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54 Nurses And Doctors Reveal The Spookiest Things That Happened During Their Shifts
We all know that working in medicine isn’t for the faint of heart. It means regularly seeing people at their lowest, when they’re sick and in serious pain. That alone is hard to stomach. But what many of us may underestimate is that the job can also get genuinely scary.
Users on Threads and Reddit asked nurses and doctors to share the creepiest things they’ve ever witnessed, and the answers were enough to fill a horror novel. We gathered some of the most chilling ones below. Just be warned that they contain disturbing details, so maybe don’t read this one on your lunch break.
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#1
I took care of a Sister of Mercy (a nun) who had dementia and was dying. She was a catholic school teacher in her day.
Anyway, she was crying and screaming begging god to forgive her for what she had done to the children.
Apparently, she had done very bad and inhumane things to the children and she was begging god for forgiveness so she wouldn’t go to hell.
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#2
We had two people (DNR’s) d*e one night and one of them was a psych pt who hated everyone’s guts. She would kick at us, scream at us, and spent most of her time in restraints. She especially hated me.
Two nights after she died she appeared to me in my house, clear as day, gave me a toothy grin with a smug glint in her eye, and screamed “HI!”
I screamed so loud my throat hurt for an hour.
#3
I work in a dementia ward so you must know how creepy it can he there at night.
Its around 0300 and its pouring rain. POURING rain. Thunder, all the jazz. My partner is on break and I'm sitting at the nursing desk. I hear a moan and assume its a pt getting agitated by the rain. Well, from the corner of my eye I see a figure in a white dress.
There's only men down that hall.
So I look again and there's this frail woman standing there just staring at me. It took me a second to register that one of the female pts snuck by me whilst doing rounds and was walking back to her room.
I almost needed a brief that night.
#4
Ooh, I love medical ghost stories! I could write a book on all the ones I've heard over the years. This is one that happened on a unit I worked in about a year ago. For reference, I believe in ghosts and the supernatural. I'm also very pragmatic about my approach to them. But this one is weird.
Note: All identifying information has been changed for confidential purposes.
In the unit I worked in, we used cordless phones to communicate. The shift was winding down and I was just d*****g around on my cell phone. I get a call from the Covid Unit.
"Hey, it's Kim. Are you busy?"
"Nah, just k*****g time until Days gets here. What's up?"
"The call light for 512 keeps going off."
[pregnant pause] "So... answer it."
[whisper] "There's no one in 512..."
"Huh, that is weird. Yeah, I'll come over and check it out."
I tell my charge I'm leaving the floor because Kim is having a call light issue in Covid. I always hated working the Covid Unit because of its location. You had to walk down an empty hallway and it felt like a world away. Usually, it's only staffed by a nurse +1 (nurse-nurse, nurse-aide), furthering the feeling of isolation.
I get to the unit and have them show me to the room. Kim and her aide (an equally scared aide in her late teens/early 20s). I tell them to stay with me in case something happens. We've had people sneak into the hospital at night and steal things. I wasn't about to get attacked so close to the end of my shift.
I walk into the room, with Kim and the aide hovering at the door. Kim reaches in and shuts the call light off from the unit on the wall by the door. The room looks like it hasn't been touched recently. It still looks cleaned by EVS. I turn all the lights on and loudly announce my presence. I say don't want to harm anyone, or be harmed, but if there's someone here to show themselves. I say this as I'm turning on lights, checking the bathroom, closets, etc. I get to the foot of the bed, and the call light goes off. I stare at it lying on the bed.
"Pull it out of the wall!" I heard Kim exclaim behind me. So I do and lay the cord on the bed, shutting off the call light from the wall by the bed. It goes off again, Kim and Aide squeal and runs away. So much for backup.
I walk out of the room and close the door. I walk to the desk, "Call Maintenance and tell them you have a faulty light. Tell Days about it so they don't freak out." And I walk back to my unit.
The next day, the unit is being staffed by Janice and Jordan. Both are really smart and experienced nurses. Janice was my preceptor and has a very no-nonsense attitude (which is why I like her). She and Jordan were working in separate rooms, and "STAFF EMERGENCY RM 512" rings on Janice's phone. Our locator badges had a single button on them. I called them "crisis buttons". You hit them and everyone's phone lights up (basically an "all come" alert).
