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“Feels Wrong And Backwards”: 50 Hospital Workers Share Creepy Moments That Left Them Speechless
Humans have a complicated relationship with mortality. Even though we all know that no one is immortal, even the more abstract reminders of that, graveyards, a casket or even a hospital, are capable of creating unpleasant, sometimes morbid feelings.
Some asked hospital workers to share the creepiest, weirdest and just most bizarre thing they’ve ever seen and the internet delivered. Be warned, some of these are not the most pleasant to read about. So settle in as you scroll through, upvote the most interesting and be sure to add your own thoughts and stories to the comments below.
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#1
A kid who's flannel shirt was literally welded to his chest because he fell into a campfire, and his parents waited a day or so to bring him to ER so they could finish their camping trip. Kid was in shock so no crying or screaming. He was airlifted to a burn hospital in Houston.
After 4 years working weekend graveyard shift at a major hospital emergency room, I could give you about 100 examples.
RELATED:
#2
I’ve used to be an Army combat medic, now I’m an firefighter/medic. I’ve seen some things. The oddest one was, doing a transport from a horrible car crash/rollover. Jaws of life and all to get this women out. We kept her stable the whole wait to the hospital. I personally held her hand as she was gurney inside to the doctors. I had a feeling she wouldn’t make it. She lost a metric-ton of blood. After the handoff and paper work/documentation which was fairly quick. I went to the vending machine to get a much needed caffeine boost. As I’m walking out the ER doors- I swear the same women we just wheeled in, is walking out of the ER in full clothing/ no blood or damage to herself. She looks me in the eyes and gives a smile! I freak the f**k out!! Check back with the nurse station- where she says I’m crazy- the doctors declared her dead 10 minutes ago……….
The Majestic Opossum 5 months ago
Pretty sure her spirit was telling you thanks for your kindness on her way out...
#3
Working at a skilled nursing facility. Came in for my shift and walked past a patient’s room…Asked when his ng tube ( nasal tube to stomach for feeding)was put in. There wasn’t one. He had a worm coming out of his nose reaching down to his chest when we went back to check.
#4
I once had a patient who was an inmate (unspeakable crimes against his daughter) come in because he clawed one of his eyes out, and MOST of the other one to stop seeing what he did. We had him in restraints because he kept trying to finish the job. The way he looked and talked still haunt me to this day.
Snazzy Smurf 5 months ago
A delayed conscience is something else. It can haunt for an eternity.
#5
I worked in the kitchen, so I was the lowly peon delivering food trays. Delivered to one guy who had a horrendously infected foot. Most of the toes were necrotic and black and the rest of the foot wasn't doing much better. I wouldn't be surprised if he was waiting on amputation. His dietary requirements were Diabetic, so it was likely. The room smelled AWFUL.
Anyway, these rooms are small, with typically two beds in them. Because of the smell from his infection, the other bed is empty. I still have to squeeze by the foot of his bed, and as I'm paying attention to the tray so I don't knock it into equipment, I accidentally brush my leg against his infected foot that he has sticking out of the covers and hanging off the bed. His big toenail comes off onto my leg. It's just, stuck to my leg. We look at each other in horror. I clear my throat, ask my usual questions, clear and adjust his table, give him his tray and wish him a good day. I leave calmly, and then run to the nurse's station and ask for help getting this dude's entire necrotic toenail (with bonus flesh) off my *f*****g leg.*
The nurse who got it off soaked that portion of my pantleg in some disinfectant liquid that smelled like it could take the paint off a car.
#6
Hospital Security Officer here. Had to check in a little little kid to our psych unit once. He was the sweetest little thing. Found out after that he was cutting kittens up with scissors.
#7
My contribution: I’m on an on call victim support team, so I often end up at the hospital at odd hours. This was around 4:00am. I’d just finished doing my thing, and I was sitting in my car in the parking lot collecting myself and writing notes for my report when I see someone out of the corner of my eye. I clearly saw the blue of a hospital gown, but when I looked over, no one was there. I figure I’m just tired and riding out the adrenaline of the call, so I go back to doing my thing. After a few minutes, I once again spot something out of the corner of my eye. This time when I look up, someone is there.
Standing on the curb in front of the hospital, I see a man in his mid to late 50s, thin hair up top, no facial hair. He’s wearing a hospital gown and holding on to something metal, but from my angle, I couldn’t tell if it was an IV pole or a crutch. He wasn’t leaning on it. He had this expression on his face of wide-eyed shock with his mouth slightly open, like he was trying to think of something to say and had totally stalled out.
At this point I start glancing around for staff or something, because this man doesn’t look like he should be outside alone. His skin is a messed up pale color, and he’s barefoot. I can’t see his feet well with the shadows, but his hand and fingers look bruised. As I’m looking around for staff, our eyes meet, and I know he sees me. I start thinking, okay, this guy can’t wander around alone, half-naked and unmasked. I have huge chills, but I turn to grab my mask and get out of my car to help guide him back inside. When I look up again, he’s gone.
