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...

[LenaLoo]

One night I was taking care of a patient who was dying from bone cancer, after he passed...did the morgue pack and took him to the morgue we had called housekeeping to come and clean the room. Well, sitting at the desk his call light started to go off for no reason. I went into the room (which was empty) and no one was there and then left went to sit back down at the front desk and again it went off. It did this several times throughout the night...then stopped. That wasn't the creapiest story, here's a good one:

My first week as a nursing assistant and was learning all the basics, blood pressure, resp., heart rates, temp.. etc... I had a patient who was passing away from Liver Cirrhosis, she also had a stroke when she was 15. Towards the end of my week, she started to go...and she was DNR. All the nurses surrounded her and was trying to comfort her to go ahead and pass over. They told me, Take her blood pressure....I did...no b/p...but she was still breathing and talking to someone in the room and it wasn't the staff. They said, get a doppler blood pressure on her...so I did it was 30/doppler. She was speaking and saying "Take me, take me now....please." Over and over again she would say this...and then all of a sudden she was talking to someone in the room...we were all looking at each other and asked her if she could here us...she didn't respond to us....then she passed. Every little hair stood up in the back of my neck all the way down my spine....I was nervous...but had a strange warm calm feeling. That was it.

[LenaLoo]

Here's another little creepy note. Last semester at the dining table during my clinicals one of the lady's I was talking to looked up and out the window and said, there's a man out there and I looked over and there was no one there. She didn't die like I read with these other stories but it was just kind of creepy.

Also, several times there was a door to the building that would open on its own for no reason. I thought that was a little weird, but the staff there was used to it.

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Have a Happy New Year too!!!:Santa3:

[wolfgirl]

Not so much a ghost story, but a story about when my mom died a year ago. She was at my sisters house for two weeks and started going down hill. Hospice was called on a Saturday and she lapsed into a coma on Tuesday. Me and my other sister got to her house on Wednesday. On Thursday, my mom woke up for 3 hours and was talkling to "other" people in the room. My dad died in 2000, and she kept saying "Frank, would you leave me alone, I am not ready to go with you yet!" Then she would get pissed and yell at him in German, (she was from germany). Then she saw her mother who passed away in 1964. The said "Mama" and started to cry and then spoke german to her for about an hour. She was reliving her childhood with her and talking about things they did when she was small and she was laughing and having a good time with her. My mom lost twin boys in her 5th month in 1966 and she was talking with them and said "I am so glad your Oma was there for you. I was so affraid you were alone." All of us in the room, and there was about 15 of us were in wonder the entire time. This went on for 3 hours. She would talk to them and then us. At one time she turned to me and said "oh Suzie, I didn't know you were here too, do you see all the people waiting for me?' She was affraid to die because of the unkwown I guess. The next day, Thursday she didn't wake up at all and she woke up again on Friday morning for an hour while I was in the room with her. She said she wasn't affraid anymore and that she had seen heaven. She just wanted my dad to stop bugging her becasue she hadn't finished her job yet. She told me that my dog that had passed away 6 months before that was with my dad. She died the next day.

When we got back into town the following day to get ready for the funeral, we were staying at my mom's house and it was hot outside, but we all smelled wood burning from her fire place. I snapped some pictures and there are orbs all over those pictures. The only picuters in the set that has them.

I would so love to see those pictures.

[wolfgirl]

Had a pt who s son had a serious brain infection she was older and had schizophrenia in her ramblingsshe always talked about how she sold her sold to the devil so that he would heal. The night she died when we were shrouding her her body was so hot it was difficult to touch her it felt like she was on fire:angryfire we were all creeped out. But even stranger her son came to from his 'daze' in our hospital a few weeks later.

OK, that's disturbing....

[danissa, LPN, LVN]

In our old hospital, two nurses were hurrying towards a lift (elevator) with an old man holding it for them. they got in and stood chatting with their backs to him, but as they turned around they were in the lift alone-- the old man had vanished! This story made the local paper!

also in that unit, call bells in the outside admission rooms would go off during the night, with no-one there and the Maternity unit theatre had a man walking around in it! That was the creepiest place, I hated having to go through there to check the equipment each morning, and would jam open all the doors with chairs, just so I could hear others in the labour room going about their work. Honestly, the hairs on your EVERYTHING! stood on end with the negative feeling in there!

The hospital we joined with has a woman who walks up and down the NICU corridor in a white dressing gown, loads of staff have seen her, but each night shift that I'm on, I ask her not to show herself to me, and so far so good, she hasn't! She must know how scared I am, but it's sad too, is she looking for her baby?

