What's Your Best Nursing Ghost Story?

What Members Are Saying (AI-Generated Summary)

Members are sharing personal experiences and stories related to ghosts, spirits, and paranormal occurrences in healthcare settings. Some members discuss encounters with deceased loved ones or unexplained phenomena, while others share their interest in ghost stories and movies like "Doctor Sleep" and "The Shining." There is a mix of skepticism, curiosity, and belief in the supernatural among the forum participants.

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...

How wonderful that must have been for you!!!!! I had a resident who always told me to say hi to her family (from heaven) and she always said her husband was right by the door under a light that is on the ceiling I always looked and said hi and she always squeezed my hand.........Not to long ago she joined her husband and the first time I worked after when I walked in the room the light blinked several times.........Thinking it was a bad light I kept working..And it stopped on my way out...The light blinked again so I looked up and said hello the light stopped I had such a peaceful feeling then and now whenever I think of her...

SissyLyn said:

This dosen't really qualify as a creepy ghost story...but more of an after death connection...you decide...its one of things that got me going to get into school...just got my LPN...one more year and I'll have my RN

I was a CNA for 8 years. My first job, actually the place that I got my training as a CNA through was a ltc...they had a ward called SCU...special care unit...it was a psycheward.

It was the scene of the most endearing and rewarding years. I worked with pt with schizophrenia, ocd, Huntington's chorea, and all types of mental and behavior disorders....I never had any problems...I took the time to get into their world and find out how to communicate with them.

We had one pt in particular that was brutal! He had lung cancer that had metastized to his brain. He was ONRY! We had to take his cowboy boots away from him because he would put them on , holler he was going to kick everyones @##!...and he would try. He also had a colostomy that he was fond of ripping off and throwing at the wall if you pushed him to hard or if he was just in a mood. This poor guy always looked awful, because and I don't blame them, dayshift was too affraid to shave, bath, or do too much with him. It took me several months, but he did let me in...he talked kindof like a robot...when he did talk..with me he acutally said "Ma'am" and so on. Anyway he would let me shave and clean him up either during my pm or night shift...we would talk about fishin and ridin horses and all kinds of things...the first time he threw his colostomy at the wall and told me to @##@! off Ma'am, I got him out of bed and made him clean up the mess...he actuall smiled when he got back in bed and said to me "Boy, you don't take my ##$! Ma'am, I like that about you...my mama never took it either!" He would onlly eat for me in the night, and it wasn't much...I could tell his end was near...He did manage to dump a chocolate milk shake over my head at one time...I don't know how to explain it, but I think he was more therapy for me than I for him....I know, a crazy for a Crazy...I was the joke of the staff..but I didn't care...anyway he passed away on a Friday...I had the weekend off and I had a feeling he wouldn't be there Monday...but that Friday night, before I knew he had passed I had the most wonderful visit from him...my dream was this

I found myself in a cafeteria....could not figure out why I was there, I was looking through the crowd and the people and just couldn't figure it out..suddenly I see "him, my pt" waving me over...I walked over and he looked fabulous...all duded up from head to toe, including his favorite cowboy boots...he had three trays of food in front of him...all his favorites...He grinned ear to ear and looked as I imagine he did before he was riddled with disease.....he grinned up at me and said "Howdy Ma'am...I just had to let you know I am okay.....after all these years I am okay...you were my friend and I will never forget if you won't" and he winked and went back to eating....I woke up and was smiling and crying at the same time....It was especially great to see him in clothes, he had to wear these one piece jumpsuits because he had a habbit at one time of getting naked and wondering around..

I think of him often and feel that this is probably the most important type of job we as nurses will do....just to be there for somone who has no one, and take the time to find a way to communicate...

Thanks for your time...Tammy, LPM

kbclary4 said:
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.

I feel the way you do. I'm home by myself, reading these scary stories and thinking "why am I doing this to myself". The bad thing is - I can't stop reading it!!! This fall I start only my second semester in nursing. And I'm becoming more and more convinced that maybe I should have went to college and get a nice 'ghost free' office job! :chuckle

Just joking, but not about being scared reading this stuff.

