What's Your Best Nursing Ghost Story?

What Members Are Saying (AI-Generated Summary)

Members are sharing personal experiences and stories related to ghosts, spirits, and paranormal occurrences in healthcare settings. Some members discuss encounters with deceased loved ones or unexplained phenomena, while others share their interest in ghost stories and movies like "Doctor Sleep" and "The Shining." There is a mix of skepticism, curiosity, and belief in the supernatural among the forum participants.

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 Progressive Care, Telemetry.

We had a very dear patient that was on the unit for quite a while. Although we were a Tele floor, this patient was somewhat of a VIP in the medical community and the family got along with the nurses so well that the decision was made to keep them inpatient hospice on our floor. They lingered for quite a while kussmaul breathing, no urinary output, spO2 in the 70-80s on 100% NRB (that is if the pleth could sense anything at all), the whole nine. The end of our shift ended like any other and there was absolutely no change wahtsoever in the patient's status. I work nights so when our shift came back on one night, we were surprised to see that the patient had finally passed away. It was a refreshingly slow night so even though the room had already been cleaned and ready for the next patient, we never had to admit anyone to that particular room. It was a little past 2 or 3 AM and we were all talking about the patient and sharing stories because by that time, all 5 of us had been assigned to them at one time or another. That's when the call bell started going off and the room number on the screen said that room. We all just stopped to look at each other for a minute before our PCT answers the call on speaker and says, "Can I help you?" Static. She looks at me wide-eyed and said, "WHOA! You have to go down there with me!" Reluctantly we took a stroll down the hall and initially were surprised to see the door closed shut because usually we leave the empty rooms open. She opens the door and steps away quickly as if something is going to jump out and bite her. All we see is an empty room and the call bell remote sitting innocently on top of the neatly folded sheets. The only thing that seemed out of place was that someone had left the crack in the window open. The next morning, one of the family members gave us a plant as a thank you and the charge nurse during the day had every intention to go transplant it into our meditation garden that we have in our atrium on the first floor. I don't really know plants or flowers nor do I pretend to but one of the other nurses mentioned that we needed to place it where it got plenty of sunlight, but that never happened. Still. So we've actually been waiting for the plant to wither up and dry out, but that has also never happened. It's been several years now and we're still waiting.

Specializes in L&D, Family Practice, HHA, IM.

I LOVE all these stories! Keep them coming! :yeah:

Specializes in Med/Surg, DSU, Ortho, Onc, Psych.

I have some stories my Mum told me years ago, though not nursing stories. I just remembered them reading these again (I love ghost stories!)

My Mum had gone to bed one night - she is an early riser so goes to bed early. Well she always used to say that she had this Chinese lady whom she would see when she just woke up for no particular reason (ie: didn't need the loo or anything), and she'd just sit quietly on the end of the bed. My Mum just knew this lady would be there & she'd wake up when she appeared. The apparition was always wearing a traditional Chinese, beautifully embroidered gown, a spike with silvery decorations in her black hair, all piled up on top of her head. My Mum would say hi, then the lady would just fade away. My Mum said she used to see her all the time. She never knew any Chinese people or had encountered any really up until that time. My Dad never saw this lady.

Another story she told me was truly terrifying. My Mum was restless, semi-sleeping one night and my Dad was asleep beside her. Well, Mum woke up suddenly and she looked down the bed....and there crawling UP the bed was a severed, bloody, black hand!! My Mum was adamant she was NOT dreaming. She tried to scream & wake up my Dad next to her, but she was paralysed with fear. This hand kept crawling up the bed, slowly towards her. My Mum said she has never felt such terror in her life. She was sweating like mad, her heart was hammering and she was desperate to move, but couldn't and all the time this hand just kept crawling up the bed, slowly getting closer to her. She told me she could FEEL it's fingrers digging into her as it gripped the bed clothes to get up the bed. She thinks she must have passed out, because the next day there as no evidence of a bloody hand being there and my Dad heard nothing.

To this day, my Mum still believes that hand was real, and nothing can convince her otherwise.

My Mum always used to see a black apparition either in the hall way as well, or in the kitchen, which would vanish and no-one else would ever see it.

I have some other stories of her astral projection encounters but it's late and I must have my cup of tea, then bed :)

Specializes in ICU.

Ok, so it's All Hallows Eve and I'm working the night shift and so far so good, nothing seen so far :sofahider

Specializes in Med/Surg, DSU, Ortho, Onc, Psych.
Ok, so it's All Hallows Eve and I'm working the night shift and so far so good, nothing seen so far :sofahider

Ha ha! Did anything end up happening? I scared myself last night re-reading some of these again!

Specializes in ICU.

Not a thing which is unusual

I'm actually a student at the moment, but this is the story of my reason to go into nursing for hospice.

My MIL had been good friends with this woman, Georgia, all of her life. Her own mother was Georgia's best friend in childhood, which made Georgia something of a second mother-figure to my MIL. Georgia had no children of her own because of a tumor in her youth, so she had basically adopted my MIL and my MIL's brothers and sisters as her own and spoiled them rotten. She had even gone as far as leaving her house to our family in her will and making my MIL her primary in the last 10 years of her life (she lived to be 96).

Georgia was sharp as a tack up until her death and never lost any of her mental abilities. One of her hardest struggles though, because of this, was dealing with the loss of her body functions and the loss of dignity she felt, having us assume more and more responsibility for her ADLs. She decided to die at home and we all took shifts being with her and doing her care in the final 6 months.