[allantiques4me]

This isnt really isnt a nursing ghost story,its wierd anyways .When I was an aide back in the day,I had a favorite patient.She was a nice,healthy enough ,so I thought ,patient,pleasant,fun,,only minimal assist.Anyway I had a strange dream that "Mrs Brown" had died at 630 and I would be responsible for taking care of her body,you know clean her up,tag,and such.I woke up the next day distressed,then I thought well that was a crazy dream,"Mrs.Brown is fine,she was one of the healthiest patients:uhoh21: that I had.I went to work that morning to the shocking news that "Mrs.Brown had died last night at 630!!!Isnt that bizzare?I had no prior knowledge of her death.:uhoh21: Also I happen to live in my grandparents home that I bought 20 years ago,its a hundred years old and has a few stories of its own!My aunt that used to live here before us,insisted she would see "Eddie'her brother in the living room after he had died (we used to think,OK,whatever)but no kidding to this day, on occasion we will get a wiff of a cigar,which"Eddie "used to smoke!!I still wont go in my attic or basement at night.!!my neighbors have some weird stories about our hundred year old neighborhood!!There is some strange goings on!!:uhoh21: :uhoh21: :uhoh21: :uhoh21: :uhoh21:

[RunningWithScissors]

I took care of a lady yeasterday who had a huge stroke with midline shift, DNR; I could see her condition worsen throughout the shift and she was not responsive to any stimuli by the time I was going off, but her son told me on my last round that she suddenly made the sign of the cross. Weird.

[grace90, LPN, LVN]

A year and a half ago my then 4 yo daughter took a bunch of her brother's Risperdal and ended up in the ER unresponsive. She was out for at least a couple hours or more (from a mom's perspective), before slowly coming out of it. Later she talked about seeing "big white butterflies" around her at the hospital- angels watching over her?

[nnicu-nurse]

Wow, this thread is addictive!!

Just a few to share..

I was working in a new hospital having recently returned home.. I was a very inexperienced (adult) staff nurse at the time having only qualified a couple of months before.. At the time you could work on the bank (locum or agency work basically!) as a newly qualified - this was what I was doing.. I was looking after 2 bays and two siderooms, so had 14 patients in all.. One of whom was dying and sadly was being nursed in the bay as we had no siderooms available to give her the privacy that should have been afforded to her.. It was coming up to the end of my shift, I was sat at the nurses station completing my documentation for the shift.. I looked up and saw an elderly gentleman walk up the ward towards one of the bays I was looking after.. Thinking I should probably go and check how the lady was I went into the bay only to be met by a health care assistant (hca) coming out from behind the curtains to get me.. The lady had just passed away... We stayed on to help perform last offices, while packing up her things I took a photo out of her locker.. Upon commenting "oh, that's her husband" the hca said she used to talk about him often and had missed him greatly since he died.... Yup - that was the man I had seen walking up the corridor, I guess he was coming to get his wife!

On another occasion, I was working in a haematology unit for 6 months, we had a patient who we looked after for months but sadly she died.. I was assisting another nurse with last offices and, just as we were about to wrap her in the sheet, I commented I wonder whether ******** is here watching, I know I would be if it were me! At that point, the large strip light above the bed went from being bright to a very soft light, the light also went from being right the way across the strip to being a soft ball in the middle... The room went very cold too... The other nurse and I looked at each other and she said "Goodnight *******, god bless" At that point I literally felt something "rush" right through me (the window was behind me, if that has anything to do with it! I kinda think it does!), the light went back to normal and the temperature came back up... The other nurse was a little spooked by this to say the least! A couple of days later I was back on duty again, sadly another patient died in the same room.. The same nurse (ironically) was caring for that patient but she was absolutely flat out giving chemo etc.. I offered to go in and do last offices as I knew the patient well.. So I went in with an hca and when we got to the point with the sheet I was telling him what had happened that last time I was doing this (he had asked, it was all the ward had talked about for the previous couple of days).. At that point the exact same thing happened with the light again... What was strange, the time of day was different (late afternoon as a suppose to late evening) and none of the other lights on the ward were affected.. And when I asked the patient who next went in that room whether she had any problems with her light the answer was always no.. So who knows, maybe it was the patients saying their goodbyes??

I'm also a midwife and talking of rooms which have feelings, there is a room on labour ward that, as a student midwife, I never liked going in.. I mentioned this to one of the midwives and she said that when ever a baby dies he or she is placed in a moses basket in this room for family to come and see... It's the most eerie feeling imaginable...

