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Hospital Happenings Of The Supernatural Kind

escargot1 said:
And how could breath be seen, unless the air was cold?
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Might the breath of a sick or dying person (or anyone else present, for that matter) be seen if the air was hot and humid enough?

Many of these reports come from the late 19th Century when sick rooms and death chambers were often indoor swamps.

"For Heaven's sake, don't let the noxious nighttime air in here - it'll KILL the patient!"
 
Now you mention it Escargot I have seen similar "thick breath" (it's a catchy phrase isn't it?) come from my dogs when they yawn - even in summer. I suppose it's just a sign of how moist the breath is.
 
Nope. They are all possessed. It's the evil spirits popping out for a look around.

Later, when you're enjoying a cup of cocoa in front of a roaring fire, they pop out of the other end.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Many of these reports come from the late 19th Century when sick rooms and death chambers were often indoor swamps.

"For Heaven's sake, don't let the noxious nighttime air in here - it'll KILL the patient!"
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OT, most hospitals in the UK from the first part of the 20th C had open air wards for infectious diseases. The fresh air being seen as therapeutic. I have relatives who spent time in sanitariums during the 30s and 40s who can still recall having afternoon naps outside while recovering from diseases like Scarlet fever or TB.
 
TheQuixote said:
OT, most hospitals in the UK from the first part of the 20th C had open air wards for infectious diseases. The fresh air being seen as therapeutic. I have relatives who spent time in sanitariums during the 30s and 40s who can still recall having afternoon naps outside while recovering from diseases like Scarlet fever or TB.
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I think what happened is that with the coming of modern germ theory the "miasmic mist" theory, with its images of infectious diseases as vampire-like clouds prowling the night, finally bit the dust.

As late as the 1850s the standard method of combatting yellow fever in New Orleans was building huge bonfires in the streets to somehow scare away those noxious vapors. (There's a great scene illustrating this in the film JEZEBEL, starring Bette Davis.)

But I really should have written "mid-19th Century" rather than "late." Even so there remain strong elements of "keep the night air out" as late as Bram Stoker's DRACULA.
 
There was a great thread on spooky hospital happenings ages ago, but I can't find it. Coincidentally enough, the story I remember most from that thread is one about a hospital morgue that no-one could ever seem to remember how to get to.
 
Huge vault of personal nursing ghost stories here:

http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-di ... 08202.html

Some interesting patterns in the reports (and some bloomin' scary ones too!) What's with the 'seeing young children running about signalling imminent deaths' that crops up quite a lot? That doesn't fit anything religious I know of - speaks more of mischevious elves or the like.
 
Stories from hospitals

http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/whats-your-best-108202.html

I know several. I'll share more later if there is any interest:

We had a black girl, about 10 in ICU that was severely injured in a car accident. Lots of brain damage. She didn't die there but was moved to another facility after weeks and weeks.

After that, I know of 3 older black males, in their 50's, that, if they were even mildly sedated, would ask about the little black girl with the ribbon in her hair who was sitting at the foot of their beds.

One guy said, "she asked me how I was doing, and then got up and walked that way" while he was pointing towards the 2nd floor window. He paused, a wide-eyed look came over his face, and then he said, 'But I guess she really couldn't have left the room that way, huh?"

Personally, I think she was taking care of grandfatherly figures.

I worked in an ICU where a prisoner convicted of murder died in ICU 1 - and nobody would put a patient in that room after that cause the air was too heavy and the room was too spooky and 'dark'. It was so bad (nurses would refuse to put patients in the room even if it was the last available bed; they'd triage out a patient before they'd trust putting a patient in that bed 1), that the hospital eventually closed down the room and knocked out a wall to make it a separate entrance into the unit.

I used to collect ghost stories: I know several.

~faith
Timothy.
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A large bunch of stories at the link.
 
This must surely be one of the FTMB's legendary threads. 8)
 
I wasn't aware of this thread. I only checked the Ghost forum.
 
Spudrick68 said:
I love reading stuff like that. It will make me boggeldy eyed though! Will peruse it later.
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I am just settling down to do this now.
 
Yup, it's not in the forum you'd expect so peopler're bound to miss it.

Hospital ghosts! Bring'em on! :D
 
Ohh, nice! That's how I plan to spend my work afternoon ;)
 
One of my life's delights is to re-read a long old spooky thread. A bit like exploring a haunted house. 8)

I'm easily pleased. ;)

Some years ago, another poster, I'm thinking Johnnyboy, remarked that a long ghostly thread was JUST the thing to read late at night. On your own. With the Devil.

I still laugh about that. :lol:
 
Although it adds very little to the discussion, I work in a school which used to be a TB hospital. I am always amazed that there are no ghosts, stories of ghosts or even a bad feeling.
 
Many friends of friends...