Janice runs into 512, no one's there. But through the wall, she hears Jordan working in 511. She walks into 511 and Jordan's in the middle of med pass. "Were you in 512?" "No, I've been in here for the past 10 minutes," Janice explains to her about the staff emergency alert, but they chalk it up to the faulty call light situation.
Later Jordan is sitting at the desk charting, chatting with the charge nurse. Her phone rings, but the Caller ID is a jumbled mess of letters and numbers. Before she can answer it, it stops ringing. She calls the number back and it rings to the desk phone sitting just out of arm's reach.
She tells Janice about it and Janice says, "Wait... Henry died in the room last week." In relaying this story, Janice told me she had enough of this BS and stormed into the room. "Henry, I understand you're trying to go home. If you follow me, I can lead you out." She walked out of the room and to the nearby stairwell, held the door open for a couple of minutes, and walked back to the desk. And there wasn't a problem afterward.
I'm a believer that spirits, at least the non-violent ones, are simply trying to complete a task. When that task is done, they leave. I thought about it later when telling Kim this second part that Henry just needed help leaving. And what do we tell our patients to do when they need our help? Press their call light.
#5
When cleaning up incontinent elderly ladies with dementia, some would fight and cry and beg you to stop. “I’ll be a good girl”. “Im sorry. I’m a dirty girl”. “Don’t hurt me anymore”. “Mama, mama, help me”. What did those women suffer in earlier life. Heartbreaking.
#6
Former nurse here. I used to work at a nursing home and definitely the creepiest, most W*F moment I had was with this Alzheimer's patient. Incredibly difficult man, he would cycle between being basically zoned out and staring off and being *very* violent. A lot of times he would talk to people that weren't there, or to inanimate objects, or he would say he couldn't do simple tasks (like putting his shoes on, going to the bathroom) but with a bit of a push he would get up and do them with zero problems whatsoever.
On this particular day, it's one of his calmer and more lucid ones. We're sitting out in the nursing home's patio area and looking outside and he leans over and whispers, "hey, you know what?" and I ask what is it and he tells me with complete seriousness, "everyone thinks I'm really losing it but I'll tell you a secret, I'm pretending. I'm just playing a game." and then he laughed and said, "but don't tell anyone!"
I side-eyed that guy for the rest of the time I worked there.
#7
I have been a nurse for 20 yrs. 13 yrs of that time was spent working nights. All of my colleagues have experienced creepy events that cannot be explained. My most creepy experience was when looking after a man with mental health issues. He had requested a one bed side ward ( UK so private rooms not standard) as it was too much for him to interact with other patients .We were very reluctant as he was depressed and we wanted to keep a close eye on him .He begged and we agreed with the arrangement we would check on him frequently throughout the night. I checked him as he was settling for sleep and he seemed agitated. I asked him what I could do to help - he explained he was upset because he kept hearing a woman whispering in his ear and kept feeling there was someone behind him.I reassured him as much as I could, he asked for his night sedation and other regular meds and I asked if he might like to speak to his doctor but he thought it was exhaustion and he wanted to settle for the night . Around 3am, it was my turn to check him . I went to his room and his door was closed over. I immediately panicked and tried to open the door but it wouldn't open, I pushed and pushed and it felt like something was behind it, I called for my colleague and as she ran to me the door flung open abruptly and hit the wall. The patient was in bed, tucked in, facing away from me, I walked around the end of the bed to check he was okay and as I got to the corner of the room was hit with the worst wave of nausea, it almost bent me double. I thought I was going to pass out and just about made it out of the room, according to my colleague I was as white as a sheet. The patient was fine, he slept all night and the next morning was more settled. He had however had dreams of a woman in his room hiding in the corner - she had " come out of the painting on his wall". I don't know what happened that night but the feeling I was left with was that whatever was in that room was inherently bad, I have never been so afraid.
#8
We had a patient in ICU who was losing large amounts of blood in her lower GI. We coded her for about an hour and pushed a lot of blood products but ended up losing her. We quickly made her family appropriate and let them say their goodbyes. As a CNA, it was my job to head in once they were done and finish prepping the body for the morgue.
I got a fresh gown and everything I needed for a bed bath, etc and went to work. She was heavy set so I had another aid come in to help me turn her while we cleaned her backside (it was also this aids first day and I was training him).
