Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

I’ve had many ‘encounters’ with paranormal happenings. I will start by being brutally honest, the whole thing scares me and for sometime I have tried to make out that I did NOT believe in ‘spooky goings-on’. However, in my career as a nurse so many things have occurred that I have had to change my stand on this and now accept that what I have experienced is the paranormal at it’s most basic level.

This is just one of my experiences, but it was the one that truly opened my eyes and my thinking…

Having recently moved to the West of England I found myself working in a very old, very historical hospital building.

During an especially busy morning shift I found myself the only trained nurse with five Health Care Support Workers (HCSW) also on the shift with me. We had twenty-six patients in five different ward bays, one empty single room right at the far end of the main ward and one terminally ill patient in another single room. Whilst doing the Medication Round (meds)I was interrupted twice by the electronic nurse call buzzer going off in the empty side room.  Initially this was not a cause for concern, sometimes in the old building electrics played up, initially I was not concerned, just fed up of being interrupted on my meds round.

However, having changed the buzzer itself, taped up the re-set buzzer and actually tested the original and replacement hand buzzers I was slightly perturbed when the buzzer proceeded to go off twice more… and at this point the re-set button failed to turn off the buzzer as it had not been trigged… yet the buzzer was still going off.

By now I was feeling more than a little scared, the other staff were busy seeing to the needs of the patients who needed almost total care and here was I on my own at the far end of the ward in a side room with a buzzer sounding but not showing as activated inside the room, but with the light outside the room active and the buzzer going loudly.

Somehow I managed to silence the buzzer and went out of the room trying to convince myself that I hadn’t just experienced what had occurred.

Moments after re-starting my meds the buzzer went off again in the empty room. At this point I called two colleagues and asked them to come with me to the room.  Having again had to turn off a buzzer that somehow hadn’t been triggered but was definitely active I stood at the bottom of the empty bed, took a deep breath and calmly said “Look, I’m not sure what you want, but I am the only trained nurse here this morning and I’m trying desperately to finish my meds round. Please, I have enough to do with the living without worrying about the dead as well, give me a break until I have another trained nurse with me… please!”

My two colleagues were speechless, unsure how to react to what I had just said. It was 10h10 at that time… the lady who was terminally ill on the other side of the ward died at that time, just as the HCSW caring for her left the room for something.

The buzzer in the empty room was silent… until 13h00.

As another trained nurse walked onto the ward ready for the late shift- raising her hand in greeting – the buzzer in the empty single room burst into life again. My two colleagues who had been so puzzled by my earlier outburst into a seemingly empty room looked at me in amazement, a mutual feeling of incredulity passed between us and one of the girls stuttered “… I wouldn’t of believed this if I hadn’t seen it for myself…”

As I left the ward at the end of my shift I paused and the door to that single room, stepped inside and quietly said “Thank-you, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.” The buzzer remained silent after that, having reported the ‘faulty buzzer’ to the repair team, the request was cancelled, the buzzer didn’t need repairing, and never went off on its own again.

Sent in by Nurse S., Copyright 2010 TrueGhostTales.com