‘Tis the season. Ghost story season that is. What better way to kick off the month of October than with terrifying tales from Nurses all over. That’s what AllNurses.com have done. They’ve collected dozens of spine-tingling tales from real nurses from across the United States. What follows are 9 real-life encounters with the unknown by those who look after the sick, inured, or dying.

DON’T LET THEM TAKE ME!

The best I have heard is from a nurse who said that one night she was floated to oncology at the hospital she used to work at. She was given a patient who was passing away and had been unconscious for several days. At one point during the night the nurse went into the room and the patient was at the top of the bed and looked at her and said, “don’t let them take me!”, the nurse was freaked out and asked her who was going to take her and she said that black thing up there and pointed up in the air. This patient died within minutes.

THE BLACK SHAPE STANDING OVER THE BED

One night I was caring for a dying male patient. He was scared and I spent quite some time with him, trying to calm and reassure him. Eventually he calmed and I left the bedside and went over to the nurses station which was about 15 feet away. As I sat down I glanced over to him and there was a black shape standing over the bed, looking down at the patient. I was terrified, and am sure it was something evil.

THE ESCAPEE

I used to work in a state inst for developmentally disabled. We were temp relocated to another building for remodeling of our bldg. Anyways… I was working one nite, 2nd shift. We had a locked pica unit. I saw one of the residents walking down the hall. Very distinct gait and very distinct yellow t-shirt w/ a happy face on it. I went into the ward to let staff know that they had an escapee.

This was a serious situation because this particular resident, Larry, would ingest absolutely anything (from clothing to pens to belts to *ugh* a bird’s head)… literally anything. He was also very reluctant to go back to his home ward (hence why I didn’t bring him back myself…he needed two escorts). When we got back into the hall, less than 15 secs later, Larry was gone!! We searched the entire building! Outside, downstairs, all wards…he was NO WHERE to be found!!! This whole search lasted last than 10 mins because I had all extra staff looking for him. I was just about to call the house supervisor to let her know that we “lost” someone when out from the bathroom walks Larry w/ one of the staff. He had been getting his bath in the bathroom for the last 30 mins or so. Kind of freaky!

I absolutely, without a doubt, saw Larry in the hallway. I never would’ve short-staffed the wards like I did if I hadn’t seen him! Like I said, very distinctive gait, look, clothing. I took a lot of razzing that nite! They all thought that I was crazy. Anyways, come to find out the next day, after the story goes around that I am crazy (haha, gigglegiggle, funnyfunny)… Larry had an identical twin brother who died in that building 10 yrs previously.

NURSE BETTY

I was working in the nicu when we had a threat of a tornado. Some Nurses got pulled to go to a sister hospital in town to assist in the disaster plan. When all was over one of the nurses returned with this story:

She was assisting the nurses in giving some meds before pulling all into the hallways. Every pt she went to said they already had their meds from that nice nurse in the white uniform and hat. She realized after she left that its been awhile since a nurse has worn a hat. That story revealed the urban legend of Nurse Betty. Story goes she had an affair with a married md, became pregnant then agreed to allow him to perform an abortion on her on the 2nd floor OR room. She died and he went to jail. She never left the hospital and was seen frequently.

The local newspaper would do an article of her every year around halloween on her sightings. The hospital has since been replaced with college dorms. Hmmmm I wonder if any students have seen her?

HE JUMPED OUT THE WINDOW

I heard a story once about a 5th floor neuro unit. This was told to me first person. nurse was at the desk and a guy in white nursing garb came through the double doors, walked into an empty room, and didn’t come back out.

Nurse thought it was weird so he went into the room, and it was empty.

He went to the double doors and opened them and there were 2 resp techs talking at the entrance who swore they’d been there talking the whole time and that nobody came through the doors.

When one of his co-workers returned from lunch and he explained what happened, she was like, “Oh, that’s just Bob (actually I don’t remember the name, so the name were changed to protect my ignorance). He worked here as an LVN years ago and was accused of molesting a child. He was sure he was about to be arrested so he jumped out the window in that room and killed himself. We see him all the time . . .”

