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

[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.

I must be more of a rationalist than I thought as my main reaction to this is - why is the NHS/provider of this service - using an entirely empty building that houses only one practitioner who then needs a receptionist AND a security guard. How is this cost effective. And why is there stuff she needs in a second floor that isn’t apparent from the outside of the building ….

@HaggisBurger I had exactly the same thought! Though I do believe in ghosts so the op probably did see one.

Oh it’s a massive waste of resources. They keep trying to shut it down for obvious reasons but the locals complain.

So as you drive upto it it looks like it’s all on one floor but the 2nd floor is set back from the front so you don’t see it from the front if that makes sense? It’s probably visible from the back but I’ve never been around there.

@Toddlerteaplease - I do too - certainly that there is more around us than the physical world. So I was surprised where my mind went with it.

@SnotRags

Oh it’s a massive waste of resources. They keep trying to shut it down for obvious reasons but the locals complain.

So as you drive upto it it looks like it’s all on one floor but the 2nd floor is set back from the front so you don’t see it from the front if that makes sense? It’s probably visible from the back but I’ve never been around there.

Gotcha. DON’T GO ROUND THE BACK THO’!

@HaggisBurger

I must be more of a rationalist than I thought as my main reaction to this is - why is the NHS/provider of this service - using an entirely empty building that houses only one practitioner who then needs a receptionist AND a security guard. How is this cost effective. And why is there stuff she needs in a second floor that isn’t apparent from the outside of the building ….

Same!

Are you able to Google old newspaper reports and/or death records? A death of a nurse like that is likely to have merited at least a mention in a local paper.

Might be worth doing a bit of digging, just to see if there's a credible backstory or if your colleagues are having a bit of fun with you. A general Google search or a look online at your county Records Office would hopefully come back with at least a note of a name, and possibly more.

That's not to say that, even if there is a record of a nurse called Julie who met a tragic early death at work, it's definitely a ghost - but it's a place to start.

I tend to keep an open mind. Often these things can have a rational explanation, but not always. I've worked in places that were supposedly haunted. Once was a case of particularly enthusiastic mice behind an old boarded-up fireplace, but there were certainly others without any similar explanation. One of the sites where I work now has definitely got an eerie vibe (and I felt it before I had any knowledge about what had happened there (Civil War cruel butchery)) - they've lost several cleaners, who fled in the evening and never returned; one even left the Hoover running all night when she dropped everything and fled, vowing never to return (and she never did).

Let us know if you find anything out, or if other stuff happens at work. It's all very interesting.

Best wishes to you. x

I don’t understand how there is a big medical facility not used, except for you.
Aside from that, yes, a ghost. I believe, I saw one when I was about 14. She was in our house, came when I was about 13. All kinds of things happened and everyone thought we were crazy until they heard her too.

The upstairs is simply used for storage.

The building was a functioning hospital a few years ago with wards, ICU, minor injuries unit etc so the upstairs is just full of all the stuff that they used to use. It’s a really odd set up. Not sure what they’ll do with it in the end as it can’t carry on the way it is.

I would've shit myself though

But why? (Genuine question, I'm not trying to be snarky ...)
Things that we don't quite understand happen all the time, and surely this is just one more - though it sounds as if the other staff are having a high old time working themselves into a state over it

@REP22

Are you able to Google old newspaper reports and/or death records? A death of a nurse like that is likely to have merited at least a mention in a local paper.

Might be worth doing a bit of digging, just to see if there's a credible backstory or if your colleagues are having a bit of fun with you. A general Google search or a look online at your county Records Office would hopefully come back with at least a note of a name, and possibly more.

That's not to say that, even if there is a record of a nurse called Julie who met a tragic early death at work, it's definitely a ghost - but it's a place to start.

I tend to keep an open mind. Often these things can have a rational explanation, but not always. I've worked in places that were supposedly haunted. Once was a case of particularly enthusiastic mice behind an old boarded-up fireplace, but there were certainly others without any similar explanation. One of the sites where I work now has definitely got an eerie vibe (and I felt it before I had any knowledge about what had happened there (Civil War cruel butchery)) - they've lost several cleaners, who fled in the evening and never returned; one even left the Hoover running all night when she dropped everything and fled, vowing never to return (and she never did).

Let us know if you find anything out, or if other stuff happens at work. It's all very interesting.

Best wishes to you. x

Not Chillingham castle is it?

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!

I think it was a ghost.

Please look into history of the building and let us know 😊.

Very interesting!

I don't think I believe in ghosts but I'm intrigued as to what it could have been. Definitely see if you can see her again, on camera if possible.

That has to be a colleague dressed up. Give some warning and go up again with a camera.

@Cissyandflora

That has to be a colleague dressed up. Give some warning and go up again with a camera.

There are old uniforms stored up there (old as in used, but still current) so could be.

I’m pretty sure you live near me and I know this hospital!

There’s been loads of strange goings on and it’s now locked. The worst was when all the electrics were off and one bedside buzzer from an abandoned bed just went off.

I don’t believe in ghosts but I wouldn’t go there either…!

There are lots of old hospitals like this - not enough nurses to justify a small overnight unit being kept open, but can’t close due to local campaign etc so small services continue to be used until they can get permission to properly close it.

Usually v old Victorian buildings, no longer suitable for wheelchairs etc

@SnotRags not Chillingham Castle, no. It's in Hampshire.

Ah the one I’m thinking of is south west

Honestly, OP, from what you say you were in the prime state for a minor trick of the mind — insomniac, working almost alone (apart from a superstitious security guard) in a spooky deserted hospital full of long corridors, odd noises made more obvious in the general silence, all equipment left as it was when fully functional etc.

You were already a bit unnerved from tiredness, the spookiness of the deserted building, discovering there was an upstairs you didn’t know about, the security guard refusing to go up with you etc, so you ‘saw’ something that wasn’t there, and had it reinforced by the dramatic responses of the reception and security afterwards. (If it was a functional hospital until recent, with wards and an ICU, lots of people will have died there, surely, not just ‘Julie’ the ghostly nurse.)

Serious lack of sleep can cause vivid hallucinations —when DS was a non-sleeping newborn, mine were frightening.

The fact that the security guard refused to go upstairs with you also reminded me of the ‘haunted stockroom’ on the top floor of a shoe shop I worked in as a teenager — the ‘ghost’ was John, a former employee who’d died in a fire in the 50s and who shot shoeboxes off shelves across the room and was a source of terror to the young Saturday workers. He was, of course, a total fiction invented years earlier by older longterm staff to provide an excuse for not having to trek up several flights of stairs from the shop floor. Your security guard is just lazy and canny.

I believe you saw a spirit! I did when I was little but as an adult my rational brain questions what I saw but I do believe in the unexplained. Do go back up and let us all know if you see, hear or feel anything otherworldly.

Gosh I'm so intrigued. I'd love to know where it is but appreciate that you won't want to out your location.

I'm on the fence, but definitely open minded. Interesting explanation about her being 'as real as you'. I've never had any of these experiences but have always imagined them to have a sort of ethereal quality.

I’m going to insist they let me back up tomorrow, I’ll record it all just in case but very much doubt I’ll be the first person in the world to ever catch a ghost on camera 😂