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...

I LOVED reading this thread, to the woman admonishing us for using other's pain for 'entertainment', you have it all wrong...this is comfort, in knowing that when we pass we will not make the journey alone, and that this body is not all there is.

I am not a nurse but a massage therapist, but have worked with a handful of hospice patients.

I was also present at my mother's passing...after the undertaker took her body, we sat at her dining room table and drank a toast to her life (she'd suffered quite a bit, and her death was a relief)...we all smelled, in a Northern January winter, in a home with no flowers, the distinct smell of flowers waft past us as we toasted. What a gift! (my mom would also talk about my dad waiting outside for her, and the day she passed she waited for me to get home from work, she said "why did it take you so long to get home today?"...she passed within an hour of me getting home and 'tucking her in').

A few yeasr later I had been called to do massage housecalls for a cancer patient.

She had been bought home to her daughter's house, and since having multiple abdominal surgeries for various cancers, lymph nodes removed, scar tissue, developed quite a bit of lymphedema in her legs...I would come to the house and do some lymphatic drainage and swedish massage...I went once a week and she was looking great, considering.

On my last visit, she stopped and said point blank, "I am NOT ready to die"...trying to lighten things up, and knowing how great she looked, and having recently been through all this with my own mother, I responded "You look great, and besides you have nothing to worry about until your dead relatives start showing up" OPEN MOUTH INSERT FOOT!

Her face dropped...she then told me her (deceased) mother had been in her room last night! I did my best to 'save' by saying "Well thank goodness someone will come to take you home, you won't have to make the journey alone"...next appointment was canceled...she passed.

This is true or at least true from my studies of such subjects. I am amazed at the number of posts in this thread. This is my third day reading, and I am not even to page 30 yet. I have always had a firm belief in ghosts/spirits, and have had several experiences myself. Right now I am just a student so have not had any nursing experiences. Maybe some of these tales are exaggerated, and I would not be surprised if some are made up, but for those of you who disbelieve (seems you are a minority) because you have never "felt" anything yourself, that does not mean that some of these things are not true. Not everyone is open to the other worlds around us. Not long ago I saw a tv show on ghosts, I think it was called "My Ghost Story" or something along those lines. One segment was about a hospice in California, a place that has since gone out of business and been torn down. There was a big storage closet there that all of the employees felt was somehow not right, they were nervous, uncomfortable, etc going into this closet. A patient had a friend with a video camera, and one night the friend decided to set the camera up inside the closet before he went out to dinner....afterwards, he came back, and they all gathered around the patients bed (the guy who filmed it, the patients, some nurses) to watch the video he had taken. A face, blurry and indistinct, but definitely the form of a human face, sort of skull like, appeared out of the dark and came right up to the camera, as if it was trying to figure out what the camera was....one of the eeriest, most chilling things I have ever seen! I will try to see if I can find this segment of this show on Youtube or somewhere online, and come back here with the link. As for me, please all you good spirits out there be with me and help me to get thru my last semester!![/quote']

I know this is super old but I found it!

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bABkJDbBiyo

Specializes in Med-Surg, Tele, Ortho-Trauma.
My Dad used to tell a story that was unnerving for him. He and my Mom had just had a verbal "thing" of sorts. My Mom was an active alcoholic, my Dad was a recovering alcoholic. My Mom had been drinking then she'd pass out. Wake up, drink some more, and pass out. This went on for years before she died.

One day she woke up and was drinking and that is when the verbal fight began. She stormed off to the bedroom and my Dad was in the kitchen and quite angry. He looked up and she had returned but she was wearing a long white gown. He took a double take and realized she was not actually human. It was my Mom yet it wasn't.

She looked behind her where my Mom was, then looked at my Dad. She looked behind her to my Mom again and looked at my Dad again. My Dad described the look on her face as very sad. She slowing shook her head back and forth.

My Dad asked her who she was, she never spoke. My Dad started to approach her and she disappeared. 'Course, first thing he did was to go check on my Mom. She was sitting there happily drinking away oblivious to what had just happened.

He never did understand what that was all about, he could only guess and thought it was my Mom's soul or a guardian angel or some such thing.

Ok just reading through all of these now, and this one gave me shivers.

