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...

Specializes in MICU.

So... I work in a MICU, and for a couple of years before I became a nurse there, I worked there as a secretary. Anyway, a couple of years before THAT, there was a nurse who had some depression issues, and had gotten in hot water over something (I think it was a documentation/medication thing, not entirely sure). At any rate, he committed suicide.

So, a couple of years later, we're having a pretty slow weekend night, when I pass by J, RN filing some orders. She says, "You know, the weirdest thing happened tonight."

"Really, here? You lie," I laugh.

"No, really, this book right here?" She points to some paperback sitting on the table she's charting at. "I haven't seen this book in a long time. I had lent it out, but I figured I'd never see it again."

"Oh, why?" I'm only half-paying attention.

"Well, I lent it to R about a week before he killed himself. And it just showed back up here, tonight, on my table, when I came back from lunch."

Then I paid attention! Now, it was possible R had lent to another nurse (before he killed himself) who found it to return to J... but noone who worked that night claimed to have brought it in, and it appeared @ like 2am.

Very weird.

Peace,

S

Specializes in Neuro, Acute, Geriatrics, Rehab, Oncology.

OMG..I am all prickley here and only on the 2nd page! i have a few stories to share. My first one was when i lived in a remote tiny town in MT and I was working on the reservation and part of my pay was free rent in apts next to the nursing home. I kept seeing big muddy boots next to the door of my apt, that werent really there and heard clanging and occasionally screams and an infant from upstairs. there was only an elderly woman above me. it turns out that the "apartments" was a hospital that had been shut down Years earlier in the late 50s for doing illegal, sometimes close to term abortions.The apt I was in was part of the former maintenece area hence the boots and aboveme, the former OR and Pt rooms.

Awww...c'mon Bipley, tell us your stories!

I have a few of them. Some types we all experience like how healthy old people can tell you the day and almost the time they will die. Had a few of those. But the one that hit home the most for me requires a bit of background.

I was not happy with a guy I had working (LTC) on my midnight shift and I was too afraid to have him work another night. So, I went down to the facility and fired him, then I took his shift. Turns out, I was right to do that, in retaliation for his being fired he set one of our buildings on fire. A building my old people were sleeping in!

You have to experience it to understand but when you are in a burning building and you are pretty sure you aren't getting out and you about to prove to the non physical people that you were right about religion all along (LOL) you quickly form a bond with all the others that aren't going to get out of the building alive either.

We did manage to get out and everyone was safe except one person who did die a few days later.

After that day I was terrified of working the midnight shift. Some of our staff lived on the property such as the groundskeeper. I was forever waking the poor guy up throughout the night swearing I could smell smoke, or I heard crinkling of something burning. I would sit at the nurses station and just shake and cry. (A little PTSD? :rolleyes: )

G was a lady that has a history of a stroke. She didn't have poor short term memory, she had NO short term memory. After 7 years she still couldn't remember who I was or what she was doing in this building.

From the time of her stroke to the time she died G ALWAYS had her days and nights mixed up. She was quite content to walk the halls and quietly hum, sit with me at the nurses station, whatever she wanted. She actually had the entire A building to herself. (We had buildings A-E)

I would bribe G with candy to sit at the nurses station with me while I worked. I never had to say anything, I'd just pull the candy dish out and G would happily munch candy, we'd talk, and I'd do my work. I just needed a human to sit with me. This was our little secret. Actually, it was my little secret! LOL G wouldn't remember by the time she stood up that she even ate any candy.

Shortly after the fire it happens to be that G died and I was all alone again on the few nights I did pull an 11/7.

One night after G's death I was sitting there trembling in fear, tears streaming down my face, ready to have the best ever panic attack SWEARING I could see, hear, and smell fire/smoke again and out walks K. K was a cool old lady, she really was. She was from Germany and she was one of the people trapped in the burning building with us.

