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...

pricklypear said:
You guys are freaking me out!! The only thing I've seen is pretty tame. I went in to set up a room for a new patient. I turned off the screensaver on the monitor, and it was showing a resp rate of 6, big, deep breaths, then shallow ones - like cheyne stokes. I thought maybe the leads were swinging on the floor, but they were curled up on the shelf without any electrodes on them, like they always are. It wasn't picking up telemetry, because our tele only transmits cardiac rhythms. The pattern didn't stop until we put the new patient on the monitor. Never saw it again. I've never seen any ghosts or other stuff, though. I'd probably pee myself.

That's not tame at all. If I saw that, I'd pee a little!

Beth ?

Specializes in OR.

Another story. My brother Mike was 16 and had an AVM (in the brain) and had had a bleed. He had surgery and survived. Anyway, about 3 days after surgery, he woke up and said he had talked to Granny (who died 3 years earlier) and to Jeffrey (my other brother who had died 19 years earlier from a blown aneursym from an AVM). Mike's first words were Granny said she was okay and she was sorry for being so mean at the end. (She had dementia and was in a lot of pain before she died and was very verbally and physiclaly abusive to all). He also said Jeffrey said to tell Mom that he was okay and that he did not suffer and had no pain. Jeffrey also said that Curtis (my other brother) was okay and had nothing bad in his head like he did. Well, this really shook my mom up. About 2 or 3 months after that, Mike went to see his neuorlogist for a followup and stopped by ICU to see the nurses and ran into one of the surgical nurses who was in the OR during his operation. she was surprised to see him and said how he was very lucky. during surgery, his heart stopped beating twice and the surgeon said if it happened a third time, they woudl let him go.

Specializes in Critical Care.

OK, I know what dh is by context, but what does it actually stand for? I know that's a newbie question and I've been here a little bit, but all I can think of is 'designated hitter'.

~faith,

Timothy.

I have to admit I turned the lights on after reading some of these stories.....lol.......I work in the MICU and we get some really really sick pts...I haven't actually seen any ghost but my unit has some ghost stories....but from experience I've learned that when a pt tells you they're going to die...they usually do...and if they start talking to dead family members...they usually die...it's like the family members have come to take them.....

A couple of stories from the unit.... In bed 3 there was a homeless pt "Willy" who thanks to modern medicine was kept alive for I believe around 3 mos....(no family to stop care)....Willy eventually died but pts who are in bed 3 will talk about their friend Willy who brought them a blanket or stopped by to talk....Bed 3 is at the end of the unit and has an ante room before you go in...You can't see directly in Bed 3 unless you're in the ante room or looking at the room on the monitor...One night with no pt in Bed 3 the monitor flips to the room and a body was seen laying over the side of the bed (over the side rails).....kind of floating...the room was checked and no one was there......

Another night a nurse who has worked in the unit a few years saw someone sitting in a chair behind the door in Bed 3 with their legs crossed...she wondered since we have limited visiting hours how a family member got in the room...she went in the room and no one was there....needless to say she was freaked out....

There was also another pt who was a young woman in her 20s who contracted necrotizing faciitis (flesh eating disease) from one of her kids who had strep....She was in the unit a while and eventually died....One of the nurses coming on to the next shift wanted to know why the pt was standing on the backside of the unit with her twin daughters holding their hands.....(wondering how she made such a miraculous recovery).....she was informed the pt had died earlier that day.....

Specializes in Education, Acute, Med/Surg, Tele, etc.

My hubby actually had a good one, not a ghost story per say, but a scary sight in a room one night long ago!

My hubby (who is a paramedic) was a Corpman in the Navy working in a old naval hospital in med surge. One night a very old demented man was just done with his shower and the orderly hadn't turned off the old heat lamp in the bathroom...so that night there was a red glow in the room with the gent.

Now the gent slept naked, and as my hubby passed by to check on him the patient was in his room upright in bed stretching his arms up and groaning. My hubby said it looked like satan rising from the bed! LOL!!!!!!! He grabbed the other corpmen to check it out and they felt the same way...and it all gave them the ebbie geebies despite knowing the reason for the scene! LOL!!!!!

