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...

These were shared with me..........

Thought you would like to read too.

When I was an EMT for my local hospital. I and my partner brought in a man who had fallen 60 feet thru a roof at a cheese factory that was being remolded. The man of course did not make it, he passed on.

However, while I was out talking with his fiance' she said they had argued that morning and he left for work angry and she did not tell him she was sorry. I tried to assure her that he knows she loves him. but she was just so distraut. When my shift was over and I had gone home to get some much needed sleep, The man appeared to me standing in the corner of my bedroom, I saw and felt him move over to the side of my bed. I sat up and looked at him. He spoke to me saying 'Tell her I love her'. I promised that I would do it. About one week later I made contact with her. I asked her to not think of me as being nuts, but I gave her the message. She cried and gave me a big hug and thanked me. She said she knew he was still around and It gave her peace. We still keep in touch. He has crossed over and she has sence married.

I remember back when i was a teenager, I was a volunteer candy striper at Aultman Hosp in Canton. At that time they still had quite a bit of the original hospital still in use and one day while I was there I was sent to pick up papers from the oncology lab. Because the weather was so bad outside to get to the oncology lab I had to walk thru the original pediatrics ward - it wasn't in use and just had a really eerie feeling to it. As I was walking thru the empty hall about 3/4s of the way to the end, I heard what sounded like a child crying. There was no one around! I booked it out of that ward and braved the weather outside rather than taking the short cut back thru the ward!

I'm a nurse here in Australia and thought I would add one of mine.

I was went to work at this small hospital that I had heard a ghost story about. At the larger hospital I was at initially even doctors had taken a visit to see a security footage video that everyone was talking about and even they couldn't explain this.

When I went to work at this hospital I thought I would check the story out with witnesses.

One evening late at night a security guard with a dog was patrolling the carpark at the back of the wards. Earlier he had walked with his dog behind these buildings and he thought he saw a shadow and thought it was an intruder but noone there. He said he definitely saw something. Later her was walking across the carpark and his dog suddenly stopped and went off its brain at something the guard couldnt see. It unnerved the guard quite a bit and it took a while to calm his dog. The dog was pulling on its leash at something.

A bit later a bored nurse was sitting near the monitor and rewound the security video to see if she could see any druggos hanging around. She saw the part where the guard was crossing the carpark and saw him stop and his dog reacting. She couldnt believe what she saw. She saw a whitish glowing thing come down from the trees and onto the grass and cross onto the concrete of the carpark. when it reached the concrete the glow turned into a shadow in the form of a human. It walked across the carpark and came directly in front of the guard whose dog then went berserk and then it stepped to the side and walked past the guard and dog. As it walked past and came closer to the camera the shadow bottom half developed distinct legs and was walking and then disappeared from camera view. It was heading towards the the back entry of the ward.

The nurse played it again and again and then called everyone to have a look and everyone agreed that it was legs and it was something spooky.

The next night they saw the guard and dragged himside to check out the video and he just went deathly white and it scared him quite a bit because he said that his dog knew something was there.

The video was viewed quite a lot during the next week by heaps of different people and even doctors and noone could find and explaination and everyone agreed it was a ghost. The strange thing was that around the time of this event. about a few minutes later one of the patients who was in the process of dying actually passed away.

This video even had the sceptics wondering.

You know its something big when they are talking about it at other hospitals lol!

I never got to see the footage as unfortunately a psa accidently kicked the computer for the security camera which was on the floor under a bench and totally stuffed it. Everything was wiped and so now the computer is in this protective thing.

I did ask many people to describe it and they all described the same thing.

I used to work as a respiratory therapist and would basically travel to three or four different nursing homes where the company was contracted in the local area. Because I was on-call, I generally got stuck working midnight shift.

I've only had one personal experience, but it was enough to scare me senseless! Anyway, the nursing home had two long hallways where the patients' rooms were located and then a connecting hallway between the two. I was going back to the office after finishing with one of the patients and in the connecting hallway I heard LOUD breathing right over my shoulder in my ear like it was coming from right behind me. It was deep and really slow...in...out....in....out. I laughed and turned around thinking it was one of the nursing assistants goofing off and I was the only one standing there with absolutely no one in sight. I FREAKED!! I don't think my legs have ever moved so fast!!

