54 Creepy Things Hospital Staff Have Witnessed That Sound Straight Out Of A Horror Movie

When cleaning up incontinent elderly ladies with dementia, some would fight and cry and beg you to stop. “I’ll be a good girl”. “Im sorry. I’m a dirty girl”. “Don’t hurt me anymore”. “Mama, mama, help me”. What did those women suffer in earlier life. Heartbreaking.

I took care of a Sister of Mercy (a nun) who had dementia and was dying. She was a catholic school teacher in her day.

Anyway, she was crying and screaming begging god to forgive her for what she had done to the children.

Apparently, she had done very bad and inhumane things to the children and she was begging god for forgiveness so she wouldn’t go to hell.

I was working on a medical floor and taking care of a man going through his first psychotic break. He would be pleasant and kind, then his eyes would fill with terror. He would just look at you, his eyes pleading for help as he ripped his hair out and screamed "I'm traveling though time!"

During one of these moments, he jumped out of his bed and started bashing his head against a wall, screaming for help. After two days they were finally able to get him into the state psychiatric hospital. About two months later I read in the paper that he was found drowned in a small stream behind his house. I felt so sorry that the system had failed him.

Ooh, I love medical ghost stories! I could write a book on all the ones I've heard over the years. This is one that happened on a unit I worked in about a year ago. For reference, I believe in ghosts and the supernatural. I'm also very pragmatic about my approach to them. But this one is weird.

Note: All identifying information has been changed for confidential purposes.

In the unit I worked in, we used cordless phones to communicate. The shift was winding down and I was just d*****g around on my cell phone. I get a call from the Covid Unit.

"Hey, it's Kim. Are you busy?"
"Nah, just k*****g time until Days gets here. What's up?"
"The call light for 512 keeps going off."
[pregnant pause] "So... answer it."
[whisper] "There's no one in 512..."
"Huh, that is weird. Yeah, I'll come over and check it out."

I tell my charge I'm leaving the floor because Kim is having a call light issue in Covid. I always hated working the Covid Unit because of its location. You had to walk down an empty hallway and it felt like a world away. Usually, it's only staffed by a nurse +1 (nurse-nurse, nurse-aide), furthering the feeling of isolation.

I get to the unit and have them show me to the room. Kim and her aide (an equally scared aide in her late teens/early 20s). I tell them to stay with me in case something happens. We've had people sneak into the hospital at night and steal things. I wasn't about to get attacked so close to the end of my shift.

I walk into the room, with Kim and the aide hovering at the door. Kim reaches in and shuts the call light off from the unit on the wall by the door. The room looks like it hasn't been touched recently. It still looks cleaned by EVS. I turn all the lights on and loudly announce my presence. I say don't want to harm anyone, or be harmed, but if there's someone here to show themselves. I say this as I'm turning on lights, checking the bathroom, closets, etc. I get to the foot of the bed, and the call light goes off. I stare at it lying on the bed.

"Pull it out of the wall!" I heard Kim exclaim behind me. So I do and lay the cord on the bed, shutting off the call light from the wall by the bed. It goes off again, Kim and Aide squeal and runs away. So much for backup.

I walk out of the room and close the door. I walk to the desk, "Call Maintenance and tell them you have a faulty light. Tell Days about it so they don't freak out." And I walk back to my unit.

The next day, the unit is being staffed by Janice and Jordan. Both are really smart and experienced nurses. Janice was my preceptor and has a very no-nonsense attitude (which is why I like her). She and Jordan were working in separate rooms, and "STAFF EMERGENCY RM 512" rings on Janice's phone. Our locator badges had a single button on them. I called them "crisis buttons". You hit them and everyone's phone lights up (basically an "all come" alert).

Janice runs into 512, no one's there. But through the wall, she hears Jordan working in 511. She walks into 511 and Jordan's in the middle of med pass. "Were you in 512?" "No, I've been in here for the past 10 minutes," Janice explains to her about the staff emergency alert, but they chalk it up to the faulty call light situation.

