The spookiest night of the year is nearly upon us, and although I don't do spooky (not well anyway), I'll admit some weird stuff happens in hospitals. In my book Off the Chart A Nurse's Journey of Heart and Humor, I talk about the room in the ICU that was said to be haunted. After all, the call light would go off when there was no one in the room - seriously freaky stuff. Here's the first of three stories from others — just for Halloween!
First up: Marcia's Story
I used to work on a large med/surg floor shaped like a cross (four hallways) and several decades ago one wing had been a children’s ward. You could even still see the faded-out flowers painted on the fire doors if you looked closely, but the building hadn’t had pediatric patients in many years. I worked the night shift and while I don’t believe in ghosts, eventually I started to think something was going on in that hall. Periodically the light covers would fall off and shatter. I always told myself “Well yeah, it’s a really really old building,” but it was odd that it would only happen in that particular hallway, only at night, and never when the room was occupied. Odd, but I figured there must be a reasonable explanation.
What I couldn’t explain was that numerous times over the years I had patients complain about the children making so much noise laughing and playing in the hallway and keeping them awake. The same hallway I was always sitting in to do my charting. The same hallway that was always dark and quiet. I'm not gonna lie, it creeped me out and I started getting goosebumps every time I looked at those faded flowers on the door...
For more stories like this one, like the haunted bed in ICU...
pick up a copy of Off the Chart A Nurse's Journey of Heart and Humor
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