I looked all over the parking lot for him, but he was gone. There’s no way he could have vanished like that in the split second it took me to grab my mask.
I don’t know how to explain this without sounding dramatic, but my skin crawled when he looked at me. He looked like a guy who was slowly realizing he’d died and didn’t know what to do now. I still think about it.
#8
Worked in an ER for a long time on overnights while I was in the air force. All of the housekeepers would talk about the lady in the red dress. They would often see her down in the basement where the morgue was. We would have to go down there to the place where they did sterilizations to drop stuff off, and that was right by the morgue. No one ever saw anything.
One day, a patient came in for a knife cut on his finger and need stitches. Young guy, no history of mental illness or anything. He was telling me how it was difficult finding how to get to the ER and ended up in the basement, until a nice lady in a red dress told him to go the other way and up the stairs and he found us.
We believed the housekeepers after that haha.
Marnie 5 months ago
My sister worked as a nurse's aid. After starting at a new nursing home, she saw a little old woman go into the bathroom, but didn't come out after some minutes. My sister went to check on her and the woman wasn't there. My sister figured she had just missed her coming out. But then it happened two more times. She brought it up to two of her coworkers and they said, "Yes, that's Martha. She died three years ago."
#9
Mexican nurse here, the worst one was a F in her 70s came to the ER she referd her leg hurt, she had a bandage above her ankle, she said she had cut with glass 3 weeks ago, so she put the bandage and thats all she did, so i take off her bandage and she has 2 small cuts, imagine from the cut, but as a i look at it more she has 2 little white things moving, i notice those are small larve, im shocked at this point but she says she feel a lot of tingling in ther leg so i squeeze a little the leg and like 50 larves come out, they say probably a fly laid eggs on her wound and she didnt notice, they had to take her to the OR because the holes were really deep, i squoze a 2nd time and another 50 larves came out, so thats the worse one.
#10
Anti-vaxxers fighting for their lives for 3 weeks then still saying COVID and the vaccine is a hoax.
#11
I'm a non-clinician but I worked in the ED of a large hospital for about 7 months (on process improvement not patient care), and I would say the creepiest thing were the BCU patients, including detoxing patients who were just out of their mind by the time they made it into the ED. These circumstances often require security bc these patients are out of control of themselves. And of course that can get violent and often does.
Nurses, BTW, are freaking HEROES! In my time, I witnessed this tiny little nurse jump on top of a coded patient and manually give him chest compressions for nearly 3 minutes after he coded on the table, and she brought him back! If you ever see that IRL, it takes A LOT of strength and effort to do chest compressions for any length of time (try it, it's physically exhausting) and he was so big and she was so small! But she saved him!
#12
One of the creepiest things (if you are a kind/positive person) is seeing nursing aids or nurses treat people poorly that are really suffering or on death's door. The occasional lack of humanity can be eerie.
#13
Not hospital but care home. We had a guy who used to call out to us at all hours of the night because he wanted his wife. He used to shout "darling? Darling?!" In the most mournful way, almost like howling.. when you went into him he usually thought you were his wife. She was his world, and had died over a decade ago. It was very sad, and sometimes when I dream, I can hear him calling her.
#14
I haven't seen a lot since I am a labor and delivery nurse and mostly do bringing people into the world, not the other way around, but helping deliver term babies that have passed before birth, espically the ones that may have been gone for a while, always feels wrong and backwards.
#15
After working as an RN for a few years, I learned to always trust a patient that expresses fears or a belief that they “are going to die.” That feeling of doom usually precedes some sort of life threatening emergency. Sudden cardiac arrest or a pulmonary embolism are usually the fatal culprits behind an ominous feeling of imminent death.
#16
Dead mouse in patient's shoe.
She had neuropathy in her feet and couldn't feel anything, including weeping ulcers covering both feet, gangrenous toes and apparently a less-than-recently deceased mouse.
A few small amputations, 2 months of IV antibiotics and many wound dressings later, all was well again.
There should be a Foot Watchers group for diabetics to check each other's feet using the buddy system. Neuropathy is serious business.
Snazzy Smurf 5 months ago
Wow!!!! Preventative and standard health care for everyone should not be up for debate.
#17
C*VID 19, first wave. I was working at a tertiary care hospital in Mumbai, in the emergency ICU (as a psychiatry resident employed for emergency work) when we didn't understand the disease, and when people were dropping dead like flies.
Saw patients who came in die within 24 hours of their stay in the ICU. Saw a few patients who were interacting just fine in one shift lie dead in the next. A few patients were covered up and kept on their beds for hours, or kept on stretchers in a corner of the ICU because the mortuary was full.
Maybe not the creepiest tale out here, but was creepy and heartbreaking enough for me.
