10 Scary Hospital Stories That Are Terrifyingly True

With so many scary stories and incidents of all kinds manifesting within the hospital walls could be why many believe the hospitals to be one of the scariest places to work around.

While some of our happiest, saddest, and scariest moments occur in hospitals, hospital staff constantly share their most spine-tingling scary stories on Reddit. Here bringing you the 10 scary hospital stories that are terrifyingly true.

10. Betty

Betty was a patient in a long-term care unit. Independent and capable, she only asked for help to bathe. A few months prior she was hospitalized with pneumonia which forced her back into the facility.

Not long after she passed away after complications from falling out of her bed leaving the entire staff devastated. She had been so stubborn about asking for help after growing weak, they clearly felt she died before her time.

They kept the bed empty after that but the call light would turn on for her room in the nurse’s station. Could it be a call for help a sign of forgiveness or a last goodbye?

9. Mass Hallucination

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This one was posted by a nurse who goes by RN_Waitress on Reddit. During a 2012 outbreak of fungal meningitis, the acute care floor she was working on had at least 10-15 meningitis patients.

The floor has a capacity of 20. Many meningitis patients were having the same hallucinations. The nurse wrote that they experienced, “children in the corners of their rooms and auditory hallucinations of religious music.”

If you think this was a plank being played by sick patients, then think again. All of the patients were in isolation with no shared rooms and no communication between one another.

What do you think caused it? Specific parts of the brain the fungal infection was infecting? Or something else?

8. Nurse rocking chair

This scary hospital story comes straight from a nurse forum full of stories. In a suburban hospital, things can get dull. The big-city life comes with its dangers and everyday oddities in a hospital.

So in a lesser transited facility, you start to notice more patterns. These nurses noticed that one room was always the last to be occupied because every patient placed in it would complain at night.

Now this could be because it had a particularly draft event or it was perhaps too close to the nurse’s station. Sadly no. It was the frightening allegation that a mysterious nurse would sit in a rocking chair in the corner late at night.

She never made eye contact but rather rocked eerily while staring out the window. Every hospital might have its own urban legends but when you hear a story enough times from different patients you have to start wondering.

7. False Hope

This one comes from an ER nurse who spoke from a now-deleted account on Reddit. She had an old lady stay in the ER overnight and was near death.

They saw the signs, irregular breaths, barely responsive, pale and cool, so they turned the lights down and kept an eye on her monitor. They searched and couldn’t find any family, plus she was a DNR: do not resuscitate.

So, the writer says they were basically waiting for her to die. She was close. Then an hour later, all of a sudden, she’s standing at the door of her room with all of her clothes back on.

Apparently she was hungry so they got her food, and while she ate, the old woman talked to the staff a little. Then, she told her nurse she was tired and wanted to lie back down, and within 30 minutes she was dead.

This surge of energy is called rallying before death and it’s not uncommon. But it is unnerving to see so much life in a person before death.

6. Time of Death

Now here’s something that’ll give you nightmares. When called in to verify the death of a patient a man found himself face to face with an unexpected sight.

The patient was an elderly lady who passed as one would have expected of old age. Once he approached her in her darkroom he heard the blinds knock against the window and saw her in her death pose for some strange reason.

She died with a snarl on her face, her eyes were wide open, and her hands were posed as claws by her head. Her nails were long with a terrifying look in her eyes.

5. A shriek and a Goatman

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This is a story that comes from a user on Reddit. She was on night shift in a hospital in Arizona going room to room when an old lady told her about a goat man trying to get through the doors.

The woman was an insomniac, so she didn’t think anything of it. Then a blood-curdling shriek rang out that people heard all around the hospital.

People were freaked and then a few looked out the windows, where they found hoof marks by the doors and windows, with no trails leading to or from them.

That insomniac clearly knew something was up and it must’ve been the goatman causing that shriek right? Either himself or through nefarious means.