CALLING FROM THE GRAVE

We had a patient, chronic CHFer, always on the call button, hated being on fluid restrictions. you know the type: the nurses have to take turns during the shift answering the call button so the primary can actually do other work.

And this was a frequent flier cause he was very chronic, very borderline, and the hospital was the only place he wouldn’t fluid overload.

I work 7p-7a. He died about 8pm. Oh the look on his face, like, “how could you let me die!” – Like it was our fault. Anyway, family came and gone by 9pm, funeral home gone at 9:30pm. About 10pm, the call button starts going off. I was there – call button going off every 5 minutes.

One of the nurses was a very spiritual girl. At about 2am, after like 4 HOURS OF THIS, nurse Mary snaps, ‘Enough!’

She walks down to the room, and, practically screams into the empty room, “Mr X, you have died. You can’t be in here bothering us anymore. Move along. In the name of Jesus, I’m exorcising you from this plane of existence. Go to the light and be happy!”

And I kid you not, the call button stopped going off then and there.

LAST CALL

I work as a CNA in long term care. We had one resident “Betty” who was totally independant, all ADL’s were done on her own and she did fine on her own, never had an incident. The only time she wanted help was showers and then she only wanted you around to make sure she didn’t slip and fall. Betty came down with pneumonia and had to be hospitalized. When she came back she was too weak to do things on her own but too stubborn to ask for help. The last thing the CNA told her before going to bed was “If you want to get up, hit your call light. I’ll come help you.” Of course she didn’t, got rid of the bed alarm, climed out of bed and fell. Betty died from the fall. No one has been moved into her bed.

The following week the call light for the room went off at night. Thinking it was the resident in bed B I walked down the room to see what she wanted. I walked into the room only to see the call light for bed B and A off, the call light for bed C (Betty’s unoccupied bed) was on. My eyes filled up with tears, I backed out of the room and made someone else turn the call light off.

THE GIANT SHADOW MAN

I was walking past the nurses station on one of our units just before breakfast time and saw this big black figure that was behind a chair raise up from about three feet tall to seven feet almost touching the ceiling and it was coming my way over the counter. I moved my butt on out there quickly.

When I shared this story with the folks who had worked 11-7 the day before and one of them had seen a big black figure go by and they both heard it make some kind of mournful moan as it went down the ramp to the other unit. I nearly fell over when I found out I wasn’t the only one seeing it that day. We both described exactly the same thing even with the same gait.

DONT LET ME DIE!

My creepiest and scariest ghost story for me happened about a year ago. It really was more of a possession than a ghost story.

I was helping another nurse with a patient that had lived a very hard life. It had numerous things going on with him from cardiac to renal failure. You name it, he had it going on. This man was very much afraid to die. Every time his heart monitor beeped, he would just go into a rage screaming, “Don’t let me die! Don’t let me die!” The other nurse and I found out why he didn’t want to die.

About 0200 his cardiac monitor starts alarming V-Tach. We both rush into the room. I am pulling the crash cart behing me. When I get to the room, the other nurse is completely white. This man was sitting about 2 inches above the bed and was laughing. His whole look completely changed. His eyes just had a look of pure evil on them and he had this evil smile on his face. He laughed at us and said, ” You stupid b****es aren’t going to let me die will you?” and he laughed again. We were kinda frozen.

I did reach up and hit the Code Blue button and when I did the man went into V-fib. He crashed back onto the bed. We started coding him, but after 20 minutes it was called. 5 minutes after the code was called several of the code team is in the room cleaning up when this man sits straight up in the bed and says, ” You let him die. Too bad.” and then begins laughing. The man collapsed back to the bed. We heard a horrible, agonizing scream ( actually every patient in the unit that night commented on the scream), and then you could hear “don’t let me die” being whispered throughout the unit. Everyone of the nurses that night was pale and scared. No body went anywhere by themselves. By morning the whispers of “don’t let me die” were gone. The night shift nurses had a prayer service in the break room before we left for home and then we all had nightmares for weeks.

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