Sara Frazer 5 months ago (edited)
The dread, horror and anxiety of the early covid days will never leave me. My dear husband has been in the medical field for about a decade now; covid has changed how we interact with the world. Very much moreso for him, but I was there as he had to come home after moving deceased people, as he was with people who took their last breath...I held him as he cried. These moróns who deny it or downplay it.... It's infuriating beyond belief
#18
I got a fast bleep (ie. drop everything you’re doing and attend this emergency please) one night to a side room on the ward to find no patient in the bed. Was just about to leave the room and go back out to the nurses station, where there had been a bit of a hubbub when I’d dashed past the first time, when something caught my eye.
Looked up to see a face with wide, slightly wild “psych eyes” peering down at me from a gap in the ceiling tiles. She was a lady waiting for a bed in the psych hospital who’d clearly thought the ceiling was the best place to hide from the people trying to poison her.
Honestly can’t think of another occasion that I’ve been quite so terrified.
Worst thing was that I had to walk (well, dash) back out underneath her to get help from the nurses and security to get her down.
#19
Every hospital has a couple rooms super close to the nurses station where you put patients who needed extra eyes on them. So either crazy due to d***s/dementia/etc or dying.
The first hospital I worked was special though. I'm a skeptical person, but I saw dozens of patients react to "Watchers" in those rooms.
The Watchers came in 2 flavors:
1. Patients who were detoxing from d***s/alcohol, or violent and unpleasant toward staff would talk about a menacing shadow figure who was there to keep them in line. There were a couple frequent flyers who would a*****t staff during admissions to other rooms, but not the Watcher rooms.
2. Patients who were dying, confused, or experiencing non-violent mental health issues would see also see a shadow figure, but it was calming and protective. I had patients talk about how the shadow kept them from falling out of bed, picked up the call light if it was dropped, all sorts of little things like that.
It didn't happen with every patients, but enough to make me wonder....
#20
You guys need a little levity after reading all these ....
Worked the ER as an AF medic, Eglin AFB hospital, Ft. Walton Beach, FL; resort area, pristine white beaches, sport fishing ....
Took a body down to the morgue with another medic and shift supervisor. He had the drawer assignment and paperwork responsibility. We pulled open the drawer and there was a monstrously large sailfish that could hardly fit without its body curved and sail pushed down.
We stood there in surprise ... um, procedure? No idea. The NCO said, "It would be a very good idea not to remember this. I'll deal with it in the morning. Let's see, how about this drawer?"
Later it was rumored it belonged to one of the senior surgeons.
#21
My mom had a patient who scooped his eyeball out with a plastic spoon because it was bothering him.
#22
My wife is transitioning away from working nights at an assisted living facility. She said for about a week after one resident passed on the memory care side all of the nursing assistants would randomly hear someone with a walker moving around (walkers make an extremely distinctive noise when one walks with one), except they have sensors everywhere so they know when someone's up and every time nobody was up, and they could not find anybody that was up upon walking around looking for the source of it.
She also told me that this job has convinced her that ghosts are real.
WalterWhiteSavannah 5 months ago
Very early in my career in Healthcare at woman had passed away the evening before I came in early at 3am to cover for night shift who left early. At that point only one patient had ever passed during my time so hearing that came as a shock already even though I know it was going to happen eventually. About 4am I was doing safety checks and this barely mobile woman sat bolt upright, pointed, and screamed "BEHIND YOU!" It scared the absolute hell out of me and I was so relieved when morning shift came in at 7am and I was no longer alone in a giant dark building. Same night I could swear I kept seeing shadows of feet in the crack under various doors too. Still freaks me out remembering it.
#23
I don't have a single event. But from working nights in the operating room of a level one trauma center you run into many awful things. Including the worst of society.
But something that sticks with you is seeing a severely injured person in complete shock. Not like WOW my arm is off, but like body shock.
They're barely aware of the world around them. Eerily calm. Pale, sluggish. Not at all bothered by the bustling room around them.
I remember one person who had a ruptured aortic aneurysm, and due to a communication breakdown we had incised before the patient was asleep (surgeons get tunnel vision in moments like that) and the patient was like "hey that hurts" very chill, almost bored. It was wild.
#24
I went to the morgue to do a temperature check and one of the bodies had sat up on its own, but it was at a 45 degree angle, so at first glance it looked like it was in the process of sitting up. S**t gives me nightmares.
#25
Sadly, every ER doc that has worked for a while has seen a child die of asthma. Doing everything you can and they just get bluer and bluer and die is terrible. Anything involving children is hard.