I composed myself and asked what I could do for her. She sat down and said she thought it would be nice to chat. LOVING the company and thinking she was probably unable to sleep I said sure, what would you like to chat about? She thought for a moment and finally said that G had just come to wake her up. I realized she had been dreaming. I reminded her that G passed away recently. K said she was aware of that but G woke K and explained that when I work nights I become afraid and needed someone to sit with me so I could do my work. G told K I was having a rough night and it might make me feel better if K came out and spent a little time with me.

I just sat there not knowing what to say, I mean... that was MY secret. I never told anyone about G, the candy, or our talks at night. K stood up, walked behind the nurses station, sat down and pulled out the hidden dish of candy. Then she proceeded to tell me what life was like for her when she was my age living in Germany.

K died about two years later but to this day I dearly love that woman. What a gem. Same with G.

I don't expect anyone to believe it but it's true.

OMG, Chad!! That is weird. When I had just started out working as a CNA, my first job was in a SNF and we had a patient on the first floor. He was a nice guy and one day he started to decline. The day before he died, we couldn't get him to go to sleep for NOTHING so we asked him what was wrong, and all he kept saying was he was afraid because these black things were around his bed waiting for him. When they (the 3rd shift) discovered that he had passed late that night, they said his face had a look of terror on it. That still bothers me to this day.

I have many--after working LTC many years. One that comes to mind is: one morning after report and hearing of this dying resident, who rested quitely "except when the monster was chasing her." and need a personal alarm, as tried to climb out of bed then.-- I checked her first and took in her am meds. She ask: "Do I have to go with that mean man?" I told her No, that she could go with someone nice. Went on to visit about her serious illness and I ask if there was anyone she wanted to come sit with her or a minister called. She replied in the negative. No family and not religious. I ask if she wanted me to say a prayer with her. That was affirmative and we said the Lord's Prayer together. On finishing she stated, "He's gone!" She died the next day and never from the time of the prayer, was she trying to escape the bad man or monster. (She could definitely see him. I couldn't)

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.

I've worked in LTC for a long time, most of those years on 11-7 shift. I don't have any good, scary ghost stories, just some creepy experiences. There is one unit in our facility that is notorious for "shadow" sightings. Many people, including myself, have seen figures in our peripheral vision. It's usually when we are in the nurse's station charting. You see someone walk by, but when you look up, no one is there. This has happened to many different people on numerous occasions. We joke about it, and often ask new people if they have met the "ghost" on that unit. We also have residents who complain from time to time about children coming into their rooms and making noise in the halls in the middle of the night. One morning, we had 5 or 6 different residents in different rooms ask if "that little boy" was still there. There have also been times when a resident will refer to "the girl behind you", but when you turn to look, there is no one there. We also have had episodes of call lights in empty rooms coming on, doors slamming shut, and just a general uneasy feeling in certain rooms. It probably doesn't help that many of us have learned to do many tasks without turning on the bright lights (as to not disturb sleeping residents) and things are always scarier by the light of night lights.

I also have a couple of stories that have a definite creep factor, but are also comforting in a way. The first one involves my mother-in-law, who was in ICU and dying. She had been unresponsive for some time. Shortly before her hospitalization, she had been talking a lot about her childhood, which had been very hard. When she about 6 or 7 years old, she was walking with her mother when her mother got hit by a bus and died in front of her. After that, her father became abusive to her and her sisters in the worst way. Anyway, here she was, lying in a hospital bed, at death's door. All of a sudden, she opened her eyes and was fixated on the ceiling. She smiled, held up her arms (like a child does when they want to be picked up), closed her eyes again, and died. We like to think that it was her mother, coming to get her.

Another time was on my wedding day. My brother had been killed just seven months before in a car accident (he was 19). Anyway, my mother said as she was driving to the church, she was thinking about how she wished that my brother could be there. All of a sudden, the smell of roses filled the car. She said it was so strong, that it was almost overpowering. Then as quickly as it had come, the smell was gone. Maybe he was there, after all.

I know this thread has been going on for a long time, but please keep them coming. I love this kind of thing.