On a lighter note, while working a night shift once on a postnatal ward we had an unusual amount of babies in the nursery ( we have a rooming in policy but we'd had 4 LSCS that day and I there were another 4 babies whose mothers were exhausted and just needed a couple of hours sleep.. So there were four of us trying to settle 8 babies.. We were, as you do, talking about ghost stories as one of the rooms on the ward was reputed to be haunted.. Now, bear in mind that the unit is heavily locked at night, you have to swipe access to get into the maternity wing and also again on to each ward.. So unless the intercom goes off people can only get in with a swipe card of which your card has to be specifically activated to work.. In the middle of a particularly exciting story one of the girls faces went absolutely beyond white and she let out the most horrific scream.. She was looking in the mirror in which she could see the reflection of the door into the nursery.. When we looked at the door we could see the figure of a man - of whom nobody knew... At this point the door came flying open and the poor guy (who was a new porter who none of us had met!!) came rushing in trying to calm us down.. He had come on to the ward to get a bed to take to the labour ward for a mum who had had an epidural!! So eventually we all laughed and calmed down... The next night it was mainly the same team working, myself and another midwife, the same maternity care assistant who had screamed the night before - but another mca was working with her that night.. At about 3am there was a lull in what was going on and we were laughing about the night before.. The new mca looked a little confused so the other mca took her into the nursery to start recounting the story.. At this point the doors at the end of the ward opened and the same porter walked back in (genius timing).. We all put our fingers to our lips and gestured him to come back down the corridor quickly and to go and look into the nursery.. The following scream (bloodcurdling actually, we'd really scared her!!!!) was absolutely priceless and we were absolutely doubled over in hysterics with tears streaming down our faces for a good 15 minutes!!!!!!!!!

I work on NNICU (neonatal ICU) now and haven't seen anything there - yet!!!

[nnicu-nurse]

When I was working on the haematology unit I got to know one patient particularly well.. My fiance was doing an 80mile walk over 4-5 days, I went up to see him at the b&b he was staying in.. I mentioned that this particular patient was deteriorating.. About an hour later I had an overwhelming urge to ring the ward to see how he was (when I left the ward he was ill but not ~that~ ill..) but I had no mobile signal.. When I was able to get through I found that the patient had died at the exact time I was trying to ring...

:sofahider

[lupin]

Ok, from my limited three years as a nurse:

In the nursing home or assisted living setting, I have heard the shuffle of feet in a carpeted hallway, with no one there. Any nurse who has worked in a nursing home at night knows that noise and knows to go check who is up, especially on a skilled/rehab floor. Otherwise the next noise might be the godawful thump of a body hitting the floor. But in a particular skilled rehab home in Maine which was shaped like a Y with the nurses' station in the stem, one side of the Y was haunted and the other was not. Guess which assignment I got stuck with 9x out of 10? Something would shuffle down the carpeted hallway and there was also "The shadow". Same nursing home, different ghost. At the delta of the Y was the oxygen room/clean hold across from the nurses' station. The door was solid, but it had a thin window that ran along the side of the door down the entire length. the light in that room was always on, so we could just dart in and get what we needed. If your were standing at the nurses' station, you could see a shadow pass back and forth in the pool of light. One night an aide and I got ambitious and checked that whole room out. Nothing was hanging or swinging free to cause that shadow and another aide standing at the nurses' station said it went away as soon as we went in there. The shadow would follow us down that hallway. I can't count how many times I would be in a pt.'s room doing checks and a shadow would pass by the doorway. Even pts. would ask if there was another person coming in.

Same nursing home, a preacher was in end-stage cancer with brain mets. Out of his treetop, mean, swinging at us, Big guy too, only in his late fifties. Would take four of us to provide pt care and turn him. We called him "Big Guy". The night he died, the regular staff nurse and I were in there admining morphine (this place had two nurses sign off on the admin of injected narcs) and he says, "It's so hot, I don't want to go there. Don't make me go there." He then started to cry, just the saddest sobs and kept asking "do I have to go there? Please don't make me." We just comforted him as much as possible, told him to rest and think of Jesus. For weeks after he died, the female pts. in the facility would yell out at night about a "Big Guy" being in their rooms. Another nurse from my agency worked one night there and refused to go back. Said it was haunted by something and it disturbed her psychically.

Different nursing home, on the Alzheimer's wing. The nurses' station had a plexiglass window on the wall looking out into the hallway. the nurses' desk was right in front of it. Sometimes residents would come up and look in. There were times I would be charting and would swear I could see a face looking in at me, but when I looked up, no one was there.