Delta Dawn 5 months ago
The first corpse I ever saw was a child that died of asthma. My own asthmatic kids are annoyed that I always make sure they have an inhaler on hand, but that kind of memory stays with you
#26
I spent 16 yrs working mental health and consequently saw a ton of traumatizing s**t. One of the worst was a woman who stabbed herself in the wrist with a shard of plastic from a clock she broke in the doctor’s office. She then proceeded to run laps around the unit spraying blood literally everywhere… the floors, ceiling and walls were just covered in blood. My brain has blocked out some of the details but I think she may have been naked from stripping her clothes off. We ultimately had to wrap a blanket around her and take her down so we could stop the bleeding. I felt terrible for all of the other patients that witnessed this.
Lyoness 5 months ago (edited)
Psych wards can be terrifying. The worst thing I saw was a teenage boy who'd scratched his face so badly blood was running down his chin and dripping on the floor. When he saw the blood he started screaming and had to be restrained by the 2 security guards on the ward. He later tried to strangle a nurse and there ended up being 2 full time cops assigned to his door. Apparently he'd been admitted involuntarily after attacking his mother. He used to scream all night. Sometimes I still have nightmares about him. Edit for spelling.
#27
When I was an intern (radiologic technologist), I ended up having to take the portable x-ray machine down to the morgue to x-ray 3 garbage bags full of chopped up body parts that had been found buried on a farm in the area. This was done to determine what was in which bag and whether there were any bullets pointing to cause of death. Had to physically move these squishy bags with a two week old corpse in them in order to put the plate underneath them, and got a face full of rotting air from the bag. Some things you can't un-smell.
But hey, I had the best damned case study in class, complete with a news report video to include as part of the "patient history".
#28
I've worked in a locked mental health unit for 12 years and I've seen some s**t but a lot of it seems quite common place at this point. The one that stands out for me, though, was when I cared for a known psychopath and convicted m******r.
There was just nothing at all in his eyes. There's no other way to describe it. I would say something innocuous and he would go silent, all facial expression would leave, and he would just look right into you. I'm a large man and I've rarely felt intimidated but this guy made ice run through my veins. The only time I've ever felt this way about a person, is when I watched the documentary about The Iceman, Richard Kuklinski.
I would ask him if I somehow offended him, apologize, and try to avoid whatever it was in the future. I actually managed to build a pretty solid rapport with him (completely out of self preservation) based on mutual respect. He was even a good enough sport to warn me that there may be uncapped h****n syringes in his personal belongings.
I stated to my team when he was discharged that I was sure he would k**l someone else and a few years later he did. Thankfully I'll never have to see him again.
#29
EMT for the ambulance service. We have two hospitals in our county. One is a general hospital and the other in level II trauma center that most people go to. Even then last week both ERs were filled to the point where the general hospital told us they could no longer accept patients due to being filled up and the level II would only take patients under certain circumstances. While my partner and I were in the ER we kept noticing a man laying in a bed out in the open that looked so peaceful as he was sleeping. We found out from a RN we knew that he had died from unknown circumstances but they had nowhere to put his body. The morgue was full and no one could track down the county coroner. All they could do was was make it look like he was sleeping so the other patients didn't take notice. I thought it was very unethical but the RN kept reminding me that they had absolutely no room for his body unless they put in the janitors closet.
Robert Beveridge 5 months ago
...and if they put him there, someone in administration would have tried to put him to work.
#30
1340 pound female patient I worked with for about a year. Got her down to 680 or so before she left.
#31
I was a supervisor over the admissions department of the emergency room in a VERY small hospital in a rural area. I had two people call in one night so I had to go in and work by myself. Around 3am, EMS arrives with a patient that shouldn’t have been brought to our hospital. She was DOA. Being in the admissions department meant I had to do all the paperwork when patients came to the hospital. I walked into the room with my clipboard and saw a woman on a stretcher with a dog chain around her neck. She had claw marks all around the chain where it looks like she had tried to get the chain off. EMS stated that in the process of hanging herself, she changed her mind but it was too late. Gave me chills.
Unholy Diver 5 months ago
Never even thought of this. Now I'm wondering how often this is the case. While hanging, after swallowing the pills, mid-fall, forearm sliced open... After the point of no return you start regretting it, and you did it to yourself. D**n.
#32
It was just a bucket. They found him after he had been floating in his bathtub for 2 months, he fit in a bucket.
#33
An arm fell out of the refrigerator when I was putting some pathology specimens away.
It was late at night so I didn’t turn the light on when I entered the room. I just open the fridge door. And this hand starts coming at me, then forearm, then the rest of the arm just rolled right out.
#34
I worked IT for a hospital, and was down working on one of the ER computers when they wheeled in a homeless man that was screaming. They were trying to get his socks off. The nurse pulled off the sock on his right foot...and all of the skin with it. The most horrendous smell immediately spread throughout the whole area. I never found out what happened. I showered for a solid hour after getting home.
#35
Walked into the morgue one time to find someone holding a guys eye in her hand, still attached to the bodies head by the nerve, and was removing the cornea for a donor transplant into a living person. I looked outside the door, leaned back in and said “ you know there’s a slider out here that says ‘in use’ right?” Then slid it to “in use” and left to come back after she was done lol.