I didn't experience this personally, but was working the night this happened at a different nursing home. I can't remember if it was one of the nurses or nursing assistants, but they were doing their rounds and entered a lady's room to do whatever it was they had to do. Anyway, this particular patient was basically completely non-functional. She never talked, never walked, never made a peep, and would only lie in bed with her eyes open. As the nurse or nursing assistant entered the room, the lady was down on the floor on her stomach, but up on her arms (basically walking with her arms, if that makes sense) pulling herself across the room towards the girl and was speaking in some sort of language that definitely wasn't English. The girl, of course, freaked out and when she returned with help, the lady was still in the floor, but just lying there with her eyes open as usual not making a peep.

At the same nursing home where I had my experience, a pregnant nursing assistant was talking with the nurses at the nurse's station. Witnessed by at least three people, a marker lifted up from the nurse's station and flew across some distance hitting the pregnant girl square in the stomach. The nurse that told me the story said they had hoped it wasn't a bad omen, but the girl later on had the baby with no complications and the baby was perfectly healthy.

When I worked as a medic, once in a while I used to transport pediatric oncology patients to Stanford's original Children's Hospital. I got to talking to a couple of nurses there one time, and they told me several stories about children who had passed on at the hospital.

There was one story about two young boys, both cancer patients, who became best friends after they met at the hospital. I believe both boys were about 9 years old, if I remember correctly. These boys were inseparable. One boy succumbed to his cancer, and the second boy also did not too long after. The nurses told me that at the moment the second boy passed away, at night, a shaft of bright light came through the skylight above the nurse's station and lit it up. They said that there was no source for the light, and that it only lasted a few moments. They said that they felt that it was the first boy coming for his best friend.

It was also common for them to hear the sound of children's footsteps running barefoot up and down the hallways after hours when everyone was asleep. Giggling was often heard when this happened. I remember them telling me that it was a group of ghostly children playing Hide and Seek. They said that they used to leave a bowl of candy out at night after hours for this group, and that the candy would always disappear.

My mother used to be a nurses aid. She said she had a lot of experiences when people were ready to pass. Often they would be talking to people. One nurse who didn't believe in an afterlife was very freaked when they went in and an older lady said This is my husband so-and-so and this is my daughter. No one was there, of course. My mother just said, "Tell them I'm very happy to meet them, I'm glad they could come for you." She died within the hour.

I was diagnosed with cancer and when I went to the hospital to receive treatment I was put in a double room, I had it all to myself though. The first night I was there, an older Doctor came into my room and checked my chart, he didn't say a word, just looked up at me after he was done and nodded in my direction then turned to his left towards the other bed, walked directly past it and through the wall. I was completely stunned. BUT, I was also on Morphine so I didn't say a word about it thinking I was hallucinating. After about a week ( this continued nightly) I finally got a room mate.

After a couple of night of me seeing this man and her not saying anything I couldn't ignore it any longer. That night after he had checked both our charts, nodded at each of us in turn, then, turned to his left and walked through the wall...I said " Did you see him?" She said " NO I didn't see the ghost-doctor ...!"

We got along VERY well after that!!

**After some questioning of the nurses, we found out that the wall we kept seeing him exit through was at one time a doorway that led to other patient rooms. When we described the doctor to them, they just nodded and said " He just never stopped doing his rounds." They weren't even surprised by it!

My mother and grandmother worked as Nurses in a hospital a little up state from where we live. One night, when my grandmother was working the late shift. My grandmother was watching a patient in critical care, when she saw a flickering coming from doorway. As she looked over, what she described as a fireball passed by the door and disapeared up the hall, leaving a cold chill behind it.

The next day she discovered one of the patients down the hall had passed away in the middle of the night. This wing was for the elderly and it was just thier time. My grandmother had told me that she got a feeling of evil from the sight of the floating ball, and, being a strictly christian woman, was convinced it was a demon coming for the soul of the deceased.

Whether it was a demon, or the soul itself, I don't know. But stories like the one my grandmother told are common among nurses, and chilling none the less.

We had a patient just the other last night. She had had severe abdominal pain all day, but it had stopped. She wasn't doing well though. Her sats had dropped, she'd only put out 10cc of urine in the past 8h, her BP was dropping rapidly, her extremeties were mottled, and she was getting more confused. She had an odd look in her eyes. They were half rolled back and her eyelids here half shut, but at the same time her eyes seemed to be popping out of her head. She kept asking "Is someone's at the door? Dear, go get the door, there's someone there." that then became "Who's that on the ceiling?" The consensus among the nurses was that angels were coming to pick her up. The doc's decided to start fluid recessitating her, and starting epi IV. She stopped talking shortly after this point. Finally, they decided to CT her, and her POA decided that all tx should be stopped because her bowels had perfed, and it was her time. We just made her comfortable and took turns holding her and telling her to rest, and close her eye and relax. I swear her breathing eased when I said a little prayer for her. She died just after I left.

