Every nurse has a ghost story

[poostinkywink]

That’s according to my guilty pleasure - Haunted Hospitals! Love watching this on a Saturday evening with my cat and way too much chocolate. So, come on nurses, is their opening statement true?

And if so, what happened…👀

Or that the people who do ‘experience things’ are mistaken, very tired, nervy, superstitious, experiencing sleep paralysis, credulous and apt to take other people’s stories, remembering something from their childhood etc.

The poll is currently 40/60 with most nurses saying they haven’t experienced a spooky spookster at work. Haunted Hospitals lied to me 😫

I've never seen anything myself and don't really believe, but it was always a fun night shift chat at 4am. It always reminded me of sleepovers as a kid, sitting quietly at the nurses station listening to spooky stories!

I know a nurse who have seen things and not been able to move but thinks she was in a half dream/half awake at the time.

I still open windows when someone dies. Not sure I believe but I'm not taking any chances lol. When new hospitals started opening where you couldn't open the windows we used to joke the spirits would be floating around the ventilation system 😂

There is no spirit world. We are based in reality

I’m a nurse, this isn’t a ghost story, but it is definitely a woo one.

I had an elderly patient ask if she could sing for me while I was at her bedside; she started singing ‘One Song’ from Snow White (her own choice!), I got a bit tearful as my Nana used to sing that to me when I was little. Not exactly a popular or obvious choice!

Rang my Mum on my way home and told her, she went very quiet and eventually asked what time it had happened, turns out she had been driving nearby my grandparents’ old house/her childhood home (was meeting an old friend) and had a strong urge to stop at the house. The homeowners remembered her from when my grandparents sold the house to move in with us and welcomed her in, she went out to the garden and saw that they’d kept my Nana’s Snow White garden ornaments exactly where she had left them (10 years on!), as they believed they belonged with the house and didn’t want to move them. She’d picked one up and taken a photo to send to me, but hadn’t yet sent it, so she checked the timestamp and the photo was taken around the same time my patient had sung to me.

We are not usually very woo people, but we firmly believe my Nana visited both of us that day!

I had not had morphine yet at that time. I see bugs with morphine.

at that time I’d had blood pressure medication and fluids.

In my defence, I never said I believe in ghosts. Just that there was no reasonable explanation to them. Apart from maybe the second, I could have just been tired (which I already said).

Also my experiences were all in broad daylight, to the poster that said about stuff always happening in the dark.

I do think it's weird how some people are so keen to disprove what other people believe though. If they believe they've seen a ghost or they believe in a spirit world then hey ho. I'd like to think there's something for us after we go.....who knows.

I enjoy these threads though OP

@SisterAgatha — blood pressure meds. That might explain the weird things I saw in labour. Rushed to hospital with sudden high bp (200 something) Injection after injection, I could see people walking across the room but it was like watching a 1960s cartoon where they repeated the background. I was trying to ask who the man and woman were ( could see them clearly, can still describe them 40+ years later) Heard the very bossy midwife say ignore her, she’s hallucinating, it’s the drugs. I thought thats ok I’m just hallucinating, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

I’ve had a couple. Yes I will always open the window when someone dies so they don’t get stuck in the hospital!
I used to work on a ward that was fine in the day but one area that was very dark and felt creepy at night. We worked on the third floor. We would hear chairs moving on the floor above..but the floor above was unoccupied at night! Could have been fifth floor I suppose 🤷🏻‍♀️
There was a chap who had worked in the theatres for 40+ years and many members of staff claimed to have seen him wander theatres at night.
My weirdest one - I was doing placement in one of the other hospitals in the trust. Very old, Victorian built and it was originally a workhouse (part of that building is still used within the hospital). A call bell went off in the loo towards the end of a late shift (so twilight). I walked down the nightingale ward and thought it was a bit odd because I could see all my patients were in bed. When I got to the loo, the call bell switched to the emergency call bell…but there was no-one in there! Staff just shrugged and say ‘Hey it’s an old system’ but it made me twitchy! I was glad I didn’t do any night shifts on there.

Of all the places you could choose to 'haunt', why would you pick a hospital??

