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...

[bell1962]

More stories???

[nissa6828]

I used to work agency and worked a few nights in a small hospital in Northern Kansas. I was scared to death to go anyplace alone as there were often shadows. The nurses that were regulars seemed to be used to seeing shadows and apparitions of a little boy playing in the breakroom and tv's that came on in a certain room in the dead of night. While working at the same facility a few months later I was doing paperwork at the nurses desk and kept looking up thinking someone was standing at the desk waiting on my attention. Thinking that it was most likely a cna or a resident I looked up and nobody was there. This happened 3 more times within a 2 hour time frame. The last time it happened, I looked up and saw a flash of color go backwards as if it had been sucked into a vaccum. Immediately as I stood with my mouth hanging open, the door to the med room behind me slowly started to close and all of a sudden as I watched slammed shut so hard that the items on the med cart fell. The rest of the night I sat unblinking. When the charge nurse came in the next morning, I said you are going to think I'm nuts, but.........she said "Oh well they must not want you here." She was as spooky as whatever I had seen the night before so I refused assignment from there on out at this place. No desire to go there ever again.

[nissa6828]

Pookyp.....This story is something I have seen as well but on the other end of things, I once took care of an elderly cancer patient who had suffered a long time. She slowly stopped talking then stopped responding then stopped opening her eyes and had no movement for many weeks. Every evening her husband would stay. Being elderly himself, our staff became worried for him as nobody sleeps well in the hosital and he was in a recliner, you know the scenario. That evening, his wife was my patient so my co-worker, the patients sons and I talked her husband in to going home to have a good meal and decent nights sleep. The patient had been having increasingly rapid breaths and falling hr for many weeks. Her bp would get next to nothing but she wouldn't pass, she would always come back. That night, as I did her 0200 vitals, the rapid breathing continued, as I did my bp check, and unhooked my equipment, this lady who had not moved in weeks sat slightly up, extended her arms in greeting, smiled and passed away. The look on her face was pure elation. I related this to her family later on and they felt she had seen her families and bloved pets and the were so relieved. Since that time, I am more comfortable with death and talking about death. I felt badly as her husband had left and she had died, but he was so sweet and said "Sweetie, don't you feel bad. I wanted her to find peace and relief and if me leaving was what she was waiting for, I wish I had left weeks ago." Love my patients and their fams!

[eralston65]

Pushing meds during a code one night in the ER, something caught in the corner caught my. I looked over and there was a floating, sparkling version of the elderly lady we were working on standing in the corner. She had a small smile on her face. After the code, which was successful, two of the older ER nurses came up to me and said, "You saw her ,didn't you? We saw you do a double take". I replied that I had and asked if they thought everyone had seen her.. the older of the two said, "Generally people will only see what they allow themselves to see".. It was not the first time or the last but it was the most incredible and the fact that two others on the code team saw her, astounded me!

[TDub, MSN, EdD]

This isn't really a ghost story, but it definitely gave me chills.

I was working in a critical care unit and there was a minister that was a pt. I can't really remember what was wrong with him but I do remember him saying that we better get his family because he would be "going home soon". In the course of the next hour, he was made a DNR.

I promise you, after that man died, he had a GLOW coming from his face and a smile that was so sweet.....I have never seen anything like it. Nurses from all over the unit came to see this man's face and everyone that saw it, cried. To this day, I get tears in my eyes thinking of it. I can not think of any other word to describe it but "heavenly".

I have seen this as a hospice nurse. It's uncanny in the original sense of the word.

I also had a nun at the sisterhouse look THROUGH me, get really excited, say "Oh, it's YOU!" and then lie back to die a few hours later.

[liberated847]

I also had a nun at the sisterhouse look THROUGH me, get really excited, say "Oh, it's YOU!" and then lie back to die a few hours later.

It's called delirium

[SmilingBluEyes]

Not a nursing story, but way back in the 1990s, my grandfather died of cancer. His wife of 64 years (!) missed him desperately as you might imagine. She was not religious, and had pretty much turned her back on Christianity long before. She had no belief in the afterlife or God or angels, nothing like that.

