Random Creepy Stories From People Who Work In Hospitals (18 items)

• (#1) Psych Staffer Has Dreadful Premonition In Dream That Comes True

  From a former Redditor:

  I'm not a doctor, but I'm a nurse. I work with geriatric patients and there was this incident about three years ago. Before I explain, let me say that I DON'T believe in ghosts.

  Anyway, this one time I was working the night shift and I was super sleepy so I decided to skip lunch because I wasn't hungry and go to my car and sleep for 30 min. I got inside my car, covered myself with my sweater, set the timer on my phone and immediately knocked out.

  I'm dreaming, but in my dream I'm still awake just sitting there. Someone taps on my car window and I see that its one of my patients (we'll call her Dee). Surprised I asked Dee what the hell shes doing outside and she tells me she is looking for her daughter. I tell her to go back inside and that we will call her daughter in the morning. My patient becomes angry and starts banging on my car window. I kinda freak out and try to reach for the door handle to get out and calm her down, but I quickly realize I can't move. Let me add that I frequently experience sleep paralysis, so even though I am asleep, I realize what is happening.

  I fight it and try squirming my body in an attempt to wake myself up. I finally manage to wake up and my heart is racing and my forehead is a bit sweaty. I sit there for about a min, realize it was all a dream and roll the window down to cool myself off.

  My break is over and I clock back in and see that my supervisor and two other nurses and huddled in front of a room. I am still by the station clocking when they see me and call me over. I walk over thinking maybe something was wrong with the ventilator or the patient fell, but my supervisor tells me Dee died while I was on my lunch break. Since most of our patients are DNR, I was not paged. It took a couple of seconds for the message to register and I freaked out internally. I got goosebumps but didn't mention anything to my supervisor about the dream.

  I don't believe in ghosts or anything like that and I mostly likely had that dream because she was the last patient I interacted with before my break, so she was still on my mind and I was mentally going over my patients charts in my head.
• (#2) Paramedics Respond To Despondent Elderly Woman Who Just Witnessed Gruesome Suicide

  From a former Redditor:

  We got a call to go out to a scene for an elderly woman with chest pains. Arrive at the house, front door is open. We knock, hear the old woman calling out from the back "I'm in the back room" in a very monotone and calm voice. My partner and I go to the back of the house looking for this woman, and that's when we smelled it. Nothing prepares you for the smell of rotting corpse. I've smelled it a dozen times, and it never gets any less disturbing. We radio for police and ALS backup as we move through the house. We opened the door to the master bedroom, and there is our patient. She is approximately 80, and she is staring at the master bathroom with these cold, dead eyes. She never once looked at us as we approached her and began talking to her. I got to the bedside and got in front of her gaze, and she just looked right through me.

  I turned around to see what she could possibly be looking at, and there was the source of my smell. A man, about the same age as my patient, is on the floor with very little left of his head still attached to his body. A shotgun lay on the floor next to him, and most of his head was strewn about the walls and bathroom counter. We loaded the woman up in the ambulance, and our police backup pulled up. I don't think that woman blinked once the entire time she was in our care. Totally f*cked me up.
• (#3) Psych Tech Meets Scary 7-Year-Old

  From a former Redditor:

  As a tech in psych years ago, there was a 7 year old kid sent to the floor because the mom didnt know what to do with him. Sadly common thing to happen, even if the kids don't have paych issues. Anyway, the mom was shaking and crying, and they had to take the kid into another room. She was genuinely afraid of her own son. She had suspected something was wrong when she kept finding mutilated animals in the back yard, but never heard or saw coyotes or anything around. The neighbors smaller pets started disappearing. The boy had an obsession with knives, hiding them around the house. Denying anything when the mom confronted him. Then when the two started getting into arguments, he would get really violent and hit her, push her down and kick her, threaten to kill her. On multiple occasions she woke up in the middle of the night with him standing beside her bed, staring her in the face. She put extra locks on her bedroom door to feel safe while ahe slept. The last straw was when she lifted up his mattress and found 50+ knives of all shapes and sizes under there. So she brought him to us.

