What's Your Best Nursing Ghost Story?

Nurses General Nursing Nursing Q/A

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 ICU.

I have a story a friend at work told me the other day-

About ten years ago she worked at a LTC where there was a patient that she was often assigned to. On those shifts at 8:45 pm without fail, his call light would go off and she would know without even looking that it was him calling. Well, he died tragically one day (I believe it was a burst aortic aneurism) and for two weeks after his death at 8:45 pm his call light would go off. Her coworkers would always make her go in the empty room to turn off the light since they said "he was calling for her". Well finally after two weeks of this she went into the room and said "look, you need to move on this is scaring everyone" and guess what? It stopped.

I loved this story.

As part of my Ghost Hunting activities we utilize a seance technique that was taught to me by a coworker of mine. The seance is called "Table Tipping" and it utilizes an antique card table as the aparatus to channel the Spirits for communication purposes.

This Mother's Day weekend several family members came home from both Coasts. As part of our fun activities, 6 of us adults went out Ghost Hunting at a couple of cemeteries last night. During our outings we utilized our antique card table to perform these Seances.

During these Seances the people seated at the Table will often feel a chill presence, and your hands that are touching the Table will actually ache to the bone, due to the coldness felt at the Table. Hence the phrase, "Bone Chilling!".

At one point during the "Table Tipping" I only had one hand on the Table. And only that hand felt chilled to the bone, while the hand not on the Table felt normal.

Even one adult niece who stayed home at Grandma's house said she experienced a huanting all of her own, while we were out Ghost hunting. She sensed that there was Spirit activity in the house, and on more than one occassion got up to check to see who was moving around in the 2nd floor hallway. Only to find everyone else in the house asleep in bed.

Those who went on the Table Tipping outings requested to do so, as it is just some good homespun fun. Which provides for them some good Ghost hunting adventure stories to share with their friends and coworkers.

If you would like to know more about how to perform "Table Tipping Seances" feel free to email me, listing "Table Tipping" as the subject of your message, and I'll send you the instructions.

We took my 2 yr old Great Nephew to the Museum at the Psychiatric Facility that I work at. To get to the Museum we went through the basement hallways. The closer we got to the Museum the more uncomfortable the child became.

After we were in the Museum the child became inconsolable, and kept pointing to the exit door wanting to leave. Giving up, his mother took him back to Grandma's house.

That got me to wondering if children still in the womb, can be traumatized by the Spirits when their Mothers are involved in Ghost Hunting activities?

Because this 2 yr old Great Nephew's Mother, would Table Tip with us when she was pregnant with him. And we always had great action when she was Table Tipping with us. I always felt that was due to the fact that she was pregnant, and that the Spirits were attracted to her.

After yesterday's outing to the Museum, I wondered if when this Great Nephew was still an unborn child; had he also been traumatized in the womb, by the Spirits that were attracted to him.

But I guess that is a question, none of us will ever be able to answer

We took my 2 yr old Great Nephew to the Museum at the Psychiatric Facility that I work at. To get to the Museum we went through the basement hallways. The closer we got to the Museum the more uncomfortable the child became.

After we were in the Museum the child became inconsolable, and kept pointing to the exit door wanting to leave. Giving up, his mother took him back to Grandma's house.

That got me to wondering if children still in the womb, can be traumatized by the Spirits when their Mothers are involved in Ghost Hunting activities?

Because this 2 yr old Great Nephew's Mother, would Table Tip with us when she was pregnant with him. And we always had great action when she was Table Tipping with us. I always felt that was due to the fact that she was pregnant, and that the Spirits were attracted to her.

After yesterday's outing to the Museum, I wondered if when this Great Nephew was still an unborn child; had he also been traumatized in the womb, by the Spirits that were attracted to him.

But I guess that is a question, none of us will ever be able to answer

i would think the more likely scenario, is that he is a sensitive....children under about 5 yrs tend to "see" more any way....and perhaps his mother is as well, explaining the increase activity around her.....someone should have asked the child what was bothering him...the answer may have been veriy interesting...

Specializes in Nurses who are mentally sicked.

Oh yeah!

I remember one day last Friday....the Nurse Manager came in...and everybody was running away.....it was scary!!!

My brother-in-law Don is very Spiritually Gifted.

