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...

You all so so easily heebie-jeebied out.

I hope I get to hang around and be a ghost for a while after I kick the bucket. I'd have so much fun! I'll do things like make the ice machine suddenly dispense buckets of ice, open and close doors, make myself look like a big black blob on the ceiling, and make the printer spontaneously spew out multiple sheets of paper with the words "GETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUT" printed all over it.

I'm with you on this! I think it would be so much fun to be a ghost!

No responsibilities like working or paying bills, being able to be invisible and scare the crap out of others, no needing to find a place to live and worrying if you could afford it. I mean, all the crap that one spends time worrying about when you have a body just isn't there when you're a ghost. Being able to fly-just think of all the places you can visit that you never had a chance to visit when you had a body.

I have been in nursing for over 20 years and boy do i have a lot.but to just get started, this incident occurred less than 48 hours ago.i am at work,night shift,and around 0200 in the morning a patient puts on call light requesting a clean diaper change.i was alone at the time and cna on break so i obliged. As i was finishing the request ,i went into patient bathroom to wash my hands.i saw no need to turn on light for enough was coming from patient overbed light.i proceeded to face basin and turned on water and instantly i felt it.a presence standing in the bathroom behind me and the most strangest thing occurred. Never in all encounters had this happened. The presence touched my left butt cheek. It shocked my breath away.i turned to look and became so frightened that i dashed out the room.walking back to the nurses station my mind was debating,did this just happened to me?as i was washing my hands the thought entered my mind,the presence had to be male to touch me of all places my butt.i didn't mention incident until next night with another worker and instantly he said"room 17 does have activity for the patient by the window in the room call them demons".he stated that the patient says there os a.demon in the bathroom and he sees it quite often.well that morning i felt it and i will never forget it.true story.

I stumbled across this site a week or so ago and have been reading every chance I get. I just love all these stories. I am not a nurse but am very fascinated with the end of life process. I myself am not afraid to die just don't want to go through the process if you know what i mean.....LOL! I have always heard about people seeing loved ones when death is near, had a family friend who's young child talked about seeing his fishing buddy who he later picked out as his father's first cousin who had died tragically 30 years prior, and many other tales my grandmother shared. I will share with you what I have witnessed personally.

My parents bought and old home in town and moved it to the family land out in a rural area where we lived. Once demolition was done and construction started it was just a shell that consisted of just the heart of the house. Two bedrooms was added on to the North end and bathrooms, closets, and laundry to the South end. It took a few years to finish the house as my dad worked on it along and along and I always had a weird feeling about it when I was there alone. After moving in I would always sit in the recliner in the living area. From that point I could see down into dining room and down the hall. I would always see things darting about out the corners of my eye. I never could make out any specific shapes but they always seemed shadowy. My mom and sister said they had seen things also. I didn't really think anything about it until one night I realized we were not the only ones living there. I was going through a rough patch of sleeping (sleep apnea) and would often lie awake trying to fall asleep because I would always have to nap when I got home from work. My mom was sleeping in the guest room next door because of my dad's recent surgery. My room was setup that my bed was on the opposite wall facing the door with the door on the right. My door always had a distinct noise on opening like it stuck a bit so I was always aware when it was opened. On this particular night I thought I had heard my mother up stirring about in the room over and down the hall and I thought nothing of it. Next thing I know I felt the bed move as if someone had sit on the side of the bed behind me. I remember saying "oh, I didn't hear you come in. Is something wrong" as I rolled over to talked to my mom. Well to my surprise no one was there. I laid there shocked for a moment then proceeded to quickly get up and go sleep in the floor in the guest room with my mom. It only happened that once but I still continued to see shadowy thing about the house. I was scared for a while to stay in that room but I finally announced one day that I was ok with whoever was there. I did however ask them not to scare me.

A year or so later.

