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 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.

Specializes in Med/Surg, Geriatric, Hospice.
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.

You must be a lot of fun to have around.

Specializes in ER, progressive care.

I was working nights as a tech and at the very end of the hall the call light would keep going off...and the room was unoccupied!!

Specializes in Cath lab, acute, community.

I work at a paeds hospital and we have a few stories. One is that one of the theatres is haunted by a child. She (or he) grips the hands of staff members in the theatre but they cannot see her, they can only feel a little warm soft hand occasionally holding on to the hand of the surprised staff member. We had a member of staff (no longer employed here) in my department that used to frequent theatres and she could see ghosts (and seemed quite legitimate about it too). She was once in visiting theatres with another member of our department, and saw the girl and actually spoke to her (much to the other staff members astonishment!). Apparently she is a little girl of about 6, dressed in modern clothes and quite confused as to where to go or what to do.

The other story is we have a back corridor in my department that is not used. At night time it is quite dark as there is no external light, and the lights turn off at night anyway because it is rarely used, except when something is required out of the storage closet in that corridor. Everyone absolutely refuses to go down there at night alone because you can just FEEL something is there, and also because the same "psychic" woman above said that there is an elderly matron-type woman who appears to be disgruntled and is pacing that hallway, and also entering the closet, then coming out. Even during the day when I go into the closet I put a box or something in front of the door because closing the door and being in there alone gives me the chills big time.

And one more, the hospital I work at relocated to it's current premises approximately 15 years ago, before that it had a VERY VERY long history in another campus. There was a ghost that haunted the old campus that was in the white wing-uniform associated with the old WW1 nurses. She used to haunt an area of that old hospital after dying of a cardiac arrest during a shift, and was very well respected and loved. She apparently came with the moving of the hospital to the new campus! She is on a specific ward that was associated with the ward she used to work at, and kind of "came with" the nurses that transferred to the new hospital. Apparently patients, parents and nurses alike have seen her.

I have been reading this for days, when I have some spare time, and I cannot wait to have some experiences when I begin my nursing career. Yes, I am one of those people who enjoy encounters with the other side.

Sorry, I posted twice somehow.

Specializes in Trauma, ER, ICU, CCU, PACU, GI, Cardiology, OR.

admittedly, this might not be consider a ghost story however, it happen to me many moons ago at the beginning of my career to be exact. i have just gotten hired to one of the best teaching hospitals in madrid, spain. when on my first week of working the night shift one of my patients died, after following the protocol of body i.d. etc. i was told that i had to take the body to the morgue by myself. as i got to the elevator i noticed that this was the old style elevator,yes ..the ones you had to pull like a metal gate to open, and then manually guide the elevator to each floor, yup a pain in the a$$ because 9 out of ten you always went to high or to low between the floors:uhoh3: furthermore, there i am in the elevator with the body and there's a blackout so i'm stuck in the elevator, with a small back-up light that allows me to pull the emergency level. when from the corner of my lt. eye i noticed the body sat up:eek:!!! a few minutes later i heard a voice yelling out "we have the engineer with us his coming to help you out" when they open the door they began to lol because i wet my pants in the process:( then i heard "call housekeeping" so there you have my almost ghost story... as you well know most dead bodies will sit or move because of the gases... needless to say i learned fast after that.

I worked in a rehab facility that half of the building was closed off and that is where the call lights kept coming on by themselves. We would go turn them off and they would come back on. Just 2 rooms that this happened in. It was kinda spooky.

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