I love it............ghost free office job, how true...now we shall wait and see if anyone reports from offices.......oh believe me most are very true that you are reading .....

criscobaby said:
I feel the way you do. I'm home by myself, reading these scary stories and thinking "why am I doing this to myself". The bad thing is - I can't stop reading it!!! This fall I start only my second semester in nursing. And I'm becoming more and more convinced that maybe I should have went to college and get a nice 'ghost free' office job! :chuckle

Just joking, but not about being scared reading this stuff.

Um, I'm not a nurse yet. Not even in college lol. But I lurk alot and had to share my story. It's part of the reason I want to be a nurse.

My mom was dying (we didn't know it at the time) and was in our small, West Virginia hospital. She wasn't on any medication (at least none that would make her...well, out of it). But she started drifting in and out. She would stare and the window and say stuff like "I've never seen so much candy, can we really eat it all?" Then look at me and said sorry I must have been dreaming. This went on for a while. She seemed to be talking about stuff she did as a kid with her brothers.

As she got sicker we had to move her to a hospital in Charleston. I knew she kept talking about dying, but nobody would let me know. Once before they took her took to get a stent placed in her kidney she told me "be all that you can be." I laughed at first because we always used to make fun of those lame Army commercials. But then it dawned on me that it was her wish.

Well the nurses in the MICU had a huge effect on me. I loved them. When we recieved news that my mom had to have a heart transplant...and wouldn't survive the operation...I ran crying from the conference room. I ran all the way down to the bathroom at the entrance of the area. This beautiful, beautiful nurse followed me all the way there. I even pushed her I think (I barely remember) but she just hugged me and wiped my tears up. I told her my mom was going to die and she said "not on my shift". She held me up as we walked back to the conference room. The doctor had mentioned that they had taken my mom off morphine a while ago and was going to ask her if she wanted to be a put on life support.

I left the room and went straight to my mom and asked her myself. She smiled and said no. She always said to keep her alive for me, not matter what. But I honestly believe she saw enough to make her want to go home.

After that the nurses had a hard time with her, she kept pulling out her oxygen. I tried talking to her but was scared of her. I asked her if she was going to dye her hair again and she laughed and said "no, what's the point?"

A few days before she died a distant relative called up to say she had saw my grandmother pulling up a black Caddy to take my mother home. She was convinced she already had died.

The night she died I wasn't with her. At first I was angry but now I'm glad I wasn't. My mother requested my father be allowed to sleep in the room with her that night, because she knew she was going to die. He did and around 4 AM she pulled off her oxygen, said take care of Beth (me). Then looked at the ceiling and said she was going to heaven. Then it was over.

I'm such a wussy, I would fall apart if I had a real experience like you all had. But I do have these dreams with my mom and grandma where we're riding in a red Mustang, in the sun with our black hair (no more gray for them!) just a flowing. My mom got the Cadillac, I know when my time comes, I get the Mustang.

I made up my mind after witnessing how the nurses cared for my mother, that it was the path meant for me. All this happened 4 years ago, when I was 12. I know my mom's with Jesus and that makes me happy.

Thanks for the link on Near Death

Experiences !

Have enjoyed this thread alot!

We had a patient just the other last night. She had had severe abdominal pain all day, but it had stopped. She wasn't doing well though. Her sats had dropped, she'd only put out 10cc of urine in the past 8h, her BP was dropping rapidly, her extremeties were mottled, and she was getting more confused. She had an odd look in her eyes. They were half rolled back and her eyelids here half shut, but at the same time her eyes seemed to be popping out of her head. She kept asking "Is someone's at the door? Dear, go get the door, there's someone there." that then became "Who's that on the ceiling?" The consensus among the nurses was that angels were coming to pick her up. The doc's decided to start fluid recessitating her, and starting epi IV. She stopped talking shortly after this point. Finally, they decided to CT her, and her POA decided that all tx should be stopped because her bowels had perfed, and it was her time. We just made her comfortable and took turns holding her and telling her to rest, and close her eye and relax. I swear her breathing eased when I said a little prayer for her. She died just after I left.

So...this got my preceptor talking (who is the most level headed nurse I've ever met)...

