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...

I've left my body many times. Once I visited a friend and described his bedroom, I'd never been to his house before. Kind of freaked him out.

Except a professor discovered 666 was an incorrect translation and it should be 616.

I know this is a blog but should give a starting point for more research

Beast's real mark devalued to '616'

The best ghost story I ever heard was from an LPN who had worked in a LTC facility. One of their oldest residents, a nonagenarian we'll call "John", had been a very evil, violent man in his younger years, and had been in an out of prisons for much of his adult life. Late one night, several terrified residents and staff reported seeing (and hearing) John being dragged screaming down the hallway by several shadowy, black-clad figures. When they checked John's room, they found the old man, passed away in his bed. The shadowy figures were never seen again, and there was no explanation as to how they were able to leave the building, but for years after there was a lot of speculation among staff and residents that what they had witnessed was John's soul being carried off to Hell. Creepy.

I was told the story by a nurse who worked at a military hospital in North Dakota. She related that a patient of hers, who was a middle-aged man, died unexpectedly in the middle night during one of her shifts. Within a month of that happening, whenever that room (313!) in which the patient had been was vacant and that nurse was working, the call light would go on. Again, the room was vacant and it was the middle the night and the call light would go on... By itself. This began to occur with some frequency, but only when that specific nurse was working. At first, it was thought that someone is playing a practical joke on a very mean level, but then others came to witness the same thing and talk to begin the spread that there was a ghost … Likely that man's spirit. Finally, it came to a point, that one night, again, that that yours was again working, the room is vacant and the call light came on in the middle of the night. that same nurse went into the room and said, " i'm sure you died, it wasn't my fault, we have much work to do, please give us some rest." And never happened again.

Specializes in Med/Surg crit care, coronary care, PACU,.

Years ago while working one night on our oncology floor (where else would you get a good story?) I answered the call light of a very alert and oriented senior lady. She asked me to find the young man who wandered into her room, then the bathroom as he looked confused. When I asked her to describe the young man as I had not seen anyone in the hallway, she described perfectly the young man across the hall who had passed away a short time prior. Creepy, but cool at the same time. Not related, but within a couple of years from that, an angel shape started forming on the metal roof that could be seen only out that wing of that same floor...a homage to so many that have passed on.

Yikes! We had the SAME type thing at the 1st place I ever worked.

A man called out saying he saw a dog between him & his roommates beds. He swore he saw it IN the mirror. We rolled him over to show him it wasn't there. He said, "turn the lights off & look in the mirror." Sure enough, we saw a HUGE black dog between the beds lying there that we could only see in the mirror. The dog would have been ON my coworker otherwise!

We booked it out of there & told the charge nurse. She shrugged & told us to keep an eye on him, that he was about to die. Sure enough, he was dead when the day nurse aides went in to get him up for breakfast.

I've had several other experiences...

In nursing school, my BFF and I were walking home frof our study group at the library. It was dark & moonless that night. As we were walking toward our dorm, we saw a woman in a long white dress fall from a balcony of a classroom building, screaming as she fell. We ran up to the stairwell below & she wasn't anywhere to be found!

About a month later, we went to the supply closet to get some cleaning supplies with the RA. We all had cleaning duties assigned in our dorm. I opened the door & had a cold blast of air shove me backwards. I walked back up to the door & said, "I believe in Jesus. This is a CLOSET, not an elevator anymore! By the power of the name of Jesus, I say to you to leave & trouble this place no more." Well never had this issue again.

But, one girls had a boyfriend working library archives & apparently, there HAD been an elevator in that building & a girl did fall to her death there....

He also told us about the girl who was killed by her boyfriend, shoved off the classroom balcony when it was a dorm. Whenever I was in that classroom, I had to sit in one place in the room. Anywhere else I couldn't breathe & felt like someone had their hands about my neck.....my BFF & I saw her fall again on the anniversary of her death.....

We had someone get killed in a hotel room nearby. The ENTIRE hotel had been gutted and redone. I went straight to the room where the murder had happened. It was NOT in the papers or on the news what the room number was. I didn't live there at the time of the murder. The desk clerk was a friend of mine & I showed her which room the murder had happened in. We both saw blood stains on the walls, carpet, bedding, furniture.....and NONE of it was there before. It kept showing up even when it was replaced. During the remodel, it was knocked down to the METAL studs! My mom says the murder has never been avenged & that's why we can see the blood. You know what else? Only a single woman can stay in the room. Men get greeted by a housekeeper offering them another bed! She tells them she's just come out & there's a bad spill in the room that needs deep cleaning....the murder was a young woman who was shot by her boyfriend in a drunken rage. He's never been caught as far as I know (I've since moved).

Specializes in IDD, and private duty.

I don't believe that ghosts are evil spirits. I believe they are like you and I, human (or sometimes animal) spirits that are no longer connected to physical bodies, etc. But if you believe in ghosts, spirits, or whatever, then you have to believe in something. Some type of God or higher power or whatever you want to call it, because without that there could be no afterlife.

When I first started working as a CNA full time it was at a LTC facility and I hadn't experienced death before when it came to a resident. So while working my usual 11-7 shift me and two other nurse where talking and they where mentioning something about on of the residents was not looking as though she was going to make it any longer then a few days.

They looked at me and one of the nurses asked, " have you ever had to clean and ready a dead person for the mortuary people to come and get for transport?"

I said, "no I haven't. I haven't even seen a dead body before. So this will be my first time doing something like this."

I won't lie I was more curious then scared about seeing someone's body that passed. As we continued to talk and me explain why since I was still pretty new to the field and then it happened.

