Real Ghost Stories | Haunted Nursing Home

October wouldn't be the fun without some creepy tales  or ghostly deeds. And what could be creepier than a haunted nursing home? Whether you believe or not, you just might enjoy this paranormal experience.

The Design

The nursing home was shaped like a giant letter H. 'one long side was the east, or front hall, and the other was the west, or back hall. The shorter hall connecting these two areas contained the staff offices, break room, and laundry room, with part of the front section dedicated to the kitchen and dining area.

The front hall, where visitors entered, had the nurse's station opposite the doors and a sitting room. Left or right down either hall were the rooms, shower rooms, supply rooms, etc.

The back hall, also known as "back there" was different. To access it, you had to walk down the short hallway, and through a set of large, metal doors. There was another sitting area, a nurse's station to the right, and to the left...a huge room that was glassed in. And of course there were rooms up and down the left and right hallways.

Going "Back There" 

At the time I was hired, there were only 38 residents. All of whom lived in the front hall. The back hall was closed off. The empty rooms were used to store extra supplies and the unclaimed belongings of deceased residents.

It was the duty of the evening shift to take the trash outside and place it in dumpsters. The dumpsters sat behind the building, and the quickest way to get to them was via the doors at the end of one of the halls "back there". It was also supposed to be our job to walk the back hall once per shift to make sure everything was exactly as it should be.

I was there nearly a month before someone actually did this though.

One of the senior aides needed to retrieve something from storage. She decided to go ahead and take the trash and patrol the hall at the same time. She asked if I would go with her. Since we were leaving the building at night, it was protocol to go in pairs, even though the home sat in the country, with just a little forest behind it.

Before we went, the aide told the nurse we would be leaving.

That is when it got weird. The nurse set a stopwatch, and turned on all the lights in the back hall before unlocking the double doors. Then she waited in the hall while we went in. When I asked what that was all about, the aide replied:

"It is just in case. We are...supposed to make sure that vagrants don't get in."

Being obnoxiously curious, and still pretty green, I wanted to know about the glass room.

The Glass Room

This was called an "observation" room. At one time, the nursing home had separated the residents depending on their needs. Those with severe dementia, behavioral issues, and mental disabilities lived in the back hall. And the observation room was a type of "chill out" place where volatile or very ill residents would be kept under the watchful eye of the charge nurse.

It wasn't a pretty sight. It contained a row of beds, with restraining straps. Something no longer used in the facility.

As we hurried down the hall, my companion shone a flashlight into the open rooms. Some were completely empty. Others had a furniture. Some were still set up as though waiting for a resident to come home.  Still other rooms held shadowy piles of junk.

My fellow worker did not step foot into a single room, and did not open the  few doors that were closed. When I went to open one, (thinking of course that vagrants would probably have the sense to hide behind closed doors) she slapped my hand away.

"We don't need to look in all the rooms!" she whispered.

She rushed through the rest of the patrol and hurried me back to the front.

The Stories Emerge Over Time

It took a few more weeks to really start to understand "back there". The first real clue that we weren't checking for vagrants or thieves came when one of the aides refused to go back there to retrieve clothing items. Now, this was in broad daylight. About three o'clock in the afternoon.

When the DON threatened to fire her, she said she would just have to be fired, because nothing was going to make her go back there. The DON finally went herself, because no one...not the aides, not the housekeeping staff...would go. I noted that even though our boss went by herself, she posted her assistant at the door.

When I asked later why she wouldn't go back, the "defiant" aide replied;

"Because its haunted. And bad things happen back there."

No one wanted to share the details, and I was dying of curiosity. I thought perhaps it was a good joke at first. A way to spook the newbies on the floor and get a few chuckles. But I wasn't seeing many chuckles. And rather than trying to spook us, the other senior workers were more determined to stay tight-lipped and advise us to just mind our own hall and leave the back room alone.

Finally, after a few months,  I started to hear some stories.

The maintenance man, a kind older gentleman shared the first. He said that when the hall was open, several of the residents who now lived up front had been in rooms back there. And they had all had very serious issues come up that no one could explain. One lady, now incoherent from a stroke, had been in the observation recovering from pneumonia and was receiving IV fluids.

The nurse stepped away to use the bathroom, and returned to find the woman in convulsions, with her IV ripped out. Her hands were still restrained. She wasn't the first resident to have something strange happen while staying in that room. (and she never recovered from the episode. It led to the stroke that paralyzed her).

There were also tales of the residents complaining that a stranger would come into their rooms and harass them. Now, this was the dementia sector, so it was common to hear a few hallucinatory stories. However, one man was so agitated and insistent that they moved him to the front hall. His ''hallucinations'' ended and never returned.

I got to be close friends with one of the nurses, and she said that she used to work that hall before it closed. This nurse was tough-as-nails, no nonsense. She ran her shift like a drill instructor, and never had a problem getting in anyone's face--be it a violent resident, an irate family member, or her boss.

But she would not go back there. She even offered me $20 to go back there for her one day.

It was she who let it slip that the back hall had not been closed due to "not being needed", or because the facility couldn't budget it remaining open. It closed down because of a disastrous birthday party.

The Party With the Uninvited Guest

A couple of years before I went to work in the home, one of the residents had a birthday. His family decided to throw a party at the nursing home. He had  a relative who was one of the aides, and she had already told me about the events of the party, and the nurse later backed it up with her version.

When everyone was assembled, many of the residents became agitated. This was not normal. They loved parties.

According to all accounts, it was a real struggle to calm them all down. Some were taken back to their rooms because they began crying or fighting.

When it came time to light the candles, no one could start a fire. Everytime the lighter would get near the candles, the flame would go out. They looked for a draft, but could find no reason. One of the kitchen staff brought a stove match, and they managed to light a few candles, only to have them blow themselves out, one by one as they were lighting the others.

Deciding to laugh it off, they proceeded to cut the cake. That was when the table collapsed, and all the doors down the hallway slammed closed.

It was enough to terrify all the residents, staff, and visitors.

Everyone left the hallway, and later, they had a hard time getting the residents to go back their rooms for bedtime.  Later that night, all the alarms went off. Over the next couple of weeks, the door alarms and call lights would sound for no reason, even in empty rooms.

It was bad enough that some families who witnessed these things while visiting moved their loved ones to other nursing homes.

Eventually, the owners moved everything up front, locked down the back of the nursing home, and told everyone it was because they didn't have the funds to keep it open. Later they said that it was because they did not have enough residents to necessitate opening the back hall.

However...

If the front rooms were full, and a family called about placing their loved one in the nursing home, the staff would tell them all the rooms were full. They never accepted more residents than would fill the front hall.

Did I See It?

Why, yes I did see some strange things. I saw the call lights for the empty rooms come on occasionally. The maintenance man always said it was just a short in the wiring. He never went back there to fix it though.

Sometimes the windows to the locked doors would be so foggy you couldn't see through them. And more than once, on a quiet evening shift, you would hear the unmistakable sound of a laundry cart being rolled down the hall. Sometimes, it sounded like it hit the doors...like an echoing gunshot breaking the silence.

And at those times, it was guaranteed that the residents would be restless and agitated. I'm thankful that I only ever had to go back there twice.

Today, over thirty resident rooms, a dark nurse's station, and the empty glass room  sit unused at the back of the nursing home. The beds in the glass room are neatly made. The restraints dangle on the dusty floors.

And five doors to five bedrooms remain closed and locked.

The only thing back there? Supplies of course.

And maybe...something else.