When she was at another hospital on a medical floor (where most patients were quite stable) she was the primary nurse for this one older man. He wasn't very nice, actually she used the word evil. He had pushed his wife out a 15th story window a number of years earlier. He would betrate her and everyother nurse, or anyone that walked into the room. He didn't have a nice bone in his body. Anyway, he died a few weeks after admission, and everyone was relived that he was gone. In the week following his death, 10 patients died on the unit. Most of them were not expected to die, and many of them happened bizarrely. One man dropped while on the phone mid-sentence , another in the shower. I guess it stopped evenutally, but it creeped her out.

The next story was from when she was on the same unit. She had had a patient die in this one room. The next admission to the room, didn't seem to sleep. He tossed and turned all night, was never rested the next day. She finally asked him "What's going on? You don't seem to sleeping at night, what's wrong?" He said that everytime he closed his eyes he saw a man in the corner of the room at ceiling level, and it was creeping him out. So she asked him what did he look like. Well, the guy described the patient that had died to a tee, right down to the scar on his face.

When things like this happen. Can't you get the hospital minister to bless the room?

Another story shared with me...........

I used to be an engineer/maintenance man at a private hospital outside Eastern New Orleans. Once, when I was on an evening shift, I was walking toward the PICU, and I was approaching the passenger elevators, when an older woman & her preteen daughter of maybe 10 years old were getting off the elevator in somewhat of a hurry. She approached me, and asked me if there were any accidents or incidents of possible violent death with anyone employed there. I had to think on it for a second, because I knew one story, but I wanted to know why she asked before I told her. She said her daughter saw a black male wearing a plaid shirt with jeans and work boots, but he appeared to be transparent. My mind instantly said "Damn, it can't be." She also informed me that her daughter had an unusual talent for seeing spirits.

Thats when I told her about "Reggie" or "Larry",the name has been disputed over the years, falling to his death down the elevator shaft while the hospital was under construction. I didn't know him, but several other people including doctors,RN's, and fellow co workers have reported catching glimpses of him jumping into the elevator doors or hiding behind dark corners. Her story creeped me out because no one had ever actually described him before. We only knew he was a black man who died during construction. Also of note, he is famous for sending the elevator to a roof, which is only accessible by using a key. The happened to me personally a couple of times. I would always yell out," Hey Buddy, chill out!!", and the elevator would leave that floor on it's own an take you to basement level.

Another one tells of the mysterious black shape moving through the Day Surgery Unit an scaring the hell out of several housekeepers so bad, that they wouldn't set foot in it to clean it unless I or someone else was with them. I never experienced that one, but I believe them.

StatBlues said:
When things like this happen. Can't you get the hospital minister to bless the room?

I dont know if that would do anything. I mean they are not neseccerally (spelling?) sent by the devil.

schroeders_piano said:
The rose petals just started floating down from the ceiling. It was like someone was just showering the room with them. This has happened several times over the years.

My creepiest and scariest ghost story for me happened about a year ago. It really was more of a posession than a ghost story. I was helping another nurse with a patient that had lived a very hard life. It had numerous things going on with him from cardiac to renal failure. You name it, he had it going on. This man was very much afraid to die. Every time his heart monitor beeped, he would just go into a rage screaming, "Don't let me die! Don't let me die!" The other nurse and I found out why he didn't want to die. About 0200 his cardiac monitor starts alarming V-Tach. We both rush into the room. I am pulling the crash cart behing me. When I get to the room, the other nurse is completely white. This man was sitting about 2 inches above the bed and was laughing. His whole look completely changed. His eyes just had a look of pure evil on them and he had this evil smile on his face. He laughed at us and said, " You stupid b****es aren't going to let me die will you?" and he laughed again. We were kinda frozen. I did reach up and hit the Code Blue button and when I did the man went into V-fib. He crashed back onto the bed. We started coding him, but after 20 minutes it was called. 5 minutes after the code was called several of the code team is in the room cleaning up when this man sits straight up in the bed and says, " You let him die. Too bad." and then begins laughing. The man collapsed back to the bed. We heard a horrible, agonizing scream ( actually every patient in the unit that night commented on the scream), and then you could hear "don't let me die" being whispered throughout the unit. Everyone of the nurses that night was pale and scared. No body went anywhere by themselves. By morning the whispers of "don't let me die" were gone. The night shift nurses had a prayer service in the break room before we left for home and then we all had nightmares for weeks.

