EYEWITNESS STORY NUMBER 16
In the morgue at my hospital, I would always hear knocking coming from inside the freezer. It really creeped me out, especially when the pathologist looked up, grabbed me by the shoulders, stared me straight in the eye and said “you hear that? You never open that door when they’re knocking. Never.” It turned out to be some loose pipes, he thought it was hilarious I didn’t sleep that night.
NUMBER 17
I work in an LTC facility, and within lies the legend of the little girl…many people have seen her; few have survived to tell about it…quite a few residents have asked me “who’s that little girl?” and pointed to her…coincidentally, these people would be dead within 72 hours of seeing her.
Turns out, about 10 years ago, there was a fatal car accident in front of our LTC…the victim? A little girl, about 10 years old.
NUMBER 18
A couple, retired military captain and his wife, Margaret, sold their house to move to Florida. It so happens that they sold their house to the State – the state was going to use it as a residential home for mentally disabled teens.
After the closing, but before they moved, Margaret died in the house. The Captain had to move cause the house was already sold.
Do you know where I’m going with this??
Residents always referred to ‘old lady’ that they always saw. Nursing staff just referred to her as ‘Maggie’.
Now, late at night, when the residents were asleep, if the staff put the TV on more adult programming, like ‘Red Shoe Diaries’, etc., the TV would turn off, and when turned back on, would come on on a different channel.
There was this one nurse, it was like the house was out to get her. She’d swear that ‘the carpet tripped me’. When cupboards opened, knives would fall out aimed at her. Turns out this nurse was eventually fired for abusing and stealing from the residents.
Maggie takes care of her ‘children’.
NUMBER 19
I work as a CNA in long-term care. We had one resident “Betty” who was totally independent, 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 showered 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, climbed out of bed and fell. Betty died from the fall. No one was moved into bed C (Betty’s bed) afterward.
The following week the call light for the room went off at night. Thinking it was the resident in bed B, I walked down to 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.
NUMBER 20
We have a gentleman that we call the inspector. He appears at the end of the long hall (our wings are L shaped). He carries a clipboard in his hand. When he shows up a resident usually dies within the next couple of days. We’ve also had residents ring and tell us that there was a man standing next to their roommate’s bed and that we should tell him to leave (no men on nights). The roommate usually dies soon after. And then there are the children. Several lucid residents have reported children in the halls at night there’s a children’s home behind us where children have been abused in the past.
NUMBER 21
I was working a night shift job as an aide caring for a lady with terminal cancer on hospice at home as I have for years. She was starting to slip and I woke her family, two girls and DH. We were all sitting around, she was pretty quiet and peaceful. All of a sudden she looked toward the door and said “Rex, Rex you’re here for me. I’m ready and they won’t let me go” I saw a shadowy figure come into the room and felt the creepiest evil spirit……..I’m not normally spooked but I was so glad when it was time for me to go home. I turned to watch this spirit and the family was looking at me like “what are you looking at?” The lady died later that day.
A few months later her daughter had been sick (just not well, not terminal) and they called my agency to see if I would come and stay with him at night for a few days until he was a little stronger. I stayed two nights. All kinds of weird paranormal stuff in that house. Voices in rooms that were empty, the sound of people moving around when everyone was asleep, etc. I decided I didn’t care how sick he was or how much that family liked me, I was NOT doing another shift there.
NUMBER 22
A couple of stories from the unit. In bed 3 there was a homeless pt “Willy” who, thanks to modern medicine, was kept alive for I believe around 3 months (no family to stop care). Willy eventually died but PTs who are in bed 3 will talk about their friend Willy who brought them a blanket or stopped by to talk. Bed 3 is at the end of the unit and has an anteroom before you go in. You can’t see directly in Bed 3 unless you’re in the anteroom or looking at the room on the monitor. One night with no pt in Bed 3 the monitor flips to the room and a body was seen laying over the side of the bed (over the side rails)…kind of the floating…the room was checked and no one was there.
Another night a nurse who has worked in the unit a few years saw someone sitting in a chair behind the door in Bed 3 with their legs crossed. She wondered since we have limited visiting hours how a family member got in the room. She went in the room and no one was there. Needless to say, she was freaked out.
There was also another pt who was a young woman in her 20s who contracted necrotizing fasciitis (flesh-eating disease) from one of her kids who had strep. She was in the unit a while and eventually died. One of the nurses coming on to the next shift wanted to know why the PT was standing on the backside of the unit with her twin daughters holding their hands (wondering how she made such a miraculous recovery) she was informed the PT had died earlier that day.