Hiram's Friend 5 months ago
When I worked in the ER, they would take the whole eyeball and remove the cornea later.
#36
I witnessed a patient of mine pull out his catheter. With the balloon fully inflated. He made no facial expression. He was out of his mind. It took 3 of us to get him restrained after that.
#37
I work in an operating room and we frequently get dog bite victims. Once when I went out to the waiting room to update the parents, the child’s father hands me a trash bag with the head of the dog that bit his son in it. He said he thought we’d need it test for rabies. Hmmmm… no, animal control would handle that particular task, thank you very much. I took it though. Details….
Melissa Harris 5 months ago
Rabies from stray and feral dogs is a very big problem in some countries.
#38
Someone who purposely lit themselves on fire.. arms charred and unmovable, like they were doing the robot. I’m sure they didn’t live, I can’t imagine the pain. The smell was horrible.
#39
I am an ICU Nurse. I had a patient who was declared brain stem dead. The family did not want him to become an organ donor so we withdrew treatment. I switched off the ventilator, pumps etc and extubated the patient. A few moments later the patient displayed "Lazarus Sign" which is a reflex that causes the patient to raise their arms in the air. I was by no means new to the role but this really scared me as I had never even heard of it let alone witnesses it.
#40
The behavior of certain doctors are the biggest creeps of them all. Stuff like undressing and calling a nurse into their office.
Becky Samuel 5 months ago
I don't know why I have had so much bad luck with so-called medical professionals, but at this point I've literally lost count of the number of them that have abúsed me.
#41
How often patients realize their time is near even when there are no medical signs. I discharged a post op patient who was doing very very well. He said to me this surgery is going to be the end of me. There were no signs of anything wrong and he couldn’t tell me why he was saying that. Two weeks later he developed an acute post op complication and died.
#42
Not seen but a lot of the patients in the hospital where I work constantly say they see a little boy in their room. Like I’ve been there 11 years and 20+ people have told me they saw a little boy playing in their room. It creeps me out every time.
#43
I used to work in a catholic hospital and on night rounds on the orthopedic floor I finally asked a nurse why the patient room right off from the elevator was used for storage of extra beds/ IV poles. I assumed it may have been too noisy and had patient complaints from being by the elevator. The real story is that it was haunted by this woman who was acting very strange and apparently they had call a priest in to literally see if she was possessed.
He said she was and she had accused a nurse of stealing her baby (patient was 70ish and son died as an infant). Turns out that nurse was pregnant and didn’t know it yet. Anyway she apparently “levitated” and died a few days later. They had hung a cross outside the wall of the room that was facing the elevators that fell off and broke. And the paper towel automatic dispenser (the one you wave your hand in front of) would constantly spill out paper towels and the automatic sink would turn on and off randomly. So they quit putting patients in that room. I never witnessed it myself but I also never went in to that room after that.
#44
Gonorrhea of an abdominal ostomy. Ostomy is when they reroute the colon to exit from the abdominal wall when the there is an issue with the colorectal system. Google it if you need a visual.
#45
Not really as exciting as the others, but a pt who was newly diagnosed with cancer decided not to get treatment because she “just didn’t have another round in her”. Shortly after, she was complaining of pain in her leg/foot, which was quickly diagnosed as a blood clot. She refused treatment. We watched her decline for days, her foot went from hot and red, to black. Each shift I would come in and find her mental status had deteriorated quickly. It was extremely sad seeing her family come in day after day, begging her to get help and change her mind while watching her die.
Becca not Becky 5 months ago
She should have received a palliative consult when she decided not to get cancer treatment. That could have saved her the pain and given her a plan of what kinds of health issues to treat versus not.
#46
RN here, when I was a student nurse I arrived at my first ever clinical placement, on my very first day, first thing in the morning, and the nurses had me help them put a guy in a body bag who'd died overnight. Not the most fun introduction to my nursing career, but it sure prepared me for all the s**t I'd have to see and do.
WalterWhiteSavannah 5 months ago
3 years into my career and while I'd had many residents pass none had ever passed on my shift, which was a borderline miracle. Then one passed away as I was doing care. The very next day my all time favorite resident passed away shortly after I did her care. Called the nurse to come do her vitals ankle by the time the nurse got there she was gone. That one still brings tears to my eyes. RIP.
#47
I’m a scrub nurse. My job is to assist the surgeon during surgeries. One of the very first surgeries I ever sat in on about a year ago was a hemicolectomy (removal of part of the large intestine). Halfway through the surgery the patient’s arm came up and hit me in the leg. I screamed and jumped and immediately thought the patient had woken up mid surgery. The surgeon who was preforming the surgery sighed loudly and said “While body twitches during surgery are not common, they are not impossible. Please calm yourself.” It was the creepiest moment feeling someone I thought was unconscious touch me but then quickly turned into an embarrassing teaching moment for me.