His daughter Laura also has shown the ability to know when something bad will happen to people she cares about. But the talent doesn't occur everytime something bad happens. But my sister would say it was not uncommon for Laura to burst out in tears, and when questioned why she was crying she would say, someone was going to be in an accident, or have a fire, and sure enough they'd hear about the incident.

Now Laura's son Matthew is showing his a bility to connect with the Spirit's. And he's only 2 yrs old.

Don is Matthew's Grandpa, but he calls him Don because everyone else does. But the words Don and Grandpa mean the same thing to him. Because he refers to his other Grandpa as "Don" also, despite his name being David.

Laura has an old picture of her Grandfather, in Matthew's bedroom. Sometimes Matthew will sit bolt right up, out of a dead sleep look at his Great Grandpa's picture and start talking while looking straight at that picture. He'll chatter away saying "Don! Don! And lots of baby talk caring on a conversation with the spirit of his Great Grandpa Joe, whom he had never met in his life time.

That's largely why we took him to the Museum, since it was dedicated to Matt's Great Grandpa Joe, since he's the person who started to build the collection of historic artifacts for our Psychiatric Facility.

If Matthew had a more working vocabulary we could try to question him as to what was scaring him. But other than saying "BaBa" for Grandma, and "Ma-Me" for Mom, and "Don" for Grandpa, that's about it for his words...so far.

This isn't a ghost story..but kind of related and it still gives me chills.

My grandpa was a great person. An all around handyman. He spoiled me rotten.He and my grandmother came and picked me up everyday from school since my mom worked late and I spent many many nights at their house. He sang me songs and told me stories that I loved to hear over and over again.

Well I was in the 6th grade and I had a "big" project coming up where we had to construct a 3D animal habitat. I asked my grandpa to sculpt me some clay animals for my project. At this time, he had been out of the hospital about 3 months after his 3rd heart attack and was doing really well, but I could tell he just wan't the same..he didn't seem as joyful as before. He still got out and about, but wasn't nearly as active as before. Mom kept saying he wouldn't be around much longer, she could see it in his eyes after that last stay in the hospital. He just didn't look like he wanted to fight anymore.

Anyway, on March 10th I had my 12th birthday and my project was due a few days later. My grandpa died suddenly of another heart attack March 11th, the day after my birthday. He had been outside tending to the goats and the quail. My grandma found him sitting under a tree beside his quail cages. She said he just looked like he was sleeping. She called 911 but he was gone. I remember being pulled out of class and taken to the hospital but no one would tell me what was going on till we got there..They had him laying in a hospital bed, just like he was sleeping...

I went to stay with my grandma that night so she didn't have to be alone. I went and sat down in his old rocking chair just so I could smell his "grandpa" smell. Then I noticed something on the table beside the chair..It was a red container of "Silly Putty". I opened it up and inside was a little pig he had sculpted for me the night before he died. (I had loved silly putty when I was smaller) I keep that little pig locked up in my chest of special items to this day. I never removed it from the red silly putty container so I didn't ruin it.

Such a simple little thing means so much to me. I know he left it there for me to find. I know he waited until the day after my birthday to pass. WOW I am crying right now LOL. He never started on those little clay animals for my project, but I think that little pig was his way of saying he wished he could have.

I work in a ltc facility and we have had numerous reports from pts that they have seen a little boy. This boy comes in their rooms, turns their call lights on and off, throw things on the floor. This facility used to be an orphanage!! Also there are stories of a oldfashioned nurse in the whole white dress and hat, would be seen going down the hall late at night doing her bed check and would go into someones room and stay there for a couple minutes if they were really sick or about to die. Well I guess one aide seen her awhile back and refused to go down that hall for a week, the persons room she went in just came back from the hospital still really sick.:uhoh21:

I work in LTC also. I had heard many reports of the patients claiming to see children in there rooms, making noise, rocking in a rocking chair or running around getting into trouble. Usually when the patients start seeing the children, someone passes away shortly after. One evening I went into a patients room to re-check a PT/INR. I told her I was sorry that I had to wake her up to do this. She said she had not been able to get to sleep anyway until she got the little girl calmed down to sleep. She patted the bed saying the little girl was sleeing right there in the bed with her. The next morning, the patient accross the hall passed away.:uhoh21:

My Niece is from Calif. she's been an RN for 2 yrs now. She has similar stories to tell of Pts. who claim to see people walking outside infront of a 3 rd floor window. And that usually a person dies when they see this happens.