NUMBER 23
The very small step down unit I worked in was having nighttime staffing issues, I agreed to rotate to nights to help them out.
It was a 4 bed, newly renovated unit. It was around 3 am, and I was watching the monitors, listening to the patient’s snore. The pencil drawer slid open, I didn’t think much of it since the hospital was on a very busy avenue and I thought it was caused by the vibrations from the traffic on the busy road below. After sliding the drawer back several times, I decided if the drawer felt it needed to be open so be it
Several minutes later I heard a noise in the room, the patient’s bathroom door opening and the sound of someone pushing an IV pole. Since I did not have a clear view of the bathroom, I just thought one of the staff members from the main floor had dashed in to wash their hands. I looked up from my monitor viewing to see a patient we recently had in the unit. It was Mrs. G, an older woman who came in with atypical chest pain, became septic due to a gallbladder issue.
She evidently had expired in the unit. Although the hospital itself had been on this site for years, the unit was newly renovated, right down to tearing down walls and putting up new ones. I heard the patient’s bathroom door open and again I heard the rattling of the IV pole and shuffling feet. I looked up and saw Mrs. G. standing there in the middle of the floor, one hand pushing the IV pole, the other hand on top of the pump on the pole. She stopped walking, turned and waved, nodded her head, said everything was going to be okay, took a few steps, and disappeared.
It was quite a site to see. Shortly after that “vision” one of the nurses from the floor came in to see if I needed anything. I told her no I was ok. And asked her if she had ever seen a ghost in the hospital. She looked at me, gasped and asked “no, why” and I explained to her what had just happened. She said she would never step foot in that room again.
Mrs. G was the first patient to die in that unit. She was well liked by all the staff and my feeling was that she was watching over us. The day shift came in, and I told them my story. They weren’t surprised.
Through the years working at various hospitals, worked as a Nurse Extern my senior year in nursing school and heard older nurses telling their stories about ghosts, I thought they were just burnt out. HA!! Yes, there are ghosts in care facilities. If they are not seen their presence is felt. They leave an energy behind.
NUMBER 24
I was working my regular 7-7 night shift in a bone marrow transplant unit with one other nurse. We had 5 patients, and it was about 3:30 am. My coworker had just come out of room 4 and I startled her as she came around the corner. She had been emptying a urinal when the bathroom door had closed on her, which of course freaked her out, and she spilled urine on herself but I digress.
She proceeded to tell me that there was a young gentleman who had been in that room who had died a rather gruesome death…evidently, this man was slated to go home, but one night (around 4) the nurses heard a thump…the sound of someone falling…they rushed in the room, and this man was in the bathroom, central line out, and blood everywhere. They coded him, but he died right there in the bathroom. No one is sure why he pulled his line, or what had happened, but evidently, the scene was a bloodbath. Horrible, horrible…now here comes the scary part.
A few weeks later, a sweet little old lady is in that room and asks the nurse if someone had died in there. The nurse explained that this is a hospital, and it was likely that someone could have died. Well, the lady says, “I think a young guy died in here.” The nurse asks why the lady responds “cuz he’s talking to me.” Aghhh!! Ok, I’m not making this up….this lady has a central line, triple lumen. The nurse goes in there later and there is blood everywhere. One of her lines is cut. Not pulled out, but cut. There are no scissors in the room. The lady says “he did it.”
NUMBER 25
I am a South African Nurse who is currently living and working in California. The weirdest thing happened to me one night when I was working Night Shift back in SA. I had a patient whom I thought was playing with his IV causing me no end of headaches – as we have all experienced. I eventually confronted him after having to open the clamp for what seemed like the hundredth time that night. He got really irate with me and said he had done no such thing but blamed it on a young nurse in a white dress whom he said had fiddled repeatedly with it. I was confused because we wear specific uniforms in South Africa and they were not white this specific hospital. Needless to say, I was really irritated and I think we both ended the conversation feeling exasperated.
I didn’t think about his story about the young nurse for several weeks until one night I was dealing with a totally different room and a totally different patient. The call light rang and when I went to answer it the patient said he had a problem with one of my staff. Curious, I asked what. He said a young nurse in a white uniform was standing quietly in the doorway of the dark bathroom staring at him and it was freaking him out. At this, my hair stood on end but I reassured him that he must have been dreaming and checked the bathroom just to be sure. There was nothing there but I will never forget it.
