and I've often felt that he is watching over me. It still creeps me out though! At a cancer hospital I worked at as a CNA, 5518 would ALWAYS ring during the middle of the night. Scared me! At my current hospital (that was built in the 1930's), I'm an RN in a psychiatric unit that used to be a med-surg floor. Apparently the old unit had a lot of deaths, and our hall is always freezing. Not any particular room, but the hallway. While working nights (like I am right now), I'll hear scuffling in the hallway, and no one will be awake. And there's lots of spiders on the unit, which doesn't help my nerves, haha!

Melyn, RN