The house has an open floor plan with living room/kitchen in one long room with a big opening to the dining room and down the hall. I was cooking at the stove facing away from the living room. My sister was standing just inside the kitchen area near the living room and my mom was at the end of the hall where it enters the dining room. My mom and my sister were arguing about something that needed straightening in the dining room. It was a pretty heated argument and all of a sudden my sister screamed and I turned around to look and she was the color of cotton and could not speak a word for a few seconds. Finally she got her wits about her and said that as she turned around to say something else to my mom she saw a man standing behind my mom in the hall. She could not describe his face but said he was wearing brown/khaki pants, blue shirt, and boots. That really freaked us all out. Needless to say the argument quickly ended.

Those are the two major things that have happened to me personally. The only thing else I can remember is that my mom got a rescue dog from a friend and after first moving in she would go crazy and barking and chasing things in the hall. The kind of crazy where the hair on her back stands up and she is about to eat something alive...(dead in this case)....LOL She don't do it anymore but it was pretty common for a few months.

I love this thread almost a decade & its still going

Specializes in Adult and Pediatric Vascular Access, Paramedic.

I wasn't a nurse at the time, I was only about 16 or so, but one night I was in the kitchen at home with my mom and sister and I smelled the perfume my Nana use to always wear. I knew she had advanced stage cancer, but my parents were divorced and I wasn't close to my father or that side of the family so we didn't know she had died that very night I smelled her perfume randomly in the kitchen. It was like she stopped by to say goodbye! It was so weird. I was the only one that smelled it...

Specializes in family practice and school nursing.

it's October... let's get this thread going again.. in the spirit of Halloween

Specializes in Geriatric.

When I was a traveling CNA I went to a place that had an elevator. It was located in the dining room and would constantly ding then open the doors in the middle of meals with no one inside. The other CNAs that worked for the facility were convinced there was a short or something that caused the doors to open randomly. Sounds legit since it was an old building so I dismissed it.

The floor plan is set up in a big square with each hall having one CNA present. We all had walkies on our person to request assistance if needed but we were usually solo on the halls.

I was walking on my hall after everyone was in bed. I felt something tug at my pony tail and assumed it was another CNA trying to scare me but when I turned around no one was there.

Fully creeped out by this point.

I went to another hall and told the CNA there what happened. We were in a residents room whom was fully alert and oriented. The resident listened to my recall of the events and chimed in stating "Dorothy always liked to pick on the workers here and I see her from time to time in the elevator. I bet it was her." I asked her who Dorothy was and she told me she was the little lady that lived on my hall in room 304 who passed away last year.

Yep I high tailed it out of there.

Specializes in ICU Stepdown.

My first "nursing" ghost story! I'm not a nurse but today was my last day of CNA clinicals at a nursing home. I was helping a CNA ambulate a resident down the hallway, we were talking and she randomly looks at the ground and says "is that your puppy?" I look at where she's looking and don't understand what she's talking about, especially after since these few days with her she hasn't seemed like the type to be confused. I looked at the CNA and she says that she has a weird story to tell me. After the ambulation, she tells me about how the resident and her husband used to live at the nursing home together, pushed their beds together when they slept, the whole nursing home couple shebang. Well, her husband passed and after that, the resident would "talk to herself" and said that she was talking to her husband. One night the floor pad alarm went off. The CNA went into the resident's room, turned it off and asked what happened and the resident said that her husband was there. The CNA left and she said that throughout the night, the floor pad alarm would go off and eventually she told what I believe was a ghost/spirit to go away and let his wife sleep, she said that it didn't go off again after that. The CNA also told me that the resident says she sees a little boy and when I told my friend that, she said that she was working with a resident who said she saw a little boy as well.

I have a friend at work who tells this story:

Shortly before my friend became pregnant with her daughter, her mother passed away. She was very close with her mother and upset that her mother would never get to meet her only grandchild. When the child was about 2-3 years old, my friend was sitting in a chair rocking her daughter and told her daughter that she wished she had been able to meet grandma. Her daughter replied that she had met grandma. When questioned farther, the daughter said that grandma came to the hospital the night that she was born and held her while my friend slept.

I love this and think its such a sweet story!

