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...

Most of the time you are right. I have seen older people decide not to live anymore and die within a few days. On the other side of that spectrum, there was a 70-something woman at the assisted living where I worked who was dying of cancer. Since we were just an assisted living facility, not a SNF, we had hospice nurses come to take care of her. For a week, every nurse that came said that they were sure she would die that day. Her hands and feet were mottled, and she was Cheyne-stoking. Finally her daughter arrived from out of state, and once the mom saw her daughter, and held her hand, she passed that day.

On a lighter note, at another assisted living, we had a cute LOL named Eva. She mostly cared for herself, just needed a little help bathing and dressing. After I had worked there a couple of months, she called me in one night and said "Melanie.....I'm dying." She said she just felt strange and she knew she was going to die that night. She was a DNR, but she still had me freaked out. I was taking her vitals q15min, and charting furiously. Her vitals were like a healthy 30 year old, and she did NOT die that night. When I told my boss the next day, she laughed, and said "Oh yeah, she does that every 2 or 3 months. It scared me the first time too."

I used to watch "Most Haunted," but unfortunately it was outed as a fraud. I felt so gullible. I always thought that Derek guy was over the top. I really believe in TAPS, though. I think they've proven themselves to be very credible.

I watch it because it's more funny than scary. As in, not at all scary. It's hilarious watching that blond woman jump out of her skin, and hearing the men scream like little girls.

Specializes in pure and simple psych.
As I said in my post, I was standing in the room when this happened. The rose petals just started floating down out of nowhere. It went on for a little while and then they stopped.

It's been a while since I was a practicing Catholic (currently a recovering catholic) but if there are actual rose petals materializing out of thin air, and it is related to a professed nun, we have a second class miracle, and the Pope wants to talk to you. Tell the local parish priest, get a couple of witnesses and y'all are off to Rome. :saint:

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....

Specializes in MDS/PPS.

Oooh! I just rememebered another one, not really a ghost story, but otherworldly anyways..

I live in West Volusia County, Fl, which is next to famed Cassadaga, FL ( a spiritualist camp from the 1800s)

We had an old lady of 107 in our SNF who had lived in Cassadaga all her life, and who had gone septic due to a cut on her toe, which was completely necrotic.

Near the end she would have converstaions with people who were not there. She would "pick us flowers" out of the air to cover the smell of her toe.:chair:

Also, I was caring for an elderly lady who was near the end. Her husband checked himself into the home to be near her-he was totally independant, but could not bear being with out her.

One evening, as I was in with her, she passed.

I called in the aides to help me clean her up, and as we were about to pull the curtain around her, and walk out, the husband popped up out of a sound sleep and started to weep. He knew she was gone. It was so sad.:sniff:

On Halloween this year, we were all sitting in the nurses station talking when a bedside table that was sitting all by itself in the adjacent tv room fell over on it's own.

In 1999 I started working at a rural hospital housed in an old, creaky building. The nurses station for the ER was out in the hallway. There was a video camera so that we could see the ambulance doors from the desk. One night I looked up and there was the figure of an old woman dressed in black walking in front of the doors. I didn't pay much attention since the woman didn't stop at the door. Later that same night I looked at the monitor again and there was the woman standing in front of the door. I got up and went to the door to let her in but there was no one there. Looked up at the monitor, there she was. Looked at the doors, no one there. I got freaked and mentioned it to my tech, and she said it was the Ghost. Haven't seen her since we moved to the new building.

In the last place I worked the ICU had a death during the night and the RN called for the transporters to take the body down to the morgue. A little later one transporter brought the gurney back and parked it behind the nurses station, saying the morgue was full and the body would have to wait there for the mortuary in the morning. RN said okay. A while later she heard something and looked up, and in the glass of the room in front of her she saw the reflection of the body behind her, sitting up veeeeeeerrrry sloooooowwwlllly. Screamed bloody murder and ran out of the ICU before finding out it was the second transporter....they had decided to scare her!

A while later she heard something and looked up, and in the glass of the room in front of her she saw the reflection of the body behind her, sitting up veeeeeeerrrry sloooooowwwlllly. Screamed bloody murder and ran out of the ICU before finding out it was the second transporter....they had decided to scare her!

That sounds great! Wonder if we could pull it off where I work....

i have a friend who doesn't believe in spirits/ghosts. she says that once you die, if you are intended for heaven you go straight there. she believes all spirits/shadows/ghosts are the devil. that he wants you on his side so bad that he will disguise himself as a grandson on a tricycle, a young girl, an infant, a beloved family member, etc.

i have always wondered...if you believe in angels and heavenly hosts, how can you not believe in ghosts? i am not arguing the point, just curious.

i have a friend who doesn't believe in spirits/ghosts. she says that once you die, if you are intended for heaven you go straight there. she believes all spirits/shadows/ghosts are the devil. that he wants you on his side so bad that he will disguise himself as a grandson on a tricycle, a young girl, an infant, a beloved family member, etc.

i have always wondered...if you believe in angels and heavenly hosts, how can you not believe in ghosts? i am not arguing the point, just curious.

people tend to fear anything they don't understand.

Every nurse has her own story to tell. Though others may try not to believe in ghost but in one way or the other they too have encountered some eeerrrie happenings during their tour of duty.

I too does not really believed in it. However, this experience is real. I am a Clinical Instructor and was on the night shift together with my students in LR/DR. The LR/DR is connected to the OR of the hospital. That time we don't have any patient and some of my students are staying in the labor room, while the others are with me in the delivery room together with 2 OB Resident physicians. The other staffs are in the operating room complex. When all of a sudden we heard somebody shout as if she is about to deliver a baby. The sound came from the area where the door is. Hearing it, all of us, including my students who were at the labor room, the staffs who were in the OR ran to the door. Thus, all of us from the three different areas of the OR-LR-DR complex ran to the door expecting to find a patient in a stretcher ready to deliver, but instead we found nothing. The door is tightly closed, not a single soul is present. Even those who are sleeping in the nurses' quarter woke up and also heard the shout.:uhoh21:

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.

If you wanted some nursing ghost story, got several. These are personal experiences.

Several years back when I was just a senior student nurse and was assigned to the isolation room of the ICU to take care of a lone patient who was there for a long time. The patient is unconscious for several weeks. He was brought to the hospital by policemen not knowing his identity. He was found unconscious in a sidewalk. He was on a respirator via tracheostomy. The trache was not a finestrated trache. When all of a sudden, I heard somebody groan. At first I thought that it might just be a sound of the respirator or the monitor, and so I ignored it. Then after several minutes, there was another groan and this time its louder than the first one. So, I checked the monitor and the respiratory for any leaks. . . there was none. Every machine is intact and functioning well. My heart beats a little bit faster this time, however, still trying to keep a brave front, and so i tried to sing to calm myself down. Again for the third time, that groaning and moaning came back and this time, I could not fool myself. No one was in the room except the patient and myself and theres noway a patient in tracheostomy (with the kind of trache the patient had) could groan or moan. I did not think this time and I suddenly bolted out of the ICU door and founf myself in the corridor of the 2nd floor of the hospital in front of a surprised nursing supervisor who is about to visit me and see how I am doing. :idea:

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