So...this got my preceptor talking (who is the most level headed nurse I've ever met)...

When she was at another hospital on a medical floor (where most patients were quite stable) she was the primary nurse for this one older man. He wasn't very nice, actually she used the word evil. He had pushed his wife out a 15th story window a number of years earlier. He would betrate her and everyother nurse, or anyone that walked into the room. He didn't have a nice bone in his body. Anyway, he died a few weeks after admission, and everyone was relived that he was gone. In the week following his death, 10 patients died on the unit. Most of them were not expected to die, and many of them happened bizarrely. One man dropped while on the phone mid-sentence , another in the shower. I guess it stopped evenutally, but it creeped her out.

The next story was from when she was on the same unit. She had had a patient die in this one room. The next admission to the room, didn't seem to sleep. He tossed and turned all night, was never rested the next day. She finally asked him "What's going on? You don't seem to sleeping at night, what's wrong?" He said that everytime he closed his eyes he saw a man in the corner of the room at ceiling level, and it was creeping him out. So she asked him what did he look like. Well, the guy described the patient that had died to a tee, right down to the scar on his face.

When things like this happen. Can't you get the hospital minister to bless the room?

Another story shared with me...........

I used to be an engineer/maintenance man at a private hospital outside Eastern New Orleans. Once, when I was on an evening shift, I was walking toward the PICU, and I was approaching the passenger elevators, when an older woman & her preteen daughter of maybe 10 years old were getting off the elevator in somewhat of a hurry. She approached me, and asked me if there were any accidents or incidents of possible violent death with anyone employed there. I had to think on it for a second, because I knew one story, but I wanted to know why she asked before I told her. She said her daughter saw a black male wearing a plaid shirt with jeans and work boots, but he appeared to be transparent. My mind instantly said "Damn, it can't be." She also informed me that her daughter had an unusual talent for seeing spirits.

Thats when I told her about "Reggie" or "Larry",the name has been disputed over the years, falling to his death down the elevator shaft while the hospital was under construction. I didn't know him, but several other people including doctors,RN's, and fellow co workers have reported catching glimpses of him jumping into the elevator doors or hiding behind dark corners. Her story creeped me out because no one had ever actually described him before. We only knew he was a black man who died during construction. Also of note, he is famous for sending the elevator to a roof, which is only accessible by using a key. The happened to me personally a couple of times. I would always yell out," Hey Buddy, chill out!!", and the elevator would leave that floor on it's own an take you to basement level.

Another one tells of the mysterious black shape moving through the Day Surgery Unit an scaring the hell out of several housekeepers so bad, that they wouldn't set foot in it to clean it unless I or someone else was with them. I never experienced that one, but I believe them.

Chad_KY_SRNA said:
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.

Come on now share your stories, I know you have seen and heard freaky things.

The floor that I worked on as a new graduate was part of the old home for the incurables. The hospital was built around this old home. Now I am not the only one who has experienced this so I am not crazy. This floor was the floor that got many older unconscious patients, alcholic and drug detox and anything else that the hospital didn't have room for. Each room had metal lockers to hold patient's clothes. Frequently we would hear the doors on the lockers banging and when we would enter the room both patients would be out cold. We also had a dirty utility room next to the nurse's station but separated by a wall. We had to go out and around the nurse's station to get to the dirty utility room. We would hear the loud noise of the metal bed pans clanging to :p gether (yes it was a long time ago with metal bedpans) we would get there and every thing would be in it's place. This happen almost every night so every nurse experienced it. Now that part of the hospital has been renovated for nursing administration. I can't help to wonder if those kinds of things still happen.

THEY ARE WONDERFUL AND EXPERIENCES BEYOND BELIEF LETS KEEP THEM COMING :sofahider I DO BELIEVE IN ANGELS..............

My favorite ghostly nursing story was actually experienced by my husband who is also a nurse. He was working at a small private hospital on a med/surg unit in a large metropolitan city. One of their "frequent fliers" was a woman named Louella who always requested the same room at the end of the hall if it were available at the time of her admission. Louella's husband Roy was very loving & doting and they refused assistance with her personal care when she was a patient as Roy did everything for her. The only time Roy left the bedside was to step to the nurse's station for a cup of coffee & inevitably before he returned to her side, Louella would be heard calling "Roy....Roy..."

