“Feels Wrong And Backwards”: 50 Hospital Workers Share Creepy Moments That Left Them Speechless

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.

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……….

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Anti-vaxxers fighting for their lives for 3 weeks then still saying COVID and the vaccine is a hoax.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.