I've had bile come up a few times when turning a body so I gently placed a towel at the mouth, thinking it would be enough.
What I was not expecting was all the blood that poured out that had traveled up through the stomach and all over the floor. Literally a liter of blood ran out over the bed and was splattering on the floor, covering my scrubs and relatively new shoes.
That aid quit shortly after and it took me about a week to get that image out of my head.
#9
Took care of a lady who had end stage renal disease, was on palliative care, minutes away from dying and unresponsive in bed. My charting station was right outside her doorway and while I was waiting for her only daughter to arrive, I was completing some of my paperwork, in full view of the door to the patients room. The daughter finally showed up, very upset, yelling that she wanted me to help get her mother out of the elevator. We both ran to the elevator that was empty. The daughter and I went into the room as her mother took her last breath. The daughter swore up and down that she rode in the elevator with her mother from the lobby to the 12th floor. When they arrived at the 12th floor, her mother told her to go get the nurse to help get her back to her room and she would wait in the elevator because she was too weak to walk back to her room.
#10
I was working on a medical floor and taking care of a man going through his first psychotic break. He would be pleasant and kind, then his eyes would fill with terror. He would just look at you, his eyes pleading for help as he ripped his hair out and screamed "I'm traveling though time!"
During one of these moments, he jumped out of his bed and started bashing his head against a wall, screaming for help. After two days they were finally able to get him into the state psychiatric hospital. About two months later I read in the paper that he was found drowned in a small stream behind his house. I felt so sorry that the system had failed him.
Dragon mama 7 hours ago
Now that's the real horror. The real life experiences of the mentally ill.
#11
Back when I was a CNA, there was one room in the SNF I worked in that had a really bad week. Patient died (on comfort measures,) patient got moved in amd died unexpectedly within a few days, and then a third patient had died there by the end of the week. During that week and *only that week* the door to the room would frequently jam weirdly and not open for a minute.. No other door ever jammed during the two years I worked there.
#12
The hospital I worked at had a haunted peds floor. Story was, late at night staff would hear a baby crying...even if there were no infants admitted at the time. Several staff related the story to me at various times over the years.
#13
A story I find myself telling a lot on Reddit:
In college I worked as an orderly at an acute treatment psychiatric hospital. I was there about a year and a half, during which time I worked the night shift on the stabilization unit. This was the unit for people who were too unstable to be grouped in with the regular men's or women's units; often, they would come in psychotic, and we'd find some meds that worked for them, and within a week they would be transferred to a unit with more freedom.
Anyway, my first night on the job, I walked in, feeling nervous. At the desk, two other techs were chatting with a woman in a hospital gown. I came over, and she introduced herself. She seemed completely normal. She told me not to worry about my first shift, that I would do just fine, and that she was sure all the other staff would help me out until I found my footing. I felt deeply reassured. This woman didn't seem like she belonged in the ward. She seemed completely normal.
Then she said she had to get back to bed, and she turned around.
*The back of her f*****g head was gone.*
Where the back of her head was, all the hair had been shaved off, and there was a gorey mass of scars and stitches and bruising. It was like something out of a horror film. I seriously can't describe just how messed up it was. It looked like she'd been shot and then someone had hastily tried to put it back together.
I'm proud to say I didn't react, but immediately after she had gone back to her room, I asked the other techs what the deal was. They said she'd tried to commit s*****e by driving a car into a wall or a tree or something, and had had several brain surgeries and was still recovering. They said most of the time she was perfect lucid but had instances of sudden, extreme violence, which is why she was on that unit. She also had a habit of picking at the wounds, which were still healing; she had a couple more reconstructions to go because of the extent to which her skull had been mangled. Honestly, after I read her file, I was surprised she was even still alive.
Anyway, it scared the ever-loving s**t out of me. It was such a perfectly horror movie trope. That was the scariest thing that ever happened to me on night shift. I remember wondering if the other techs had set it up to freak me out on my first night. The lady became one of my favourite patients and aside from occasional outbursts was one of the most well-behaved and best-spoken. We had a lot of late night conversations until she was transferred.
(Edit/disclaimer: obviously, minor details have been changed because HIPAA.).
