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She did not like swearing though. One of our newer doctors once made the mistake to tell her to f**k off. After that bad luck seemed to follow him whenever he stepped on the unit. Misplacing his coffee mug - just to show up later exactly where he had put it down before, but now ice cold. Charts disappearing. Lights turning off in the middle of him placing an IV (which prompted me to call her out and her turning the light back on). His chair going down to the lowest setting every time he sat down - even if we switched chairs. The chair would work perfectly fine for anyone but him.
We had him apologise to her and it all stopped, or at least he wasn't that specifically targeted anymore. I kinda miss her.
There’s this never fully answered question – do ghosts exist? Well, technically, it is answered – there is a consensus in science that there is no proof of ghosts. For this reason, ghost hunting and anything like that is typically classified as pseudoscience. You know, a belief that isn’t really compatible with the scientific method.
But while science cannot prove ghosts’ existence, it has managed to find certain reasons why people think they see ghosts. For instance, there are toxic and psychoactive plants (like datura and henbane), which contain anticholinergic compounds that are pharmacologically linked to the development of dementia and neurodegeneration.
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I worked at a very small hospital (maybe 30 beds) it has been around for MANY years. In the basement is of course the old mourge and there is one elevator that goes from the basement to the main floor outside the nurses station. This elevator would come up in the middle of the night randomly and the doors would open and all the staff would get up to go find the patient who just passed away. One night my coworkers and I were sitting at the nurses station and down the short hall to our right we hear this TV come on and the volume is up as loud as it can go. One of my CWs and I walk down said hall to find the TV to turn it down. There is one room down that hall that maintenance has the door closed and Do Not Enter signs on the door. After looking in all the open rooms there is no other room but the closed one to look in, we open the door, there is NOTHING in this room except the TV. I walked in turned the TV and said "Stop that, there is a sick baby next door who needs to sleep, so please be quiet" I walked out and closed the door with no further incidents with the TV.
It can also be due to both prescription and over-the-counter medication (for example, sleep aids), which, in rare cases, can cause hallucinations that can be mistaken for ghosts. The same goes for carbon monoxide poisoning.
Yet, despite all of these explanations, there are people who firmly believe that ghosts exist, whether because they want them to or because they've experienced something that feels too real to not actually exist.
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One night, we had to do a reasonably emergent C/S on a patient who was from out of town. Meaning she didn’t have a support person with her. As far as I remember, the C/S was going well (I was scrubbed in). We were in the middle of it when the patient stopped responding to the anaesthetist. Her vitals were all normal but she just stopped talking to her, stopped responding to questions. I could hear the anaesthetist ask her, “Hey, are you ok?” a few times. After a few minutes, the patient started responding again and all was well.
I had her in recovery room (just me and her, the babies were in the NICU) and things were pretty straightforward. But I did mention to her about the strange episode during the C/S. She said, “I saw my grandmother in the OR. I was so scared and I asked her to hold my hand but she told me that she couldn’t touch me.” That sure was something for a 23 yo to hear at 0300 in a room far away from any of my coworkers in a very, very old and empty hospital.
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A couple hours later, I had left with a coworker to pick up a pt. When I returned, all of my coworkers are freaking out even our senior nurses. My pt was on portable video because he could be forgetful at times. On the camera, they had witnessed multiple orbs shooting through the room that had looked similar to shooting stars. We get that from time to time, but they said that there were a crazy amount to where the room looked like it was glowing. Some coworkers even went in to check. When they did, the video person said they’d disappear then return when staff left.
By the time I returned, the orbs had just stopped. About 15-30 minutes later, my pt wakes up and decides to get up from the bed. I go in there and thought it was weird for him because he didn’t really do that the night prior. I ask him where he’s going. He points to an area behind me and says that his friends are here and want to play cards with him. My coworker who was with me paled. I just said that they should play cards when it was a little later and tucked him into bed. I thought that this whole situation was pretty wholesome. My coworkers thought I was nuts haha. I was like his friends just wanted to stop by and say hi!
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I go in his room at 3 am and ask him why he can’t sleep. He says “I’m not hurting or anything. And don’t get me wrong, I love kids, but why are y’all letting children run around the unit so late?” I asked what he was talking about. He said “the kids in the dinosaur and cowboy costumes.” I said I hadn’t seen them but I’ll let the other staff know to send these kids back to their parents, thinking to myself “who the hell let them in here this late in the first place?”
I head back to the nurses station and tell the charge (who has worked there for years). I tell him “hey the dude in room XY said he can’t sleep cause some kids keep coming in his room.” He looks at me and says, less alarmed than you’d expect, “oh the kids in the dinosaur and cowboy costumes?”
I asked a couple other more veteran staff and they all had stories of patients telling them the same thing. If they were all messing with me, then half the unit and my patient were phenomenal liars.
For instance, various doctors, nurses, and other hospital workers who experience something creepy in their workplace might tend to start believing in the paranormal. For examples of such happenings, we've prepared a whole list today – it’s compiled from various testimonials of said hospital workers that they shared online.
