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 believe I have posted this story in the past, but it may be worth the rewrite. This takes place in an inner city nursing home up on the third floor. The hall is to the left of the nurses station. Very nondescript with rooms on each side. Just a dull rectangle shape. The only access to this area is the elevator which is across from the nurses station and a stairwell on the other side of that, more towards the other unit. The shift is 3-11, and its about 7P. Most of the staff is off the floor for dinner. I am getting ready to begin my evening med pass with all the crushes for the tube feeds. I have a male orderly on the floor with me.

This unit has several loud patients with one in particular, a female who says a name of someone repetitively. All the time. I think the name was Mary. So along with other assorted dementia sounds there is the constant background noise of "Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, being chanted. The orderly is

facing towards the end of the hall next to me and my med cart. I am about half way down the hall. The patient who keeps chanting Mary is the second last room on the left. He is asking me a question when the is a sudden SILENCE. The chanting woman has stopped. The silence makes us both look down the the hall towards this woman's room. We both see a little girl who literally skips out of her room and enters the last room on the right which I know is empty. We both know there are no visitors on the floor but still don't want an unescorted child running around. Plus we have noticed she was dressed kind of odd. I lock the the cart and go down the hall together. No one is in any of the rooms except the bedridden patients that were supposed to be there. We then check on the quite chanter who was not dead , just inexplicitably quiet. The little girl we saw was dressed in a salior like outfit. A popular style at the turn of the last century. A midi blouse with a large collar and necktie and having a long waist. It was over a dark pleated skirt and dark sockings. Her hair was blonde and pulled back into two braids that bounced as she skipped. She never turned towards us, just skipped purposely into the empty room. The patient stayed quite only for a few days then resumed her endless calling to someone she wanted to see and "Mary. Mary, Mary" filled the dismal halls again, but no reappearance of the little girl from the past who seemed to have given her some comfort, if only for a short time.

We all have accidents. This is an inexpirienced 16 y.o. girl who I am sure had no intention of hurting anyone when she got in the car that day. Can you imagine how you would feel if a momentary lapse in judgement had such long lasting results.

Chad, I definitely agree with you. It was very sad that she died. I had JUST seen her less than 24 hours earlier. We lived across country from her, and I had JUST returned home from a visit. I like to remember her as the lively person that she was, not someone who ended up dependent on everyone else living life in a nursing home. She would have HATED that to no end. She went at her time and she never had to live one day in a nursing home. She was so proud of her independence. Her body would have lived in a nursing home, but her soul would have eventually died.

Thank you for the kind words Cute_CNA, but I don't hold any ill will against the young driver involved. This was just a momentary lapse. I'm sure that she's living with this constantly, and I bet that she hurts. I've never met her, but I'm just guessing.

Ironically, I had a dream about my grandparents last night. That they know that I'm now married and very happy about that. That's the gist of it.

Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
futuregaspasser said:

okay, I know this one sounds strange, but hear me out.

we just moved into a brand new hospital, and the locker room (to the or) always sounds like there is someone in there changing (lockers closing, opening, mumbling voices ect.) but there never is (I work weekends and nights when I am the only one around). I go in there completely expecting to see someone in one of the bays, but no one is there. I have attributed this to a new building still settling in.

one day around 6pm I am at my locker and I hear this strange whooshing noise. I attribute it to the clock behind me, when I realize it is coming from infront of me. I start listening closely and it coming from the locker directly below mine. I put my ear to it and it sounds exactly like someones mouth is behind the vent breathing. I automatically reach to open the locker and as soon as I touch it, the noise stops.

the following weekend the charge nurse (that works graveyards) was in there next to that locker doing her charges at around 3am. she told me she heard breathing coming from below my locker and ran out of there. she said "I could just see a demon back there watching me."

if your charge nurse thinks she can see a demon watching her, I'd be scared to death! wouldn't hurt to see if you can get someone to exorcise it -- if that's even possible these days. I don't think I'd want to be in that locker room alone!

ruby

I had a shivery incident happen to me the other week... We lost a resident that night (she was on hospice, it was expected) and as I went back down the hall that my office is on, I heard sobbing. I started opening resident doors but could not find the source, everyone was sleeping (it was about 4am). The last door I opened was one in which noone was assigned, and the room was empty. It didn't seem as if the sobbing was coming from in there, but when I opened the door the sobbing sort of hiccupped and stopped. Noone was in the empty room, and I couldn't find out where the sobbing was coming from... it hasn't happened again though. The scariest part is that I mentioned it to a CNA who has been here for years and she said that she had the same thing happen to her twice, both times when we have had a resident die. I guess a spirit hangs around here and mourns when a resident passes away...