#14
I work as a nurse in an ICU, about 2 years ago we had a patient who was 24 and recovering from heart surgery. One night she told her nurse she saw the angel of d***h standing in the corner of her room. Every day after that she would "see" the angel of d***h and talk to him. Apparently he was telling her that she was going to d*e. We consulted psych, tried to get her outside into some daylight but she was still convinced she was going to d*e... like to the point of calling her friends and family to say goodbye. Clinically she looked great! She was recovering as expected and we were getting ready to send her to a step down unit. Then one night around 9 pm she took a sip of water and her sternal incision completely dehisced (split open) and she bled to d***h almost immediately. Turns out there was a small abcess under her sternum slowly eating away at bone and tissue, and it gave out when she coughed. Pretty creepy.
#15
We have a labor room that’s right above the morgue. One night everyone was sitting at the nurse station and the call light in that room started alarming. There wasn’t a patient in there and all the staff were at the desk and all our patients on monitors in their own rooms on the other side of the unit from that room. A few of us braved going to investigate, the call light wasn’t even plugged into the wall. It called all night long.
A few months later it was super busy and we still had that room empty but were using all the rooms around it. The bed was moving itself into a high throne position and was clicking because it was all the way up and still trying to move. We went in there and activated the CPR latch to drop the head of the bed to flat and it immediately sat back up.
I had a labor in that room that was an interesting individual. She mentioned someone was walking around in the room. She said it didn’t bother her, but wanted to let me know.
There was a night I was getting ready to admit a labor into that room and was alone on that end of the unit. I was setting up the labor bed to transfer her and something was shuffling in the bathroom around the corner from my view.
#16
I was working nights as a hospice nurse in a church owned facility that was a former Shriners hospital. I was walking down the hallway all alone and something pulled my ponytail so hard I almost fell backwards. I ran to the nurses station that was in front of the communal dinning room, and all of the silverware that was set on the table rushed to the middle of each table all at once. Like 40 tables all at once. It made a big clang sound. My patient died shortly after. I think it was her way of letting me know to come back. I was so scared and I refused assignments in that facility from that point on.
#17
Not a nurse, but X-ray tech doing a portable exam on a elderly patient who was clearly days away from passing. She was mostly non responsive the whole time I positioned her and didn’t open her eyes. I finish up and am standing at the foot of her bed annotating my image on my machine when she opens her eyes, points over my shoulder to the dark bathroom behind me, and says “I don’t like him. Get him out of here”. I did not look behind me (because I choose to live in ignorant bliss) and instead backed out of the room and hoped I wouldn’t have to go back.
#18
We had to move a female resident as far away from the doors as possible. They were alarmed and when they went off she would start crying and shaking. She was from Russia and lived through World War Two and alarms and loud noises really affected her. She would never speak about it.
#19
We were talking about ghosts in the staff room and someone noticed the snackwich machine was hot.... it's always unplugged, no one had turned it on, we were there for like 15 minutes (gasp! An actual break) and everyone denied plugging it in/turning it on.
#20
Do the elevators at your hospital have sensors so that they open before you get there? I'll be walking by myself down an empty hallway, about to turn the corner and all of a sudden the elevator doors open. It's always creeped me out.
#21
I was rounding on an elderly patient on the overnight shift. She was maybe 80-85 years old. She had some issues from a stroke but was generally pretty coherent and “with it”.
She is laying down but opens her eyes wide and looks right at me when I enter. She says “The devil is in this room.” I’m not religious but I promptly walked out after I checked on her. Nope, nope, not today satan.
#22
CNA here. We had just finished post mortem care after a long code. It was a really hard night, like this was the third code on cardiac step down in a span of two hours. As we exited the room to get back into the war zone, a blast of cold air and steam was pushing us out of the room. We looked at each other, shrugged and kept running.
#23
After a women had passed away in one of our private rooms we had to move a particularly disruptive man into it. It was temporary to give the other ward patients a break. He had to be moved back quite quickly because he kept shouting for us to 'help this women leave! She's been waiting all this time and she wants to go home now!' There was no way he could of known about the previous occupant.
#24
I'm not a nurse but my mom is and she works at an assisted living facility. She's told me some stories.