Later Jordan is sitting at the desk charting, chatting with the charge nurse. Her phone rings, but the Caller ID is a jumbled mess of letters and numbers. Before she can answer it, it stops ringing. She calls the number back and it rings to the desk phone sitting just out of arm's reach.

She tells Janice about it and Janice says, "Wait... Henry died in the room last week." In relaying this story, Janice told me she had enough of this BS and stormed into the room. "Henry, I understand you're trying to go home. If you follow me, I can lead you out." She walked out of the room and to the nearby stairwell, held the door open for a couple of minutes, and walked back to the desk. And there wasn't a problem afterward.

I'm a believer that spirits, at least the non-violent ones, are simply trying to complete a task. When that task is done, they leave. I thought about it later when telling Kim this second part that Henry just needed help leaving. And what do we tell our patients to do when they need our help? Press their call light.

Former nurse here. I used to work at a nursing home and definitely the creepiest, most W*F moment I had was with this Alzheimer's patient. Incredibly difficult man, he would cycle between being basically zoned out and staring off and being *very* violent. A lot of times he would talk to people that weren't there, or to inanimate objects, or he would say he couldn't do simple tasks (like putting his shoes on, going to the bathroom) but with a bit of a push he would get up and do them with zero problems whatsoever.

On this particular day, it's one of his calmer and more lucid ones. We're sitting out in the nursing home's patio area and looking outside and he leans over and whispers, "hey, you know what?" and I ask what is it and he tells me with complete seriousness, "everyone thinks I'm really losing it but I'll tell you a secret, I'm pretending. I'm just playing a game." and then he laughed and said, "but don't tell anyone!"

I side-eyed that guy for the rest of the time I worked there.

We had a patient in ICU who was losing large amounts of blood in her lower GI. We coded her for about an hour and pushed a lot of blood products but ended up losing her. We quickly made her family appropriate and let them say their goodbyes. As a CNA, it was my job to head in once they were done and finish prepping the body for the morgue.

I got a fresh gown and everything I needed for a bed bath, etc and went to work. She was heavy set so I had another aid come in to help me turn her while we cleaned her backside (it was also this aids first day and I was training him).

I've had bile come up a few times when turning a body so I gently placed a towel at the mouth, thinking it would be enough.

What I was not expecting was all the blood that poured out that had traveled up through the stomach and all over the floor. Literally a liter of blood ran out over the bed and was splattering on the floor, covering my scrubs and relatively new shoes.

That aid quit shortly after and it took me about a week to get that image out of my head.

I work in a dementia ward so you must know how creepy it can he there at night.

Its around 0300 and its pouring rain. POURING rain. Thunder, all the jazz. My partner is on break and I'm sitting at the nursing desk. I hear a moan and assume its a pt getting agitated by the rain. Well, from the corner of my eye I see a figure in a white dress.

There's only men down that hall.

So I look again and there's this frail woman standing there just staring at me. It took me a second to register that one of the female pts snuck by me whilst doing rounds and was walking back to her room.

I almost needed a brief that night.

We had two people (DNR’s) d*e one night and one of them was a psych pt who hated everyone’s guts. She would kick at us, scream at us, and spent most of her time in restraints. She especially hated me.

Two nights after she died she appeared to me in my house, clear as day, gave me a toothy grin with a smug glint in her eye, and screamed “HI!”

I screamed so loud my throat hurt for an hour.

Took care of a lady who had end stage renal disease, was on palliative care, minutes away from dying and unresponsive in bed. My charting station was right outside her doorway and while I was waiting for her only daughter to arrive, I was completing some of my paperwork, in full view of the door to the patients room. The daughter finally showed up, very upset, yelling that she wanted me to help get her mother out of the elevator. We both ran to the elevator that was empty. The daughter and I went into the room as her mother took her last breath. The daughter swore up and down that she rode in the elevator with her mother from the lobby to the 12th floor. When they arrived at the 12th floor, her mother told her to go get the nurse to help get her back to her room and she would wait in the elevator because she was too weak to walk back to her room.

