What's Your Best Nursing Ghost Story?

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...

[workingmama77, BSN]

I had an older cousin who died of complications from a bone marrow transplant when she was in her mid 20s & I was about 12 or 13. I remember one of the last times I saw her she spoke about family members who had passed away, especially my grandfather (who was her godfather). She said he had come to her and said he'd "show her the way and take care of her". She passed away not very long after that, on Halloween.

[polkadotnemo]

This is kind of Nursing related. I was 14 and my grandfather was passing away from lung cancer (which had met'd all over his body pretty much). Anyhow, my mother and I travelled up to the hospital to see him (350 miles from our home) and at the beginning of our week therehe was lucid enough but you could tell he was going to pass within the next 2 weeks or so. Whilst we were there, he "didn't recognise me" as being me, but "thought" I was my older sister, and kept having a moan at my mother for not letting me go out for a cigarette (I smoked at this age, which my mother didn't know, but my grandad kept winking at me as if he knew it was me) however by the sunday he had deteriorated rapidly and was put on the LCP (liverpool care pathway, in which syringe drivers and care is put in place to remove pain and discomfort). After he was placed on the LCP whenever we returned from getting food or going down to the shop, he would always become a little confused and frustrated because our relatives (who were deceased) wouldn't stay around to say hello, and would always ask us whether we had seen them when we walked in. After being placed on the LCP we were allowed to sleep in his bed space on chairs, and during the night above his curtains it was as though you could see faint disco lights dancing above the curtain rail all around the bed space, which no one but us and the elderly gentleman accross from my grandad could see, who kept walking over and trying to open the curtains to see what the lights were about. on the wedensday morning it felt like he became a little frustrated (even though he was unreponsive and unconcious, we could just tell) My mother told me that we were going to sainsbury's to get some lunch and tea and gran would stay with him. 10 minutes after we left he passed away, We think it was because he didn't want me to see his last moments. I saw him post death in the bed and I felt heavy, as if I was being cuddled by very thick foam (but didn't feel suffocated, almost as if soothing and safe)

He passed away on the wednesday and me and my mother travelled home that day. I went to bed in my room (which incidentally was my gran and grandads room before they moved back up north) I managed to get some sleep but was woken up by my bed shaking (like someone was vibrating the mattress) I opened my eyes to see a long thin light right above my bed (which lit up my room) and then prompty vanished (it was when it vanished I felt sad and scared) which was followed by, what I can only describe as humpty dumpty (fat body, fat bald head and short thin legs looking like it was sat down) float in through my open bedroom door do a semi circle to go over my bed and through my right hand side bedroom wall, come back through the bedroom wall closer to my head over my bed and back out through my bedroom door, all the while chuckling to itself (not evily, almost the chuckle and old man gets when he's being very cheeky and mischeivious) but it was that that really scared me (?because I couldn't recognise it as anything/anyone I could relate to?), I slept with my light on from then for about 3 months.

Thats really the only dealings with supernatural since I was very young (under 10)

sorry if it's long :) xx

[polkadotnemo]

Sorry laptop posted twice, dont know how to delete comments

[DrRobotnik]

Oh these are so creepy!

Sorry if I'm a bit late, but I have a story to add to the pot too!

When I was working as an ICU Nurse (I've quit that profession and have no intention of going back!), we used to have this bed that would ALWAYS be empty. Everyone absolutely refused to ever put any living being in that bed..The entire hospital could be full to the brim, and patients would try to force their way to that bed, but we just wouldn't let it happen.

About 4 years before I was in med school, and quite a few years before I started working there, a man came in to registration in his car, got registered, sent in, blah and got placed in that bed. He came in with self-inflicted cuts on his shoulders, chests, wrists and stomach :/ He was very calm, and polite and seemed to be absolutely at peace with everything around him. We had nooo clue why, but he had a fever of 112 when we checked him out! 112! I don't know how he even got to us with the fever and amount of blood he had lost, let alone was talking and interacting without problems.

A few hours after we got him settled into a bed and comfortable, he completely changed. He turned from a calm, polite man into this just...cruel, rude, mean, evil person. He had to be restrained since he wouldn't allow us anywhere near him. He kept screaming that they were going to 'rot in hell for your sins.' and a bunch of other seriously not okay things. He even said someone's kid was about to die! I mean, we've all had a crazy PT at some point, but we had no idea what to do about him. His fever kept going up and up no matter what anyone did. He was awake, talking and ALIVE when his fever hit freaking 120. I've seen people conk out at 109..But he was still going strong, and hateful..

We were all at our wits end, and decided to silently pray over the man while we went about our business. The moment, the EXACT moment I started praying, he locked eyes with me with this just..unnatural glare that I'll never, ever, EVER forget and told me 'He won't save you. You're going to burn.'. We ran as fast as we freaking could out of that room, and I absolutely refused to go back into it until he was gone. The nurse who took care of him for the rest said his fever was up at 130 by the time he finally passed on..Only after screaming 'He's here! PLEASE DON'T LET ME GO! PLEASE!.'

