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...

[NurseeTee]

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.....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!"

Just curious why the OR floor would have call bells?

[Spritenurse1210, BSN, RN]

I'd have to say nurse managers. I've heard they exist, but I very rarely see one.

[Spritenurse1210, BSN, RN]

This one is pretty creepy and it is one of the reasons I got out of the hospital and started working office case management. I worked many years on tele and I worked steady nights. I was constantly overtired, never felt quite rested. While waiting for my husband to get home (he worked steady 2nd shift, I worked steady nights) I was dozing on the couch, the kids were in bed. I was half in and out of consciousness when I felt a presence. Even though my eyes were closed tight, I "felt" the room turn red beyond my eyelilds. I started to hear the whispers of athousand souls in the room. The air was oppressive, and I tried to scream, though no sound came out. The whispers got louder and louder, though I could not tell what the souls were trying to say. When my husbands key turned in the door, the redness in the room vanished, the whispers instantly stopped, and I became wide awake, as though never asleep. I told my husband I felt it would be a bad night. Sure enough, in the room across the hall from the nurses station (you know the one, that is reserved for the sickest or the most unstable, so to be close when code is called) my coworkers patient strangled herself silently in her waist restraint. Her body was contorted, limbs contorted in unnatural ways, with her face smashed between the bedrail and the mattress. My coworker was distraught, having checked on her only 20 minutes prior. We called a code, and worked on her a back breaking 30 minutes, I did compressions, and I still remember the sound of a couple fo ribs cracking. In the end she was gone, and my coworker was beside herself. The next night the same scenario, I waited for my husband to come home, I drifted in and out of consciousness, the room turned red beyond my eyelids. and a thousand souls whispered tortured sounds into my ears, but I was unable to discern what they were saying. I opened my mouth to scream, nothing came out, I woke to the sound of the key in the door...That night I had agreed to switch sides with my coworker, having felt pity for her. The room across the hall was cleaned and in it was a new patient, a man in his 50's with moving chest pain...I was tired from the night before, my back still sore from the 30 minutes of doing compressions. I worked swiftly as I could getting in first rounds, checking frequently on my new friend across the hall with the moving chest pain. I was newly trained in telemetry, and felt concerned about the pain that moved across his chest, and down the left arm, then back up and down the right arm. Although I was new, I felt that I noted a subtle S-T depression on his rhythm strip. But a more seasoned tele nurse looked at the strip, and said it was nothing. I called the cardiologist, and though I didn't want to seem overly zealous, I told him about the moving chest pain, and what I felt to be a subtle change in the S-T segment. He ordered my patient maalox and tylenol, which I gave, then I was sidetracked by a patient whose rate suddenly went into the 150's. I got busy with his orders, and for a moment, forgot about my patient with the moving chest pain. Suddenly the unit clerk shouted at me in the still of the night down the hall, "Patti, go see your patient in 15, he is in V Tach!, as I raced to his room, she said, "NO! now he is in V fib!" I yelled over my shoulder, call a code! As I ran into his room, the hues changed from a soft yellow, to a definite red. I looked at my patient, as he sat up, and laid down, up and down up and down again and again, making these agonal sounds. He could not sit still. In the midst of this the code team came in. They all watched as this man sat up and laid down again and again. In awe, we watched as this man breathed his last earthly breath. As he laid down for the last time, they sprang into action, but too late. He died of a massive heart attack. A week later I was applying to every insurance company in town. I got my steady daylight weekends and holidays off. I make sure I get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. I vow never to work nights again.

Y-I-K-E-S!!!!!!!!!!!!

[StatBlues]

Just curious why the OR floor would have call bells?

So if they need extra help in the OR room extra staff can run in and any spare anes doc..........

Not really a call light per say.....like patients have on regular floors.

[Taxminia0311]

We had a patient, chronic CHFer, always on the call button, hated being on fluid restrictions. you know the type: the nurses have to take turns during the shift answering the call button so the primary can actually do other work.

And this was a frequent flier cause he was very chronic, very borderline, and the hospital was the only place he wouldn't fluid overload.

I work 7p-7a. He died about 8pm. Oh the look on his face, like, "how could you let me die!" - Like it was our fault.

Anyway, family came and gone by 9pm, funeral home gone at 930pm.

About 10pm, the call button starts going off. I was there - call button going off every 5 minutes.

One of the nurses was a very spiritual girl. At about 2am, after like 4 HOURS OF THIS, nurse Mary snaps, 'Enough!'

She walks down to the room, and, practically screams into the empty room, "Mr X, you have died. You can't be in here bothering us anymore. Move along. In the name of Jesus, I'm exorcising you from this plane of existence. Go to the light and be happy!"

And I kid you not, the call button stopped going off then and there.

~faith,

Timothy.

You got me busting out of my jogging semes :lol2:

[NurseeTee]

My story is from when I was working on my current floor, but I was a nursing student working an evening shift.

Our actual floor was having a new call bell system installed, so they moved us to another floor in another wing of the hospital while the work was being done. Our temporary home used to be a pediatric floor, and we knew before we even went there that it was supposedly haunted. Something about a pair of red shoes that people always saw under beds...supposedly some of our nurses saw them while we were up there but I never did, so I can't attest to that.

What I CAN attest to was the other rumor, in which one particular room at the end of the hall was supposed to be especially haunted. Nurses said the water in the sink in the room would always turn on by itself (I also never saw that happen) and the call bell would always go off. This one evening I was working, lo and behold, that call bell kept going off like nobody's business. There were no patients in that room and I walked back there each and every time to manually cancel it, only to find the call bell lit, tv on, and an empty room. They say it was a bored child, maybe the one with the red shoes...?

That was a few years ago; we are obviously back on our normal floor now, which is in the newest wing of the hospital. I keep looking for signs, anything, but I work busy day shifts so the only thing I can add is one long-term patient who was made DNR. She told us that she saw her sister and her husband standing "there" (end of bed?) waiting for her, and she died within 24 hours.

[jlwlln]

I recently sat with gentleman holding his hand while he took his last breath. We had window open to allow spirits to come in to take his soul to the other side. I watched as he inhaled and the blinds flew out straight into the room and when he exhaled the blinds went right back straight to the window. There was feeling of peace and calmness in the atmosphere. He also told me that he was ready to go be with his wife again, I told him to go be with her and we would be okay. Of course this was before he took his last breath. Needless to say i was glad there was tisues there.

[HoosierDeb]

In October, my boyfriend's father died at an ECF. Fred called me right after it happened and I went to the ECF before I went to work, to be there with him while he waited for the funeral home people to come pick up his dad. Al had died at 5:17 am. After he had been taken to the funeral home, Fred went home, took a shower and

as he walked down the hall past his granfather clock, noticed that it had stopped at exactly 5:17. I stayed at his house that night and in the morning, Fred was sitting at the kitchen table and I was in the family room just a few feet away when we heard this loud noise. It was the dishwasher which had started up on it's own. Fred lives alone and that dishwasher hadn't been used since he'd had a birthday party for his dad 2 years ago!! We both felt it was Al, telling us he was okay.

[chadash]

Why, Oh why do I read these things so late at night??

[StatBlues]

Thanks for sharing your stories!

[Chad_KY_SRNA]

Not exactly a nursing ghost story but my best friend who I was living with at the time and myself were painting the house and he yelled for me to "come here quick". He was painting the outside of the bedroom door at the time. There were very small hand prints all over the door, he's 6'2" and I am 5'11" and there were no children around. I tried to upload a picture but its too big. You can clearly see the hand prints though.

[chadash]

ok, never mind.....:)