Personally, I have become extremely nervous and jumpy, unable to sleep, agitated the night before someone dies. I woke up at 530 one morning with my dog whining at my bedroom door. My husband was asleep with me but didn't wake up. I felt someone with me but no one was there. I felt like getting up and running. My dog kept whining and then just fell right to sleep. After my husband woke up I told him what I felt, he said that's what you get for drinking pepsi before bed. He left at 0600 and at 0630 my dad called to say my grandmother had died, at 0530 that morning. I think she came to say goodbye. This has happened when my husband's grandfather passed away and when a friend of mine was hospitalized and miscarried a baby. I tell my husband every morning to be careful when he leaves for work. One morning he says I said be careful and wear a hard hat today to work. He was in the USCG and on a boat that day. He did as I said and at one point while carrying a wooden box full of batteries, fell down a broken stairway that no one had roped off. He fell backwards, hitting his head in the hard hat on several stairs. He had some bumps and bruises, and slipped a disk in his back, but his hard hat was split down the middle.

I think as nurses we have something in us that responds to danger and illness. Maybe it's a psychic sense, maybe it's intuition, maybe it's luck. But whenever I feel it, I listen.

[~Karen~n~AZ~]

well... i'm not a nurse yet but i just can't wait to be finished with school and off with a new job! first things first! i have to stop reading all these great stories because block i starts on monday. i need to be reading my road trip to nursing book! i'm kinda addicted to this thread now. i'm also kinda worried if my heart can take having an experience like some of the ones described. i've had things happen to me ever since i was really small.

i can remember all the way back when i was about 4 years old. i was setting in my grandmothers walk in closet trying on her shoes from, who knows what era, and my grandfather walked through the bedroom door and stood beside me. he looked down and said, "your granny is going to get you for playing in her shoes". i kept on playing and laughed with him about it. strange thing is, my grandfather died nearly two years before i was born in that very room i was playing in. i can remember it all really clearly, pretty weird for my age. i can even remember the shoes. they were white with the block type heel and straps that laid across the top. i described my grandfather to my mom and she said that it sounded exactly like something he would say.

here is a link to a few things that have happened over the years that scared me terribly. don't go and get addicted to the answers thing like i did. that was a tough one to stop logging into, but i broke that habit last semester. lol

i'm brigit in the nurse costume from halloween. lol

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=avac7thpagg.wp7z0zymbztsy6ix?qid=20061021001635aamtmle&show=7#profile-info-8d7b6c63d205688c3f1ec020e20cfe8eaa

after reading about 20 pages of these nursing ghost stories i remember something that frightened me to the point of tears. i was eight months pregnant and, of course, making myself a bowl of ice cream about 2 in the morning. i turned to put the box back in the fridge and was instantly scared. it was that bad feeling of when you know you shouldn't be there and you need to leave because something bad is going to happen, kinda thing. i just stopped and waited. i could feel something behind me but it was above me. i didn't move because i was scared. my legs were scared. nothing was working right. i'm in between on the knowing the "unknown". i want to know, but i'm scared also! maybe thats why i just stood still. fright or wanting to have that full experience? either way it scares me even today. anyways, while i was standing there i started to feel something hot move down my back. i could feel the heat start at the top of my head and move down the back of my neck and it just kept moving down. it was just hot on my back. i still had the freezer door open and, like a idiot, just stood there. i felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end and i wanted to turn around but i couldn't. all of the sudden there was this rush. it was like having a blast of air or something, but there was no air. i guess the best way to explain it is when your really tired and your almost asleep and you get that falling feeling and your heart feels like its jumping out of your body and you jerk yourself back awake. after having that rush feeling almost instantly there was a feeling that whatever was behind me feel from the ceiling and then with a super loud noise hit the floor right behind me. my back was hot, there was the feeling of something behind me, the rush, and then there was the actual sound of something really heavy hitting the floor behind me. the floor was hit so hard that i remember the shaking feeling. i turned around, because really there was nowhere else to go. i did it really slow though. there was nothing at all there. my heart was pounding. funny thing is i turned back around and put the bowl of ice cream that i had just made in the freezer, because ya know... i might want to eat it later? i don't know why. lol i then grabbed my keys and left to my aunts house in my pajamas and in tears. it was really awful.

ok this now officially me break away from this thread! lol ya right! no really it has to be! i have to much reading to do. i promise that i won't spend more than 15 minutes a day here unless its to ask some really super important nursing question from the experts!

i can't wait to work the night shift!!!!! lotsalove!

laters,

karen

also, when i got up the nerve to go home that same night i still ate the ice cream!