She said there is one area that spooks all the Nurses.

And the Hospital even called in a Priest to perform some sort of a cleansing to calm the Paranormal Activity in that area.

A coworker of mine, who works on the PM shift, where as I work on the Grave Yard shift told me an interesting Ghost story of his own. Eventually we went together with 2 of his sisters to investigate his story from his childhood.

Jamie grew up on a remote farnstead near Jackson, Neb., some 20-30 yrs ago. He said the farm place was quite haunted, and that was part of the mystique which intrigued his Mother's desire to live there.

As Jamie and his Mother and family inspected and toured the farm Jamie noticed that there were alot of large bones stacked on shelves in the garage. When asked about the bones, the son of the owner ( who was approx. 16 yrs old ) said that they had been drug there by their dog. The son claimed to not know where the dog found the bones. But they were definitely human bones.

After taking possession of the farmstead, the family discovered head stones laying flat on the ground beneath some large bushes on the property. It is then that they realized that the owner's son had been involved in Grave Robbery, but from where they didn't know.

Visiting relatives to this farmstead soon learned of the hauntings taking place there, as their bed linens would be pulled off them at night while they slept, and TVs, VCRs, and even the room lights would turn on & off by themselves. This prompted some of the relatives to never stay over night in the large 2 story farmhouse again.

When Jamie was about 16 yrs old, one evening his girlfriend was over to the house for a visit. Jamie took her for a stroll up a small hill that rose at the back of their yard. The hill plateaued at about the hieght of the house as you could look straight at the roof when standing on the hill.

Jamie and his girlfriend took advantage of the relative seclusion of their whereabouts and laid on the ground under the stars and began making out. Jamie was just about ready to seal the deal, when they heard little children laughing at them in the darkness. There were no little children at the farm that night, and none of the neighbors had enough little children to account for the multitude of laughing voices they heard radiating from the darkness.

As the number of voices increased they soon realized that they were surrounded by the laughing voices of several children.

This freaked both Jamie and his girlfriend out!

Jamie tore off running for the house in fright of what he was hearing, and experiencing. He quickly confided in his Mother as to what they were hearing.

His Mom promptly slapped him, for having left his girlfriend all alone out on the hill, as he ran to the house.

Soon the the frightened girl raced into the house in hysterics, and from that night on, refused to ever set foot on the farmstead again!

Approx. 4 yrs ago Jamie and I, and 2 of his sisters revisited the farmstead. The current Tenant was an alcoholic Carpenter. Who proclaimed that he didn't believe in such things as Ghosts. Yet he invited us in to investigate Jamie's claims that the house was haunted.

( Now I stand 6' 8" tall and weigh in excess of 400 lbs., and Jamie is 6' 2" weighs nearly 300 lbs.. If 2 men such as we, had come to my house with such outlandish ideas. I can gaurantee you, they would be the last people to set foot into my home. ) But this was not the case for the Drunken Carpenter. Which makes me believe that he wasn't as big a non-believer as he was touting. He invited us in to investigate his house. We took picutres inside and out, and checked Electro-Magnetic fields for any fluctuations or spikes of energy, which might indicate that an active haunting was occurring. Our conclusions proved nothing was actively haunting the house.

We asked for permission to visit a small cemetery that laid on the far edge of a cornfield that bordered the yard of the farmstead. Upon our arrival we encountered a bramble of branches that hung low over the footpaths through the small cemetery, that was roughly 50 ft X 50 ft. in size. Most of the graves were those of children, who died from a plague near the end of the 1800's.

When we returned to Jamie's suburban we noticed that his vehicle was covered in dusty little hand prints from children. Which there was none with us.

We have always intended to go back and spend the night in the cemetery, but we have never made it, to this date.

My theory is that all the children that died from the plague were buried in this remote cemetery, which had no roads leading to it. As it lay at the top of hill, across a cornfield, in a thicket of brambled branches and weeds which secludes it from discovery. No one wanted the plagued graves to be rediscovered for fear of respreading the plague.

Back in those old days it was common place here in the midwest for rural sick houses to be established to quarentine ailing infectious people. Many of whom went to the sick houses in hopes of recouperating and returning home, only to die secluded from their families. I believe that the Ghostly Voices that Jamie and his girlfriend heard, were the voices of all the children that were buried in that lonely cemetery.

All of whom do not relaize that they are dead. These children frolic in the hilltop, laughing at young lovers enthralled in intimate moments in their lives.

