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...

Sorry I posted that as a reply to FranNurses post

Hello all! I've posted on this thread before, a while back, with just one story. I'll repost that one and all a few more! Here goes!

Story Number 1

I was newly out of nursing school and just started being charge nurse on med-surg when this incident occurred. On our med-surg unit, night shift charge takes the same patient load as all of the other nurses. On the first night of my weekend trio of shifts, I had assigned myself a patient that I'll call Mrs. G. Mrs. G. was a morbidly obese lady with a small bowel obstruction who had refused to have an NG tube placed. No big deal, really, I guess, since she was NPO and not having and n/v at the time. She was as sane as you and me. Anyway, I got the creepiest feeling from her that Friday night for some reason. She said something about how she usually talks to her dead mother (which I don't think is strange at all). Like I said, she just gave me an uneasy feeling.

Fast fwd to the next night. For some reason she had changed rooms, so I didn't mind one bit to assign her to another nurse. At one point during the night, she had pressed the call button. I couldn't understand what she said over the intercom, so I walked down to her room to see what she had asked for. She wanted some water, so I went and got her some. When I came back to the room, she told me something that I thought was awfully peculiar. I can remember exactly what she said: "They had a party for me today." I asked, "Who did?" She replies (with a huge smile on her face) "My friends and family. Some I haven't seen in 20 years!" I say "Wow! They must have come from far away!" I know that my eyes got huge when she clarified-- "No! They have been dead for that long! It was the most beautiful party."

It really made me wonder why a 40-something year old seemingly sane woman would say something like this. I got my answer about two hours later when a white-faced co-worked walked out of Mrs. G's room and yelled that we needed to call a code. It was too late for Mrs. G. It looked like she had died at least thirty minutes before we found her. I immediately understood what she meant by her "party." It must have been a going away party!!

Story Number 2

It was a pretty slow night on the med surg floor. There were only two of us working on the 3rd floor, another nurse and myself. The third floor ends with a window to the outside on one side and locked double doors to the L&D ward on the other. I was in the room closest to the l&d ward, on the B side of the room (A bed was empty) fiddling with my patient's IV pump. The curtain dividing the room was pulled. I didn't think much about it when i heard rusting and footsteps around bed A, as I thought it was the other nurse getting the bed ready for an admission that they must have called about while I was busy. I said, "Are we getting one?"... no answer. I yanked the curtain back and NOBODY was there! The B bed patient and I looked at each other, confused. I stepped out of the room and saw the other nurse way down at the nurses station, doing her charting, just like I had left her. I called out, "Were you just in here??!" She said no. I asked if anyone else was on the floor except for us. Another no answer. I never figured out who (or what!) was right beside me on the other side of the curtain!

Story 3:

Same floor as the two stories above. I had a patient that was admitted to our unit to die. It always made me sad for patients to die alone, with no family, so I put an 02 sat monitor on him to alarm once his 02 sat dropped below 50 or 60%, can't remember which specifically. Anyway, I was doing rounds and opened his door to peek in on him. The room was dark and the hall light on, so naturally my shadow was cast on the wall opposite me. That particular night I was working with a very tall, very stout coworker. While i was peeking in, a VERY large, tall shadow in the shape of a person covered mine on the wall. I spun around thinking that my fellow nurse was behind me, but there was nobody :nailbiting:.

Story 4:

I happened to be working in the psych unit one night with two techs. We were all sitting at the front end of the hall, charting, talking, etc. We all heard what could be described as something being dropped. One of the techs got up and made her way down the hall to try to find the source of the noise. She found everyone (12 bed unit) fast asleep. We heard the noise again, this time louder. I took off this time, determined to figure out what was going on. I briefly noted a pair of sneakers on the floor in a room to my left. I walked on, peeking in rooms, when i heard the noise again, louder and behind me. I turned around quickly and walked back toward the room with the sneakers in the floor. this time, they were both in different positions on the floor. The patient that was in that bed was still fast asleep--it couldn't have been him throwing the shoes around, because he was a max assist transfer into bed. I ran as fast as I could down the hall back to the techs and wouldn't go anywhere by myself for the rest of the night.

Stories 4 & 5:

Med surg floor again, sitting at the desk with my coworker not long after shift change. The floor was very light that night, only about 5 patients. Two men in a room together to the left of the nurses station, and three ladies in separate rooms to the right. All of a sudden, a LOUD AND ANGRY male voice was heard by my coworker and me "CRYYYYSTALLLLLLL!" it growled. We looked at each other, terrified, with big eyes and practically ran into the room with the two men patients. We startled them, coming in so fast. One was texting away on his cell phone, one was flipping channels. We asked which one of them yelled. Neither had! We checked all of the other patients, all ladies, mind you, and they said they hadn't called out. We went through all the empty rooms and found nothing. Another night, not long after that, another nurse and I heard loud sobbing. We checked all of the rooms and found nobody crying.

Story 6:

I'm a home health nurse now, and this happened a few years ago. I was going to a patient's house that I had never been to before. I pulled up to what looked to be the main entrance, a screened in room to the side of the house. There were tall shelves against the windows to that room. I noticed the figure of a cat walking across the tops of the shelves pretty quickly toward the screen door that I was about to open, so, not wanting to let the cat out, I decided to go to the front door instead. I walked around the house to the front door and the man who answered (the patient) looked like he was kind of confused that I used that door instead of the one that I pulled up to. I explained that I didnt want to let the cat out. He said something like, "Honey, there hasn't been a cat that's lived here in three years!" I told him that I was certain that I'd just seen a cat walking across the tops of the shelves. We sat in that room for his visit just so he could prove to me that there was no (living) cat there!

