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...

[grace90, LPN, LVN]

This morning about a half hour before shift end, I was trying to get last minute charting done and trying to remember what I might have forgotten to chart.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone standing by me and turned my head to talk to them, thinking it was another nurse, but no one was there. It looked like this person was wearing white, and none of us had white scrubs on last night now that I think about it. I felt the hair on my neck stand up. A few minutes after I saw her, I had a feeling she was critiqing (spelling?) my nursing skills. Then I suddenly remembered an important bit of charting I needed to fill in, like someone had reminded me.

I've seen this white-clad ghost before, and I believe it's an old nurse who passed on physically but continues to work. I have seen her before, from the waist down, with a white dress on like an old-school nursing uniform. She doesn't seem to be malevolent. She was active last night. A door to a tub room no one uses was hanging open a couple times. There was noise in the room that I get the strongest feelings in, even though it was empty. It sounded like things being banged and dropped and drawers being slammed and only lasted a couple minutes. I thought it was housekeeping, but I don't think they were in there at the time.

Construction is going on at the unit and there's plastic surrounding the nurses station to keep it sealed off. The plastic was hanging open a few times, even though we've all kept it shut to protect pts from the dust.

I've wondered if she is a former nursing instructor who I had given care to when she was getting on in years and was a pt on our unit. She died earlier this year. Who knows, though. I'm not sure.

[Valanda]

I took care of a very gentle mannered southern lady who would only get upset about one thing. She had limited range of motion in her arms and would scream at anyone who placed her denture cup at the back of the bathroon sink in the corner.

She would yell and tell them that she could not possibly reach it back there and she would make them move it to the front edge of the sink. It was nearly an unwritten policy that denture cups went in the back corner of the sink's counter, so she ended up yelling about this problem nearly every night.

After she died, if anyone placed a denture cup in the back corner of the sink it would move to the front corner. The first time it happened to me I called nearly all the staff down there to check it out. And sure enough, every time it was placed in the back, you could watch it move to the front. Our maintenence man was very sceptical and made sure the counter was completely dry, then got out his level and tried it again. Interestingly, the counter was not level, but actualy tipped back slightly toward the back wall. So gravity would have been working the other direction!

In the 3 years I worked there after she died, this remained a constant thing, and we just loved to spook the new employees with our ghost who moved denture cups.

[AprilRNhere]

I have 2.....neither a big deal or anything to do with nursing..but I'll tell them anyway.

1st....I read this thread about 2 months ago. Before that...I'd really never given "ghosts" a second thought. I didn't believe in them...but I didn't really disbelieve in them either. Well..my dh and I read this thread together..and talked about what we thought. We both admitted that we'd felt a presence in our house before...but never saw anything before so hadn't thought much of it. (old house...estate...previous owners both died on hospice here) We both agreed we were open to the concept of ghosts..just never had a reason to believe in them.

A couple of nights later...as I sat at the computer reading I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I turned around...and in the dark (around midnight) I watched a light orb float around the room for appx. 45-60 seconds. It wasn't a person..but I really felt like it was a previous owner telling me they heard our conversation..and were just saying "yes, we are here"

The other one....is more real. I live in a rural town in MN...where a few years ago there was a murder of a great family farmer who everyone knew. His wife auctioned off the farm and everything about 2 months afterwards. I recently was shown pictures from the AUCTION....and in it is a picture of his farm truck as it was being auctioned off. In the front seat...with a wide grin...sits the man who was murdered. Just fuzzy enough to tell he's not really there...yet definately there enough to not deny it. (this pic was taken by his granddaughter....who I KNOW didn't fake it..she was as freaked out as anyone)

[sziq1]

It seems that every once in a while on our cardiac tele floor there will be a certain room where patients seem to keep crashing. Sometimes we can have 3 or 4 people either die or have to be transfered to the ICU out of the same room, one right after another. We (the staff) decided to have the chaplin come and bless the room to see if it helps and it really does help. In the five years that I have worked there we have probably done that to half a dozen rooms on the floor (34 bed unit) and it works everytime!

[vetnrse]

Dogs are the same in 'death' as in life... Angels that never leave you!

[nursermk]

As a young nurse many years ago working PMs on the surgical unit. Only one elderly lady in a four bed ward room who was upset about being alone in there on Halloween so I made sure and rounded every hour. About 9pm she started getting upset saying there were ghosts outside (you could see kids dressed to trick or treat on the sidewalk across the street) and a man under her bed. After the third time in 15 minutes she turned on the call light (I had four other patients as well) I sat with her for a few minutes and she said "LOOK UNDER THE BED, HE'S THERE!" So to prove a point I dramatically lifted the bedspread and looked under and there was some guy looking back at me! He snuck in thru ER to hide from the cops, intoxicated. Luckily we were in a small hospital with the police right down the hall and they took him out. The rest of the shift I had to listen to her go on and on about not believing her, she was right--I was wrong, she told me and I didn't listen...yadda yadda.