My sister found out she was pregnant with my niece when my mother was in the active stages of dying. My mother had Alzheimer's and had not recognized any of us in years. She had been unconscious for three days prior to this happening. Let me back track first. This was my sister's first pregnancy. She had been married for 10 years and my mother was always pressing her for a grandchild. She had a very special bond with my sister. Once we found out my sister was pregnant we spent hours sitting on the bed next to my mother's talking all things baby. The day before my mother died she woke up and started talking to us. She was clear as a bell and was able to make perfect sense whereas she had not for years prior this. With a huge smile she looked right into my sister's eyes and said, "I am so happy for you! You are going to have a baby girl!" She soon became unconscious again and died the next evening.

My sister did have a little girl and let me tell you, the similarities between her and my mother are uncanny. Physically but especially personality. One day she and my sister were in an antique store and my niece (who is 5 BTW) picked up a small framed painting of the Virgin Mary and said, "You should buy this. It reminds me of MeeMaw." My mother was a very devout Catholic and always had Virgin Mary items around the house. My sister swears she has never told my niece anything about that. My sister is not religious and has no religious items in her home. My mother was always heartbroken that my siblings stopped going to church as soon as they left the nest so I wonder if my mom wasn't trying to send a message through my niece. Especially since my sister is going through some really stressful things lately. My niece has also intuited other things about my mother.

My sister-in-law said when my mother died that the baby my sister was carrying would be connected to my mother's spirit and I think she was right.

The day my grandmother died our family dog ran to the door and started acting the way she acts only when my grandmother came over.

As for nursing ghost stories we once had a bed that was unplugged start to move up and down on its own.

I work in mother baby our new wing use to be the nursing home. Our tv's turn on all the time in vacant rooms. It's alway the pbs station especially Lawrence Welk. One of our New mom's wondered why there was an older All urse in her room one night looking over her baby. All of our nurses are younger than 55. We really watched her baby after that, the next day he was put in NICU

I worked in a rural hospital built in the 1950's. It was built on the site of an old children's home. The facility to this day still has that old 50's feel to it even with the updates it has been given. I had been working there about a year when one of the older nurses told me her ghost story. Our med surg unit is L shaped. She worked night shift and was given assigned the rooms at the very end of the unit. IT was a busy night and she had come out of the last room at the end of the hall way. She looked into the room across the hall and there was a woman in the bed. Before she had gone into the room the other room was empty. She said she walked over to the door and the woman sat up and said that she was waiting for her. The nurse told her she would be right back and the woman laid down. She went up to the nurses station and began chewing out the charge nurse for putting a new admit in the room without telling her. He informed her that there had not been any new admissions for a few hours. They both went down to the room and it was empty.

Okay, I have one too. But it's not really a ghost story. It's more of a God story.

When my younger sister's marriage ended, she and her pre-school age son moved back home to live with our mom and dad. It was a difficult time. Jane was angry that life had not turned out as she had hoped, and she was under a great deal of stress being a single working mom. Adam was deeply affected by this change in his life. There was so much sadness and confusion in his young heart. We all feared that he was depressed. He was afraid to sleep alone, and my dad often lay in bed with him until he fell asleep. Both Jane and Adam started seeing a family therapist to help them deal with their pain.

One day, Jane was in the shower while Adam played in the house. Mom (Adam's grandma) was in the garage doing laundry. While in the shower, Jane heard a distinct voice urgently tell her to scream her son's name. She immediately did. She screamed out "Adam" at the top of her lungs. My mother heard the scream from the garage (it was attached to the house), and ran into the house to find Adam hanging by his neck from the stair rail. He had tied the sash of his little bathrobe around his neck, tied the other end to the bannister, and had climbed over the railing.

Mom got him down, removed the sash, and found that he was still breathing. His neck had burn marks from the sash, a visual reminder to us of how close we had come to losing our precious boy.

Jane says she knows that God warned her that day and saved her son's life. On at least two occasions following this incident she saw what she believed to be an angel in the house and when Adam told her that he had seen something in the house that frightened him, he gave the exact same description.

Jane is remarried now to a wonderful man. Adam is all grown up and learning how to drive. We believe that God sent extra protection to that little family during a time when they needed it most.

I'm sorry, but how in the world does a pre-school aged boy know how to hang himself on purpose?

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