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...

your story about your yorkie gave me a lot of comfort. Thank you.

What you think are hallucinations are, in fact, angels gathering to assist the almost-dead to cross over. It's quite a party -- the trip of a lifetime! Read the book, "Many Lives, Many Masters" by Brian Weiss, M.D. YOU WILL FLY THROUGH THE BOOK IN MAXIMUM TWO DAYS! You will look at life and death differently by the time you read the last page.

Specializes in LTC, peds, rehab, psych.

About a year ago while working midnight shift I was standing at my med cart charting on the computer. My back was to the nurse's station. From the corner of my left eye I started to see someone dressed in all white coming down the hallway toward me and the nurses station. I have a supervisor who has white hair and always wears white so I didn't even think anything of it and didn't turn to really look. They got closer and I could see them go behind me into the nurse's station. Well I had something I needed to tell my supervisor, so I turned around to face the nurse's station to talk to her and there was nobody there. It scared the hell out of me! Straight unexpected chills. I was absolutely 100% sure that she was there and she wasn't and there was nowhere she could have gone in the 2 seconds it took for me to turn around. I had even started talking to her before I was completely turned around, that's how sure I was.

Not sure if I shared this one on here before since it happened a few years ago. I had a patient who had died the day before. I was working 3-11 shift and was pushing my med cart down the hall to pass meds. I stopped the cart just outside of her room to give her roomate meds. When I walked out a bed alarm or something came on down the hall so I locked my cart and went to answer it. When I was walking back up the hallway toward my med cart I saw my narcotic book appear to jump from my medcart onto the floor. It didn't slide off or anything, it lifted into the air and landed on the floor. So weird.

Specializes in Long term care.

I had an experience that literally changed the way I think about our souls and afterlife. I saw my residents deceased husband standing beside her as she lay on the floor crying from her fall. No one else saw him, not my unit coordinator, my aides, nor my charge nurse. I heard him speak and I thought he was real, I watched him walk past me and leave the room. I was so concerned about his sadness that I tried to locate him after to comfort him and that is when I found out no one saw him but me. I never forgot what he looked like, later I identified him as the grandfather of a fellow nurse by the fact that the daughter of my resident looked just like him. I found out then that my resident was the grandmother to one of the nurses. The deceased husband looked as real as us, and spoke too. I will never forget this, and now to this day when I encounter a family group around a resident, I wonder which if them is a deceased spirit. I now believe our soul lives on.

"I had an experience that literally changed the way I think about our souls and afterlife. I saw my residents deceased husband standing beside her as she lay on the floor crying from her fall. No one else saw him, not my unit coordinator, my aides, nor my charge nurse. I heard him speak and I thought he was real, I watched him walk past me and leave the room. I was so concerned about his sadness that I tried to locate him after to comfort him and that is when I found out no one saw him but me. I never forgot what he looked like, later I identified him as the grandfather of a fellow nurse by the fact that the daughter of my resident looked just like him. I found out then that my resident was the grandmother to one of the nurses. The deceased husband looked as real as us, and spoke too. I will never forget this, and now to this day when I encounter a family group around a resident, I wonder which if them is a deceased spirit. I now believe our soul lives on. "

You MUST read "Many Lives Many Masters" by Brian Weiss. You can find it on Amazon or any other book site. IT IS AMAZING! It changed the way I look at death and dying. You will for sure finish it in two days. Keep these stories coming!

Specializes in Emergency Department.

But the best ghost I ever heard of haunted the house a friend lived in. One night she and her husband were just exceptionally tired (I don't remember why, maybe it was a new baby) and they debated about doing the dishes, but decided they'd go to bed and do them the next day. When she came down to the kitchen the next day, all the dishes were done. She swears that it is not at all likely that her husband would have gotten up in the middle of the night and done them, even if he didn't swear he'd done no such thing. Unfortunately, the ghost has not repeated the favor. :)

I need a ghost like that at my house!! :woot:

Specializes in CMSRN.

I have not posted on allnurses in awhile but figured this was a good place to start.