Last story:

Med surg floor again, and there was a call light on a hall that was no longer used that would ring from time to time. We would always just cancel it out at the nurses station and blame it on the ghost. Well, one night it rang, and I guess I was feeling brave, so I marched down there determined to catch a glimpse of the ghost in the room. I swing the door open. A figure sat up slowly from the bed (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Turns out that it was an out-of-town lady from the transplant team waiting for someone who was on life support to be taken off because he was a donor. I seriously thought that I was going to faint when I saw the "ghost" sit up in the bed.

That one would freak me out! Sorry I was responding to an earlier comment and didn't realize my reply would go at the end of the feed :)

I am not a nurse but I have read this entire thread and I'm fascinated by the stories. (And I do believe them, or almost all of them anyway.) I would like to share my own experience. I was working at a mental health clinic some years ago, and one day I was walking down the hall and out of the corner of my eye I saw a young man in jeans and a ball cap entering the conference room where we held drug and alcohol group meetings. I knew there was no meeting scheduled at that time, so I went to the room to inform the client and ask him to come back later in the day, but the room was empty. Oh, well, I was mistaken, a trick of the light or my imagination, I think nothing of it. Several hours later I heard one of the therapists crying and people trying to comfort her. One of her drug/alcohol clients had committed suicide. I had never met the client in question and I don't know what he looked like, I don't even know if he was a member of that particular group that was going to meet that afternoon, but I have sometimes wondered if he decided to attend the drug/alcohol meeting regardless, even though he had already passed away. The young man I thought I saw entering the conference room looked solid and real, down to the color of his shirt and his dirty red ball cap. I never told anyone this because they would have thought I was nuts.

Thank you all for sharing your stories.

Do you believe, there are more happenings during the holidays? Such as Christmas??

Specializes in ICU.

I have had some pretty eerie patient experiences that elicit goose bumps still when I think about them. I was just wondering what everyone else's experiences have been. I would say the one that still gives me chills was when I was a new nurse on night shift. I had 2 cute little old ladies together in a shared room, both were oriented on my rounds around 12 am the woman on the far side of the room asked me why I kept bringing a man in with me. I turned around and told her nobody was there. She said he has been standing behind you most of the night but I can't see his face and he is wearing all black :nailbiting:. Meanwhile when I went to check her neighbors vs she woke up and started freaking out screaming and trying to hit at me, then started to decompensate. All I could picture was the grim reaper standing behind me as I entered my patients rooms the rest of the night.

More recently I had a patient who had every system failing and the family had just stated they were not going to escalate care and would like to withdrawal when everyone was able to make it in the next morning. Just after they left I was getting ready to change his ETT holder when the lights in the room shut off his, blood pressure, HR and end tidal alarms started ringing and then the lights popped back on. The other nurse who was with me and I looked at each other and decided the patient did not want to be bothered. He passed away an hour later.

Thanks for the goosebumps :/ It's time to retire after a 12 hour shift ;)

I've been a nurse for 33 years and had some doozies.. but THAT is EEERIEE! Nurses are so often present at the time of death we are bound to experience unusual happenings.

My eeriest.. a zipped up body bag moving, more than one patient looking past me and talking to deceased family members right before passing.. and noting asystole on the monitor.. walking into the patient's room and "Stairway to Heaven " playing on their radio.

Hang on to your "cap"... have a feeling you are particularly receptive and in for some more "unusual" death scenes.:nailbiting:

Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.

I had a private duty patient ask me, "Who is that standing at the foot of the bed?" She and I were the only ones in her apartment. There was nothing there but a blank wall. I asked her who it looked like, and she described a man with long brown hair and a beard, who "kind of looked like Jesus."

I checked her pulse and found it thin and thready. Called her family and they all hot-footed it over there. All were present around her bed and I left the room to give them privacy. But the patient called out for me and her daughter came out to get me. When I went in I took her hand and asked her what I could do for her. She said, "I'm ready to go home now. Will you take me home?" I said I would and that I was ready anytime she was ready......she said "OK, thank you."

And then she took her final breath.

Personally, although I had a bit of a skin crawl when she first asked me about the person at the foot of the bed, I was glad, because it allowed the family to assemble 'in time'.

Specializes in HH, Peds, Rehab, Clinical.
been there,done it said:
Thanks for the goosebumps ? It's time to retire after a 12 hour shift ;)

I've been a nurse for 33 years and had some doozies.. but THAT is EEERIEE! Nurses are so often present at the time of death we are bound to experience unusual happenings.

My eeriest.. a zipped up body bag moving, more than one patient looking past me and talking to deceased family members right before passing.. and noting asystole on the monitor.. walking into the patient's room and "Stairway to Heaven " playing on their radio.

Hang on to your "cap"... have a feeling you are particularly receptive and in for some more "unusual" death scenes.:nailbiting:

HEY! You can't mention a moving body bag and then walk away! Did anyone check it out? It wouldn't have been ME, I can tell you that with every fiber of my being, but why was it moving?

Specializes in ICU.

I would have screamed if the body bag started moving.....I always hate being alone when I am doing post mortem care......I don't think I would ever do it again if I saw that.

Curious minds NEED to know......dont leave us hangin'

Specializes in Geriatrics, Dialysis.

I had a dead man sit up, on Halloween! Working night shift and this gentleman passed away, apparently he still had that one big breath of air left in him and as he exhaled it he sat bolt upright in the bed. I don't think I have ever jumped backwards so far or so fast in my life.

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