Another instance, there was a patient who was terminally ill with liver cancer in a private room. I was working days but the night shift people said they hated going into the room because something would blow on the back of their necks and shadows would move where shadows shouldn’t be. The man was a Christian, as was his wife, and his wife said she saw this black presence descend above him and his breathing would become labored. She asked me and a friend to pray for her which we gladly did being Christians ourselves. We anointed and blessed the room and prayed with the family and asked the Lord to seal the room. From that time on the room was filled with peace and love and the man breathed so much easier. People had no more problems with going in there. This gentle little man eventually passed away, but it was in a place of peace and love.
NUMBER 26
Night nurse for 4 years now at an old folk’s home. Had a palliative who couldn’t sleep because of incredibly vivid hallucinations. She would describe voodoo people around her room that would just stare at her waiting for her to die. I didn’t take it seriously until the lady across the hall (who rarely ever spoke) starting seeing them in her room too. Legitimate shivers.
NUMBER 27
I work a stroke/telemetry floor on the bought shift. Most of our patients are elderly. Apparently, there are two things that patients see before they pass away.
Some will say that two men are walking in their rooms and telling them to get ready to leave. The patient will call and tell us that these men are big and abrasive in their demeanor. They are either terrified or annoyed when they see the two men.
The other thing they will see is a little boy who will go into their rooms and try to wake them up. The boy is usually loud and runs around their rooms. The patients will call and ask who’s letting children just run around late night.
Several nights or even that same shift we’re coding or cleaning the patient for the funeral home to pick up.
NUMBER 28
I work a stroke/telemetry floor on the bought shift. Most of our patients are elderly. Apparently, there are two things that patients see before they pass away.
Some will say that two men are walking in their rooms and telling them to get ready to leave. The patient will call and tell us that these men are big and abrasive in their demeanor. They are either terrified or annoyed when they see the two men.
The other thing they will see is a little boy who will go into their rooms and try to wake them up. The boy is usually loud and runs around their rooms. The patients will call and ask who’s letting children just run around late night.
Several nights or even that same shift we’re coding or cleaning the patient for the funeral home to pick up.
NUMBER 29
My town has two really old hospitals. One no longer functions as overnight, and the stories are unsettling. No one cleans the old ER alone, because all the lights and call bells go off. On other floors, there’s a kid with his ball, a lady in a white dress, etc.
A coworker was cleaning an entire floor utterly solo (the norm) and bounced between rooms because the cleaning solution stays wet for a few mins. Upon returning to a freshly wiped bed, handprints were clearly visible.
NUMBER 30
Not my personal story, but when my mom worked as an E.R. nurse a guy came in from a car accident and was losing blood. In the midst of resuscitation, the man jolts awake and screams “Don’t let me go back there! Please, please, please don’t let me go back!” A few seconds later they lost him.
NUMBER 31
I work midnights in a long-term care facility as a nurse’s assistant. I have two men under my care and both of them are unable to use their call lights.
They have severe dementia and debilitating Parkinson’s disease but still, their lights are looped around their bed rail. One night their light came on and I went to answer it already confused and creeped out. I turned it off and left the room. Before I could get two doors up the light came back on. I went in there and both lights were unplugged from the wall and thrown under their beds. I fished them out, plugged them back in and left.
I’ve seen shadows standing over the dying and felt a tap on my shoulder while doing chest compressions so I knew that lady had passed.
I’m not a believer but some of those things can’t be explained.
NUMBER 32
I was pulling a guard shift in the CHS on FOB Speicher on the night in Iraq. There hadn’t been any action for the whole previous week so the staff was all racked out. I was walking the halls and everything was supposed to be off or on standby. I walked passed one room that they used for Locals who were victims of trauma. The lights were on so I toggled the switch down to turn them off. I started walking down the hall again and I saw the lights come back on out of the corner of my eye. This is when I went into an alert mode (safety off, at low-ready). I cleared the corner and looked into the room. Nothing.
