Your
True Tales
September 2005 – Page
38
Haunted
Nursing Home
by Ernest
Several years ago, I worked in a nearby nursing home on the 3-11 shift. The long-time nursing employees mentioned several times different tales of ghostly occurrences, tales that I neither believed nor took seriously. All of that was about to change.
One evening the north hall was assigned to Jesse, a sensible nurse aide, and me. The hall was full of residents except for one room. The room's occupant was recently admitted to the hospital, where she was battling a massive infection. The nurses had mentioned that the chances for recovery were very slim for such a weakened patient, so we always expected the worse. At 10 p.m. we were turning the last resident and preparing for the imminent shift change. We were almost through with our last resident when a call light started to ring from somewhere on the hall. I told Jesse I was going to answer the call light and would be right back. I was mildly surprised to see that the call light was from the only empty room on the hall, the room that belonged to our beloved resident Mrs. Tate who was fighting for her life in the hospital.
I really wasn't alarmed because we had several residents who wandered about late at night and I thought it was probably one of them who switched on the call light. I opened the door, entered the room quickly, and switched on the overhead light. The room was totally empty. I looked in the adjacent bathroom and even the closet; there was no one in the room. A sense of fear and wonder swept over me. Could it be? Was it possible that our dear resident passed away in the hospital and her spirit or ghost was trying to say goodbye? I turned off all the lights including the call light and rushed back to the room that Jesse was in and told her about the eerie incident. She told me to shut up because I was scaring her!
At 10:30, the charge nurse received a call and when it was over she whispered something to Jesse who subsequently let out a restrained scream. Jesse told me that Mrs. Tate passed away at 10 p.m. As I drove home later that night, I was relieved that Mrs. Tate was no longer suffering and that maybe there was indeed life after death.
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