Eventually Louella died at that hospital in "her" room.

Many months later a salesman is traveling through the state, experiences chest pain & pulls into the hospital. He was treated & placed in the same room that Louella had always requested. Younger, awake, alert, oriented & non-medicated.

My husband said that during the night the patient called the nurses station and asked if someone could "please help that lady so I can get some sleep."

The nurses hadn't heard anything but quickly made rounds to see if someone needed assistance. No one claimed to have called out & no one else heard the disturbance.

Shortly thereafter the patient calls the nurses station again requesting that someone "please make her shut up so I can get some sleep."

Again, made rounds, didn't hear anything, didn't see anyone that needed help.

The next call to the nurses station the patient asked if someone could "please help her find Roy so she will be quiet." My husband said that even then the staff wasn't unusually alarmed & even discussed the possibility that it was coming through the air conditioning vent & was maybe someone on another floor that was calling out.

The NEXT call to the nurses station, the patient says "She says her name is Louella & she needs help finding Roy." Everyone at this point is quite freaked out having known Louella & the history. Hubby says that a seasoned nurse walked into the room in question, opened the window (the inch that they will) and said very loudly "Get out Louella! You have to leave now."

My husband worked at that facility for another year & they never heard another peep from Louella.

When I was an EMT in a small town, a fellow EMT had something interesting happen to her.

My friend was called out on a freeway auto accident involving several unstable victims. This was her very first call out, and she was really nervous. She was trying to stabilize one victim, and her hands were shaking so hard she could barely function. She panicked and was afraid she was going to have to step back and let someone else take care of the victim because she felt so upset and overwhelmed. At this point, a man came up to her and said "I'm a doctor. I'll help you." It's not unusual to have people stop along the freeway and try to help out or gawk at an accident, but this one happened really early in the morning on a stretch of freeway that has few cars on it, especially at that time. The only vehicles there were the ambulance, a state patrol unit, and the car that flipped. Anyway, she accepted his help, and together they put the victim on the backboard and got him ready for transport. When they were finished he said "I'm going to help them" and pointed at another EMT who was with another victim. She nodded and said 'thanks.' She saw him walk over and kneel beside the victim, waiting to see if the EMT needed help. She turned back to the patient she was working on, and he needed an airway device, so she quickly turned to call to the EMT that the doctor had just gone to help. The doctor wasn't there, so she figured he'd left the scene.

The patients were all very unstable, and we were 50 miles from the nearest hospital, so the life flight helicopter had been called to transport the victims to the hospital. After the victims were loaded and gone, my friend turned to the other EMT she'd been working with and said "Wasn't that great to have help from that doctor?" The EMT looked at her with a puzzled look and said "What doctor? There wasn't anybody else at the scene except us and the cop." My friend said "He helped me, then I saw him walk over to you and kneel by you and the guy you were working on." The EMT just looked at her strangely. "No one helped me out." He said. She went up to the state patrol cop who had been directing traffic and said "Did you see the tall guy who stopped to help us?" The state patrol guy gave her the same look the EMT had and said "About two cars went by while you guys were working, and no one stopped."

To this day my friend is convinced that she was helped by an angel.

StatBlues said:
When things like this happen. Can't you get the hospital minister to bless the room?

I dont know if that would do anything. I mean they are not neseccerally (spelling?) sent by the devil.

schroeders_piano said:
The rose petals just started floating down from the ceiling. It was like someone was just showering the room with them. This has happened several times over the years.

My creepiest and scariest ghost story for me happened about a year ago. It really was more of a posession than a ghost story. I was helping another nurse with a patient that had lived a very hard life. It had numerous things going on with him from cardiac to renal failure. You name it, he had it going on. This man was very much afraid to die. Every time his heart monitor beeped, he would just go into a rage screaming, "Don't let me die! Don't let me die!" The other nurse and I found out why he didn't want to die. About 0200 his cardiac monitor starts alarming V-Tach. We both rush into the room. I am pulling the crash cart behing me. When I get to the room, the other nurse is completely white. This man was sitting about 2 inches above the bed and was laughing. His whole look completely changed. His eyes just had a look of pure evil on them and he had this evil smile on his face. He laughed at us and said, " You stupid b****es aren't going to let me die will you?" and he laughed again. We were kinda frozen. I did reach up and hit the Code Blue button and when I did the man went into V-fib. He crashed back onto the bed. We started coding him, but after 20 minutes it was called. 5 minutes after the code was called several of the code team is in the room cleaning up when this man sits straight up in the bed and says, " You let him die. Too bad." and then begins laughing. The man collapsed back to the bed. We heard a horrible, agonizing scream ( actually every patient in the unit that night commented on the scream), and then you could hear "don't let me die" being whispered throughout the unit. Everyone of the nurses that night was pale and scared. No body went anywhere by themselves. By morning the whispers of "don't let me die" were gone. The night shift nurses had a prayer service in the break room before we left for home and then we all had nightmares for weeks.