  I remember talking to him, treating him like he was just any other kid that came through. He seemed remarkably normal, until you spoke directly to him. He had this way of looking right through you, or maybe like he didn't see you at all while you were speaking. He would respond like a robot, like he was just saying words because thats what we wanted to hear. And be would always put on this creepy, dead-looking smile. Like all mouth and no eye involvement in the smile. Especially when he would get away with something, like taking another kid's markers and they couldn't figure it out. Still gives me chills laying here thinking about him. I had to get up and close my bedroom door.

  I believe I met a 7 year old psychopath.
• (#4) Doctor Has Frightening Experience Verifying Woman Is Dead

  From Redditor /u/edhb9189:

  Verifying death is always sad but my friend tells the funniest story about how creepy his first verification of death was. This is not meant to disrespect anyone; black humour is a huge part of doctors' coping strategies.

  He was on a night shift a few weeks into his first job as a qualified doctor and got a call from a ward to say a lady had passed away- an expected death hence he hadn't been called about her before- and could he come verify and do the paperwork. It's a busy shift with lots of sick people to see first so he takes several hours to get there.

  He goes up and they tell him she's in room 8. The door to room 8 is slightly ajar and the room is dark. Now, she was in a side room but most patients there were in shared bays of 6 beds so you get into the habit of not turning lights on. In his nervous haste to make sure it didn't look like he was nervous, he slipped into the room armed only with his little pen torch. The window was slightly open and (he swears) the blind rattled against the sill as he crept towards the bed, the tiny circle of light from his torch picking out the rumpled white hospital blanket, only a very slim rise showing where she lay as she was a tiny old lady, just skin and bone. Finally, the light plays over her face and he has to bite back a little scream, nearly dropping the torch.

  For whatever reason, her pose in death is one of a horrified and horrifying snarl, lips drawn back to bare (likely false) teeth, the whites of her eyes showing in a fixed blind stare, and both hands up close to her face curled into claws, slightly over-long nails shining grimly in the meagre torchlight.

  Now, to verify a death, the doctor has to listen for heart and breath sounds for two minutes while feeling for a pulse, check for pupil reactions and check for no response to pain. He flicked the torch dutifully across her glaring eyes, forcing himself to shuffle close enough to touch- first to check for response to pain and then to settle shaking fingers on her throat- so close to those furiously grinning teeth- to feel for a pulse. To get his stethoscope under the collar of her gown under the blankets, he has to lean in even closer, almost nose to nose with her now, unable to draw his gaze away from hers. And he has to stand like that for two minutes. The seconds crawling away as he stares into that screaming face.

  He says there's no way he would have heard heart or breath sounds even if she had been alive. All he could hear was his own racing heart in his ears and, on a loop in his head, "Please don't let her move, please don't move, oh dear god don't move..."
• (#5) Dead Man's Body Slips Out Of His Skin

  From Redditor /u/Doc-in-a-box:

  Motorcycle driver, accident, 3rd degree burns, arrived DOA. Had to transfer him from ambulance gurney to ER bed. As we were moving him with a transfer sheet, the liquefied/cooked subcutaneous fat caused the charred skin on his back to separate and his body slipped onto the floor (despite several of us trying to "catch" him).
• (#6) Dead Lady Reaches Up, Grabs ER Nurse's Wrists

  From Redditor /u/sadtrombone_:

  ER Nurse here. Was doing CPR on a lady whose heart had stopped. They initially rolled her into the room unconscious and not breathing. This lady is pretty much dead. However, in the middle of doing chest compressions, her hands reach up and grasp my wrists and then fall back to hanging off the table. We never got her back.
• (#7) Med Student Delivers Baby From Dead Woman

  From Redditor /u/bluegraypurple:

  When I was on an ER rotation during med school we got a call about a 23 year old woman who was shot in the head, and who was already completely gone, but was reportedly 5 months pregnant so they were doing CPR until they got her to the hospital to see if the baby was viable. They got her to the ER and did an ultrasound and turned about baby was full term and they did a C-section in like under a minute and got the baby out.

  I don't think it's so incredibly uncommon but it was pretty surreal to see a baby delivered from a dead person with their brain exposed and she was pretty close to the same age I was at the time.
• (#8) Woman Has Hallucinations Of Bugs Crawling All Over Her

  From a former Redditor:

  Nothing I can say can possibly describe the year I worked in Psychiatric Intensive Care. [...] There was a woman that came in and sat down across the table from me for her admission interview. She had bandages all over her arms and scotch tape over her mouth and ears. She looked very uncomfortable and wouldn't really sit still. When the nurse would ask her a question, she would peel the corner of the tape back and answer, then stick the tape back on really fast. 

