What's Your Best Nursing Ghost Story?

Nurses General Nursing Nursing Q/A

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...

So, how did you get the child out of the room?

Share your nursing ghost stories....

I know you have seen and heard freaky things.

I became an RN in the 80's, I worked on an Oncology Unit and we had the first HIV patient that was ever admitted to that facility. HIV was new then and everyone was afraid of this patient. Sadly, staff avoided his room as much as possible; this patient constantly rang his call bell too. About a year after he passed away, the unit was closed for remodeling. After a few months of construction it was to be reopened; I was working the nigh-shift the day before it was to be reopened to patients. Well, myself and the LPN working that night with me decided we would take the back stairs and go up to the newly renovated unit and take a look around. I can not explain how creepy it was going onto that dimly lit unit, a place that had seen many, many deaths over the years. As we were at the nursing desk, looking around the call light came on in the room where the patient with HIV had been. The LPN looked at me with terror and related that she'd heard other staff that had gone up to the new unit say that the call light in that room kept coming on. I thought she was playing a joke on me, so I went down to the room and flipped on the lights and looked around. No one was in there, and I turned off the call light. I stepped out of the room into the hallway, where the LPN was waiting on me, and the call light came on again. I was standing right in front of the room, so no one could have gotten in there. My friend and I beat a hasty retreat out of there!

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

Goes to show how lonely that poor HIV guy was. He's still trying to get attention.

Sad story.

I pray someone will come and help this soul

cross over. And, any others still there.

have you spoken to the ghost in your home?

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in 20 years of nursing, i only saw a ghost at work once. i was in pacu, called in for a case in the middle of the night. so, most of the lights in the or suite were turned off. i was at the desk, putting my purse down and looked up. across the hall we had a holding area for patients who were next up for surgery. i saw the silloute of a man with a hat standing there, not looking at me, but down another hallway. even though the or suite is locked, the main doors next to pacu can be opened by pressing the plate on the wall - so my first thought was this was a visitor who got lost. i started to walk toward the man, when he began walking toward the side hall - i said "excuse me sir, can i help you?" he went down the hall and i turned down the hall because i knew it was a dead end, the door being locked. but when i turned, he was no where to be found. there was absolutely no place he could have gone - he just wasn't there.

i went back to pacu and realized i had seen a ghost. i live in a haunted house, so it didn't bother me, i was more concerned that i wasn't able to communicate with him and therefore help him.

my patient came to pacu a few minutes later and i was busy with the patient. after i got the patient recovered, brought to the floor and got back to pacu to close up, i checked the waiting area again, this time turning the lights on, but no one was there and nothing was amiss.

this was the "old" portion of the hospital - so who knows back in the 1920's when this part of the hospital was built, what type of ward it was. after that episode, i always looked for the man, especially when called in overnight - but i never saw him again.

Specializes in geriatrics,med/surg,vents.

not ghosts at work but my oldest son was taking a picture of his girlfriend and her daughter and on the first pic there was a funny mark right next to them so he took another shot,same mark only bigger this time.He tried again and got the same mark but with the face of a woman with long dark hair hovering over the mark.Creepy.He also took a picture at his job of a car he had repaired and there were orbs around the car,his girlfriend uploaded?downloaded? the pics to their computer and enlarged the orbs.Each one turned out to be a skull and each skull was a different just like faces would be.I think his camera's haunted.

Last november I showed up early for a first clinical shift. It was very cold and very dark, and I had to park way out back where the original hospital still stood.Built in the late 1800s, and continously added on to, I was assured that I would be able to enter thru the old ER. Turns out, at 5 in the morning, the empty, under renovation ER was quite locked, and I had to buzz security to come let me inside.I froze outside for a bit before security showed up from a different building, gave me directions to navigate the labrynth to the newer (and confusingly attached) buildings. With the warning the direction signs were wrongSecurity didn't enter...just swiped his card and let me in.... and I stood in an old, vacent, silent, dimly lit ER... trying to remember the complicated directions.I looked back outside, and considered going back out, but that would be a 15+ min walk in the frosty winter dark.Turning again towards the interior, I happened to see someone just pass at the nearby end on the corridor."EXCELLENT!" I thought....I'll just follow that guy! (Since this whole building is empty..he must be heading for the new building!)