OMGosh.

Specializes in Picu, ICU, Burn.

I hate to believe that children are ever left behind as ghosts. That said we have a room in the PICU I used to work at that is reserved to accomodate families with a dying child. Older patients who have died in the room have reported seeing other children in the room with them. Younger children have been known to point and track unseen things. Even the most hardened skeptic on the unit will tell you there is a strange static feel to the room.

On my third day of orientation at this hospital my preceptor took me for a walk through the 'old hospital' Its all boardrooms and resident's sleeping quarters now. But it was the night shift and all the sleeping rooms were empty. When I asked her why she grinned from ear to ear. She told me stories of nuns floating and kids giggling and running down the halls, lights flickering, and shadows darting. We didn't see anything that night but you couldn't get me out of there fast enough. I could have killed her! Then I understood why our residents and fellows will find an empty room anywhere in the hospital before sleeping up there.

Takem said:
Um, I'm not a nurse yet. Not even in college lol. But I lurk alot and had to share my story. It's part of the reason I want to be a nurse.

My mom was dying (we didn't know it at the time) and was in our small, West Virginia hospital. She wasn't on any medication (at least none that would make her...well, out of it). But she started drifting in and out. She would stare and the window and say stuff like "I've never seen so much candy, can we really eat it all?" Then look at me and said sorry I must have been dreaming. This went on for a while. She seemed to be talking about stuff she did as a kid with her brothers.

As she got sicker we had to move her to a hospital in Charleston. I knew she kept talking about dying, but nobody would let me know. Once before they took her took to get a stent placed in her kidney she told me "be all that you can be." I laughed at first because we always used to make fun of those lame Army commercials. But then it dawned on me that it was her wish.

Well the nurses in the MICU had a huge effect on me. I loved them. When we recieved news that my mom had to have a heart transplant...and wouldn't survive the operation...I ran crying from the conference room. I ran all the way down to the bathroom at the entrance of the area. This beautiful, beautiful nurse followed me all the way there. I even pushed her I think (I barely remember) but she just hugged me and wiped my tears up. I told her my mom was going to die and she said "not on my shift". She held me up as we walked back to the conference room. The doctor had mentioned that they had taken my mom off morphine a while ago and was going to ask her if she wanted to be a put on life support.

I left the room and went straight to my mom and asked her myself. She smiled and said no. She always said to keep her alive for me, not matter what. But I honestly believe she saw enough to make her want to go home.

After that the nurses had a hard time with her, she kept pulling out her oxygen. I tried talking to her but was scared of her. I asked her if she was going to dye her hair again and she laughed and said "no, what's the point?"

A few days before she died a distant relative called up to say she had saw my grandmother pulling up a black Caddy to take my mother home. She was convinced she already had died.

The night she died I wasn't with her. At first I was angry but now I'm glad I wasn't. My mother requested my father be allowed to sleep in the room with her that night, because she knew she was going to die. He did and around 4 AM she pulled off her oxygen, said take care of Beth (me). Then looked at the ceiling and said she was going to heaven. Then it was over.

I'm such a wussy, I would fall apart if I had a real experience like you all had. But I do have these dreams with my mom and grandma where we're riding in a red Mustang, in the sun with our black hair (no more gray for them!) just a flowing. My mom got the Cadillac, I know when my time comes, I get the Mustang.

I made up my mind after witnessing how the nurses cared for my mother, that it was the path meant for me. All this happened 4 years ago, when I was 12. I know my mom's with Jesus and that makes me happy.

Hi Beth......I work in the MICU at CAMC in Charleston where you are referring to.....I've posted a couple of ghost stories on here from the unit...Glad to hear that you had a good experience with our nurses in the unit when you were having a horrible experience in you life with your mother dying.......Keep your goals set on becoming a nurse...you'll make a great one, and who knows...maybe you'll work in the MICU at Charleston!!!

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