4. Followed by death

A staff member at a skilled nursing facility was typically working in the Alzheimer’s ward and had a troubling string of experiences.

First, they hear someone shuffle behind than and feel someone put a hand on their shoulder while in a linen closet. But they turn around and no one is there and the door is still closed.

Then, another lady began to complain for two weeks straight, every night, that a man was coming into her room at night. That being the Alzheimer’s ward, the author didn’t take it too seriously, saying they’d check in on her throughout the night.

And the end of the two weeks of complaining, the staff member asked what the man looked like.The woman said, “He’s real handsome, and wears a black suit. Oh. He’s right behind you now, honey.”

Which justifiably freaked the writer of this story out. There was no one behind them. And as for the old lady, she died the next night in her sleep.

3. The Hallucination

This one is from Reddit user whites42 who worked as an ICU nurse. She shared that a woman in her 20s had come in with serious cardiac abnormalities and then abruptly went into respiratory distress.

The lady was put on a ventilator and was sedated just enough to keep her lucid. She could nod to answer questions and that’s all they needed in that moment.

A few nights later the patient in the room next to hers died but the body was yet to be taken to the morgue. The girls’ room door was closed and the male patient’s curtain was drawn so they never met nor saw each other.

The nurse went to check on the woman and she looked like she was about to die. She was in pure panic mode and the nurse asked her if she was cold in pain warm and she said no to everything.

She then asked if she saw something and she started nodding aggressively. And mind you just because she was sedated that didn’t mean she would hallucinate.

She started probing and asking questions to try and figure out what she was seeing and she found out she was seeing a caucasian bald man missing his left arm.

The nurse freaked out when she realized the patient was seeing the ghost of the man who had died in the room right next to her.

2. The Grim Reaper

This one is from Redditor ScaryKerry91476 and boy oh boy are you guys not ready for this one. So Kerry is an intensive care nurse and she shared that back in 1999 she was in a 12 bedded ITU in London.

She was in charge of the nurses station and she looked up to see a man coming through the double doors of the unit. And that image just stuck in her mind even 20 years later, it was like he had been plucked out of 1974 and dropped into 1999.

He was wearing cord pants, a check shirt with a patterned tank top on top, and platform shoes. He looked about 30 years old and he just very calmly walked towards the bay of patients.

Now Kerry had no idea who he was so she asked him and he responded by nodding and continued walking. All right. He went and stopped at the end of a patient’s bed and just looked at them.

He didn’t touch them, no contact, he just made eye contact. The patient was sick but very stable but as the man was looking at them, they suddenly started deteriorating in front of Kerry’s eyes.

Staff rushed over to assist him and they were just acting like the man wasn’t even there and with that exited as calmly as he had come in.

The patient ended up dying and Kerry asked the assisting staff who the man was and none of them had seen him or remembered any man walking in that day. So Kerry thoroughly believed she saw the Grim Reaper at work that day.

1. The Bloodbath

Now this is scary as hell, and one of the scariest hospital stories shared by a user called Paravell. They shared they were working their regular night shift in a bone marrow transplant unit with another nurse.

They had 5 patients and as the other nurse was coming out of room 4 she shared that the patient in there had died a gruesome death. He was slated and approved to go home but that night the nurses heard the sound of someone falling.

They went in to check on him and saw nothing but blood. The man had pulled out his own central line and there was blood everywhere. He died right there and then and no one knew why he did it. But this doesn’t end here.

A few weeks later a little old lady gets moved into that room and she asks if anyone has died in there. The nurse brushed it off saying people die in the hospital all the time.

But the old lady replied by saying no I think i young guy died in here because he’s talking to me right now. Now this woman also has a central line and later that night the nurse goes in to check on her.

Again an utter blood bath, her central line had been cut, not pulled out like the other guy it was proper cut. There were no scissors in the room and the lady said ‘he did it’.

So which one of these scary hospital stories freaked you the most? Comment below.