This is not a nursing ghost story, just a cool story that's hard to explain. My dad passed away suddenly last February from an asthma attack and several codes. They were able to save his body long enough to donate organs. Anyway, he and my step-mom loved each other a lot and it was a shock to her, and a heartbreak because my dad had always taken care of her. My step-mom collects crosses, especially cross jewelry. My step-mom was at the time a home health case manager. A couple of months after my dad's death she was having a hard day and crying a lot between home visits. She said she arrived at a patient's house and did the visit, and as she was about to get into the car, which was parked on the street, she saw a silver cross on the street. She asked the patient's family if it was theirs and they said no. So she kept it and thought maybe it was a sign. But later that day doubt creeped in and she was tearful again. On the way home from work she stopped at the grocery store and as she got out she saw a glint of metal. She looked closer and it was a small square silver charm that said "4 Ever." She said she knew for sure it was my dad trying to tell her he was still there with her. I can tell when she's having a difficult and sad day when I see her wearing those charms.

And as an aside to that story-- I only took 2 weeks off work and felt it was best to continue a normal routine. The organ donor people were wonderful with helping us to say goodbye to my dad and I was so grateful and had decided to be a volunteer when the time was right. Well, my very first patient was a child who had received an organ transplant some years earlier. And the child's mom was wearing a donate life t-shirt and had a big green donate life rubber bracelet on her arm. I started to get emotional and felt comfortable enough to tell the mom my father had just passed, and he had donated three vital organs. And it was so wonderful and meaningful that my very first patient back was her child. We hugged. She was the nicest parent ever. Her child was was also fine-- just there as a precaution and went home the next day.

This one is from a friend-- she swears it's true.

Her dad is a hospice nurse. He got a call from the agency that a patient was in the process of dying and was expected to pass very soon. They asked that he attend to the family. Apparently the nurse who was supposed to be there could not make it for some reason. He complained that it was all the way across town, and it was not his usual day to work, but he went anyway. When he was nearly there the agency called him to say the family had reported that the patient had passed but to please go there and help with family support and start postmortum care. When he arrived he introduced himself by saying "Hello I'm Marty, I'm from Hospice." My friend said the family's mouths fell open and the all looked shocked. He apologized that their usual nurse could not make it. They said, "No that's not it. Grandma kept mumbling that Marty was coming. We thought she was just talking nonsense but here you are!"

Specializes in Operating Room.

This is the best thread ever! I love the paranormal!

I have read every post in this world-class thread and I figured it's time I chipped in. I'm not a nurse, but this happened in the hospital and most definitely involves a ghost. It took me several years to realize what I had actually seen that night.

One evening around 9 pm my S.O. got struck by a car as we were crossing the street. The hospital had a mixed reputation--it had grown too quickly, was a bit slow and disorganized. Radiology was in the creepy old basement part--it was after 11 pm by then and we were waiting for someone to come do his x-rays. He clearly had some broken bones but they had checked for internal bleeding and such first. This entire area was deserted—long corridors, brightly lit—no sounds, no people. My S.O. was not fully conscious and mostly he was quiet, but he would get restless from time to time because of the pain. After about 30 minutes I thought we had waited quite enough. I didn't want to leave him there in that little room all alone but I decided I had to remind people we were still waiting.

I was traumatized by seeing him get hit--he got knocked 60 feet--but you go into auto-pilot mode, and I wanted to get him sorted. So I started down that long hall, telling him I would find us some help. The main hall had smaller ones T-ing from it, all deserted, all quiet. I got to the reception desk and no one was there. I waited and looked around and then figured I needed to go check on S.O. As I hurried back I saw a child in a wheelchair—she wasn't visible from the main corridor, but was just at the end of one of the intersecting ones. She actually startled me. She might have been 3 at most, and was bundled in a cute robe, holding a blanky too. She had curly brown hair and was wide awake and alert. She had the blanket against one side of her head, like a little pillow, and was sucking her thumb. She seemed in no distress. Her brown eyes were enormous, with long eyelashes.