In her last month, she began seeing a very tall man dressed in white in her bedroom. If we were staying with her at night, she'd suddenly give a shout and we'd wake up and come in. She'd be shouting "You get out of here! Stop bothering me! I can't do it!" and there would never be anyone there. She'd be upset and would always want to know why we let this tall stranger into her room in the middle of the night, completely irritated with us. We always slept in her living room, which one would have to walk through to get to her room, and never saw this man. He would come to her and tell her to get up and walk to him, but she had lost function of her legs and would yell at him that she couldn't do it, that she wasn't strong enough.

He came to visit her 4-5 times before her death.

The day she died, one of my friends was there for the few hours I was out running errands for my family. My friend was snoozing on the couch because Georgia had been in a coma for three days and was in the quiet, last stage. My friend said that suddenly, she had been jerked awake like someone was warning her, shaking her by the shoulder. She ran into the room to find Georgia taking her last, very quiet breaths. She sang a soft song and Georgia passed on. She was upset later by the experience, not because the death was scary, but because she could not explain who had woken her up to witness Georgia's death.

Georgia had left her house to my family in her will and we moved in for a while after we repainted and renovated it to put it on the market. The most work we did was in the bathroom, putting in all new fixtures. Well, Georgia didn't seem to like to changes because even though we are confident that we put in good work in there, every single new screw has been undone over time and each fixture has fallen apart. Just the other day, the new cupboard door came off in my hand. I had to laugh because it was just so obviously unnatural. At first I thought it was my kids doing it one fixture at a time, but the cupboard had to be unscrewed from the inside and we have childlocks on those so my kids can't get to the chemicals and medicines. I keep apologizing out loud to Georgia for changing her bathroom, but her old fixtures were just not going to be appealing to new homeowners.

Specializes in ICU 3+ years, travel nurse 1+ years.

LOVE this thread! As a travel nurse I can safely say I have worked at many hosiptals. I always love hearing all the stories that each hospital has, because you know that every hospital is haunted (according to the night shift!). At the hospital I currently am at they have stories of their own, which is somewhat surprising because this hospital was built on farmland in 2009, so it's basically brand-new. Apparently the farmer who owned the land didn't want a hospital to be built on it, but the hospital won, the farmer gave up his land, and during construction of the hospital the farmer died (of natural causes, nothing suspicious). On a walk-thru of the hospital some big-wigs were giving a tour, and apparently when they walked past an empty room (no patients had been allowed in the hosiptal yet) they saw a man standing there in overalls and a flannel shirt. When they backed up to check it out nobody was there. Maybe it was the farmer??

There is a room designated as the 'hospice room' which also gets used as an overflow ortho-surgical room, and I HATE it when I have patients in there because of this: one night a nurse had an ortho patient in the room. The nurse kept seeing shadows in the room, and also saw a white mist. She never told the patient about what she saw. The next day the patient asked to have a room switch because of the shadows. Neither the nurse nor the patient told each other what they had seen, so they each saw it on their own, scary! I always close the door to that room when nobody is in it.

Here's a creepy thing that happened, and I saw it with my own eyes. Security has cameras all over the hospital. One of the cameras is outside angled towards a big heavy metal door that you need a badge to get it to open. All of a sudden on one of the tapes the door whips open, and stays open for approx a minute and a half. The door is dang hard to push open, and slams shut immediately when you let go of it. Right before you see the door slam open for a split second is a dark shadow on the window of the door, and then it looks like an orb shooting out of the doorway when the door is open. I know it sounds totally crazy, and so I had to have security show me the tape so I could see it with my own eyes! They checked to see who had opened the door w/their badge and nobody had opened it for at least 20 minutes. So it basically opened on it's own. That one made me have nightmares, and I have goosebumps writing it!

And of course, the thing that all these hospitals have in common is there's always a ghost in the OR, call lights go off in rooms where there aren't any patients, bed alarms go off, etc. I guess some people never want to leave.... :eek:

My mom and myself always considered ourselves 'sensitive'. My mother's father recently passed away and I live across the country from where he lived. On the night he died, my bedroom light went on by itself in the middle of the night. It has never done this. I looked around to see my husband fast asleep (no one else lives in the house) so I quickly turned the light off and got up to go to the bathroom. One of my arms was freezing cold but my face wasn't cold so I thought it was odd. While I was in the bathroom, I felt an intensely cold chill and thought maybe my husband had left a window open. I checked and it wasn't cold outside the bathroom and the windows were closed.

The night before we flew out for the funeral, I woke up to go to the bathroom, my husband was asleep but the downstairs light was on. It had been turned off when my husband went to sleep. Neither of these has ever happened and even turning on the downstairs lamp is quite difficult as it takes some force to turn the knob.

I'm not sure if my grandfather was checking in on me or if my mourning had caught the attention of 'something'.

Specializes in medical surgical, oncology.

these stories are all giving me the chills!

Specializes in SNU/SNF/MedSurg, SPCU Ortho/Neuro/Spine.
The best I have heard is from a nurse who said that one night she was floated to oncology at the hospital she used to work at. She was given a patient who was passing away and had been unconscious for several days. At one point during the night the nurse went into the room and the patient was at the top of the bed and looked at her and said, "don't let them take me!", the nurse was freaked out and asked her who was going to take her and she said that black thing up there and pointed up in the air. This patient died within minutes.

A similar story happened to my first death, the patient did not want to die... When I went to get her water and call the family in to say good bye, she was gone! When I was leaving the unit I kept feeling her right behind my neck (must have been all in my mind) but it made me run through that huge dark garage at night... I wanted to scream... I think I ran a red light that night.... It took me 6 months to be able to help out with post mortum....:eek:

Past and current residents of a certain room have repeatedly been heard talking to and seeing children in there. The room they are in was the morgue back in the day.

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