When she was in nursing school they had to go to a morgue and she asked the mortician if anything creepy has ever happened to him. He said only once. One time he was sleeping and was having a dream. This old lady kept saying in his dream "wake up, you have to come get me." over and over. Anyway, he got a call to come pick someone up and when he got there it was the old lady from his dream. Really creepy.
One night a bunch of different residents kept calling my mom to complain that a little boy and his dog kept waking them up.
Then another night this really religious lady was dying. They had a baby monitor in her room and my mom had the other end of the monitor at her nurse's station. She kept hearing someone praying over the monitor. So her and the CNA kept taking turns going to the room to check on the lady and every time they went in there the lady was asleep and the praying would stop. Then when the room was empty again, the praying would start back up.
There's also one room at my mom's facility that this really mean old man that used to wear a hat all the time died in. They can't put anyone in that room because all the patients are scared of it and a lot have complained about the mean old man in a top hat.
Then there's another room where this old lady really loved coffee. She died in the room and it has been empty ever since.. but every morning it still smells like someone's brewing coffee in there.
and shadow people walking the halls.
#25
I work night shift on a trauma floor. I once had a patient that had been beaten with a baseball ball and required multiple surgeries. He was in his 30's and had visitor that kept lingering around, a 60-something year old lady with a glass eye. Something about this lady just creeped me out, can't explain it but there was something "off" about her. Around 10pm that night, the creepy lady said goodbye and left. Later on in the shift, around 2am, I went into this man's room to clear his PCA (pain pump) and re-time his vital sign machine. I didn't turn a light on, as I did not want to wake him up. I'm in his room working on these machines for a solid 5 minutes...when all of the sudden, I feel a breath on my neck. Then very quietly a voice whispers, "I'm right behind you". I immediately scream out, "Holy s**t! Jesus!!!". The patient jumped up and turned his light on and there behind me was creepy lady. She'd been in the room the whole time! She said that she was trying to make sure I knew she was in the room so I wouldn't be startled. She told us that she couldn't sleep from worrying about him, so she came back to the hospital to stay the night. He did not know she'd come back, none of the staff saw her come back. There were no chairs or recliners in the room at the time, so she was just standing there, in the dark, watching him breathe.
#26
Veterinary patient, not human.
Dog was in surgery that wasn't supposed to be fatal. He started crashing under the anesthetic and my co-workers started CPR. At this time the phone rings, but all hands are on deck and nobody can answer. The dog passed away.
The phone call was a voicemail from the dogs owner, saying "hey I just wanted to check on the surgery, I had a really strange moment where I saw Buddy in his dog bed and needed to hear from you guys"
I still get chills thinking about it.
#27
I am a Psychiatrist, 55 years old, who is now seeing patients for six hours a week only, almost retired. Allows me to browse internet for first time in my life. I have a few very unusual cases up my sleeve.Would share just one.
Back in 1985, as I began my residency, a mute adult male was admitted. He was in early 20s, would never utter a word, and was almost robotic in movements. But he had his smile permanently on his face. For any, sight of a smiling in a very odd way man, never uttering a sound, blinking sparsely, and walking in a mechanical fashion was hard to deal with as you attempted to communicate with him. His smile deepened as we attempted to speak. And his eyes were shiny and very bright. Too much lacrimal fluid? I do not know the reason.
We did every thing that was possible back then at the very large hospital that it was. He did not respond to any treatment, including shocks, ECT that is.
One day his family came and requested his discharge. After legal and administrative formalities they took him away.
One of the Psychiatrists was a married female. with kids, who would refuse to see him and told the chief of the unit as well.The guy made her very scared. She was way senior than me, and although friendly I could never ask her why.
Many years later I ran into her at a Psychiatric conference. We both were working at different places and there she asked me "Do you recall the mute guy who I refused to see and even told Chief of Psychiatry unit about"?
I said yes, the guy with a smile affixed like a stamp upon his face.
She had a very scary experience with him a few years after his discharge. One morning she was going out for work and a guy stopped her on her drive way. He hands her a small packet and said that was for her. Then she noticed that the package was oozing blood and the guy was dripping blood in torrents. She screamed and drove back. Fortunately her husband was still in the house. They called the Police and their friends.
The packet had testicles of the guy who was bleeding like hell.He was in shock.
The guy was the smiling man.