I smiled at her and said hello; she just looked at me. Then I said, "Who is with you?" She just looked at me, no expression change. I told her I'd be back and went down to check on S.O. He was alert enough to tell me he was having a great deal of pain, so I decided that this time I would find someone for sure. I head back the way I'd come--I was also fuming about this child left by herself. As I approached her this time, though, I saw her blanky had shifted and she had massive tumor on whole left side of her head and part of her face. My auto-pilot self thought, well, she must be in the hospital a lot, she must be used to this. She was very calm and watchful, but not troubled. I went back to reception, finally found a tech and gave him an earful. He was aware of my S.O. and said they were going to come get him in about 5 minutes. Then I told him about the little girl. He gave me a slightly puzzled look. I explained where she was--about 3 corridors down--and he said he'd check.

I walked back and turned to where the girl had been, but the corridor was deserted. I was relieved; someone must have been prepping an exam room or something and had been quite near all along and now she was being taken care of. I paused to listen briefly, but there was nothing.

Almost right behind me came the gurney for S.O. There was a lot going on then--and after, with ortho surgeries and rehab.

I thought about the girl now and then because I was in that hospital often enough and eventually worked there in Onc. I don't know why I thought about her, apart from the strangeness of the situation--it seemed crazy and negligent to leave her there alone. I realized too that she might have been uneasy with me, as a stranger, and recalled that the second time I'd seen her, she did not make eye contact but looked away. I wondered if she might not be able to hear, speak or understand what I said. But it seemed impossible that she should be there alone, in the middle of the night. I hoped I hadn't added to her stress.

Flash forward about 10 years, I'm working in that hospital and happen to pass that spot in Radiology. I suddenly realized it was impossible that a real child had been there. She looked absolutely real but I thought about the size and severity of that mass, how she silently appeared--I would have heard footsteps, I would have heard the wheelchair when she arrived--in fact, there was a kind of profound silence around her, when I remembered it.

I have had a fair amount of "experiences" and that runs in our family, but I had never seen a complete, full figure, completely detailed ghost. I may have passed some and not known it--how would you know? You only figure it out, if at all, by looking at the circumstances and realizing the situation just doesn't "add up."

I have read every post in this world-class thread and I figured it's time I chipped in. I'm not a nurse, but this happened in the hospital and most definitely involves a ghost. It took me several years to realize what I had actually seen that night.

One evening around 9 pm my S.O. got struck by a car as we were crossing the street. The hospital had a mixed reputation--it had grown too quickly, was a bit slow and disorganized. Radiology was in the creepy old basement part--it was after 11 pm by then and we were waiting for someone to come do his x-rays. He clearly had some broken bones but they had checked for internal bleeding and such first. This entire area was deserted—long corridors, brightly lit—no sounds, no people. My S.O. was not fully conscious and mostly he was quiet, but he would get restless from time to time because of the pain. After about 30 minutes I thought we had waited quite enough. I didn't want to leave him there in that little room all alone but I decided I had to remind people we were still waiting.

I was traumatized by seeing him get hit--he got knocked 60 feet--but you go into auto-pilot mode, and I wanted to get him sorted. So I started down that long hall, telling him I would find us some help. The main hall had smaller ones T-ing from it, all deserted, all quiet. I got to the reception desk and no one was there. I waited and looked around and then figured I needed to go check on S.O. As I hurried back I saw a child in a wheelchair—she wasn't visible from the main corridor, but was just at the end of one of the intersecting ones. She actually startled me. She might have been 3 at most, and was bundled in a cute robe, holding a blanky too. She had curly brown hair and was wide awake and alert. She had the blanket against one side of her head, like a little pillow, and was sucking her thumb. She seemed in no distress. Her brown eyes were enormous, with long eyelashes.

I smiled at her and said hello; she just looked at me. Then I said, "Who is with you?" She just looked at me, no expression change. I told her I'd be back and went down to check on S.O. He was alert enough to tell me he was having a great deal of pain, so I decided that this time I would find someone for sure. I head back the way I'd come--I was also fuming about this child left by herself. As I approached her this time, though, I saw her blanky had shifted and she had massive tumor on whole left side of her head and part of her face. My auto-pilot self thought, well, she must be in the hospital a lot, she must be used to this. She was very calm and watchful, but not troubled. I went back to reception, finally found a tech and gave him an earful. He was aware of my S.O. and said they were going to come get him in about 5 minutes. Then I told him about the little girl. He gave me a slightly puzzled look. I explained where she was--about 3 corridors down--and he said he'd check.

