Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Did I see a ghost? Or am I going mad?

327 replies

SnotRags · 02/02/2022 09:45

This happened on Monday. It’s been playing on my mind since.

I work in a largely unused community hospital. Some days, I’m the only person working there other than reception and a security guard. I run a clinic and my room is down the end of a corridor - remember there is nobody else in the entire building, all other rooms unused. Just mine at the end with its little light on.

So anyway, I don’t believe in ghosts, never have. However this corridor is bloody spooky sometimes and on a number of occasions I’ve thought I’ve seen someone walking around a corner only for there to be nobody there. I’ve heard the sound of a Zimmer frame walking towards my room, gone out to greet my patient and nobody is there. My cupboard door in my room has had a random rattling handle on a few occasion. A pair of scissors weirdly left my trolley and ended up on the floor (I didn’t see how, just heard the clatter on the floor and saw them lying there). Now, not saying those incidents are ghosts but it was unnerving so I asked security if we could put the waiting room TV on a music channel or something just to make the corridor less silent.

Anyway, on Monday I asked reception where I could find something I needed. She said “that sort of stuff is upstairs”. I asked how I got up there (didn’t even know there was a second floor!) and she said “you can’t, it’s locked”. So I asked security to let me up. He laughed and said “you going up there on your own? Because I’m not coming with you!” … long story short he unlocked the door to the stairs, I went up - was sorting through the stuff I needed and saw a nurse walk past the room I was in (not a shadow or Victorian dressed character, just an actual nurse). Thought nothing of it. Went back downstairs and as security was locking the door again I said “you know there is a nurse up there? Does she have a key for this door?” He said “nobody is up there” and locked the door. I said “I literally saw her! You can’t just lock her in!” He maintained nobody was up there and we walked back to reception where he told receptionist I’d seen “Julie”. Lots of dramatic faces and gasps, they tell me Julie is a ghost - had an aneurysm at work and died years ago.

As I said I don’t believe in ghosts but I can’t stop thinking about it! I definitely saw someone, they even described her and it was the same person I saw. Only thing I can think of is it’s an in joke and there is a nurse who works up there?? (But no patients go up there so what is she doing exactly?)

YABU - it’s clearly an in joke and the nurse works up there, the others say she’s a ghost to freak people out
YANBU - it’s a ghost, why would a uniformed nurse be working on an unused floor on her own?

It sounds ridiculous even to me as I’m writing this but I just can’t stop going over it in my head.

OP posts:
RobertSmithsLipstick · 03/02/2022 23:15

A time slip, perhaps?
I had a similar experience years ago, and it was only very gradually that the facts sank in.

Going by the facts, I saw somebody who didn't exist in the place that I saw her.

A ghost? I still don't know.

Rubyupbeat · 04/02/2022 03:00

F

Etak123 · 04/02/2022 03:36

@SnotRags

This happened on Monday. It’s been playing on my mind since.

I work in a largely unused community hospital. Some days, I’m the only person working there other than reception and a security guard. I run a clinic and my room is down the end of a corridor - remember there is nobody else in the entire building, all other rooms unused. Just mine at the end with its little light on.

So anyway, I don’t believe in ghosts, never have. However this corridor is bloody spooky sometimes and on a number of occasions I’ve thought I’ve seen someone walking around a corner only for there to be nobody there. I’ve heard the sound of a Zimmer frame walking towards my room, gone out to greet my patient and nobody is there. My cupboard door in my room has had a random rattling handle on a few occasion. A pair of scissors weirdly left my trolley and ended up on the floor (I didn’t see how, just heard the clatter on the floor and saw them lying there). Now, not saying those incidents are ghosts but it was unnerving so I asked security if we could put the waiting room TV on a music channel or something just to make the corridor less silent.

Anyway, on Monday I asked reception where I could find something I needed. She said “that sort of stuff is upstairs”. I asked how I got up there (didn’t even know there was a second floor!) and she said “you can’t, it’s locked”. So I asked security to let me up. He laughed and said “you going up there on your own? Because I’m not coming with you!” … long story short he unlocked the door to the stairs, I went up - was sorting through the stuff I needed and saw a nurse walk past the room I was in (not a shadow or Victorian dressed character, just an actual nurse). Thought nothing of it. Went back downstairs and as security was locking the door again I said “you know there is a nurse up there? Does she have a key for this door?” He said “nobody is up there” and locked the door. I said “I literally saw her! You can’t just lock her in!” He maintained nobody was up there and we walked back to reception where he told receptionist I’d seen “Julie”. Lots of dramatic faces and gasps, they tell me Julie is a ghost - had an aneurysm at work and died years ago.

As I said I don’t believe in ghosts but I can’t stop thinking about it! I definitely saw someone, they even described her and it was the same person I saw. Only thing I can think of is it’s an in joke and there is a nurse who works up there?? (But no patients go up there so what is she doing exactly?)

YABU - it’s clearly an in joke and the nurse works up there, the others say she’s a ghost to freak people out
YANBU - it’s a ghost, why would a uniformed nurse be working on an unused floor on her own?

It sounds ridiculous even to me as I’m writing this but I just can’t stop going over it in my head.

Either an in joke or group belief. It happens a lot when stories about ghosts go around. You’re probably just overtired hehe Remember-there’s no such thing as ghosts! 🤣
Etak123 · 04/02/2022 03:36

@RobertSmithsLipstick

A time slip, perhaps? I had a similar experience years ago, and it was only very gradually that the facts sank in.

Going by the facts, I saw somebody who didn't exist in the place that I saw her.

A ghost? I still don't know.