#48
Idk creepy? I think I’m desensitized now. I think the foreign bodies are always interesting. I’ve seen snakes, peanut butter jars, outside spickets, Barbie heads, razors etc. my first code was pretty creepy when patients get that marble dead look in their eyes. I think when it hit me that my job isn’t like my friends is when I was going to get lunch downstairs, and I bumped into a body bag going to outside trailer ( no room left in the morgue cause of COVID) and then the body, morgue people and me got on the same elevator and I just had my chicken in my hand just like a normal Tuesday. Amputations always give me the wiggles.
#49
Was working in the emergency department (I’m a pharmacist), walked by the nurse station where they have the EKG rhythms of monitored patients showing across the screen. The patient who was in the trauma bay had the most whacky s**t happening on the screen so I went to the room to see what was happening. Code in process, his chest had been c*****d and the trauma surgeon was beating the heart with his hand to try to get him to come back. He did not.
#50
As a student I was given the opportunity to attend a donor enucleation (removal of eye tissue for potential transplant or research). The patient was deceased and the donation was for research. I had never witnessed such a thing in training as it's rather specialized and I tend to work with living patients, and, to be completely transparent, I thought my preceptor had said
"*colleague name* is going to get some ICE. Did you want to assist?"
I literally thought I was going to help him get ice. In retrospect it made zero sense but I was very new to the placement and keen to impress so I immediately jumped aboard. When we got to the morgue I realized something was up. It took no time for me to reassemble the word I had misunderstood as I donned appropriate PPE and was escorted into the cold room for retrieval of the eye tissue.
Thankfully, my mentor was not expecting me to participate as I stood frozen next to the deceased patient who was post autopsy (not covered up on her slab, y incision just kind of laid back in place on her torso) and I spent the next 20 minutes nodding enthusiastically, attempting to appear as if I had knowingly engaged in this lesson from the start.
The actual removal of the eyes was not too distressing (tissues, fluids and procedures were not unfamiliar in training with live patients) but the view left behind haunted me for a few years. There was something so unsettling about that patients body lying there exposed on a narrow metal gurney, Y incision across torso with her eyeballs removed from her head. Because it was well post mortem the eyelids could be pulled down respectfully but they just kind of popped back open with nothing beneath them to hold them closed.
20 years later I've seen things that make that experience a walk in the park in comparison but the that image popped immediately into mind when I read this question so thought I'd share.
Sleep well, friends. ;).
Hiram's Friend 5 months ago
Generally when they remove the eyes from a cor*se, they fill the socket with cotton and use a double hooked metal insert(dort of lie like, but not quite like those clips that come with elastic bandages. to keep the eyes closed.
#51
One human of young age who had really invasive brain cancer, his eyes were almost falling of its cavity 😭.
#52
RN here, not exactly "creepy" so much as an "oh s**t" moment. I went to check on my patient for some routine obs and they proceed to calmly tell me "I can't pick up my phone" and then they lifted up one of their hands with the other and let it limply drop down to demonstrate that it was 'dead'. I immediately called a code stroke and they were rushed to theatre. It was just so disconcerting how nonchalant and unconcerned the patient was about it.
#53
I was walking into the hospital cafeteria, and see a guy crouched down behind a trash can wearing a gown and holding his IV port. He was an interesting looking fella, sorta trashy looking, and wearing ONLY the gown, so he was quite noticeable.
I see security running in and watch him crouch down lower. Officer Man Pants (a female security guard I’ve affectionately nicknamed) finally spots him and yells at him to come with her.
He jumps up, screams “not YOU again, b***h!!” Then pelts her in the face with an open carton of milk.
Chase ensues. I go back to getting my breakfast.
Turns out, he was trying to leave with his IV port attached so that it gave him easier access to shooting up. Pretty common practice of d**g addicted individuals in a hospital setting. We always let these people go AMA (against medical advice), but we let them know we must remove the port, per hospital policy. It rarely works in our favor.
kzys59pcrp 5 months ago
I have left the hospital multiple times with my IV port still in. Why? Because I came into the hospital with it in. They can’t take it from me if they didn’t put it in. Sometimes I do have to explain it to nurses because they tell me I can’t leave with it but I just get upper management to explain it to them.
#54
I'm a med student and get to see pretty gross stuff on a regular basis. But this once was unusual. In came a 16yo girl with her belly as large as someone who's about to give birth. Only thing is she refuses any history of intercourse. We do a scan just to be sure, and d**n she is right. It's just fluid. Difficult to determine what it was actually. Seniors docs were suspecting ovarian cyst.
Later in the operation theatre, they went for an exploratory surgery, trying to relieve the girl off the pain and other problems that accompanied such a huge abdomen.
They suctioned out a total of 11.5 Litres of blackish turbulent fluid. It just wouldn't end.