Well....it's not a nursing story, but it happened to a nurse so does that count?:coollook:

A friend of mine has a three year old son. A neighbor of theirs was dying of cancer, and my friend was going in to the home daily to help out as a neighbor, not as a nurse. Anyway, one morning at 9:00 she called the neighbor's husband to ask if he needed anything from the store as she and her son were on their way. He named a couple of things, and she and her son went to the store. It took about an hour, and at 10:00 she and her son drove up to the neighbor's house. The woman was in a coma and was expected to die at any time. My friend was kind of leery of taking her son in to the home because of the woman being in a coma, but she decided to anyway. She explained to him that the woman was not sleeping, she was in a coma and she wouldn't wake up and was very likely to die soon. He cut her off and said "Mama, she's already dead." She said, not yet, honey but soon. He said again very emphatically "Mama, she is dead." He was not upset about it, he was just stating a fact. She and her son walked up to the door and rang the bell. The hospice nurse answered the door and told them that the woman had passed away at 9:30 that morning. My friend and her son returned to the car, and she asked him "How did you know she was dead?" He said simply "Tony told me." My friend did not know anyone named Tony, either in the family or as a friend. She asked him to describe Tony. Her son said that Tony was a child who was about one year old and he was in the same house as the woman who died. The problem with that is that there had been no children in the house at all besides my friend's son, at least no LIVE children......

I heard this story from a friend of mine, who is also a fellow nursing student but from another university. One night, while they were on a night shift, a 9-year-old female child unfortunately died in the Pedia Ward. My friend was the one assigned to perform post-mortem care to the said patient. So there he was, cleaning the patient's body and all. He placed a red bracelet in the patient's right hand, as it was the policy of the hospital to place a red tag on the right hand of all patients who are pronounced dead. After performing his tasks, he was on his way to the elevator when suddenly, the little girl came running after him! Terrified, he quickly pushed the close button so that the elevator would close right away and bring him to safety down to the lower floor.

While inside the elevator, an old woman in hospital gown asked him why he closed the elevator door right away when a child wanted to board in. Still overwhelmed with fear, he explained to the old lady "That was the child that I just performed post-mortem care a while ago. She is already dead. Did you saw the red tag on her right arm? That is the mark for all dead patients here in this hospital..." The old woman raised her right arm and replied... "Similar to this?"

My friend was found unconcious inside the elevator a few moments later. He never stepped inside the said hospital again. Ever.

We have a white figure that has been seen in the medicine room, sometimes the carts are moved down the hall while you are in a room giving meds, etc. One of the male CNAs reported seeing a very tall black figure going from room to room several times. We have all seen balls of light floating around. From what we have been able to gather from old pictures of the property that the nursing home is on there was a mobile home park at one end and a cemetary at the other end of the building. Everyone has seen a little boy walking around but the freakiest part was when they saw wet childrens foot prints coming down the hall and followed them to the wall and there were footprints in the snow outside that came right to that place in the wall.

Well I called to talk to a friend after I got off from work tonight and he was telling me that their door alarms had been going off while all of the residents are still in bed. He saw the reflection of someone behind him in the window. Two of the residents are talking to and about people in their rooms. This from the CNA that told me that the ghosts didn't like him, well these do.

This isnt a nurse story but it is something that I have always held close to my heart.

I remember when my dad died (it was pretty sudden) and feeling like he was still in the house but never seeing him.

It was a little while after his death my brother (who was about 18 mos old at the time... there are about 13 years between us) came into my sister's room (where we were all sitting and talking about how things had changed, etc) and my brother starts going to the window and wont leave it... he kept saying "Daddy's out there and he is crying" and "Daddy's crying" at that moment we all got teary eyed and I knew from then on that he was watching us.

Last year when I was torn between what to do with my life and what I was going to back to school for. I thought several times about nursing but had also thought about becoming a surg tech or even going to school to be a PT... I had several back to back dreams that all dealt with hospital experiences I had had (either my own or from visiting family, etc) and in each one I could always remember the nurse after I woke up. I have a feeling it was my dad's way of helping me decide just what I needed to do.

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