I have never really had an encounter at work before, just a few stories I heard.

But the last few weeks at home, small strange things have been happening.

A few years ago I think I posted that my son's room had smelled like cigarette smoke. Well I said out loud to stop smoking in his room and it stopped. So nothing for few years. Here is an account of recent events.

Lately I have been getting into the habit of closing my children's bedroom doors while they are at school. They are 10 and 8, and do not feel like looking at their messes while I'm home and refuse to clean their rooms. Even my daughter will keep her room door closed out of habit now.

Well one day while we were eating dinner my daughter says "I just heard my door open". I blow it off and told her the windows are open, etc. Or it could be something else. My husband agreed with my daughter that is was the bedroom door and he heard it too.

She replies back, "No, my door was completely closed, clicked shut". She swears she closed it but chalked it up to just that she did not close it all the way. Well that night my son's room smelled like cigarette smoke again.

Fast forward to a couple of days ago and I was off again during the day and went to put my daughter's shoes away. Which only consists of me opening her door and tossing her shoes on the floor. I put my hand out to grab her door knob and realize the door is open. Now I would just say she forgot, but 15-30min earlier I had closed my son's door and looked to my daughter's door to see if it was closed and it was.

Fast forward again to yesterday morning and evening. I had worked Saturday night and came home to my happy son awake and greeting me at the door. I relax for a few minutes and talk to him and when I go to sit down I notice a half eaten granola bar on the desk table. I asked my son to please finish it as not to waste it. He said it was not his. (my kids are not good liars and seldom do so) There would be no reason for him to deny since it was not taboo to eat it in the morning. Needless to say I left it there so whoever left it can clean it up from last night. Both my husband and my daughter deny it. Again no reason to lie.

Well I end up feeding it to the dogs and start preparing for bed. There were brownies on the counter and I asked my husband to please make sure to save them for the kids. The kids wanted them for school on Monday (today).

Well when I go up that afternoon, I noticed that the brownies were eaten except for a small piece. I do not care but was concerned that my hubby ate them. He again denies this and so do the kids. It was their brownie and could have eaten them already anyhow. I spent a good part of the day trying to get it out of them and they swear up and down. My husband does not sleep walk but he was going to say that was what happened since we could not figure it out.

Ok, so here is the final thing. I was supposed to work but got canceled and ended up staying awake all night. But at

0300 I turned to tv off and tried to climb into bed for a few hours. It lasted about 30minutes. I got up and went into the living room and the tv was on. Now I know I turned it off because my dog runs to the bedroom when I turn it off because she wants to go the bedroom with me. She did her typical routine and I placed the remote control on the couch cushion with a kindle fire next to it. One of my dog likes to get on the sofa but he won't if anything is on it. So when I noticed that the tv was on I peaked over the couch arm and there was the remote just as I left it. I smelled cigarette smoke for a split second also, no doubt about it. Made me want one too for a moment.

I have been awake since.

Not one event seems significant but put it all together and it is just weird.

It's been a few years since I posted to this thread, but here's another one:

On my former med/surg unit I worked nights. When walking up and down the halls it was habit to glance into open rooms, you know, just to make sure nobody's on the floor or anything. On one trip back to the nursing station I half-glanced into 309 and as I passed I though, huh, who was that lady sitting in the chair? So, I doubled back to check, the room was completely empty but the rocker was slightly moving. I wasn't terribly exhausted that night, I felt like I was thinking straight, so, I don't think this was a delusion.

Down the other wing, several times, I had various patients ask me to "please tell those children to stop running in and out of my room, they're noisy and it's hard to rest". (Paraphrase, of course.)

This happened in the middle of the night, no visitors were around. And, this unit used to be a peds floor years earlier. Weird.

It's one thing if you have a dementia pt, a sundowner or someone in DT's say these things, but when you have a mentally intact patient that's not on any narcotics say the same things, it gets your neck hair standing up.

Specializes in Med-surge, hospice, LTC, tele, rehab.