I put the switch back in the down position again and went to call it up on the intercom. The radio was on the fritz. So I began walking back to the CQ desk to report it in person. The lights turned back on. At this point, I’m a little on edge. I can’t radio in for help, there is nobody on this side of the compound that would hear me yell, and the light switch position keeps changing when the lights go back on. Keep in mind that I’m on a Forward Operating Base in a combat zone. I don’t know what I was expecting when I went to clear the corner and look into the room again, but I saw nothing but an empty room, a gurney, a heart monitor, and a crash cart. I couldn’t tell you to this day why I said what I did, but I was worried that if I didn’t, the lights would keep switching back on. I said, “If you’re scared of the dark, I’ll leave the light on for you.”
I finished my shift and left the light on. I left a note with the desk that one of the surgeons had asked me to always leave that light on just in case they had an emergency come in. For the remainder of my shifts, that light had always remained on.
NUMBER 33
Worked at a hospital doing transport for a couple of years. The transport home base was in the basement of the hospital, where all the laundry is done and supplies are also sorted there. I hated working late nights after this incident.
On this particular night, I was the only one in the basement when I heard whistling at the end of the hallway by the elevator. I poked my head around the corner expecting to see my only coworker on duty that night, but there was absolutely no one there. I shrugged it off, I’m not easily spooked. Nights are slow, so I ate some snacks and hung out in the break room for a bit. Next thing I know, I hear a loud bang. I walked into the hallway and a bed is rolling down the hall bumping into the sides. At this point, I think that my coworker is bullshitting me. I radio him and he says he’s upstairs in the cafeteria. Ah, I still don’t believe him and think I’ll catch him in the act. I walk past the laundry room and the machines start. Pop my head in there expecting to find him but it’s completely empty. Okay…starting to get a little nervous. I walk into the laundry room, and the machines completely stop. I freeze, then run out and head towards the elevator when I hear whistling again.
At this point, I know I am the only worker in the basement. As I am standing there waiting for the elevator, things start falling off of the shelves down the hall. Boxes of gloves, tissues, packages of tubes.. I am literally standing there watching them fall off one by one at the opposite end of the hallway. I shit you not, my entire body broke out in goosebumps, my hair stood on end and I had this strong gut feeling I was being watched, I was not alone. As I’m getting into the elevator, I feel what feels like someone brushing my arm. Went upstairs and found my coworker in the cafeteria, freaked out to him. I got the fuck out of there and transferred soon after that. The creepy thing to add to it is that I usually whistle mindlessly to myself at work, it was almost as if the spirit was mimicking me. Creepiest feeling ever.
NUMBER 34, AND 35
First story: Patient had been in CCU (where I work at the time) for a long period of time(six months) we had finally been transferred to med Surg floor and he coded. We worked on him for 45 min to an hour and he had no pulse or heart rhythm the entire time and the docs had decided to call it and his family walk in the room leans over him and rubs his chest lightly and says his name and immediately regains a pulse and regains consciousness.
Second Story: Patient comes in coding and we are working on him and we are getting nothing, so we bring in his wife to say goodbye and she starts yelling at him at the top of her lungs and he comes back so we arrange transfer to a tertiary hospital and he codes again so she comes back and yells at him again and comes back again, cut to they are loading him into the helicopter and he codes again, so they bring him back into our ER after working on him for a bit on the helipad and his wife yells at him again and once again he immediately comes back. Eventually, they decide to have his wife ride in the helicopter with him to make sure she can scare him back to life if he were to code again. The guy ended up living and received at heart transplant and is still alive to this day all thanks to his wife scaring the life back into him.
NUMBER 36
I worked overnight security in one of the largest, best, and oldest hospitals in the US. My fellow security officers and I all have stories about one building in particular, but the one that I’ll tell is the one that happened to me.
The Backstory: This hospital was built in the late 1800’s and it was the original psychiatric building for this hospital. Now, being the late 1800’s, not much was truly known about psychiatric disorders. On top of that, this hospital was known for its medical research. With both of those facts combined, you can infer that some terrible shit was done to these misunderstood psych patients in this building. A couple years before I started working security there, this building had been converted into offices after the newly built part of the hospital dedicated a section for an updated psych ward.
My story: My rounds for that night happened to include said building. At night this building was empty, due to recently being converted into offices and the drones who worked there wanting to leave promptly at 1700, if not earlier. In some of their haste, they left their office doors unlocked, which is a big no-no due to medical information being located in their offices. It was our duty to go to each floor and make sure every door was locked, and if it wasn’t, to secure it ourselves.
I did my initial sweep of the building to make sure it was clear (nobody in the building), and proceeded to do my door checks. The hallways were pretty narrow, so I could check both sides of the hallway’s doors at once. At the end of this hallway, there were two sets of doors you had to go through to reach the final office, which was a dead end. Everything was secure. Awesome. Time for the next floor.