#28
Was neither a doctor nor nurse. I just took the corpses from their room to the mortuary in the basement. And a few other odd jobs around the hospital.
Anyway. I get called to a room to take a body. Same old normal s**t. They've got the body covered by the time I get there. Cool. I roll out, I'm in the elevator with the d**d body when a nurse comes running up to the elevator, she yelled "wait!". I couldn't reach the door to keep it from closing (trolly with a corpse in the way) so it closed on her.
Oh well, couldn't be important. Keep doing my thing. It's not like I'm involved in the medicine at this place.
Down in the basement. I'm taking my time. I'm kinda a slow walker when no one else is around. I'm approaching the mortuary doors. I hear pitter patter of someone running behind me. It's a hospital, people run all the time. No big deal. I push the trolly through the mortuary doors. When I hear "WAIT!" Its the same nurse, she must have ran down a few flights of stairs.
"We prepped the wrong body for you. Mr. Simon is just in a coma. This one isn't d**d."
Whoops, took a living person to the morgue. That was unfortunate. But in all fairness, I'm not medically trained, so I shouldn't be relied on to tell the difference between living or d**d. They covered the f*****g body, how was I supposed to know it wasn't the guy?
So I put the coma dude back into his room, got the proper dude, took him to the morgue.
It's not an "in your face" kind of creepy, but that experience has really bothered me since it happened. Like, s**t, mistakes like that happen in hospitals. That's kinda scary to me. What if doctors make those kinds of mistakes? People would d*e.
**BONUS CREEPY THING** When I first started the job, I was taking my very first corpse to the mortuary, it was still warm. That was really off putting. Then I was in the basement hallway. Dim, mildewy, flickering lights, etc. Creepy kind of place. And I'm just there with a warm d**d body. Then it farts. The f*****g d**d body farts. I freaked out. I took a few steps back and it took a couple minutes to regain my composure. Later learned corpse farts happen quite a bit.
Bi.Felicia 5 hours ago
"What if doctors make those kinds mistakes? People would dìe." Doctors do make those mistakes, more often than you would think and people do dîe because of it.
#29
In an ICU we had two patients , months appart, with delirium, same room. Both called me in to ask about the girl standing on her head in the corner.
#30
Patient at med surg ward, ready to be discharged the next day after being admitted a few days earlier, doing a lot better now. Pretty healthy before, but old. I had cared for her for 2 shifts. I said good night and that I would be there to discharge her the next morning. She said "I know. But I won't be here when you get back. But I will be here anyway. You are a great nurse and I will be with you". She died that night from a heart attack. No signs of it at all the night before. But she knew.
#32
RN but a patient at the time. I was hospitalized for a gastric.bleed but every time I tried to go to sleep, something would grab my left arm just above my wrist. It'd grab it firmly and hold it there. I asked my nurse if anyone else had experienced this and she said that anyone that occupied that bed complained of the same thing.
#33
The oldest parts of my hospital are like 200 years old, but that's very little of it - I think just the chapel. Anyway, people tell stories all the time about things like hearing children playing on the burn unit (we have no peds or OB) or seeing ghost nuns around. I'm a skeptic and don't particularly believe in ghosts, but I'll admit there are some things that are hard to otherwise explain. The only creepy thing that's happened to me, personally, so far was back around the time I started working there. I'd actually just brushed off someone's silly ghost story and went to the pyxis/supply room to get something. I was the only person in there. Some random item (I don't remember what it was) dropped straight down into the middle of the room. There was no air blowing, no movement in the room other than me at the time. It was as if it dropped from the middle of the ceiling. I still don't really have any explanation for that.
#34
Back when I was still a tech I had a psych patient that would pace the hallways preaching like a televangelist to no one in particular, and occasionally wander back to his room and sit quietly. I was doing my 15 min checks after everyone had gone to bed and he was still pacing and preaching, ignoring me, but eventually went back to his room and suddenly made the loudest "demon" noises like something out of the exorcist when I was right outside his door, startled the s**t out of me. I asked him to please be quiet because the other patients were sleeping and he stopped, but it definitely creeped me out a bit that night lol.
#35
I remember a post from an emt/ems (can't remember which)... They got a call to an old ladies apartment who hadn't been seen for days. They get in the apartment and find her in the bathtub. She apparently had a stroke (if I remember correctly) after turning on the hot water tap with her toe. Basically, she couldn't move and was cooking in this boiling water.