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

This is a more personal note. After be bought our first home,I had my newborn son in a cradle at the foot of the bed for convenience. My (now ex)husband shook me awake one night and told me the following: he had gotton up to use the bathroom and was just settling back into bed when he saw a woman in a filmy white dress float into the room and gaze down at our son. My baby whimpered and she set the cradle rocking.My husband said she then looked directly at him and then exited through the outside wall of the house!! that scred me to no end!!!! I put the cradle right up along my side of the bed from then on!!

Well this didn't happen in any facility or place I have worked for, but I LIVED with one of these types of spirits for six years. I started doing recordings of my downstairs because things would happen down there, like stuff turning on/off by itself, whispering, stuff moving. Well during the times when I ran out of tape to record and "talk" to whom ever was there, they would get really active. Once I was on the couch laying down with a sheet over me and I got the sheet ripped off of me, I had my shirt pulled up a few times, and have had this something follow me up the stairs and sit on my bed. I left the recording on one night after asking only about three questions and when I went to play it back, a little after I annouced that i was tired and going to bed, I can hear this man's voice saying ask me more questions please, please ask me more questions. Also had my son screaming for me like someone was trying to kill him, because my lights would flicked on and off as if someone was messing with the switch. We learned to live with them, yes I said them, there were three, but I am kinda glad that we moved because I can sleep without being pushed, pulled, or have things moved when I didn't pay attention to them.

Specializes in MDS/PPS.

Ok, I have a couple...

During clinicals at Nursing school over the last summer, we went to a older hospital that had been converted to a Rehab unit after a hurricane...It is a 3 story facility, but only the top floor is used.

The elevator would stop on the 2nd floor everytime, which was being used only for storage, and being inquisitive I asked the staff and found out that supposedly the 2nd floor is haunted by an old ghost doctor who worked and died on the unit...

I just HAD to investigate! I grabbed a classmate and upon stepping onto the vacant, darkened unit, a callbell was on.....we walked in and turned it off.

What we weren't told is that 2nd floor was the old OR floor. It was pretty creepy walking through the old surgical suites.

Well, once we had made an entire trip around the unit we came back to the nurses' station, which was adjacent to the elevator....as we rounded the corner to face the elevators, the doors to the elevator FLEW open and all the call bells went off, as if to say, "Get out!" :eek:

Also, at the SNF I work in (11-7)I have seen a dark figure floating across the floor when walking into a room, only to disappear under a door....

yes, I know that some persons don't believe in ghost that they are just the work of the devil. I too believe that. However, we need to bear in mind that until the Lord comes, the devil will really lure us and deceive us for he is the GREAT deceiver in earth and so ghost are real. . . because satan the deceiver is real.

Ok you are all gonna say that I'm cruel as hell on this one and yea I guess I was. We had this one LPN that was scared of her own shadow but was constantly trying to scare us. The nursing home I worked in on 11-7 I was the nursing supervisor. (I still work there but now Restorative nurse) This home is infamous for being haunted even though it was a new building compared to the old home that a lot of the residents came from. (It had been the county poor house, infirmary, lunatic assylum etc since 1845) Well apparently they brought a few of their "old friends" with them when they came cause believe me there is wierd stuff happening there all the time.

