Working second shift as I do now I don't have many odd experiences like I did when I worked night shift. Maybe it is because I am too busy to notice! But before I was a nurse I worked the night shift for about 8 months as a Nursing Assistant. Strange things happened almost daily on night shift.
One of my favorite patients was a little man that was a music composer; he would often roam the halls at night in his wheelchair, go into others rooms, or sing in the halls. I will call him "Joe". All the other patients knew him because of this. I was quite upset after he died. For months after he died we would have other patients turn on their call lights asking for us to remove "Joe" from their rooms because he was singing. Of course in the middle of the night knowing that it was not possible for "Joe" to be in anybody’s room because he was dead, we would often just say sure, and leave the room. Even though this is odd and strange it brought me comfort knowing that my favorite patient was still alive somewhere. Hopefully he is in a better place sharing his love of music and his big smile.
Night shift is responsible for some cleaning duties, one being to empty the bedside trash cans and bathroom trash cans in every room and bathroom. Me and a coworker went down our assigned unit and emptied all the trash cans. We stopped at the nursing station to report that we were finished and were going to take a break, when this very loud boom went thru the unit. The nurse and us ran down the hall to see what the noise was, the only thing we found was all the TVs on and all the bathroom doors open. The boom being from all the bathroom doors slamming into the walls at once! And the TVs? Who knows how they all came on at once since we had just walked up the hall and none were on. The bathroom doors also had all been shut since we just picked up the trash from them!
I was repositioning a small bedridden patient one night, and somehow during the turning side to side I managed to get her closer to the foot of the bed rather then the head. I seen the nurse in her white uniform go by the room, so I yelled her name for help pulling the patient up in bed, when she didn't stop or answer me I walked into the hall and yelled her name again, she still didn't answer so I started to walk down the hall to look for her. When I got about three doors down I heard the other nursing assistant and the nurse laughing behind me, I turned around to see them heading around the corner of the unit with soda and chips in their hands. An obvious sign that they had been to the vending machine, no where near the unit. So therefore it would have been impossible for the nurse to have walked down the hall where I was two minutes ago when I had seen her. I felt confused, and then realized that with both of them being on a trip to the vending machine, I was the only one on the unit! Seeing my confusion they both asked what was wrong so I told them that not two minutes ago the nurse walked by and I yelled for her to help me. Of course it became a joke that I was tired. By morning the nurse on another unit that has worked in the place for years, had heard of my seeing the nurse when she wasn't there. She informed me and my co workers that no I wasn't tired or crazy, but had seen the "Lady in White". She said actually she was quite surprised to hear of her again because it had been several years since anyone had seen her. She said she herself seen her one night, "plain as you or me standing here". She said she only realized that she had seen the rumored lady in white, when she seen a nurse come down her unit and enter a patients room. This confused her as to why another nurse was on her unit in one of her patient’s room so she followed her and when she got to the room no one was there.
Sometimes a patient wakes in the middle of the night hungry for a snack. One night I went to the kitchen to get a snack for a patient as much as I hated to because the dark kitchen always gives me the creeps. I can feel the hairs on my neck stand up as soon as I walk into the kitchen. It doesn't help that the light switch is on the wall about four feet from the entrance. As I stepped into the kitchen that night I felt no more comfortable then I ever did, I noticed first off the newly waxed floor that made a noise as I walked on it. You know the "sticky" noise like you have stepped into spilled soda and it has become sticky. The kitchen has a wall in the middle that is lined with the stoves. The refrigerators are behind this wall, lined against the back wall. I flipped on the light switch and headed straight around the corner to the back to the refrigerator. When I opened the refractor I heard someone else’s sticky footprints walking along the stove wall, I yelled out my coworkers name telling her I was already in the kitchen and asked what did she need. No one answered. Thinking that maybe she didn't hear me over the exhaust fans that run in there, I walked to the corner of the stove wall as I heard sticky footprints go around the other corner! So I yelled her name out again louder, she didn't answer so I went back to the refrigerator obtained a snack and heard the sticky footprints along the other wall again. This got me curious because I was still wondering why she wasn't answering me or who was in there and why they didn’t speak to me. So I walked toward where I heard the footprints and then suddenly they were behind me. No matter where I walked I could hear them on the other side of the kitchen! I left and headed back to the unit where all my coworkers were sitting at the nursing station. It was only then that it hit what had just happened. No one was in the kitchen but me!
As patients become weaker and more confused, they often lose their strength to walk. Of course they do not realize this and become a high risk of falls because they try anyway. So the staff is always on the look out for this. One patient was particularly bad about getting up constantly and walking into the hall. As we sat at the nursing station filling out the night’s paperwork the nurse looked up and said oh there goes "Joe" again! All three of us jumped up to redirect "Joe" back to his room. He was walking across the end of the hall into the sun room. As we all got to the end of the hall and into the sunroom no one was there! "Joe" was sound asleep in his bed and we all had seen him walking across the end of the hall into the sunroom!
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