She was still alive when they arrived. When they had to remove her from the bathtub, all of her skin literally just slid off of her body. She ended up dying.
#36
Geriatric nurse here.
Had a resident on hospice and getting ready beginning to transition. She had been talking about seeing her husband at night for about a week at this point. She was very reassured however with dementia it was difficult to distinguish these visits between confusion or actually taking place. She would have one sided conversations all the time. One morning at the end of my shift - went in to give her her meds and asked how she slept. She says oh not much "Edgar" has been here alllll night. I turn around after making sure she is all tucked in and see this 6" figure with black suit and top hat standing at next to the bookshelf at the end of her bed. Needless to say I did last rounds with my CNAs. Resident passed away just 48 hours later. Another time one of my residents calls down several times and asked me to come up and close her blinds - because the people outside kept tapping on her window asking to come in and waking her up. She lived in the 3rd floor - no balcony. Lots of good stories these two just came to mind.
#37
Responded to a pedestrian hit, vehicle fled the scene. Pedestrian was my partner.
It was fatal.
#38
A schizophrenic that pulled his IV out and used the blood to draw on his sheets and wouldn't let anyone change them.
Seeing a heart nearly explode in OR. Lots of chaos and yelling ensued.
A young healthy guy going in for a minor procedure stated he was going to d*e on the table. There was a rare complication and he did end up passing away during the procedure.
A friend was given a picture drawn by a psych patient of a person k*****g a lot of animals. Before he gave it to her, he said it was a pretty picture that reminded him of her.
#39
My mom told me. that her emt friend had 10 years back. There was this massive car crash 8-10 cars maybe a semi. When he arrived he could hear a baby screaming when he ran to the car with the baby. The mother was d**d died on impact. He then we straight to the baby. The baby was in the passenger seat. All of the baby's skin on his face was stripped clean from the air bag.
Bi.Felicia 5 hours ago
Oh my goodness, why tf was the baby in the front passenger seat anyway?!? Completely avoidable injury to that poor baby.
#40
Paramedic friend went to a call where this guy pulled an inflated cathador out of his p***s. There was lots of blood and screaming.
#41
I was working in a nursing home on graveyard shift on a locked Alzheimer's/ Dementia/ Psychiatric unit, alone because they couldn't possible afford to have a second person back there with the mentally unstable residents. We had a new lady who had mood swings like a roller coaster. Seriously, if you didn't like her, you could wait for five minutes for her next personality to come out and play.
That night she was very agitated and kept complaining about the little girl singing. I'm all, "I'll try to get her to stop." to play into her world so she doesn't try to k**l me or something (she recently tried to strangle my friend). After a few minutes she was all happy and wandering around the dining room and back into the living room. So I turned on the TV for her to watch something on TV Land.
I am filling out my charts for the night and keeping an eye on her. She seemed pretty mellow at the time. The power goes out and I have a mini panic attack because I am terrified of the dark. I hear her shuffling through the dining room and she is humming. I thought that was a bad idea as she could trip in the dark or run into something, fall, break a hip... so I fumble for my phone and use the back light to find her. But I couldn't see her. The lights come back on and I am staring at an empty dining room trying to figure out where she went.
I go into the living room and there she is sitting in the living room right where she had been when the lights went out. She was all, "The TV went out. Turn it back on for me, okay?" And then starts looking behind me and asks "Did you get her to stop singing?"
I carried a very bright flashlight after that. I had a lot of weird things happen but that was the creepiest I can think of.
#42
I was 9 months pregnant with my second son, I was working a 16 hour shift, I was in micu. The lady in room 5, pushed the call bell. She wanted to tell me there was a lady sitting in the chair in the corner with gorgeous red lips and blue eyeswith a white gown with pink roses holding a baby. Turns out the lady died and the baby was born sleeping. I held my belly and cried. I've never cried in front of a pt but I did that night.
#43
Had plenty of dying patients who saw angels and family members before passing. One day I had a patient who saw the opposite! CREEEEEEPY!