[DefmamaNurse]

Resident who was on hospice rang one night. I answered her call light. She was sitting on the edge of the bed and when I walked in, she looked at me and point blank said.

" I'm supposed to tell you 'Thank You." from this group of people here."

Me: " Oh...that's nice. Is it for me in particular or the CNA?" (It was me and one other working that night.)

"Yes you. They said tell the Deaf one that we say 'Thank you.' "

Me: (flustered) " Well....okay. You're Welcome." (cough)

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

Years ago when I was working nights at a LTC facility, there was a resident who was a former nurse and she used to make rounds with me. She was still hale and hearty at 100, and she had so many stories! But one night as she followed me on my rounds, she began to talk about her children, all of whom had predeceased her, and mentioned that she had seen them recently; knowing her to be of sound mind, I got a UA just in case a UTI was making her loopy.

She didn't have one. But she continued to talk about the conversations she was having with her oldest daughter, and finally one night she called out to me from her room: "Look, here she comes...she's coming for me!" Her voice was full of joy. Then, silence.

I ran to her room and there she was, dead. She had the most amazing smile on her face, though, and I could feel a presence in the room as if someone had really been there. Maybe they were...who knows? All I know is that she was happy as she passed away. I'll never forget it.

[Moonmama73]

Am I the only one that comes back and re-reads these stories. I started out as user Phantomfirefly73, and posted a few stories. I would love to read more. This thread is amazing. :)

[DocWorkaday]

I hope the mods here don't mind if I relate a ghost story that's not directly "nursing related" other than the fact that my girlfriend is a nurse and I talked her into taking one of those paid ghost tours.

Okay, so far?

Back in 2013 when I first started dating her we got onto the subject of her nursing ghost stories before I ever discovered this thread. Of course her confidentiality requirements don't allow her to discuss much that is work-related, but she was able to tell me enough that it stoked my desire to fulfill one of the items on my bucket list: to take a real ghost tour with authentic ghost investigators just like on the TV shows.

So, in this town there is an old hotel that dates from the Old West. It's been a hotel, a bank, a brothel, and other things during its history. It's a historic landmark and a local ghost investigator society is allowed to charge customers to accompany them on a genuine ghost investigation. So I paid the money and we showed up for the "tour".

It's important to note that one of my trademarks is that I wear an Australian slouch hat (looks like the classic movie green safari hat with puggarree). On this particular evening, the sun had gone down and I decided to leave it in the car for the ghost tour. To most people it looks like a "green cowboy hat" if you're not familiar with the old Tarzan movies. I was the only one in the group to wear such a hat to the tour, even though I left it in the car. This will become significant in a while, you'll see.

During the ghost tour, we were invited to silently walk through some of the corridors on the ground floor of the hotel. I was born with a "gift." I can walk into a haunted building and sense if there is an evil presence there. While walking in one of the corridors, I definitely felt the presence of something totally evil that did not want us there. Others in the group noticed it too.

As the evening progressed, the ghost investigators did the usual "parlor trick" of placing a flashlight on a table with the head mostly unscrewed, so that the "spirits" are supposed to answer questions by turning the flashlight on and off. They did this through several questions. At one point, they tried to contact the spirit of a famous local murder victim. The murder was never "officially" solved, although a book was written by a man who claimed to have solved the murder. He claimed that a man who lived with his mother was the killer and the investigators had totally missed it. So at one point during the "contact" session with this murder victim, members of the audience were allowed to ask the spirit of the deceased girl some questions. Most asked about the political intrigue surrounding the murder, etc. When it became my turn to ask, I asked if she had been murdered by the the guy with the two dogs who lived with his mother. The flashlight flashed once for "yes". This is something that probably could not have been faked because unless you've read that author's book you would never believe the murderer was someone other than the people named in the official narrative. Had the ghost hunters somehow been able to fake the answer to that question, they almost certainly would have had the flashlight flash two times for "no."

The investigators also made it a point to tell us that the spirits in that hotel like to mess with electronic devices. Several just wouldn't work right during the tour. This will become significant toward the end of my story.