🤣🤣🤣
ElftonWednesday · 04/02/2022 04:30

Peter Ackroyd in 'London the Biography' talks about how certain streets have ley lines but also morphic resonance (if it's that) and when I've worked in Victoria - in Victoria Street I often get a sorrowful feeling. Apparently there was a women's mental institute there, friend told me this after I got this feeling though

I've felt suddenly terribly sad, slightly sick and just "off" around London Bridge station, especially Tooley Street. I first noticed this 20+ years ago.

LifesABotch · 04/02/2022 06:35

Don't know, and might be missing the point, but surely the security guard should have gone up after you reported seeing someone up there?!

SnotRags · 04/02/2022 06:59

But I don’t want to be a ghost :-( I’ve never seen the ocean!

OP posts:
BreakingUpWithMyPhone · 04/02/2022 07:18

Oh no, I spend enough time at work now without wandering around there for the rest of eternity.

CorsicaDreaming · 04/02/2022 09:00

*@SecretWitch
*
Other times, especially when I’m alone, I can hear very faint music that sounds like 1930’s dance tunes..

That just sounds so lovely and quite romantic - have you found much out about the history of your house?

I always think the NT house in Devon called Coleton Fishacre has that same lovely 1930s vibe - and could certainly have a ghost or two!

CorsicaDreaming · 04/02/2022 09:03

@AuntyJanet

Interesting that a lot of people have had experiences in places with a “nice” feeling about them.

I briefly lived in an old property where one of the previous residents had cut his own throat in the early 1900s. It took place in what was my kitchen. Despite being aware of it, the house had a really lovely feeling about it, never felt scary despite living alone there and I didn’t experience anything.

My friend lived in an old farmhouse when she was a child where a former owner had shot someone dead in their kitchen. And you could still see the bullet hole in the floorboard.

That house also had a really nice feeling I loved going to see her there and happily stayed overnight

Idolovetrees · 04/02/2022 09:20

I wasn’t scared, that’s the thing … I wasn’t scared because I genuinely thought it was a nurse going about her business. She was as real as I was! She wasn’t transparent or floating or dressed in a Victorian uniform etc etc … just a woman working!

Makes you wonder if more ghosts walk around us everyday and we don't realise it. Maybe there are ghosts in our supermarkets.

InisnaBro · 04/02/2022 09:27

@LifesABotch

Don't know, and might be missing the point, but surely the security guard should have gone up after you reported seeing someone up there?!
Which supports the idea that it’s in a lazy or clock-watching security guard’s interests to put about the ghostly tale of poor dead Julie the spectral nurse — if anyone reports someone upstairs that shouldn’t be, it’s an apparition, so he doesn’t have to trek upstairs and go searching for intruders.
EmmaH2022 · 04/02/2022 09:41

I love Peter Ackroyd's work, his book The English Ghost is also terrific.

DennisNoelKavanaghOffTwitter · 04/02/2022 09:51

You completely saw a ghost, there is no doubt in my mind.

Zilla1 · 04/02/2022 10:02

Old community hospitals and secure residential children's hospitals are hotbeds for often happy ghosts.

InisnaBro · 04/02/2022 10:21

@EmmaH2022

I love Peter Ackroyd's work, his book The English Ghost is also terrific.
Roger Clarke’s Natural History of Ghosts is also good on the changing social history of ghost ‘types’.

I find cultural stats on belief in ghosts interesting — French people are statistically extremely unlikely to believe in them, for instance. Only 13% of a big 2000 survey said they believed in ghosts, compared to over one third of people in the UK in 2017.

There have been interesting studies done on the relationship between social class, religious belief or educational level and belief in ghosts.

deleteasappropriate · 04/02/2022 10:40

@DennisNoelKavanaghOffTwitter

You completely saw a ghost, there is no doubt in my mind.
@DennisNoelKavanaghOffTwitter - I agree! Love a good ghost spotting story
StrychnineIntheSandwiches · 04/02/2022 10:48

@RobertSmithsLipstick

A time slip, perhaps? I had a similar experience years ago, and it was only very gradually that the facts sank in.

Going by the facts, I saw somebody who didn't exist in the place that I saw her.

A ghost? I still don't know.

Oh I love a good timeslip story. They're my favourite genre of ghostly tale. I seem to remember one about a London train station that has a café that no longer exists but sometimes appears as it did in the 1940s (Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard are probably in it giving one another big cow's eyes). And Bold Street in Liverpool has a lot of time slip stories linked to it.
DePfeffoff · 04/02/2022 10:53

Of course you didn't see a ghost.

EmmaH2022 · 04/02/2022 11:22

Strycnine that post made me laugh with the Celia and Trevor remark! 😂

I didn't know that about Bond Street unless I knew and forgot!

Interesting re the cafe, do you know which station?

Doodledeedum · 04/02/2022 11:29

Has anyone got a photo of Julie? Maybe see if you can find it and see if it's her

CounsellorTroi · 04/02/2022 11:33

I’ve listened to some episodes of Uncanny and found them fascinating. I did feel with the Brooklyn poltergeist it was the flatmate and her boyfriend though. The boyfriend did say at the beginning he didn’t want her there.

That awful unearthly wailing they use to segue from one bit to the next Grin

BellatrixOnABadDay · 04/02/2022 12:13

I love Uncanny- I didn't particularly like the Brooklyn poltergeist one though.

Have particularly enjoyed the Luibeilt bothy one, the evil in room 611 and the return of Elizabeth Dacre.

The Luibeilt one made me feel properly sick when I was listening to it!

ImprobablePuffin · 04/02/2022 12:22

I've enjoyed this thread no end. Shame about posters like Etak who only comment to shit on people for fun but hey ho

Thanks OP

JustOneCup · 04/02/2022 12:25

Oh poor Julie 😞