In the pub Saturday, I mentioned to my mate Don that an ex-gf who has moved recently into a flat briefly saw a ghost. We then swapped a few stories and he told me this one.

Thirty odd years back Don's mate was on holiday abroad, and managed to fall off a hotel balcony a couple of stories up. He was medivaced back to UK, and ended up in the LGI.

The ward was filled with both young blokes, most of whom had had motorbike accidents, and old men with various fractures from falls.

Don's mate was in a bit of pain and couldn't sleep - and one night clearly saw a 'nurse' in an outfit similar to a nuns walk onto the ward and then sit by the bed of an old man opposite. After half an hour or so she stood and went into a small side room. And although he watched for some time, she did not come out of the room.

The morning after this chap wakes up and - you guessed it - there are screens round the bed opposite and turns out the old man has passed away

Weeks later, Dons mate is discharged and goes for a pint with his wife, Don and Dons girlfriend, who is a nurse at LGI. She promptly asks him if he had seen anything odd on the ward, as it has a 'reputation', and he describes what he saw. The nurse tells him the ward used to be staffed by nuns.

Don added an extra twist. A few years ago he was browsing the Yorkshire Evening Post website and chanced on a link to 'Haunted Leeds'. First page he comes to has an account of that meeting in the pub, written by his mates wife.

When I spotted this thread had 'risen up' :roll: I decided to add the story, and I wanted to include the 'Haunted Leeds' page. I had to get mildly inventive with Google (ended up using 'leeds hospital ghost husband' !!!).

Just look for the LGI story:

http://www.hauntedleeds.co.uk/yourcomments.htm

And you can see Dons and Kathryn's recollections are different in one very key aspect. I'm going to ask Don if he is in touch with his old mate, and if he recalls what happened.
 
Of course, LGI has since become famous for another type of historical haunting. :shock:
 
I work some nights in a hospital , and can honestly say that it can be the creepiest place on earth sometimes . The room I work in is empty all day , but used for a few hours in the evening and when I'm there I'm usually alone . At night , the hospital is deathly quiet (apart from myself obviously) , and as such the slightest noise coming from the corridor seems amplified tenfold and can be a tad unnerving.

I think the creepiest thing I ever saw was an overturned wheelchair at the top of the stairs , it was lying on its side with one wheel spinning . Although I discovered there was a logical explanation (some guy had fallen out and down the stairs on his way out for a sly puff) , it scared the bejeezus out of me nevertheless and prompted an unsettling evening alone at work.
 
An old article from 2004 has resurfaced...

At least Scrooge's spectral guests came only on one Christmas eve. For staff in hospitals around Britain, visits from beyond the grave could happen any night of the year. Mark Gould on the haunted wards where paranormal events can trouble even clinical minds

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/dec/22/health.healthandwellbeing
 
This just came up on a Facebook 'Personal Ghost Stories' page.
As it's so specific I reckon it might be gone soon so I've nicked it.

Ward 12 of Macclesfield hospital is notorious, particularly bay 14. Many patients have complained of the apparition of a little girl (12 being the erstwhile paediatric ward) in that bay.

Makes me wonder if that's why it's been cleared out and a perfectly useable room is now used for storage. I cleared it out only a fortnight ago and put a bed in there, thinking we could use the extra bed and was quite surprised to find the bed gone and the place full of junk again when I arrived for my next nightshift.

I'll relate a couple of incident's as they both happened in the same week. Another auxiliary returned from his break which he took in an old recliner stored in bay 14, "I'm not taking my break in there again" he said, on his return. "What, with all the junk and stuff?" I said. "No." he said, "There was a bloody ghost in there."

A young girl in a blue dress had appeared and stood for some time watching him. I pressed him for more details but he said he didn't wish to discuss it because he was in shock, except to say that she vanished leaving a "disgusting sickly sweet smell".

Also, same week, earlier this month, an agency nurse had to go home in a state of shock. Given that nurses are fairly hardened to tense situations, this came as something of a surprise to us. She'd been on duty in the same corridor, that corridor being particularly dark after lights out, and she saw a patient in her pyjamas go into the toilet.

All of her patients that night were extremely elderly and not mobile so, fearing she might fall, she rushed to the toilet only to find it empty, when a voice called her name in her ear, she turned to find the corridor empty and all of her patients asleep in their beds. She rushed out of the ward in hysterics.
I always try to pick shifts up on that ward.
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'I always try to pick shifts up on that ward.' - that's the spirit! :bthumbup:
 
I've spent some time in Macclesfield hospital. Once, when I had an argument with a van windscreen (I got a couple of scars, but the windscreen was a total write-off - so who won that one, buddy?!) And later, when my dad was ill.

Nothing supernatural to report, unfortunately. But I do have a friend who works as a nurse there - so I will be interrogating next time I bump into her.
 
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