I work as a nurse in an ICU, about 2 years ago we had a patient who was 24 and recovering from heart surgery. One night she told her nurse she saw the angel of d***h standing in the corner of her room. Every day after that she would "see" the angel of d***h and talk to him. Apparently he was telling her that she was going to d*e. We consulted psych, tried to get her outside into some daylight but she was still convinced she was going to d*e... like to the point of calling her friends and family to say goodbye. Clinically she looked great! She was recovering as expected and we were getting ready to send her to a step down unit. Then one night around 9 pm she took a sip of water and her sternal incision completely dehisced (split open) and she bled to d***h almost immediately. Turns out there was a small abcess under her sternum slowly eating away at bone and tissue, and it gave out when she coughed. Pretty creepy.

Veterinary patient, not human.

Dog was in surgery that wasn't supposed to be fatal. He started crashing under the anesthetic and my co-workers started CPR. At this time the phone rings, but all hands are on deck and nobody can answer. The dog passed away.

The phone call was a voicemail from the dogs owner, saying "hey I just wanted to check on the surgery, I had a really strange moment where I saw Buddy in his dog bed and needed to hear from you guys"

I still get chills thinking about it.

I have been a nurse for 20 yrs. 13 yrs of that time was spent working nights. All of my colleagues have experienced creepy events that cannot be explained. My most creepy experience was when looking after a man with mental health issues. He had requested a one bed side ward ( UK so private rooms not standard) as it was too much for him to interact with other patients .We were very reluctant as he was depressed and we wanted to keep a close eye on him .He begged and we agreed with the arrangement we would check on him frequently throughout the night. I checked him as he was settling for sleep and he seemed agitated. I asked him what I could do to help - he explained he was upset because he kept hearing a woman whispering in his ear and kept feeling there was someone behind him.I reassured him as much as I could, he asked for his night sedation and other regular meds and I asked if he might like to speak to his doctor but he thought it was exhaustion and he wanted to settle for the night . Around 3am, it was my turn to check him . I went to his room and his door was closed over. I immediately panicked and tried to open the door but it wouldn't open, I pushed and pushed and it felt like something was behind it, I called for my colleague and as she ran to me the door flung open abruptly and hit the wall. The patient was in bed, tucked in, facing away from me, I walked around the end of the bed to check he was okay and as I got to the corner of the room was hit with the worst wave of nausea, it almost bent me double. I thought I was going to pass out and just about made it out of the room, according to my colleague I was as white as a sheet. The patient was fine, he slept all night and the next morning was more settled. He had however had dreams of a woman in his room hiding in the corner - she had " come out of the painting on his wall". I don't know what happened that night but the feeling I was left with was that whatever was in that room was inherently bad, I have never been so afraid.

Responded to a pedestrian hit, vehicle fled the scene. Pedestrian was my partner.
It was fatal.

Not a nurse, but X-ray tech doing a portable exam on a elderly patient who was clearly days away from passing. She was mostly non responsive the whole time I positioned her and didn’t open her eyes. I finish up and am standing at the foot of her bed annotating my image on my machine when she opens her eyes, points over my shoulder to the dark bathroom behind me, and says “I don’t like him. Get him out of here”. I did not look behind me (because I choose to live in ignorant bliss) and instead backed out of the room and hoped I wouldn’t have to go back.

A story I find myself telling a lot on Reddit:

In college I worked as an orderly at an acute treatment psychiatric hospital. I was there about a year and a half, during which time I worked the night shift on the stabilization unit. This was the unit for people who were too unstable to be grouped in with the regular men's or women's units; often, they would come in psychotic, and we'd find some meds that worked for them, and within a week they would be transferred to a unit with more freedom.

Anyway, my first night on the job, I walked in, feeling nervous. At the desk, two other techs were chatting with a woman in a hospital gown. I came over, and she introduced herself. She seemed completely normal. She told me not to worry about my first shift, that I would do just fine, and that she was sure all the other staff would help me out until I found my footing. I felt deeply reassured. This woman didn't seem like she belonged in the ward. She seemed completely normal.

Then she said she had to get back to bed, and she turned around.