I like to joke about it with colleagues as she lost almost 12 kilos in there :P
Trust me it must have been so difficult for her.
#55
I recently had to confirm my first death. It was late at night and I had to deal with quite a few things first that were higher priority so it had been a while between the person passing away and me getting there. I've seen dead bodies before but this was my first time getting really close to one because if you don't know there are certain things you need to do to confirm a death such as check for pulse and breathing for a decent amount of time which means you are in contact with the deceased for a fair while.
I don't like calling it creepy because death is natural and I don't want to feel as if I'm in anyway being disrespectful but it was certainly unnerving because for one his skin was very cold and thats a really big deal when you're so used to the warmth of living people. Second was that the person was caught in the position of their last breath and I kept sort of hoping that they would complete it. Also being as it was late at night and I was near the end of shift I was rather tired and a lot anxious out of the corner of my eye I kept seeing movement - Im still sure he was dead because I did really check but it messed with me a little.
#56
I work at a nursing home during the summer and winter when I’m back from college. One evening, a resident asked me to stay late to help him organize his room. He had recently been admitted to the facility and had end-stage renal failure, so he had to go dialysis regularly. I spent about 45 minutes with him getting everything just the way he wanted it, which I was fine with because I needed the extra overtime, but when I was finished he said something I will never forget. He told me, “Thank you very much, I can sleep well now.” I wished him a good night, and clocked out and went about my evening. At the time I thought nothing of it, but the next day I heard that he had passed overnight. I think that he knew he was at the end, he was at peace with it, and he was able to die happily. Couldn’t ask for a more peaceful way to go imo.
Not strictly a creepy story, but it did kinda creep me out for a little bit.
#57
As a psych RN some of the drawings that patients draw while having a psychotic episode is downright scary.
#58
My first day as a caregiver in a nursing home I saw s**t come out of someone’s stomach. Their colostomy bag had burst. It was very scarring. I no longer work there but it still haunts me.
#59
A mother that confessed to us that she just k**led her children and how relaxed she was like she had zero regrets about what she just did.
#60
A psych patient bite their own arm and spit out tendon and muscle, and another psych patient who whipped their head against a wall corner, splitting it open like a plum. The wound was so severe two of my fingers disappeared in the cavity while I was cleaning out pieces of drywall from the wound.
#61
Hospital Security (Texas) here:
Per State law, any victim with a gunshot wound (GSW) has to be reported to a LEA (law enforcement agency). Doesn't matter if it was accidental, intentionally self-inflicted, or a result of criminal activity, the hospital is obligated to report it. The thing is we don't report it to the LEA where the hospital is at, we have to report it to the LEA of location of the incident. Which means the hospital staff, by which I mean security, is tasked at finding out... and finding out which LEA has jurisdiction to make appropriate contact.
98% of the GSWs we deal with are relatively minor, superficial grazes, leg wounds..etc (accidental or victim of a crime), and we're able to speak with a patient and most are cooperative and give a location of incident or approximate enough for us to know which LEA to contact.
That other 2%, are pretty gruesome. Worst one I remember is an individual that shot off most of his lower jaw with a pistol he was carelessly handling.. I didn't see it but another officer responded to one on a botched s*****e attempt with a shotgun. In those instances you're not getting any info from the patient, and you have to rely on getting info from whoever brought the patient in (Friend/Family or from EMS). Most often those have LEAs that have already been notified.
Thankfully we don't have many traumatic GSWs at the hospital I work at. I'm in a suburban hospital without a trauma center, so we maybe get 1-2 GSWs total a month... if that. So the really bad ones are far and few between.... but it's still a thing that really just kinda shocks you when they do come in.
#62
I dont know what kind of bad luck this is, but for 3 months every patient that went into the room 3B16 in the hospital I work at passed away.
#63
Obligatory; 18 hours late, takes place in a psych ward, not a doctor.
This chick didn't say a single word during her stay. Not to patients, not to staff. She wasn't nonverbal, just chose not to talk. The staff kept pressuring her to talk, and threw her in a padded room because they didn't know whether or not she was a danger to herself, since she didn't say anything. When she was being thrown in there we heard her say, "I'm going to k**l you." It was nonchalant and very ominous. Of course, later in her stay, she tried to k**l someone.
#64
Radiologist here...had patient with severe abdominal pain, X-ray revealed a “Yoo-Hoo” glass bottle lodged in his lower abdominal cavity.
#65
I I had just started working as a nurse when I had to help out on another ward. Of all things, this was my first night shift.
The ward where I was supposed to help out was only half full, so one of the corridors was locked. From the nurses' room you could look into the illuminated, used corridor and the dark, unused one through two glass doors.
So in order to make my life easier, I first did all of my tasks, so that I only had to do my tours. I finished that at 0200 and took a break first. So I sat down in the nurses' room, where I could see the glass doors.( I had to see if someone came to the ward or not.)