I told her "you may change your mind because SOMETIMES loved ones "visit" or "hover" after they die to be sure". She said I was pretty much full of it (in a nice way). Well, a few days after Gramps died, she was sitting in her living room when she heard a noise. She looked down the hall, and there was Grampa with a vacuum cleaner, cleaning up. (he did most of the housework, because he liked to be busy and clean). She did a double take and he was still there, looking at her. She wrote it off to delusion or daydreaming.

That night, she went to bed and the corner of her bed started to move downward, as if weight was on it. There was Gramps again.

He never said anything but she in her head, believed and knew he was just checking up on her to make sure she was ok. I told her she needed to tell him she was ok; that he needed to hear it. She did.

The same sort of appearance happened to my husband's grandmother after her husband died. She swore he was sitting on his side of the bed some time after he had died. She could feel the weight and see him there.

I don't know; I have never had such experiences myself, but I am not too quick to write off what other people say has happened. There are just too many stories from people of all walks of life, all religious (or non religious) backgrounds, around the world, to simply write them off as "delirium" or hallucination, or some other such.

Why not let people tell their stories and you don't have to believe, but at least respect them enough here, not to dampen spirits. SOME people BELIEVE strongly just as others do not. Let them have their say without negating it right off the bat!

[SmilingBluEyes]

One more cool story

A friend of mine named Libby had a mother in law who was an extremely heavy smoker, like 2PPD. Well, she died, not unexpectedly, of lung cancer.

A few weeks after her death, Libby was driving and smelled the distinct stench of cigarettes being smoked in her car. She has never smoked a cigarette in her life and hated the smell.

She could even SEE the smoke. So she looked back in the rearview mirror and saw the mother in law....then she was gone. Not a word spoken.

It happened a few times and Libby asked me what she could want. I said "she wants to know her son is ok, and that all is right in the world, so she can rest". So the next time Libby smelled smoke in her car, she told her MIL what I said.

That was the last time she ever experienced this phenomenon. I believe Libby. She has no reason to lie.

[SmilingBluEyes]

OK one more:

Had friend named Janine who had given birth to her 5th child without a single complication. She was in recovery, holding her baby, when all of a sudden, she felt SOB and very dizzy and sick.

She handed the baby to her concerned husband, and said "GET A NURSE; I feel like I am suffocating!" The nurse came, and pulled back the covers and a RIVER of blood flowed from under her to the floor, in torrents.

They rushed her to the OR and had to do an emergency hysterectomy, d/t placenta accreta (the placenta had not been delivered fully and this causes severe hemorrhaging). It was too late for a D/C; she was too far gone.

When they took her back, Janine remember being unable to see or hear well. In the OR, she was unable to hear, but could see clearly. She looked in the corner and saw a lady in street clothes; not anyone she had ever seen before.

Janine remembered praying to God not to take her from her babies, but if he must, to help her husband raise her kids without a mom. The lady then said in a voice Janine could hear, "go back, it's not your time yet" Her lips were not moving at all, but it was like she could still hear a voice.

The next thing Janine remembers is waking up in the ICU, intubated and in severe pain. When they took the tube out and she could talk, she asked who the woman in street clothes was, in the OR. They staff looked very puzzled and told her there was no one, but she HAD coded on the table, and they had to do full code blue to get her back. She had lost almost all her blood volume in the hemorrhage, needing many transfusions to survive.

But survive she did, and to this day, her whole outlook on life/the afterlife and the joy of everyday living has changed. She lives each day like it's her last and holds no grudges. She swears she "saw the light" and I believe her.

[liberated847]

Sadly just because we "believe " in something it doesn't make it true. Nevertheless if it brings you comfort then by all means believe away just don't attack the skeptics :-)

[SmilingBluEyes]

You really ARE being a wet blanket, bordering on trolling. Maybe another thread is more to your liking, Liberated. Obviously this is all a bunch of "junk" to you. Let's just agree to disagree and I will read the stories here with an open heart. You approach them how you feel you must. But maybe, just maybe, be more thoughtful and let people have their say without negating every story. Can we do that?

[liberated847]

You really ARE being a wet blanket, bordering on trolling. Maybe another thread is more to your liking, Liberated. Obviously this is all a bunch of "junk" to you. Let's just agree to disagree and I will read the stories here with an open heart. You approach them how you feel you must. But maybe, just maybe, be more thoughtful and let people have their say without negating every story. Can we do that?

Yes I can, just save the personal attacks, I'm merely keeping the thread honest