Well, it’s not that surprising that so many creepy stories are coming from hospitals – let’s admit, they can be pretty creepy. Let’s take the infamous former Pennhurst State School and Hospital. This place is widely considered to be haunted, as quite a lot of people have reported paranormal experiences there.
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On night shift between 0200-0300 you would get calls from 12B. You were told on your first night to NEVER answer that extension (think it was 2307 can’t remember).
One night a new nurse answered and that triggered a cascade of calls to the unit until shift change.
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Second story, had a patient for a couple months. I do inpt oncology so our patients get sick very fast. He was on comfort care and passed alone. Take him to the morgue they clean the room new patient gets in there. Poor lady calls in the middle of the night that there is a strange man sitting in her room. We go in she is like i swear he was just here. She describes him, yep exactly like the former patient.
Last one, again another pt that we took care of for a few months, a very sad situation. The room is right next to the nurses station. He had been a very confused active pt in a low bed so constantly setting off alarms. He passes, the room gets cleaned and placed on hold for a new admit. His call bell went off all night long. Finally one of the nurses went in and yelled at "him" that it was time to quiet down and let us get work done. The call bell didn't go off again.
You see, it used to be an overcrowded and underfunded institution for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. This kind of leads us to the topic of mental institutions developing rather negative reputations in people’s minds when associated with ghosts and stuff like that.
Getting mental health help is already hard enough, and these negative stereotypes don’t help the case. Like if a person has an image of a mental hospital being a creepy, haunted place, they might feel discouraged from seeking help to avoid being placed in such a scary place. While in reality, nowadays mental hospitals aren’t that scary. They might be kind of sterile and clinical, but not haunted.
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One night, I went to answer a call light. The patient, who was completely A&O, asked me to “tell those kids to quit playing in my bathroom.” I immediately asked one of the senior nurses what was up. She explained the many lives that unit had led: peds, AIDS hospice, then to post-acute LTC.
The elevator would come up to our floor at least once a night with nobody in it. The doors would then open and close rapidly until the elevator was spoken to. We had taken a vote and named our residence ghost “Georgie.” As soon as somebody said, “Hi, Georgie,” the elevator shenanigans stopped.
Patients sometimes reported seeing strange men in their rooms (we had no male staff on the unit). Call lights occasionally went off in empty rooms, even ones that were unplugged. It was eerie but I never got the sense that Georgie and friends meant us harm.
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Obviously, Andrew required 2 people to help turn him, change him etc. I walked into Andrew's room one morning and out of the corner of my eye saw a man, at least 6 foot tall and dressed in a black trench coat, black boots and a black hat, standing over Andrew and just staring down at him. The moment I looked properly, the apparition had gone. I didn't get a sense of malice or anything, it was just observing him. My colleague, who came through 30 seconds later said I looked white as a sheet.
I don't believe in ghosts, but I can't explain that one besides maybe a bird flying past the window and casting a shadow that my brain misinterpreted or something.
Maybe in the past, they were way worse, like the Pennhurst institute, where people were neglected and exploited, but things have improved since then. Now, the aforementioned hospital is used as a haunted attraction and a museum – it doesn’t treat patients anymore.
So, anytime you read ghost stories, keep in mind that, scientifically, they don’t have that much support, thus they might be experiences brought on by certain personal experiences and contexts. Or, science hasn't evolved enough to prove ghosts just yet – only time will tell.
Do you have any ghost stories you've experienced yourself? We’re eager to hear about them in the comments!
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One night, one of my CNAs was doing a round and stopped outside of the door. The resident had her curtain completely around her bed, and the lights were off. She was whispering frantically. The CNA heard her say "yes, she has pink on." The CNA who the resident still could not see or hear was outside in the hall had a pink top on. This was her first round at 2200.
When the Aide walked in and announced herself, the resident quickly shushed her. When she asked the resident what was wrong, the resident stared intently at her and pointed to the bathroom. "Be quiet. The man in the bathroom will hear you."
The CNA swears she heard something move in there. I believe it. That area of the facility is called "the hole" for a reason.
We've also had several residents throughout the years complain about children running up the halls in the middle of the night laughing. It's always in the same unit near the same room.
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Months later, I was taking care of an elderly woman who was clearly sundowning. I did my best to calm her, but with little luck. Out of nowhere, she yells, “OFIE! OOOOOFIE!”
Nobody in her family was named Ofie. We weren’t talking about Ofie that night, either.
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We managed to control the bleeding that day. The next morning she was my pt again and coded a few hrs into the shift. Everyone ran into her room, and the acls protocol began. I was spiking bag after bag of blood products. As I spiked a bag of platelets, I looked straight ahead because I saw movement in the 5th floor windows in front of me. A solid black mass, darker than any earthly black color, like a void was floating there. It had no distinct shape, and the edges where whispy and undulating. I would estimate it was about 4ft, no face, nothing. But when I looked right at it, I felt it knew I saw it. At a very fast speed it zoomed down, at a left angle and out of sight. There were about 12 other people in the room, but nobody else saw it. She did die. I felt it was waiting to take her and it was not a good feeling when I saw it.
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