An hour passed and nothing unusual happened, I drank coffee and looked at the lighted door every now and then. But then I saw in the corner of my eye, how a person in a nightgown (from the hospital) was walking in the dark hallway through the beam of light from the glass door.
I suspected someone was lost and so I went to find this person. But the front doors to that part of the station were still locked, as was my glass door. And nobody was to be found in any of the rooms.
I suspect it was my tiredness, but I still have some doubts.
Melissa Harris 5 months ago
Reflections on glass can create the "pepper ghost" effect when the lighting is just right.
#66
During demolition in morgue, the human parts soup inside the bottom of curb when freezers were removed.
#67
I worked in a psych unit a few years ago, I had this patient, an old lady around 80, her teeth were rotten and broken (horror movie style) big protuberant eyes and whispy hair, sort of like Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
So, the medical history with her was that she had schizophrenia. So the usual, alusinations, random screams, easy stuff manigeable with antipsychotic and anxiety medications.
We had this christian CNA who on certain days would sit with us and talk about God and read the bible to some patients that would ask for it at times.
One day we had to restrain this lady because she became aggeesive, so this CNA had to sit outside her door to keep an eye on her.
So the usual patients asked for a bible readinf setion ans he complied, I sat with him to back him up just in case.
After a few seconds of him reading I can hear a low hissing sound, like a cats, coming from the patients room, when i went in, she had slipped off her hands restrains and was dangling upside down, eyes wide open, mouth too, hissing like a wild animal. I grabbed the bible and read to her, and dear Lord, she went wild.
We sedated her, restrained her again, and I never looked at her the same
I knpw, schysophrenic patients become hyper religious and so on. But that scared me a bit.
#68
My religion techer's brother is a surgeon and he once told a story of a patient that recently died and they were removing their lungs for organ donation. He touched the lungs and the patient (dead, might I say again) snapped his arm together infront of his chest, hitting the surgeon .
This is what's called Lazarus syndrome. A reaction of the dead body, as a last effort to preserve the body from damage from foreign interferance. aka, man touches lung of dead, dead doesn't like, dead defends.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 5 months ago
Yeah, that's not why the Lazarus Sign occurs XD A dead body isn't trying to "preserve" itself from damage or "foreign interference". It's dead. It's a spinal cord reflex that only occurs with certain stimuli.
#69
When I was 16 I was a hostess (so I worked in the kitchen and brought food to patients). I worked on a psych ward mostly, and saw a lot there. There was a ton of court-ordered psych holds for people who were coming down hard off of hard d***s, some in d**g-induced psychosis. People trying to trap me in their rooms while I took their order, people lunging at me. Had a guy hold my hand once (like a vice) and then try to stab an orderly with a pen when she tried to pry him off me.
Anyway, bizarrely the creepiest encounter wasn’t dangerous at all. I was walking through the hall trying to collect trays and someone in the geriatric (old) section must have gotten permission to keep a radio in their room. They were absolutely BLASTING “Mellow Yellow” by Donovan. I left the trays and went back downstairs for a while before I could come back up.
I can’t really say why it scared me so bad. Maybe because the psych ward skeeved me out a bit, and especially the geriatric section. But something about that song playing super loud in there made me feel like I was in Uncanny Valley.
Melissa Harris 5 months ago (edited)
Sounds like a delayed PTSD reaction. OP shouldn't have EVER been allowed on to the psych ward at 16. Must-have happened years ago as having non medical, under age staff interacting with potentially violent patients isn't really done now for liability.
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Rebecca O’Donnell 5 months ago
Thank you, Justin Sandburg. Not only was this an interesting read but reminds us that “there but for the grace of God” what happened to these patients could happen to any of us. I’m grateful that there are people who can do these jobs for those in need.
Margaret Shannon 5 months ago
I hope I would stay calm and help, though I don’t know what possible use I could be in a hospital. Get the nurses a sandwich? Direct people to the bathroom?
Becca not Becky 5 months ago (edited)
I have my share of creepy stories. One hospital I worked at, several patients at different times mentioned a little girl in a red dress. We all felt a little unsettled. Also, giving adenosine is quite scary for everyone involved.
Rebecca O’Donnell 5 months ago
Thank you, Justin Sandburg. Not only was this an interesting read but reminds us that “there but for the grace of God” what happened to these patients could happen to any of us. I’m grateful that there are people who can do these jobs for those in need.
Margaret Shannon 5 months ago
I hope I would stay calm and help, though I don’t know what possible use I could be in a hospital. Get the nurses a sandwich? Direct people to the bathroom?
Becca not Becky 5 months ago (edited)
I have my share of creepy stories. One hospital I worked at, several patients at different times mentioned a little girl in a red dress. We all felt a little unsettled. Also, giving adenosine is quite scary for everyone involved.
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