I worked nights in an older hospital and there weren't many people there at night, maybe three nurses and two CNAs max. One night another nurse and I went into a patient's room to reposition him. The patient was sleeping pretty heavily and wasn't very alert even when he was awake. While the other nurse and I were on either side of his bed holding on to the draw sheet, we heard a loud noise. We both looked over to see a big heavy recliner chair moving towards us about a foot loud enough to make a scraping sound on the floor.

There was no one else in the room, no visitors. The chair was locked, there was no breeze that could have moved a heavy recliner like that even if it would've been unlocked. It wasn't near the door or touching a wall. Those things are hard to move when you pushed on them and they were unlocked. The other nurse and I looked at each other and said, 'ummm...ok. Weird!"

Another night on this same unit, I was in a patient's room and she seemed fairly alert and oriented. I had gone in give her a med. It was probably around midnight. She looked at me and said, "honey who is that standing over there?" and I said, "where?" She said, "standing there behind you?" I turned around and there was no one. This was not a confused lady and it kind of gave me a creepy feeling.

On another night, one of our CNAs was in a two-bed room checking on a sleeping patient and the CNA suddenly came running out of the room, scared. We asked her what happened. She said that the bedside table from the empty bed rolled away from the bed on its own and hit the sink very loudly. Now this bedside table was a good two feet from the sink and was over an empty bed! Talk about freaky. This CNA was so scared, she wound up going home early.

That same night, another nurse on the unit was in a room giving an IV push and she happened to look up at the mirror over the sink and kept seeing a shadowy figure going back and forth in it. There was no one else in the room and the mirror was pointed away from the door. She was freaked out.

We also had call bells ring at night from empty rooms when everyone was accounted for at the desk. These were rooms near the desk that we would have seen someone sneak into to ring the bell. That unit was creepy! lol

Specializes in ICU.

This isn't really a ghost story so much as it is a spiritual one, but my great grandmother was diagnosed with Stage 4 liver cancer; it was only about 2 weeks from the day of her diagnosis until her death. During the end of her battle, she had hospice visiting her at home, and had been unresponsive for the past few days. We felt that her time would come very soon, and were all sitting on her room. She was lying still in bed when all of a sudden she opens her eyes, reaches her arm up into the air and gasps "It's beautiful!" with the happiest, most joyous smile on her face. She passed seconds after, and you could feel her presence immediately had left. I know she was reaching up into Heaven. It's still been the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

since is near halloween, I just wanted to post my mom story..is not a nurse story but still...

She hears stuff all the time..

She used to wae up to the sound of someone calling her name in her ear..or from the living room..

she lived in ahose and a night she could hear people praying in the room aboove her..in this same house she would put her plants in the patio at night when it was raining so the plants would get water, and when she wake up the plants were all inside the house in their respective places..

Specializes in PDN; Burn; Phone triage.

Not a nursing story but --

My mother had passed the day before and we - her kids, plus my father/her ex-husband - were at the funeral home trying to price out plans, get the obit written, etc. It's hard to explain familial nuances without getting into too much detail, but, basically, my father showed up and we pretty much expected that he would offer to pay for whatever costs her final expenses policy wouldn't cover.

So, dad's in the corner kind of listening, while us kids are sitting around the table with the funeral director. My (maternal) half-brother is making a good show of trying to price out her obit - that gets expensive, fast!- but we're all just kind of...waiting for my dad to speak up. So we finally get up to go look at mini urns, with my dad still sitting in the corner and having not said anything about funeral expenses when...

...suddenly the 30 lb fake tree that he had been sitting next to toppled right onto his head. He hadn't moved. There wasn't a draft in the room and it wasn't by anything that could have accidentally pushed it over. We all got a good laugh and my dad DID offer to front all of the costs after that.

I consider myself a skeptic and even a fair weather atheist, but that little incident seemed *so* perfect that I still can't help but think that was mom's way of urging my dad along. In life, she was always very adamant that he should support us kids financially because he could. Makes perfect sense that she'd be hanging around to make certain that he'd follow through with this one last thing.

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