Spooky
But True
Another Halloween is upon us it seems. “Hmmmm”, thought I. “A perfect time to share my numerous true ghosty stories with anyone out there who cares to read them”. And so it comes to pass......
Ghosts.
Pah! Just scary see-through things that appear on Scooby Doo and
scare Shaggy witless. They don't exist. At least that's what I did
think until I started working in hospitals. Especially at night. And
even more so when there had been a death on the ward. Then things
feel distinctly spooky. Eerie. Chilly. It's hard to explain.
One
nursing colleague of mine had had a nerve-racking ghostly encounter.
She had looked after this elderly lady who took an intense dislike to
her and told this nurse that she would haunt her after her death. The
nurse “laughed off” this statement as just a bit of an
eccentricity. The old lady died during one day shift. Once the
formalities had happened, the nurse went to wash down the bed for the
next patient. She had just finished making it, when, without reason,
the bedcovers all ruffled up and the bed flew out from the wall. The
picture behind the bed fell to the floor with a crash too. Weird
things happened whenever this one particular nurse was dealing with
that one bed. In the end, the nurse left.
Personally
I have had a few ghostly encounters, mainly when I worked in the
haunted Research Unit. It was a war-time gastro-intestinal ward, and
it was reported to be haunted by the White Lady. In fact, very often
the junior doctors experienced her presence in the on-call room above
my research unit.
You
know when you go into a place and you are alone, but you feel like
there is someone else there watching you? I had that a LOT. I
remember the first time I was spooked was when, one morning I went
into work especially early, at 6.30am (I wasn't due to start until 8
but I had a lot of paperwork to do). I went down the unit, unlocking
all the doors (after I had switched the alarm off) and was checking
the resus trolley when I heard a shower turning on. I knew I was the
only one in the unit, so I went to the shower room next door to the
common room (that trial volunteers could play pool in, watch tv, that
kind of thing whilst on a clinical trial), and there was no-one there
but it was icily cold. I switched the shower off and went back to the
resus trolley. In less than 2 minutes, there was the shower turning
on again, and a noise of something banging the window. I was very
very spooked by now, but the adrenaline was pumping and I thought I
had better check. I went through all the shower cubicles and toilets
but no-one was there. Just this extreme coldness. I decided the resus
trolley had had enough attention and scurried back to my office at
the other end of the unit until my colleagues came in.
Strangely
enough, the shower incident repeated itself one night shift when some
of my colleagues from the nurse bank were in supervising a group of
“macho” (or so they thought) clinical trials volunteers. The
shower had turned itself on during the night whilst one of the men
was in the toilet. He got so scared he had almost had an adverse
reaction!!!
A
similar thing happened with the TV in the volunteers' common room. It
would switch itself on by itself, even though it was switched off at
the plug..........
Another
time, I was again on my own at work early. I had unlocked the small
lab room where the centrifuge lived and where we dealt with blood
samples. It was just after Christmas holidays, and there was a
Christmas tree in the corner of the wall opposite the lab room. I was
doing the routine job of making sure the drugs testing kits were in
working order before being used on that morning's volunteer
screening, when I heard this frantic tinkling noise and then a smash.
I went to the door and found the Christmas tree had been pushed over
to quite an acute angle, and one of the baubles had smashed. I just
thought it had maybe been because the tree was feeling the worst of
being two weeks in a research unit without being watered and had
decided to collapse, but there was that chilly coldness again and the
tree HAD been straight when I had gone into that room........
Another
time I was actually in company. A colleague and I had arrived at work
at about 7.30am to get started on paperwork before the phones started
ringing. Her desk was opposite mine and we were both typing away on
our respective papers. As it was early, the office felt very chilly.
Then there was a sudden strong aroma of lavender. I asked my
colleague what perfume that was she was wearing as it was very strong
– I didn't know of any lavender perfumes. She said she wasn't
wearing any; she had been in too much of a rush to get to work she
hadn't even put her make-up on. The scent of lavender got stronger,
and I had to check around the office in case anyone had put a
lavender pot pourri in it or something. Then all of a sudden it
vanished. I went and made a cup of coffee and came back to my desk. I
was just about finished with the piece of paperwork I had done when
all of a sudden my mug of coffee knocked itself over with quite a
force – yes, my desk was empty and I hadn't knocked it. The scent
of lavender came back briefly and then died away. When I mentioned it
to one of the doctors, he said that it would have been the Lavender
Lady aka the White Lady, who stalked the Doctors on-call room at
night. It would explain the coldness around my desk area right
enough. I thought he was winding me up, but there was always
something at the back of my mind that made me uneasy. Over time, I
came to call the ghost Betty, and if ever I got into work early, I
would shout good morning to Betty.
The
last I “saw” of Betty was when I was interviewing a prospective
clinical trial volunteer in a room out of the unit but along the
corridor. This room was always freezing cold. I had to do an ECG on
this patient as he had an uncertain heart history, and when I came to
plug the ECG machine in, the plug came straight out of the wall
again. Every time. I kid you not. Needless to say, a spare bed was
found in the Research Unit itself for this ECG to be performed, and
the room was never more used for our interviews nor medicals.
As
I used to leave work often, along the empty corridor (which used to
be a ward but was at that time deserted) a patient call bell would go
off outside that room. No-one else was about. It was quite freaky.
Even the cleaners were spooked. They would go in and switch the call
bell off, but within minutes it would go off again. Medical physics
came up and tested it numerous times, no fault was found.......in the
end a priest was sent for to exorcise the room, as the deserted ward
was to be used once again. And that was the last I knew of the
Lavender Lady/White Lady.
And
by the way, these are ALL true.....I have imagination but not THAT
good an imagination. Don't have nightmares.......
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