  We eventually found out that she saw and felt bugs crawling all over her, and they were trying to get inside her body. The tape was to keep the bugs out. The bandages were because some bugs got in and she had to dig them out. She couldn't sit still because she felt the bugs all over her even while we sat and talked. The worst part was, she had some idea that it was her mind playing tricks on her. Can you imagine going through your life, feeling like someone is continuously dumping buckets of cockroaches on your head, feeling like they're all over you and getting inside of you to the point that you're digging chunks out of your flesh in a panic, all while knowing intellectually that none of it is real?
• (#9) Psych Patient Literally Fights Invisible Demons

  From a former Redditor:

  A girl spent my entire 8 hour shift fist fighting the same ghost. She would throw a few punches, and obviously landed knockout blows, so she'd bend over and twist her hand around like she was wrapping some long hair around her wrist. She'd drag her opponent down the hallway, give a few good kicks, then set up for a curb stomp. Starts off kinda funny, then gets a little disturbing when you think about the graphic things going on in her mind, then just sad after you watch this replay for hours on end.
• (#10) Toddler's X-Rays Show Dental Work Done, Parents/Insurance Say Otherwise

  From Redditor /u/alison_bee:

  I'm not a doctor, but I am in the health care field as a dental hygienist. The creepiest/most confusing thing I've seen is as follows:

  We had a new patient come in for a cleaning. He was around 3/4, and mom said he had never been to the dentist before. Not uncommon for what I see on a daily basis, so at first I didn't think anything of it. I did his cleaning, and then went to take his routine xrays.

  This is where the sh*t got weird. After looking at the xrays I could see that the child had already had a large amount of dental work done. He had around 6/7 composite (tooth color) fillings. when I sat back down at my chair I asked the parents again if he had ever been to the dentist. They were both adamant that he hadn't, and also said there was no way a relative could have taken [him] without them knowing.

  What the f*ck? How did this happen? Who took him? Where were the parents? Had they possibly been in jail for a long time and not known he was taken to the dentist by someone else and had work performed? What if this wasn't really their child, and actually some kid they kidnapped? His insurance had no record of him having previous dental work, so that was a dead end too.

  I think about it often, but know that ultimately, I'll never get an answer. It sucks.
• (#11) Guy Takes So Much Ketamine He's High For 3 Weeks, Only Chuckles Creepily

  From Redditor /u/ScalpEm316:

  Medical student. While on my Psych rotation, came across an individual who was a chemistry graduate student. Apparently he had been taking astronomical amounts of ketamine, and he was just continuously disassociated. For the entire time I was on this portion of the rotation (3 weeks) I never heard him speak a word. 95% of the time [he] was wrapped up in his sheets like a mummy and he would just periodically laugh, a crazy soft chuckle, from under his covers if you tried to talk to him. The creepiest laugh I've ever heard, I'll never forget that.
• (#12) Paramedic Responds To Extremely Upsetting Suicide Call

  From Redditor /u/jfa_16:

  Paramedic checking in - A few years ago I responded to a call for a pregnant female who shot herself. The 911 caller hung up before any more information could be gathered by dispatch. We arrived to find a girl in her early to mid 20s sitting on the bathroom floor, leaning against the front of the bathtub slumped over.

  She was obviously pregnant, looked to be third trimester to me. She was unresponsive and barely breathing with a rapid carotid pulse. A small revolver was on the floor next to her. We found a single gunshot wound to the center of her very pregnant abdomen. The patient's mother and 4 year old son were on scene. The mother told us that the patient invited her over for dinner for some company as she had been fighting with the father of her fetus all day long.

  The mother stated that in the middle of dinner the patient excused herself from the table to use the bathroom. That's when the mother heard a single gunshot. Anyway, the mother told us that the patient was 23 and was almost full term (I can't remember how many weeks, but it was >34) with her second pregnancy. To make a long story short, we intubate the patient, establish 2 IVs, carry her down from the second floor to the truck, and haul ass to the trauma center. The patient went into cardiac arrest as we were wheeling her into the hospital. CPR was started and an emergency c-section was performed in the ER.