Rushing to make the turn, I faced a looong corridor with few heavy old doors....old cumbersome doors that would make noise to open or close... a hall too long for anyone to make it to the end, or thru a door before I turned the corner...

Just a long spooky hallway, on a cold winter morning, and myself the only living thing around.

I never entered via the old ER again!

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

I just love these stories. From the time I was a child I was fascinated with ghost stories. I have posted some on this thread but am unable to contribute any more nursing ones. Like I mentioned, when I was a child I listened to people tell them, and was mesmerized by the mystery they held. I still am. I wonder what makes us so attracted to them. Hmmmmmm.:thankya:

Specializes in Med Surg - Renal.
I wonder what makes us so attracted to them. Hmmmmmm.:thankya:

People are attracted to stories like this because they reinforce the belief that human beings have souls and will live forever.

I have taken care of many dying people and zipped up my share of them in body bags. I just returned from volunteering at my old nursing home where one of my favorite residents recently fell and broke his hip. He always looked forward to my visits and demands, "Where have you been?!!?" no matter how recently I was there.

He may have had a TIA before or soon after falling. He cannot have surgery, so he is bedridden, on painkillers and quite delirious.

During my visit he was hallucinating quite badly, waving at things that are not there and speaking incoherently. But never for a second did I suspect or even entertain the thought that he was seeing ghosts or having any kind of supernatural visitation.

But this everlasting thread reminds me that others will see his hallucinations in a different light. I am bothered greatly by the fact that caregivers will see this poor man having hallucinations and attribute them to the supernatural in an effort to confirm their own beliefs, or worse yet, just get a kick out of it.

This poor man's dying experience will become the fodder for someone's "ghost story." He is a married father of three, served in Germany during the Korean war, and is a retired railroad worker.

He is not entertainment. He is dying.

Sorry to post a downer on this thread, but I find it a bit sickening.

Specializes in Intermediate care.

Where i work, we have elevators that are labled like "Elevators A" or "Elevaotors B" etc. Whenever i go by elevators "E" one will ALWAYS open without me pushing any buttons. Never fails.

Not really a ghost story...maybe more coincidence? but still weird.

Specializes in Community Health/School Nursing.

After a year of working nights I woke up one morning went to the bathroom. As I walked into the bathroom I cut the light on....there in the mirror....staring at me with dark eyes and pale.....ghostly..... and scary...............guess who it was??? ME!!!!

I looked like a$$ and decided to quit nights.

So I did. End of story. :yelclap:

Of all the strange features of the universe, none are stranger than these: time is transcended, laws are mutable, and observer participancy matters.

~ John Wheeler (born: 1911-12-09 died: 2008-04-13 at age: 96) Professor of Physics, Princeton University

The most recent work in Quantum Mechanics says that, in some way, various unlikely possibilities cancel each other out, so that in practice, in general, we manifest an orderly predicable universe.

In some sense, everything possible, past and future is pre-existing.

There exist all possible worlds, not all conceivable worlds.

Einstein wondered why we could not experience everyone at once. (I should not want to experience a Hitler)

Einstein also wrote to a widow of a friend that death was an Illusion, a very convincing Illusion but an illusion nonetheless.

When Einstein was working on his superstring theory (about an atom say on earth connected mysteriously to an atom say at the other end of our galaxy) he consulted with a roman catholic priest on transubstantiation. Einstein had no interest in becoming a catholic but he wa sintriqued by the idea how a host can be altered into something entirely different.

To assume that this is all there is, is to defy modern science. One should not castigate others for publishing stories about near death or death bed experiences , not everything is a hallucination.

Oh just recently they discovered a particle that travels faster than light, meaning time travel is possible.

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