I thought that was a cute one!

Years ago I worked nights on a LTC unit. No one ever used their call lights there. We always seemed to know when we would have a death, because the nursecall system would go haywire. It would start bleeping, not even a real ring, like half bleeps. No where would it light up to a room. Just the sound.

(The call system was checked several times and we were always told it was fine.)We would immediately make a round and sure enough someone would be gone. Most of our vets were DNR's, rarely had a code. It almost seemed liked someone just wanted let us that know someone had passed. It was so common it wasn't creepy after awhile. Also on a couple of occasions a coworker and myself while sitting outside on a break saw a dark figure moving across the parking lot, almost like he was floating. On both occasions he got about halfway across the lot and then would vanish. We used to hear all kinds of stories of ghosts/strange occurences from some of the staff that had been there forever.

After I left there I went to work in a rehab unit that was located in what used to be an old Catholic Hospital. We were basically the only unit there other than a couple of outpt. clinics downstairs.

Would often hear crying, laughing footsteps etc in the stairwells, even on holidays when we were the only ones there. There was never anyone in those stairwells. Was often told it was an old nun who roamed the halls for many years before passing on our unit many years ago. I can't believe I've forgotten her name.

I am so easily scared, I would leave and never come back. Seriously. I am actually getting uneasy being in my apt. alone and reading this stuff. I really would have to quit my job if I saw anything like that or have someone go with me everywhere I went. My husband and I were watching The Shining the other night (I had never seen it) and I made him get up and go to the bathroom with me and I wouldn't let him go anywhere unless I followed him because I didn't want to be left alone. He was so aggravated, but I really scare easily.

The very small step down unit I worked in was having night time staffing issues, I agreed to rotate to nights to help them out.

It was a 4 bed, newly renovated unit. It was around 3am, and I was watching the monitors, listening to the patients snore. The pencil draw slid open, I didnt think much of it since the hospital was on a very busy avenue. I thought it was caused by the vibrations from the trafffic on the busy road below. After sliding the draw back several times, I decided if the draw felt it needed to be open so be it

Several minutes later :

I heard a noise in the room, the patients bathroom door opening and the sound of someone pushing an IV pole. Since I did not have clear view of the bathroom, I just thought one of the staff members from the main floor had dashed in to wash their hands. I looked up from my monitor viewing to see a patient we recently had in the unit. Mrs.G. An older woman who came in with atypical chest pain, became septic due to a gallbladder issue.

She evidently had expired in the unit. Although the hospital itself had been on this site for years, the unit was newly renovated, right down to tearing down walls and putting up new ones. I heard the patients bathroom door open

and again I heard the rattling of the IV pole and shuffling feet. I looked up and saw Mrs. G. standing there in the middle of the floor, one hand pushing the IV pole, the other hand on top of the pump on the pole. She stopped walking, turned waved, nodded her head said everything was going to be okay

took a few steps and disappeared.

It was quite a site to see. Shortly after that "vision" one of the nurses from the floor came in to see if I needed anything. I told her no I was ok. And asked her if she had ever seen a ghost in the hospital. She looked at me, gasped and said no why. Explained to her what had just happend. She said she would never step foot in that room again.

Mrs. G was the first patient to die in that unit. She was well liked by all the staff and my feeling was that she was watching over us. The day shift came in, and I told them my story. They werent surprised.

Through the years working at various hospitals, worked as a Nurse Extern my senior year in nursing school.And heard older nurses telling their stories about ghosts...I thought they were just burnt out. HA!! Yes there are ghosts in care facilities,

If they are not seen their presence is felt. They leave an energy behind.

This thread is soooo creepy!!! Even more creepy, I had my first "ghost" experience right before I saw this thread! Bare with me, it's sort of a 3 part tale...