At least that's what I tend to believe.

Hello all, I am not a nurse but I thought I would share my experience of some nurses I have had.

In 1981 I was 13 and I had two major surgeries to correct scoliosis of the spine. My curve was an "S" curve and pretty severe so I had to undergo two surgeries that were eight and ten hours long. The surgeries were performed 10 days apart. Well by the second surgery I suppose my body was getting a bit worn down as my heart stopped during the last surgery and I had to be "brought back". During the time my heart was stopped I had some "experiences", one of which I saw everyone working on me in the O.R. One nurse in particular was working very diligently and I somehow felt/knew that she truly cared for me and really wanted me to "come back". I could feel her heart breaking as they were working on me. Anyway fast forwarding a bit, I saw her in my room a few days later, and being a kid I didn't think anything of it at the time, I non chalantly thanked her for her help during my surgery when something had gone wrong (at the time I didn't know exactly what had happened to me) I gave details that I shouldn't have known. Looking back I remember she was a young nurse and the look on her face was utter shock. She left the room immediately after I thanked her. I thought it was weird at the time, but being 13 I didn't think about it much.

This took place at Nemours Childrens hospital in Jacksonville Florida. I would also like to acknowledge another nurse whom I only knew as "Jenny". She had long straight brown hair and she was very kind and sweet to me. She brought me a radio to listen to and was always very patient with me and if it wasn't for her I would have been terrified 24/7. I deeply regret that I never found out her last name because I would like to thank her for the love and care she gave. It was beyond the call of duty for certain. If any of you ever wonder if your work is making a difference in anyone's life, I can tell you it is. I am now 39 years old and I have never forgotten Jenny and I never will.

On the "ghost story" side, I had an experience during this time when I had just been brought back to my room from one of my surgeries and I was visited by a nurse in a white outfit that consisted of a white smock top, white slacks and the typical white nurses hat. She was beautiful, blonde hair pulled back in a bun, standing at the foot of my bed writing in one of those metal flip charts. As I stared at her she looked up at me with a sweet smile on her face and the most beautiful blue eyes I had ever seen. I was filled with warmth and I knew instantly that I was going to come out of everything perfectly. That was all I remember as I think I passed out. When I awoke I asked all of the nurses where this "nurse" was. I wanted her to come back because she made me feel so safe and assured. I described her uniform and they told me that no one wore that uniform in this hospital. It was then that I noticed that all of my regular nurses wore uniforms that were tops with floral print or various characters. It then dawned on me that maybe she wasn't a regular person.

I have often wondered if she was a former nurse or an angel, maybe the two are one in the same:)

Hey Gang, I can't get enough of these stories and since we were talking ghosts, I thought I would tell you a few more experiences....

Now, my husband grew up in the hills of Kentucky...and they heard lot's of stories, but one of my favorites was about the time thier dad came home one night from work.

My Hubby's dad was a hardworking man. He laid brick for a living and would sometime work until his fingers bled to support his 8 children and wife (and usually half the neighborhood as it often was back then). Any who, one night he came home from work and Mom and the kids all piled out on the front porch to greet him. He had just pulled the car over the old cattle grate the covered the drainage ditch, when he heard the chains...

He stopped in his tracks and the kids got really quite as the sounds of chains being drug across the drive could be heard by all. This wasn't the first time that the sound of chains going around the house could be heard. But, my Father-In-Law told the kids to get back in the house. He and his wife, watched as the sound of the chains crossed the path of his headlights but nothing was there but the dust of a chain being dragged through the old gravel drive. Needless-to-say Dad booked it to the house, but no sooner had he got Mom inside, something clubbed him in the head with a piece of wood meant for the fire.

He had a bad concussion (sp?) and was layed up for a day or two.

The second terrible thing that happened at the house was one day they were having a picnic. It was around the fourth of July and the kids were lighting up sparklers and playing in the yard. For some reason one of the youngest girls B, went into the house to get something. It wasn't long after that they heard her blood curling screams.

When Dad got to her, she had a man sized hand print in blazing red on her cheek. When she was questioned as to who hit her, she cried that she never saw anyone, she was reaching up to get a cookie out of the jar when something slapped her hard.

There was no one there but the kids and FIL and MIL, that was it. B claimed that no one was there, and other strange things happened in that old house all the time. .....very strange.......

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