The ghost investigators contacted the spirit of a little girl who made a toy move. At one point a flashlight left in an adjacent room turned on so brightly that it lit up the adjacent room like a huge spotlight was turned on! We went back into that room and there was the lowly Maglite sitting on the table. No spotlight. When people started asking the child ghost questions like, "What's it like on the other side?", the spirit suddenly shut up and didn't want to talk anymore. Can't reveal there's a Heaven and Hell, kid, is that the deal?

As we went upstairs, no one was left on the ground floor, and yet we saw one of the flashlights turn on and stay on as we ascended the stairs.

On the top floor, the ghost hunters contacted a prostitute that had lived in the hotel. As they asked the spirit questions, several women felt their hair getting brushed by something invisible. The ghost hunters just laughed, and said, "She doesn't like women for some reason." At this point they asked the spirit, "Is there any man in this room you do like?" The spirit answered audibly through one of those spirit boxes, "COW...BOOOOOYYYYYEEEEEEEE." Remember I had left my safari hat in the car, and how I had described it as looking like a green cowboy hat to a lot of people?

There were several more minor things like cold spots and more women getting their hair brushed, but eventually the evening ended and my girlfriend and I went to our separate homes.

Days later, my girlfriend frantically called me one afternoon to ask if I had experienced anything strange at my house. I said, "No, why?" She explained that a radio she left in her daughter's room had turned on spontaneously while her daughter was in school. Upon inspecting the radio, we found that the alarm was turned off, and the switch was set to "manual", meaning you had to move it to the on position with your hand.

A few nights later, as I was lying in bed, I was awakened by the sound of the carbon monoxide alarm going off. Note that this was the time of year when it was still too warm to have the furnace on. There should have been no source of carbon monoxide anywhere in the house. Later that night, I felt the same evil presence above my bed that I had felt in that hallway of the old hotel. I saw what looked like an indistinct black shape moving across the ceiling. Quickly I shouted at it, "In the name of Jesus Christ you were not invited into this house and I command you to leave."

Neither my girlfriend or I have had another incident, but we don't go on ghost tours anymore, either.

[CFitzRN, ADN]

(To Doc WorkADay)

I had somehow missed this, but enjoyed reading your story. Without going into detail (which would take the better part of a week, undoubtedly), I am a practicing Catholic who has experienced what no one could deny was an encounter with evil. It was targeting my young son. My husband - an engineer and a very logical, linear thinker - witnessed the entire encounter. His world view changed 100% after that, and it was the turning point in our family. It was a watershed moment that proved to us that God and satan are real, that the preternatural world is not just the musings of some ancient superstitious men. That said, you reacted to the attack in the only way that would have been effective. However, these beings do not usually go down without a fight, so be vigilant and please, never go looking for this kind of trouble again. You are wise to forgo any further ghost tour-type activities because, although they're usually done all in fun, the powers of evil are no respecter of men, and they will take any opening you permit by consenting to contact them. Just to be clear, I am the most normal, boring person there is, and if this can happen to me and my family, it can happen to anyone. Satan's most effective weapon is to convince people he does not exist and lull them into a sense of safety or unbelief. When they let their guard down (as in the case of dabbling in occult-type "games," seances, Ouija, witchcraft, etc) his minions will get a foot in the door. It may not lead to anything obvious such as what you or I experienced. It can manifest in a myriad of ways which lead to destruction. At any rate, thanks for sharing your story!

[Bast1993]

Hello! This is not medically related but it is a pretty weird ghost story. Growing up as long as I can remember I was always sensitive to the paranormal all the women in my family are. I was about 16 and living at home when this happened. I was upstairs cleaning my room when I heard what I thought was my mom calling me. Sounded just like the way she would yell my name. (forgot to mention I had my music turned up loud.) I ran downstairs and when I walked into her room and asked her what she needed she looked confused and said she never called me (my mom is a jokster I thought she was kidding) i went back up to my room and turned my music back on but down a little . not even 2 minutes later I heard the same voice call me again. I chose to ignore it this time. When my brother got back home later from wherever he was I told him what happened and he said he had heard it too. Growing up in a family full of sensitives you get a lot of advice. After I told my mom what happened she said she figured it was my great grandmother which is weird I was young when she passed about 6 and I was very much afraid of her. Not to mention the house she lived in was heavily haunted by my great greandfather. I have Plenty of family ghost stories. I actually have a new one every time I visit my brother because his house is haunted (Not by bad spirits). I enjoyed your stories. Given more time (Currently full time Medical Assistant and working on my Bachelors Degree in Psychology for grief counseling and full time mom) I will get you guys more stories! Keep them Coming!