I exited the two sets of doors from the dead end office and stood absolution frozen from what I saw.
Every door ajar. Set perfectly so their own weight wouldn’t cause them to shut again. And one wheelchair, at the end of the hallway, facing towards the steps.
I had heard other security officers outright reject that set of rounds due to strange stuff happening there, but I laughed it off until that night happened. Never took those rounds again.
Second story: The old children’s ICU is currently under construction to be turned into medical labs, so we have to patrol the area. Once again to make sure the area is secure, or to report if the contractor/foreman stayed to plan for the next day.
When patrolling this area, several security officers have reported seeing a single white male child around the age of 5-7 with short brown hair (think 90’s bowl cut). I personally dismissed this (this was before the psych ward incident) as a tall tale told with the intent to scare me because I was new at the time.
I got that buildings patrol one night, and a foreman who stayed late called security and asked for a security officer to come up ‘because a kid locked himself in a room, and I don’t want him to get hurt with all the open wires in there.’ Or something to that effect.
I unlocked the door for him. Looked at what could only be a 10 x 8 room for about 10 min. No kid. Called it in as a false alarm, and finished my patrol.
Third Story: Had a special detail (aka babysitting) a violent psych patient, along with another security officer. He woke up in the middle of the night, recognized the other officer, and said hello.
He sees me and immediately starts screaming at me not to hurt him. Now, I’m a rather large gentleman (at 6’2 and 250 lbs), but I try not to make myself too intimidating around psych patients as to not escalate the situation.
Well, he keeps screaming for me not to hurt him, and he says if I promise not to, he would make something good happen for me. I promise, he calms down, goes back to sleep, and I forget about it.
Next day I got a permanent set of rounds and a pretty good promotion. Easily a coincidence, but interesting nonetheless.
Fourth Story: Fellow security officer had rounds in the aforementioned psych building. Heard a call on the radio, in what could only be described as dry throat terror voice, for one officer for back up. I was close so I responded to his call letting him know I was on the way.
When I got there he had his head between his knees and was silently crying with a shattered chandelier a couple feet next to him.
Now, before I had experienced the abnormal happenings in this building, I would have written off his testimony off as idiocy. But he claimed that something held him in that spot as the chandelier started swinging wildly until it started to fall. When it started to fall he was ‘let go’ and allowed to move, and scrambled out of the way before it hit him.
Got him up, calmed him down, and took him back to the supervisor. She yelled to one of our other supervisors ‘almost lost another one in [insert building name here]!’ The other supervisor laughed and said ‘Why do you think we send the new guys! Haha, you know I don’t even like going over there!’
That guy is my roommate and hates when I bring up that experience.
number 37
I had cared for an elderly woman with no family who came to us when her husband died. She didn’t speak often but when she did it was usually just words that made no sense together. I felt so bad for her because ever since she had arrived so many of the residents in her area that she seemed to enjoy spending time with had passed in such a short timespan. She put up a picture of each of them next to her pictures of her husband and several others who were probably family to remember them. I had ad always felt sorry for her and showed her extra attention and we became close. It just seemed so unfair that she had such luck and kept losing people that she cared about. One day she looked at me and said plain as day “sweetie, I think I’m done now” and handed me a picture. It was a picture of me and I smiled because it touched my heart that I was that important to her. She passed nearly a week later and I cried for days, it hit me really hard. She knew it was the end for her and she said goodbye as best she could.
A little less than 2 years later I was talking with a colleague and she came up in conversation. My colleague referred to her as “that crazy bitch” which seemed very out of character for her and it shocked and offended me deeply. I expressed this to her, not so nice and she looked at me with this shocked look and said “oh dear, do you not know?” and then explained something to me that I hadn’t known. As it turned out, it came out sometime after she had passed that she had killed her husband by poisoning him and that there was an investigation because it appeared that she had a ritual of befriending someone, obtaining a picture of them, and hiding the picture until she could kill them (usually by poisoning) and then displaying the picture as a sort of trophy. It was suspected that this may have been the reason for the spike in mortality rate during her stay and the considerable number of photos in her “collection”. The last I heard, the old “family” photos weren’t any relation to her and the police were trying to ID the individuals and compare them to several cold cases.
READ MORE LATER IN PART C
STEVE RAMSEY- CANADA