I was working my regular 7-7 night shift in a bone marrow transplant unit

with one other nurse. We had 5 patients, and it was about 3:30 am. My coworker had just come out of room 4, and i startled her as she came around the corner. Well, she had been empyting a urinal when the bathroom door had closed on her, which of course freaked her out and she spilled urine on herself but I digress. She proceeded to tell me that there was a young gentleman who had been in that room who had died a rather gruesome death...evidently this man was slated to go home, but one night (around 4) the nurses heard a thump...the sound of someone falling...they rushed in the room, and this man was in the bathroom, central line out, and blood everywhere. They coded him, but he died right there in the bathroom. No one is sure why he pulled his line, or what had happened, but evidently the scene was a bloodbath. Horrible, horrible...now here comes the scary part. A few weeks later, a sweet little old lady is in that room and asks the nurse if someone had died in there. The nurse explained that this is a hospital, and it was likely that someone could have died. Well, the lady says, well, i think a young guy died in here....the nurses asks why, the lady responds "cuz he's talking to me." Aghhh!! Ok, I'm not making this up....this lady has a central line, triple lumen. The nurse goes in there and there is blood everywhere. One of her lines is cut. Not pulled out, but cut. There are no scissors in the room. The lady says "he did it." OHMYGOSH!! Even the doctors were trying to get a priest or something to come in and say some prayers in that room!!!

Ok, so my coworker is telling me all this and we are scaring eachother when all of a sudden the call light goes off. For that room. We look at eachother, and both of us go to the room (we are not going in there alone!) The pt. is sleeping soundly. It was soooooooooooo freaky. Luckily, her central line was fine :)

sounds like nurse betty has truly become an angel...wow a nice nurse who wanted to do more and her time was shortened....believe in ghost don't know believe in angels positive...nurse betty has proven that one again to me...blessings to all ....

mulan said:
jdon said:
I was working in the nicu when we had a threat of a tornado. some nurses got pulled to go to a sister hospital in town to assist in the disaster plan. when all was over one of the nurses returned with this story: she was assisting the nurses in giving some meds before pulling all into the hallways. every pt she went to said they already had their meds from that nice nurse in the white uniform and hat. she realized after she left that its been awhile since a nurse has worn a hat. that story revealed the urban ledgen of nurse betty. story goes she had an affair with a married md, became pregnant then agreed to allow him to perform an abortion on her on the 2nd floor or room.she died and he went to jail. she never left the hospital and was seen frequently. the local newspaper would do an article of her every year around halloween on her sightings. the hospital has since been replaced with college dorms. hmmmm i wonder if any students have seen her?
wow, a ghost that can physically give meds, that's pretty good!

Worked as a Hospice nurse for 10 years and was with many as they died. I have come to regard death as a sacred experience. We always tried to ensure that the symptoms were controlled so that the patient was comfortable and calm. When someone is not at peace as they die then it can be very scarey for the nurse and family. I belive that there is an afterlife and that evil exits but I have never seen a ghost or been freaked out. I have however, seen others who watch too many scarey movies and don't understand the sacred nature of the next stage of life whose door is death. I am not afraid to die myself, I just hope that whoever is there to take care of me as make my journey can be compassionate and comforting. I already have my hopice nurse picked out.

Mulan said:
Jdon said:
I was working in the nicu when we had a threat of a tornado. Some Nurses got pulled to go to a sister hospital in town to assist in the disaster plan. When all was over one of the nurses returned with this story: She was assissting the nurses in giving some meds before pulling all into the hallways. Every pt she went to said they already had their meds from that nice nurse in the white uniform and hat. She realized after she left that its been awhile since a nurse has worn a hat. That story revealed the urban ledgen of Nurse Betty. Story goes she had an affair with a married md, became pregnant then agreed to allow him to perform an abortion on her on the 2nd floor OR room.She died and he went to jail. She never left the hospital and was seen frequently. The local newspaper would do an article of her every year around halloween on her sightings. The hospital has since been replaced with college dorms. Hmmmm i wonder if any students have seen her?

Wow, a ghost that can physically give meds, that's pretty good!

Would Nurse Betty count against the day's PPD?

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