No wonder they're so overcrowded...

Erm.... you walked into a patient's room, saw it was filled with a mystery gas and the patient was unconscious. Then, instead of calling the emergency services about a possible poison gas leak and checking if the patient was even breathing, you.......walked out and pretended it never happened!

Hope I don't end up under the care of you and your pals!

Exactly!

I think I may have detached a retina rolling my eyes at that one 🙄

I am 44, but when I was a young teenager while still at school 16, and when I left, I was a bit of a care assistant doing, odd little jobs, like emptying commodes et cetera and cleaning them out.
anyway, this occasion in this particular care home because I worked in a couple everybody was downstairs. I was the last on the corridor because all I was doing was putting back the clean commode in the residence homes rooms while they were all eating their breakfast downstairs with the other staff. I started walking back towards the stairs and I could really hear footsteps behind me and they were getting closer and closer and my back of my hair on my back. It just stood up and I felt like I cannot even look around because I just knew instantaneously I just knew there was nobody there so I absolutely run really fast down the stairs and everybody else thought I was fucking mental but it freaked me out.
another care home there was this like corridor and a residence room where me and this other girl really hated going in it wasn’t the patients They were perfectly fine to talk to. They didn’t cause any problems but there was just a horrible feeling. I hated dropping the clean flannels and towels. I just literally dropped them and left but do you know what’s really weird as soon as the man and lady had died and a new person came into that room. It was almost like the atmosphere had totally changed. It was much brighter lighter and there was no like weird dark I hated it. It made me feel ill energy

Though you don't want someone bringing them when you are only in for a bunion operation and don't want to go home in a box!

I like the opening windows after a person has died thing personally. They did this in the hospital after FIL died and again in the nursing home when DF died. It seems to be a nice tradition and a way of paying respects to the person who has passed on. I found it comforting to think of their spirits being set free to go on to a better place now their suffering was over.

Not a nurse but when I was in my late teens I worked in a care home. Was stood in the door of one of the residents asking if she was ready to get up for the day when I saw a lady with a red top and black wool skirt on out of the corner of my eye. Turned around to say I’d help her in a minute and there was no one there. Only two other bedrooms on that floor and both ladies were wearing completely different colours. No way she’d have been able to disappear that quickly. I don’t believe in ghosts but if there’s a time when I think I saw one it was then.

The window opening thing sounds lovely. I'd find it comforting that the nurse cared about my loved one even after their physical needs had passed. Please don't stop doing that!

For those who work places where there's a bed where there are lots of sudden and mysterious deaths - please can you get them, the equipment and electrics thoroughly checked. I am a bit worried that these are just being attributed to spooky things...

My DM was a nurse and always said you must open a window for the spirit when someone died, so much so that when she passed away I had already made sure the window was open before the nurse came in. She always said that red and white flowers symbolised blood and bandages and should never be taken into hospital. She never spoke of any ghost experiences though.

My cousin is also a nurse, she saw a patient who was out of bed, just a very ordinary looking old lady in dressing gown and slippers. When she went into the bay to check she was back in bed and she had vanished, she checked the rest of the ward and there was no sign of her. On checking with colleagues they said “Oh you’ve seen Mary” the lady had passed away a long time previously, but she wasn’t frightening at all, they said everyone saw her at some point.

A friend who was a nurse worked in a care home which had been a fever hospital for children originally, residents often became distressed saying they could hear children crying and there was a corridor which nobody liked using, it was believed it used to lead to the mortuary.

Nope

The hospital I trained in had some spooky areas but only because a nurse had been murdered in one of the corridors about 5/6 yrs earlier by a porter .

This is still done now by many nurses, I did too but thankfully I'm not in a field of nursing now where I encounter patients who have died.

🤣🤣

🤣🤣
Fortunately, flowers are banned from wards now!
I don't think grapes are as dangerous!

Christ I was just reading these and my doorbell rang with a Domino's pizza. Made me jump 😂

My dad died at home 7 years ago. His bed was downstairs. After the undertakers came and took him away I opened the French doors to the garden. As far as family were concerned it was to let fresh air in. It did no harm if it also released his spirit.