#44
I had a 93yo who had been in a car accident with multiple injuries including anoxic brain. He had been made a DNR. It was around 2am when his vitas started to slowly decompensate. We called his wife, who was not going to make it in time. I couldn’t bare him passing alone. I pulled up a chair, held his hand, and told him he was not alone and to think about the joy 93 years had given him. He smiled, squeezed my hand, as I watched the color leave him and felt his hand grow cool. Changed me.🥹
#45
Came on shift and went into my first pts room- they asked me why they let the little boy run around throughout the night. They were confused so I didn’t think anything of it. Went to see the next pt in the room next door and they said “it’s great to be able to see children happy and playing throughout the hospital.. but the little boy kept me up pretty late.” This pt was A&Ox3… the floor I was on used to be paeds years before this.. still gives me chills lol
LakotaWolf (she/her) 8 hours ago
"Alert and Oriented x3 (A&Ox3) is a concise medical notation used by healthcare providers to quickly document a patient’s neurological status and cognitive function. A&Ox3 signifies that the patient is fully awake and aware of three specific categories of information, which is generally considered a normal level of consciousness."
#46
We had a string of patients passing back to back in a specific room on our unit. We had the chaplain come up and bless the room, a coworker brought a “smokeless sage” spray and it resolved back to normal rates
#47
Sitting at the computer charting next to an isolette in an area that had a few spooky moments. Something whispered loudly my name next to my ear. 👂
#48
Stuff randomly flying off shelves after I’ve been sitting there for hours has been common enough to make me know that there are ghosts for sure for sure
#49
We had a Patient on the ICU for roughly a year. It was our longest patient stay to this day.
She had Guillain Barré and couldnt move a single muscle. She used to click her tongue very loudly when she needed something.
It was kind of a running joke because it was so loud for a normal tongue click and she would call very often during a shift.
She died after a year and it was weird, she kinda lived there, we knew everything about her and her family, felt weird to empty the room.
In the next few weeks lot of us heard her clicking her tongue at nightshift. We laughed it off but it was so many times and so many different nurses it was creepy.
#50
The most creepy, and I would say quite unsettling thing for me, was a young male adult admit, night shift, to med-surg I might add, who was found at home when his dad returned from vacation and found his son sitting in his bedroom, in the dark apparently there for days. Non communicative. His dad said he was totally fine before he left. I walked into the room, introduced myself, and got the most creepy and unsettling vibe I have ever gotten from a patient. He just sat there and stared blankly into nothing. It was like the wall across from him and me, for that matter, didn't exist. I said, I'm just going to check your vital signs, OK? He didn't flinch, blink, move. I mean nothing. I'm getting creeped out as I write this. I asked him if he was in any pain, the usual. Not one single response. Something I wouldn't usually do is turn my back to a patient in specific scenarios if ever at all , but I turned around to put the dynamap in the corner when I felt the hairs at the back of my neck p***k up and just this wave of cold. Didn't think much of it, turned around, and he was standing right behind me!! Staring. I asked him if he was okay, and he just stared right through me. Just standing there. I have never felt threatened by a patient and didn't by him. I seriously just felt freaked out. I started moving to the side of him to leave the room. I was taking sideways steps. I called psych straight away to get straight up to the floor. Don't even ask me how this patient got from the ED to our unit without intervention because when he was moved to a more appropriate unit a few hours later, I put that right at the back of my mind but I struggled to sleep when I got home that morning. I can actually still see his eyes. Nothing there.
So, adding a few strange occurrences and the usual ghost stories told on nights, hands down that was the biggest thing for me.
#51
I SO want this thread to blow up. I used to have a friend who was a nurse and apparently, seeing some figure that May or may not be d***h coming for patients just before they croaked was not unusual.
#52
I'm a nurse at a nursing home and since I'm one of the few RN's I often pronounce people d**d. When it's someone else's patient I'm fine, just pronounce and bounce. But if it's someone on my unit that I had conversations with it's really creepy. I get the feeling like they are going to come back and try to bite me. The worst is when someone just died and you can still hear blood flow in their chest but no heartbeat.
#53
Not me but my male co worker was taking a body down to the morgue when the body began to levitate off the gurney
#54
I was rolling a lady out of a nursing home, who had trouble breathing. When we get her in the back of the ambulance and I start setting up leads on her, she grabs my wrist and pleads "you have to get me out of here." She then lays back on the cot and dies in front of me.
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