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

How often patients realize their time is near even when there are no medical signs. I discharged a post op patient who was doing very very well. He said to me this surgery is going to be the end of me. There were no signs of anything wrong and he couldn’t tell me why he was saying that. Two weeks later he developed an acute post op complication and died.

Not seen but a lot of the patients in the hospital where I work constantly say they see a little boy in their room. Like I’ve been there 11 years and 20+ people have told me they saw a little boy playing in their room. It creeps me out every time.

I used to work in a catholic hospital and on night rounds on the orthopedic floor I finally asked a nurse why the patient room right off from the elevator was used for storage of extra beds/ IV poles. I assumed it may have been too noisy and had patient complaints from being by the elevator. The real story is that it was haunted by this woman who was acting very strange and apparently they had call a priest in to literally see if she was possessed.

He said she was and she had accused a nurse of stealing her baby (patient was 70ish and son died as an infant). Turns out that nurse was pregnant and didn’t know it yet. Anyway she apparently “levitated” and died a few days later. They had hung a cross outside the wall of the room that was facing the elevators that fell off and broke. And the paper towel automatic dispenser (the one you wave your hand in front of) would constantly spill out paper towels and the automatic sink would turn on and off randomly. So they quit putting patients in that room. I never witnessed it myself but I also never went in to that room after that.

Gonorrhea of an abdominal ostomy. Ostomy is when they reroute the colon to exit from the abdominal wall when the there is an issue with the colorectal system. Google it if you need a visual.

Not really as exciting as the others, but a pt who was newly diagnosed with cancer decided not to get treatment because she “just didn’t have another round in her”. Shortly after, she was complaining of pain in her leg/foot, which was quickly diagnosed as a blood clot. She refused treatment. We watched her decline for days, her foot went from hot and red, to black. Each shift I would come in and find her mental status had deteriorated quickly. It was extremely sad seeing her family come in day after day, begging her to get help and change her mind while watching her die.

RN here, when I was a student nurse I arrived at my first ever clinical placement, on my very first day, first thing in the morning, and the nurses had me help them put a guy in a body bag who'd died overnight. Not the most fun introduction to my nursing career, but it sure prepared me for all the s**t I'd have to see and do.

I’m a scrub nurse. My job is to assist the surgeon during surgeries. One of the very first surgeries I ever sat in on about a year ago was a hemicolectomy (removal of part of the large intestine). Halfway through the surgery the patient’s arm came up and hit me in the leg. I screamed and jumped and immediately thought the patient had woken up mid surgery. The surgeon who was preforming the surgery sighed loudly and said “While body twitches during surgery are not common, they are not impossible. Please calm yourself.” It was the creepiest moment feeling someone I thought was unconscious touch me but then quickly turned into an embarrassing teaching moment for me.

Idk creepy? I think I’m desensitized now. I think the foreign bodies are always interesting. I’ve seen snakes, peanut butter jars, outside spickets, Barbie heads, razors etc. my first code was pretty creepy when patients get that marble dead look in their eyes. I think when it hit me that my job isn’t like my friends is when I was going to get lunch downstairs, and I bumped into a body bag going to outside trailer ( no room left in the morgue cause of COVID) and then the body, morgue people and me got on the same elevator and I just had my chicken in my hand just like a normal Tuesday. Amputations always give me the wiggles.

Was working in the emergency department (I’m a pharmacist), walked by the nurse station where they have the EKG rhythms of monitored patients showing across the screen. The patient who was in the trauma bay had the most whacky s**t happening on the screen so I went to the room to see what was happening. Code in process, his chest had been c*****d and the trauma surgeon was beating the heart with his hand to try to get him to come back. He did not.

As a student I was given the opportunity to attend a donor enucleation (removal of eye tissue for potential transplant or research). The patient was deceased and the donation was for research. I had never witnessed such a thing in training as it's rather specialized and I tend to work with living patients, and, to be completely transparent, I thought my preceptor had said

"*colleague name* is going to get some ICE. Did you want to assist?"

I literally thought I was going to help him get ice. In retrospect it made zero sense but I was very new to the placement and keen to impress so I immediately jumped aboard. When we got to the morgue I realized something was up. It took no time for me to reassemble the word I had misunderstood as I donned appropriate PPE and was escorted into the cold room for retrieval of the eye tissue.

Thankfully, my mentor was not expecting me to participate as I stood frozen next to the deceased patient who was post autopsy (not covered up on her slab, y incision just kind of laid back in place on her torso) and I spent the next 20 minutes nodding enthusiastically, attempting to appear as if I had knowingly engaged in this lesson from the start.

The actual removal of the eyes was not too distressing (tissues, fluids and procedures were not unfamiliar in training with live patients) but the view left behind haunted me for a few years. There was something so unsettling about that patients body lying there exposed on a narrow metal gurney, Y incision across torso with her eyeballs removed from her head. Because it was well post mortem the eyelids could be pulled down respectfully but they just kind of popped back open with nothing beneath them to hold them closed.

20 years later I've seen things that make that experience a walk in the park in comparison but the that image popped immediately into mind when I read this question so thought I'd share.

Sleep well, friends. ;).