I walked back and turned to where the girl had been, but the corridor was deserted. I was relieved; someone must have been prepping an exam room or something and had been quite near all along and now she was being taken care of. I paused to listen briefly, but there was nothing.

Almost right behind me came the gurney for S.O. There was a lot going on then--and after, with ortho surgeries and rehab.

I thought about the girl now and then because I was in that hospital often enough and eventually worked there in Onc. I don't know why I thought about her, apart from the strangeness of the situation--it seemed crazy and negligent to leave her there alone. I realized too that she might have been uneasy with me, as a stranger, and recalled that the second time I'd seen her, she did not make eye contact but looked away. I wondered if she might not be able to hear, speak or understand what I said. But it seemed impossible that she should be there alone, in the middle of the night. I hoped I hadn't added to her stress.

Flash forward about 10 years, I'm working in that hospital and happen to pass that spot in Radiology. I suddenly realized it was impossible that a real child had been there. She looked absolutely real but I thought about the size and severity of that mass, how she silently appeared--I would have heard footsteps, I would have heard the wheelchair when she arrived--in fact, there was a kind of profound silence around her, when I remembered it.

I have had a fair amount of "experiences" and that runs in our family, but I had never seen a complete, full figure, completely detailed ghost. I may have passed some and not known it--how would you know? You only figure it out, if at all, by looking at the circumstances and realizing the situation just doesn't "add up."

This one was REALLY a good story.

This one was REALLY a good story.
Thank you! I also had the pleasure of working at a very old and haunted medical building for 3.5 years, I'll have to dust some of those off. But this one with the child was so very strange, because the incident has stayed with me for decades now but at the time it never, ever occurred to me she wasn't real!

This isn't nursing related, but still pretty amazing!

My father passed away when my daughter was just over 1 year old. The day after he passed I fed her lunch in her high chair then left her there for a moment as I straightened up. I heard her laughing and went in to see what was so funny. She was reaching out to a particular spot in the air, laughing and looking right at something. I knew it was my dad when she saw me and told me, "Pa!".

About a year later we were driving in the car and she was looking out the window and upward very happy and excited. I asked her what was so amazing and she said, "Look! Grandpa's flying!".

Last one: My husband was putting my daughter to bed and she was asking for a stuffed animal so he reached to the bottom of the bottom of the toy box to pick something she hadn't played with in a long time. At the same time I was putting our new baby daughter to sleep in the next room, missing my dad and getting teary. I asked my dad to give me a sign that he was with us and with his granddaughters. The next morning when I woke up my oldest daughter she was sleeping with the giraffe toy my dad have her and played with her with it all the time. It had been over a year since I had seen it! I asked my husband how she got it and he said something made him reach in the toy box for a different stuffie and he grabbed it immediately!

I know my dad is with us :-)

This isn't nursing related, but still pretty amazing!

My father passed away when my daughter was just over 1 year old. The day after he passed I fed her lunch in her high chair then left her there for a moment as I straightened up. I heard her laughing and went in to see what was so funny. She was reaching out to a particular spot in the air, laughing and looking right at something. I knew it was my dad when she saw me and told me, "Pa!".

About a year later we were driving in the car and she was looking out the window and upward very happy and excited. I asked her what was so amazing and she said, "Look! Grandpa's flying!".

Last one: My husband was putting my daughter to bed and she was asking for a stuffed animal so he reached to the bottom of the bottom of the toy box to pick something she hadn't played with in a long time. At the same time I was putting our new baby daughter to sleep in the next room, missing my dad and getting teary. I asked my dad to give me a sign that he was with us and with his granddaughters. The next morning when I woke up my oldest daughter she was sleeping with the giraffe toy my dad have her and played with her with it all the time. It had been over a year since I had seen it! I asked my husband how she got it and he said something made him reach in the toy box for a different stuffie and he grabbed it immediately!

I know my dad is with us :-)

I think the dead are always with us. My Mom has visited me a couple of times in my dreams-she said she was in heaven but she missed me. I also believe they are there when you pass to help you get to the other side.

Thank you! I also had the pleasure of working at a very old and haunted medical building for 3.5 years, I'll have to dust some of those off. But this one with the child was so very strange, because the incident has stayed with me for decades now but at the time it never, ever occurred to me she wasn't real!

You'll have to share them-I love a good ghost story.

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