OMGosh.

Specializes in Picu, ICU, Burn.

I hate to believe that children are ever left behind as ghosts. That said we have a room in the PICU I used to work at that is reserved to accomodate families with a dying child. Older patients who have died in the room have reported seeing other children in the room with them. Younger children have been known to point and track unseen things. Even the most hardened skeptic on the unit will tell you there is a strange static feel to the room.

On my third day of orientation at this hospital my preceptor took me for a walk through the 'old hospital' Its all boardrooms and resident's sleeping quarters now. But it was the night shift and all the sleeping rooms were empty. When I asked her why she grinned from ear to ear. She told me stories of nuns floating and kids giggling and running down the halls, lights flickering, and shadows darting. We didn't see anything that night but you couldn't get me out of there fast enough. I could have killed her! Then I understood why our residents and fellows will find an empty room anywhere in the hospital before sleeping up there.

Takem said:
Um, I'm not a nurse yet. Not even in college lol. But I lurk alot and had to share my story. It's part of the reason I want to be a nurse.

My mom was dying (we didn't know it at the time) and was in our small, West Virginia hospital. She wasn't on any medication (at least none that would make her...well, out of it). But she started drifting in and out. She would stare and the window and say stuff like "I've never seen so much candy, can we really eat it all?" Then look at me and said sorry I must have been dreaming. This went on for a while. She seemed to be talking about stuff she did as a kid with her brothers.

As she got sicker we had to move her to a hospital in Charleston. I knew she kept talking about dying, but nobody would let me know. Once before they took her took to get a stent placed in her kidney she told me "be all that you can be." I laughed at first because we always used to make fun of those lame Army commercials. But then it dawned on me that it was her wish.

Well the nurses in the MICU had a huge effect on me. I loved them. When we recieved news that my mom had to have a heart transplant...and wouldn't survive the operation...I ran crying from the conference room. I ran all the way down to the bathroom at the entrance of the area. This beautiful, beautiful nurse followed me all the way there. I even pushed her I think (I barely remember) but she just hugged me and wiped my tears up. I told her my mom was going to die and she said "not on my shift". She held me up as we walked back to the conference room. The doctor had mentioned that they had taken my mom off morphine a while ago and was going to ask her if she wanted to be a put on life support.

I left the room and went straight to my mom and asked her myself. She smiled and said no. She always said to keep her alive for me, not matter what. But I honestly believe she saw enough to make her want to go home.

After that the nurses had a hard time with her, she kept pulling out her oxygen. I tried talking to her but was scared of her. I asked her if she was going to dye her hair again and she laughed and said "no, what's the point?"

A few days before she died a distant relative called up to say she had saw my grandmother pulling up a black Caddy to take my mother home. She was convinced she already had died.

The night she died I wasn't with her. At first I was angry but now I'm glad I wasn't. My mother requested my father be allowed to sleep in the room with her that night, because she knew she was going to die. He did and around 4 AM she pulled off her oxygen, said take care of Beth (me). Then looked at the ceiling and said she was going to heaven. Then it was over.

I'm such a wussy, I would fall apart if I had a real experience like you all had. But I do have these dreams with my mom and grandma where we're riding in a red Mustang, in the sun with our black hair (no more gray for them!) just a flowing. My mom got the Cadillac, I know when my time comes, I get the Mustang.

I made up my mind after witnessing how the nurses cared for my mother, that it was the path meant for me. All this happened 4 years ago, when I was 12. I know my mom's with Jesus and that makes me happy.

Hi Beth......I work in the MICU at CAMC in Charleston where you are referring to.....I've posted a couple of ghost stories on here from the unit...Glad to hear that you had a good experience with our nurses in the unit when you were having a horrible experience in you life with your mother dying.......Keep your goals set on becoming a nurse...you'll make a great one, and who knows...maybe you'll work in the MICU at Charleston!!!

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