I really don’t like hospitals.
They’ve creeped me out since I was a little kid and I guess I’ve never gotten over it.
And when I used to deliver food late at night when I was in college, occasionally I’d get a call to bring a bunch of grub to the local hospital.
I really didn’t like walking through those long, silent, creepy hallways by myself at midnight…ugh…
What’s the creepiest thing you’ve seen at work?
Hospital workers took to AskReddit to share their stories.
1. Terrible.
“Sadly, every ER doc that has worked for a while has seen a child d** of asthma.
Doing everything you can and they just get bluer and bluer and d** is terrible.
Anything involving children is hard.”
2. Hell no.
“Working at a skilled nursing facility.
Came in for my shift and walked past a patient’s room…Asked when his ng tube ( nasal tube to stomach for feeding) was put in. There wasn’t one.
He had a worm coming out of his nose reaching down to his chest when we went back to check.”
3. Good Lord.
“A psych patient bit their own arm and spit out tendon and muscle, and another psych patient who whipped their head against a wall corner, splitting it open like a plum.
The wound was so severe two of my fingers disappeared in the cavity while I was cleaning out pieces of drywall from the wound.”
4. Let me know when you’re done.
“Walked into the morgue one time to find someone holding a guys eye in her hand, still attached to the body’s head by the nerve, and was removing the cornea for a donor transplant into a living person.
I looked outside the door, leaned back in and said “ you know there’s a slider out here that says ‘in use’ right?” Then slid it to “in use” and left to come back after she was done.”
5. Horrible.
“A kid who’s flannel shirt was literally welded to his chest because he fell into a campfire, and his parents waited a day or so to bring him to ER so they could finish their camping trip.
Kid was in shock so no crying or screaming.
He was airlifted to a burn hospital in Houston.”
6. A teaching moment.
“I’m a scrub nurse. My job is to assist the surgeon during surgeries.
One of the very first surgeries I ever sat in on about a year ago was a hemicolectomy (removal of part of the large intestine). Halfway through the surgery the patient’s arm came up and hit me in the leg. I screamed and jumped and immediately thought the patient had woken up mid surgery.
The surgeon who was preforming the surgery sighed loudly and said “While body twitches during surgery are not common, they are not impossible. Please calm yourself.”
It was the creepiest moment feeling someone I thought was unconscious touch me but then quickly turned into an embarrassing teaching moment for me.”
7. Ghost?
“A lot of the patients in the hospital where I work constantly say they see a little boy in their room.
I’ve been there 11 years and 20+ people have told me they saw a little boy playing in their room.
It creeps me out every time.”
8. Look out!
“An arm fell out of the refrigerator when I was putting some pathology specimens away.
It was late at night so I didn’t turn the light on when I entered the room. I just open the fridge door.
And this hand starts coming at me, then forearm, then the rest of the arm just rolled right out.”
9. Scary.
“I spent 16 yrs working mental health and consequently saw a ton of traumatizing s**t.
One of the worst was a woman who stabbed herself in the wrist with a shard of plastic from a clock she broke in the doctor’s office. She then proceeded to run laps around the unit spraying blood literally everywhere… the floors, ceiling and walls were just covered in blood.
My brain has blocked out some of the details but I think she may have been naked from stripping her clothes off. We ultimately had to wrap a blanket around her and take her down so we could stop the bleeding.
I felt terrible for all of the other patients that witnessed this.”
10. Disgusting.
“I worked IT for a hospital, and was down working on one of the ER computers when they wheeled in a homeless man that was screaming. They were trying to get his socks off.
The nurse pulled off the sock on his right foot…and all of the skin with it. The most horrendous smell immediately spread throughout the whole area.
I never found out what happened. I showered for a solid hour after getting home.”
11. The virus.
“C*VID 19, first wave.
I was working at a tertiary care hospital in Mumbai, in the emergency ICU (as a psychiatry resident employed for emergency work) when we didn’t understand the disease, and when people were dropping d**d like flies. Saw patients who came in d** within 24 hours of their stay in the ICU.
Saw a few patients who were interacting just fine in one shift lie d**d in the next. A few patients were covered up and kept on their beds for hours, or kept on stretchers in a corner of the ICU because the mortuary was full.
Maybe not the creepiest tale out here, but was creepy and heartbreaking enough for me.”
12. Fire victim.
“Someone who purposely lit themselves on fire.. arms charred and unmovable, like they were doing the robot.
I’m sure they didn’t live, I can’t imagine the pain.
The smell was horrible.”
Have you ever had any really creepy experiences at work?
If so, tell us your stories in the comments.
Thanks a lot!