  Both mom and baby died. The bullet went through the baby and through mom's abdominal aorta. Her belly was full of blood. F*cked up call.
• (#13) Suicidal Man Saws Both His Arms Off

  From Redditor /u/psychotherapistthrow:

  The one that got to me the most was a patient who came to us after attempting suicide by sawing both his arms off at the forearm with a table saw. His arms were reattached, fairly successfully too, with only limited impairments in mobility. All I could think was how bad it would have to be to live in his head that sawing his arms off seemed better than that.

  He has since completed suicide.
• (#14) Psych Patient Who Assaulted Woman Reveals He Only Pleaded Insanity Because Lawyers Told Him To

  From Redditor /u/furrrsurre:

  On a medical school rotation in psychiatry...

  I rotated at a hospital which is essentially a full time psych ward for folks who have pleaded insanity or ended up in an acute psych hospital and were eventually transferred here because they could not become well enough to get home. The place was actually very nice. It was nothing like you see on TV. It was essentially like a college dorm with 6 or 8 wings total. each wing had like 16 rooms and each wing was broken down by gender. Each wing also had a gated outdoor area and a gym area so the patients had a relatively good life considering.

  Met many patients with many crazy stories but one always will stand out.

  This young guy, about 25 years old was there. He had had these delusions just after college about some girl he had a crush on from his freshman year of college. She wrote for a popular magazine and he supposedly had these delusions that she was writing about him to make fun of him. He hunted her down in her home town, raped her, and tried to kill her but she escaped. He then [pleaded] insanity and was placed here.

  I went up and talked to him as a little 3rd year med student. I started asking about his delusions and what not. It turns out his father was high up in a international corporation and worth millions. The kid, who was hauntingly normal on the surface and incredibly creepy once you started digging, told me that he basically [pleaded] insanity only because his lawyers said to. He never had delusions. Never had hallucinations. Nothing. He basically thought the girl was hot in college, drove 400 miles to rape her, then freaked out. But his lawyers advised he plead insanity because as a soft upper class kid he'd do much better in the psych hospital than in prison.

  So there he was. Luckily, he'll likely spend longer in there than he would have in prison because generally that's how it works. But he seriously creeped me the f*ck out.
• (#15) Psych Patient Has Upsetting Hallucination

  From Redditor /u/PM_Me_Ur_Saber:

  I was having a [patient sign] her admissions paperwork. Everything was going normally and she seemed coherent until she looked out her window and asked me, "did you see that?" I hadn't seen anything and she said, "a man just jumped off the building."

  Then she shook her head and mumbled to herself how her mind isn't right anymore. Freaked me the f*ck out. Now I'm terrified of getting old and having dementia.
• (#16) Hospital Worker Honors Dying Woman's Peculiar Last Words

  From Redditor /u/RedheadDPT:

  I was sitting a patient up at the edge of the bed in ICU when she started getting all squirrelly. She didn't speak much English but kept saying "stand, stand" so I helped her stand up. After standing for a few seconds something told me to lay her back down. Before her head ever hit the pillow her eyes rolled back and she was gone. She had a massive stroke and was gone on the spot. She all but died in my arms. But, I like to think I honored her last wish of wanting to stand.
• (#17) High Lady Chews Off Her Own Lips

  From Redditor /u/bluegraypurple:

  Saw a lady once who had gotten high on something and chewed off her lips.
• (#18) Doctor Uncovers Family's Horrifying Secret

  From Redditor /u/bigskyandsunshine:

  Whenever you admit a patient you have to inquire about their [do not resuscitate] status in case of a code being called. I had one elderly patient (late 80s/early 90s) who was severely demented and chronically ill (in and out of the hospital every month barely holding onto life - basically a horrible miserable quality of life). I asked the patient's family (I think it was a granddaughter who had medical POA, but I'm not sure, it was a while ago) about their DNR status (you don't want to put someone through a brutal resuscitation that may not even work if it isn't something that they would want if they wanted to die naturally).

  She flat out stated that "Oh, we want everything done for him because we really need his check". I didn't understand at first, but apparently the family was living off of his social security and could not have cared less about his pain and suffering or his wishes. I'm pretty sure it was the creepiest thing I've seen. These people were supposed to be his loved ones taking care of him and they were using him like an inhuman object.

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