I really wish I was making this up :/ I really do.. So many other people have had similar experiences that I can't even deny it to myself and claim I was just really tired

[VampyrSlayer, CNA]

The first time I went to Waverly Hills was a fluke. My SIL knew some people that had payed for an 8 hour private investagation. Over half of the people that wanted to go bailed on them pretty unexpectedly. These tours are not cheap. They are $1000 minium and you can take 10 people in for that. SIL knew I was into "that sort of thing" and told DH about it. He reserved us 2 places with them and gave it to me as a christmas gift. I had to wait until late April to go though. The day finally came and we arrived at Waverly. It's a very impressive building to see and you can tell that it was once very beautiful (still is). The tour guide lead us into what was once the laundry room for the hospital. It's now an office gift shop, and meeting area for guests. It was quickly determined that there were only 5 of us that had ever been on an investagation before. The other 4 formed thier own group and went off by themselves leaving me in charge of all the noobs. I really wasn't there to "investagate" as much as I was there just to experiance the place. The tour guide takes us outside and lets us take some pics of the outside of the building and then gives us a quick tour of the inside. He fills us in on the ghost stories and "hot" spots as we go. The hospital isn't a small building so you can imagine. We then split into groups and went our seperate ways. The first group started out in the tunnel and we started on the 1st floor of the hospital. We worked our way up to the second floor which features the cafeteria, the bakery, the dining rooms and a pt wing. As we were walking down to the cafeteria everyone started to smell bacon. As we got closer to the dining rooms and the cafeteria it got stonger just like someone was cooking bacon. It was almost overwhelming by the time we got there. All 6 of us smelled it. We examined the room carefully and knew that no one had brought any bacon with them.We never found any source for the smell. We continued on back to the pt wing. Each wing is made up of 2 hallways. The outside hallway is made up of the open breezeway (which the hospital was famous for)with a row od pt rooms behind. The inside hallway is where the closed rooms are. These were the rooms used for dying pts. When you were moved to a closed room you knew you didn't have much longer left. We started walking up the outside hallway, everyone was taking there time, chatting since it wasn't dark yet. I crossed over to the inside hallway and was taking pics of some of the rooms. The group continued forward on the other side. DH came to see what I was doing and he took a few pics as well.We started to walk forward and were going to cross back over at the end of the hall and re-join the group. We were walking when we heard shuffling foot steps behind us. We both turned to look at the exact same time and there was nothing there. We continued down the hall like this. Every few steps we'd stop and it would stop. We were taking pics and giggling about it when the rest of the group caught up with us. After they came it stopped though. We continued on though out the hospital for a few hours with nothing happening. It got dark and we were on the 3rd floor. We were on the outside breezeway and one of the guys with us told everyone to stop. We all froze in place and he told everyone to look at the end of the hallway. My BIL chimed up and said it looked like there was a person standing there. We all saw a dark shadowy out line of a person. I thought it was an acctual person it was so solid looking and immeadately started running to it.There was no way I was going to let someone that wasn't supposed to be there ruin my evening. DH and BIL took off after me. I got there first and followed it into one of the open rooms and though to the inside hallway. There was nothing there. We split up and looked for a person and came up empty handed. We took a break after that and had lunch. Afterward we went to the tunnel. We tried doing EVP on the way down and using a K2 meter. We had a few spikes on the k2 but we didn't get any EVPs. We found that the end of the tunnel was open so we went out of it and took pictures of the places where supplies were picked up and bodies were taken away so many years ago. We also found a building and took pics of it. (on a side note the owners and guide both claim that this building is not there even though I've touched it and given them pics of it. Research has lead me to believe it was a power house or water treatment.) We trecked back up and 2 members of our party was over all the fun of the evening but they kept going. We went up to the 4th floor where we started hearing voices and foot steps all over the place. One of our group members had had enough at the point and broke down so we took her out. After seeing that she was ok and comfortable we went back in and did a EVP session in the childrens cafeteria During that time it felt like there were children tugging at the hem of my hoodie and one of the guys we were with kept feeling like he was being touched. We were able to document a cold spot right next to both of us his was 20 degrees colder than the rest of the room and mine was 30. We then hit the OR on the 4th floor and tried to do another EVP session. We were getting lots of responces on our k2 though. DH was sitting in a metal folding chair holding it. We were getting answers to our questions when all of a sudden the chair felt and sounded like it was kicked hard. We got a few more questions after that and then it stoped. Pretty much everyone was done at that point so we walked out and rested for a moment. DH and I went back in on our own and did another run though of the whole hospital. We found the other group and ened up spending the last hour or so with them. Nothing else really happened that night but it was awesome. I booked my next trip before we left! Here are some pics of that night.I did my best to add as much info as possiable to them. NOTE: there is some graffic graffitti in the pics if you are easily offended please do not click the links!!! Also these pics are NOT up for debate. They are what they are and have not been altered in any way. They are there to show people what Waverly is like and not to prove or disprove ghosts. www.flickr.com/photos/leogirl13/ www.flickr.com/photos/leogirl1333/

I'm sorry I know this is old, but is it just me or did anyone else see a face in the largest orb top right side of pic 185 on second link?

[DedHedRN]

I was at the death of a elderly man who died from cancer at a RFCE, the staff showed me to the room and then left me alone with the pt who had been dead for several hours, while I made the call to the mortuary and to the doctor to let them know that he had died. As I was sitting in the room, I was making calls, and the female operator put me on hold. It was a silent hold. I heard crackles on the phone, then a very gruff mans voice coming from the cell phone, sounded like "I'm not dead" and then more crackles and silence again. Then I had a strange burning sensation in my ear that faded away. I stuffed my feelings to run out of the room, turned to the dead man and said "you dead sir, your free to go".

[Libitina]

Love this thread, keep the stories coming guys!

[hothands]

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.

[VampyrSlayer, CNA]

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

[GerberaDaisy]

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.

[anon456, BSN, RN]

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.

[anon456, BSN, RN]

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!"