Anyway, as the supervisor you had to go to the basement and check all the doors and make sure they were locked twice a night. Well it was Halloween time and they had an old casket down there for the haunted house they put on for the residents and families. Well I told one of the other nurses about it and she insisted we go down to see it. (I could already see the cogs turning lol) So I took her down and we pulled it down the hall so that it was right in front of the elevator. We got one of the aides to comes down and lay in the coffin and I went up and told this nurse that I had to go to the basement for supplies. (she should have known something was up cause I was the only one that would ever go down there alone). Well it was harder than hell to keep a straight face all the way. When the elevator doors opened, the aide pushed the lid of the coffin open and slowly sat up. I thought that nurse was going to go throught the back of the elevator and they could hear her scream clear upstairs. LOL. Needless to say she never tried to scare anyone else again. But me on the other hand, I'm bad it's just not so easy to do it when I work day shift now. HEHEHE

Hugs

Rosie:rotfl: :coollook:

Pepper The Cat said:
Here's mine.

I was working the Night shift in a very small hospital. The RNA (this was years ago, before they became RPNs) and I had just finished our 1:00 rounds and were doing our paperwork at the Nsg Station. We heard a loud scream that cut off short. We looked at each other and ran to the room where we heard the scream come from. A patient we had just turned, repostioned, etc was dead. She wasn't expected to die and was quite medically stable. She was a DNR so we did nothing, but that scream creeped us out for the rest of the shift.

All I can think of is that she didn't like who came for her!

Well, just remembered a similar experience, when we found out that during our change of shifts rounds that an old lady patient just passed out without letting us know and what is more funny is that her caregiver who is with her does not even know that the patient is already dead and she was sleeping BESIDE the patient (the two of them are lying side-by-side in one bed). When we woke her up and asked her what time the patient passed away, she gave us an angry look, but when we informed her that the patient is already dead when we entered the room, she suddenly jumped out of bed and was actually shaking in one corner of the room.

When I was an LPN and supervising a nursing home on the 3-11 shift (early 1980's), late at night, (the first time I saw it)...I was sitting at the nurse's station which could view down three long halls. I happened to look up and down one of the halls and saw this tall figure, dressed in a long black flowing hooded robe...no sound from the tiled floor it made. It appeared and just seemed to glide down the hall..and entered the room of a hospice patient. I turned to one of the nursing assitants who had worked there for many years...Bobbie just looked at me and said..."Yes, I saw it." That was very un-nerving. I asked her "...what was that?" She replied..."that was death, we better go down there and check on the resident." Trembling, and heat pounding, Bobbie and I walked down the hall...into the resident's room...the resident indeed had just passed away. There was a distinct odor in the room...(difficult to describe), but throughout my 34 years of nursing, I have smelled it several times before, during and after a resident or patient has expired...the odor of "death." I kid you not. After that incident...I saw the figure three more times, and always just prior to a death. I have worked nights in facilities when the locked front doors would open with the alarm sounding and doors closed on there own...also associated with an event of death.

Since I received my RN, BSN, I have experienced paitent's words, fear, explanations of what they have visualized prior to their deaths...seeing and speaking to loved ones passed on before them, those who have described angels who have come to guide them from this earthly world. Now a nursing instructor...I teach clinical on a step down ICU unit where we have patient's who are prescribed comfort cares, and those who's code status is changed to DNR or referred to Hospice. The night and day nurse's often talk about two rooms on the unit where the call lights come on throughout the shifts... The engineers have checked the systems, the hardware, electrical and have found nothing wrong. IT appears as these two rooms are rooms where patient's have commonly expired from. Coincidence? Who knows... I only know that I don't ever want to be a patient in either of those two rooms.

My scariest is probably a long time ago when I was a cna. I was taking care of this lady and she started screaming "they are behind you" She really believed there was something behind me. She did die later that night. A more pleasant story was when a lady was dying and she kept saying "look at those beatiful white horses" she too died shortly afterwards.

I have worked LTC with hospice etc for a very very long time. (God I'm getting old) Anytime you get a resident/patient talking to a dead relative with great deal of pleasure on their faces or say look at the pretties you can bet probably 99% of the time that person will die within probably 24-72 hrs. People tell me I'm nuts but believe me I've seen it way too many time. We also have a resident who is very demented and chants etc. Well when she gets extremely loud and hangs around outside a certain person's room, you can almost bet that person won't be there long.

Rosie:kiss

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