Some reason it felt like time had slowed down around me and I saw a dark shadow pass me on my side and saw a flicker of light follow it. But that wasn't that scariest part mind you. I heard it. I heard what sounded like a bell chime but it had a unexplained weird sound to it. It didn't sound like a normal bell chime. It sounded more light and high sounding. I dunno it's really hard to explain the sound. But I when I saw the light and shadow go away, it felt like time went back to normal pace and I looked at my nurses and asked them if they had heard the bell.

I swear the look on both of their faces made it seem like I was crazy or something. I tried to explain what I saw and heard and one nurse looked pale and the other nurse stood quiet.

After that night, I went home and had to look up what I heard so at least I know what it was so next time I know...and what I heard was called, Deaths bell.

Know I have seen plenty of crazy stuff in my life growing up because most of my family, including me have always been able to see things like ghost and stuff but never have I seen death and heard its bell before.

And a not even a day or two after, the patient died

I work night shift, one night I had a pt who had an order for sitter protocol b/c she was confused and impulsive and tried getting out of bed. At about 23:00 I relieved my sitter for her 15 min. break, as I sat I the pt's room with the lights off, trying to chart in the corner of the room. I heard something fall from the pt's bedside, I got up to investigate, I found the pt's basin on the floor, so I picked it up and placed it back in its place and thought to myself that maybe the pt had somehow had knocked it down. When my sitter came back I mentioned what had happened and she said the same thing happened to her ealier and assured me that she had secured the basin so it wouldn't fall out again. We both thought it was strange and I left the room shutting the door behind me to try to keep the noise down in the pt's room. At about 03:00 I was about to go in to the pt's room when I was distracted by a coworker who had a question for me, as I stood a few feet away from the pt's room the door opened and I waited for the sitter to come out of the room, since she wasnt walking out I decided to approach the door. The sitter was also on her way to the door. She thought I had opened the door and i thought she had opened the door, we both said, "you need something?" we both answered at the same time "no" the sitter said she saw that the door had opened and assumed that it was me, and when I didn't walk in she decided to walk out.later I sent her on her lunch break and as I sat in the dark in the corner of the room the same basin fell out of the bedside table, this time I just left it on the floor. When the sitter cameback I told her what had happened and to leave the basin on the floor, she agreed. When I left the pt's room I closed the door once again with the sitter inside. Later on in the shift when it was time to give her 15 min break, the sitter came up to me and said she was talking to the pt and the pt had asked, who was the tall black person who stood over her bed. The sitter said she got goose bumps up and down her body and replied to the pt, "oh, it must have been a nurse." Little did the pt know that nobody else had gone in that pt's room but the sitter and I. In the next room another lady who waz A&Ox4 said, "will you tell those children laughing to let me sleep and pointed to the corner of the room which was empty. Another pt a few rooms down also mentioned that there were too many kids in this hospital at late hours of the night. I didn't know what to tell those pts so I just brushed it off. It was the creepiest night so far I have experience in this hospital, and hopefully it wont happen again.

It took me a month to read all these posts! What a fun thread! My mom and grandma are both nurses, and I've had several experiences.

When I was pregnant with my oldest, I had severe pre eclampsia. I don't think they cared much if I made it or not, because I had a false positive for drug use in my 24 hour urine collection, and they told me not all mommies take their babies home. My blood pressure was in the 200s/150s for an hour after that lovely conversation! You can imagine how much nicer they were after the full blood analysis showed absolutely no drugs of any kind! Well, they left me alone a lot after delivery, even though I still had high blood pressure, and I was laying down in bed on my stomach, when I felt someone rubbing my back in s comforting, motherly way. I turned my head to thank whoever was doing it, and saw I was completely alone! That is my only story from a hospital setting.

My great grandma passed away this year, a hundred years old and one of my favorite people. We weren't able to fly up north for her funeral, so I didn't have much closure, and missed her so much. A few weeks after she died, I had a very vivid dream that she was visiting me to meet my girls and see what I was up to. I woke up feeling so loved, but didn't mention it to anyone for a few days. When I did tell my mom, she got quiet, then asked me what night I dreamt it. Turns out, she had dreamed about her that same night, along similar themes too, with it being just a happy visit. My mom called grandma to tell her how cool it was that great grandma came to see us, only to find out that grandma had a dream that same night as well! We all got goosebumps then, and truly think she came to see us in our dreams.

My brother and I had haunted toys. A toy phone with no electronic parts, no batteries, no sound...started ringing one night as we were playing. That thing got tossed fast! A remote control robot would move on it's own a lot, until we finally tossed it, thinking someone else in the neighborhood had a toy with the same frequency, until it showed up in the toybox again!! We took it straight to the dump the next time! Our house used to be barracks for the air force during WWII, so ghosts were common, everyone in the neighborhood had their own stories.

Specializes in Psychiatric nursing; Medical-Surgrical.

Silence is the best answer for people like you. Last time I checked I have freedom to speak,think and believe in what I know is truth. Hopefully you find something else like a tree to attack.

countrynurse09 said:
I don't believe that ghosts are evil spirits. I believe they are like you and I, human (or sometimes animal) spirits that are no longer connected to physical bodies, etc. But if you believe in ghosts, spirits, or whatever, then you have to believe in something. Some type of God or higher power or whatever you want to call it, because without that there could be no afterlife.

I don't believe in god or a high power but I'm still a big chicken when it comes to spooky noises. Just last week I called my dad (who does not live with me) to come to my house to check my room because I heard a noise and thought it was either a ghost or someone hiding in there. He came right away and turns out it was the curtain flapping because of the wind. Heh.

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