*The back of her f*****g head was gone.*

Where the back of her head was, all the hair had been shaved off, and there was a gorey mass of scars and stitches and bruising. It was like something out of a horror film. I seriously can't describe just how messed up it was. It looked like she'd been shot and then someone had hastily tried to put it back together.

I'm proud to say I didn't react, but immediately after she had gone back to her room, I asked the other techs what the deal was. They said she'd tried to commit s*****e by driving a car into a wall or a tree or something, and had had several brain surgeries and was still recovering. They said most of the time she was perfect lucid but had instances of sudden, extreme violence, which is why she was on that unit. She also had a habit of picking at the wounds, which were still healing; she had a couple more reconstructions to go because of the extent to which her skull had been mangled. Honestly, after I read her file, I was surprised she was even still alive.

Anyway, it scared the ever-loving s**t out of me. It was such a perfectly horror movie trope. That was the scariest thing that ever happened to me on night shift. I remember wondering if the other techs had set it up to freak me out on my first night. The lady became one of my favourite patients and aside from occasional outbursts was one of the most well-behaved and best-spoken. We had a lot of late night conversations until she was transferred.

(Edit/disclaimer: obviously, minor details have been changed because HIPAA.).

RN but a patient at the time. I was hospitalized for a gastric.bleed but every time I tried to go to sleep, something would grab my left arm just above my wrist. It'd grab it firmly and hold it there. I asked my nurse if anyone else had experienced this and she said that anyone that occupied that bed complained of the same thing.

We were talking about ghosts in the staff room and someone noticed the snackwich machine was hot.... it's always unplugged, no one had turned it on, we were there for like 15 minutes (gasp! An actual break) and everyone denied plugging it in/turning it on.

I remember a post from an emt/ems (can't remember which)... They got a call to an old ladies apartment who hadn't been seen for days. They get in the apartment and find her in the bathtub. She apparently had a stroke (if I remember correctly) after turning on the hot water tap with her toe. Basically, she couldn't move and was cooking in this boiling water.

She was still alive when they arrived. When they had to remove her from the bathtub, all of her skin literally just slid off of her body. She ended up dying.

I am a Psychiatrist, 55 years old, who is now seeing patients for six hours a week only, almost retired. Allows me to browse internet for first time in my life. I have a few very unusual cases up my sleeve.Would share just one.

Back in 1985, as I began my residency, a mute adult male was admitted. He was in early 20s, would never utter a word, and was almost robotic in movements. But he had his smile permanently on his face. For any, sight of a smiling in a very odd way man, never uttering a sound, blinking sparsely, and walking in a mechanical fashion was hard to deal with as you attempted to communicate with him. His smile deepened as we attempted to speak. And his eyes were shiny and very bright. Too much lacrimal fluid? I do not know the reason.


We did every thing that was possible back then at the very large hospital that it was. He did not respond to any treatment, including shocks, ECT that is.

One day his family came and requested his discharge. After legal and administrative formalities they took him away.
One of the Psychiatrists was a married female. with kids, who would refuse to see him and told the chief of the unit as well.The guy made her very scared. She was way senior than me, and although friendly I could never ask her why.

Many years later I ran into her at a Psychiatric conference. We both were working at different places and there she asked me "Do you recall the mute guy who I refused to see and even told Chief of Psychiatry unit about"?

I said yes, the guy with a smile affixed like a stamp upon his face.

She had a very scary experience with him a few years after his discharge. One morning she was going out for work and a guy stopped her on her drive way. He hands her a small packet and said that was for her. Then she noticed that the package was oozing blood and the guy was dripping blood in torrents. She screamed and drove back. Fortunately her husband was still in the house. They called the Police and their friends.

The packet had testicles of the guy who was bleeding like hell.He was in shock.

The guy was the smiling man.

Back when I was a CNA, there was one room in the SNF I worked in that had a really bad week. Patient died (on comfort measures,) patient got moved in amd died unexpectedly within a few days, and then a third patient had died there by the end of the week. During that week and *only that week* the door to the room would frequently jam weirdly and not open for a minute.. No other door ever jammed during the two years I worked there.