The ultimate Phantasms in the Infirmary A compendium of ghostly tales... 15 tall tales of hospital horror. Stories to make you feel the goosebumps and hairs in the back of your neck stand up with fright.
The facts are that apart from the graveyards and cemeteries, hospitals are probably the only other environments that will see and experience so much death.
Not every ghost or spectral phenomenon is malignant and evil.
Some remain for other reasons and some are trapped between worlds.
Their presence is subject to hard evidence and belief in them is subjective to the personal experience of the individual.
Due to the nature of my profession, I have spent most of my adult life in different hospitals. Each has its own supernatural myth and story as individual as their speciality or discipline.
My personal experiences are few but I always remember the first ward I worked on nights in.
I had managed to work without encountering any ghosts or spooks, or feeling any ill feeling of any sort. One particular night, we had two deaths on the ward, a male medical ward. The shift was busy and the cold, dark and busy night seemed to drag. By the end of the shift, I felt tired but accomplished, the remaining patients were safe, the meds had been dispensed and the patients were well looked after. The day shift had arrived and the charge nurse asked ‘how was the night shift then’? I informed him of the two deaths.
His remark was ‘did you see the nun then?’‘What nun?’was my innocent reply…‘Well, in this ward, when there is a death there is a spectral form of a nun that glides through the ward and stops off at the person that is about to expire’ he added, almost casually.
This casual remark was to have a big impact on the young student nurse that I was at the time. For the rest of my placement on the ward and the remainder of the stint on nights, I was never comfortable. Granted, I never got to see the ghostly nun but none the less, it left a mark on me. Thirty three years plus later, I have never seen a ghost but it has always intrigued me to hear what others have seen or encountered. I walked many a dark corridor and encountered lots of uneasy feelings but never seen a ghost. For this I am thankful however I have been captivated by the genre that is so specific within my profession, the hospital horror story.
This has led to my writing Phantasms in the Infirmary Volumes One and Two. These two books catalogue some of the stories that have been shared by friends and colleagues, adapted into a form of light entertainment that will hopefully help wallow away the hours and trigger the imagination. Volume II is my contribution and if there is a demand for Volume III then I hope Julie will join me in writing these to add more to the next one.
Care to visit? Opening hours are up to you...
In the meantime, don’t have nightmares.
