20 Hospital And Funeral Industry Workers Are Sharing The Creepiest Things They've Ever Witnessed

Most of us enjoy watching horror movies or hearing about real-life supernatural encounters even if it gives us goosebumps. Since Science hasn't been able to explain some mystical things yet, it's natural to be curious about them. And who could tell you better spooky stories than the professionals who work around dead bodies! When someone asked on Reddit "People who have worked around death/burial, what's your best ghost story?", many people shared their spine-chilling stories of being around dead bodies. Scroll below to read some of those answers. More info: Reddit

#1

Image source: Chemistry-Least, Rod Waddington "I used to be a driver for a funeral home corporation. Like, drive the hearse and pick up the bodies. Never had anything creepy happen, a few funny things, a few traumatic things. In general it was a chill job. However. I did get incredibly uncomfortable one night picking up a man who died at home, he still had the defibrillator leads on his chest and his eyes were closed, which is unusual because the eyes are always open. He just looked like he was asleep or unconscious. Not rigid or pale or anything. I just had this sinking feeling for about half an hour in traffic that he was going to suddenly gasp and wake up in the body bag. Then it hit me. That would be the coolest thing ever. I’d take him home and he’d be back with his family. So I just kind of drove slowly and turned up some music and sang along and talked to him. When I got him to the funeral home I left him out of the cooler for about an hour while I did paperwork and played on my phone. When I got another call I checked on him and his limbs had started to stiffen. I was kind of bummed. I put him in the cooler and went on my next call."

#2

Image source: rocharox, Jiří Sedláček "Corpses move when you cremate em. People who don't know this get spooked a lot."

#3

Image source: Nighthawke78, Rotary Club of Nagpur "I am an ICU RN. We had a septic patient in the unit. She was 29 weeks pregnant. She went into labor on my shift and we delivered her baby, stillborn. I did post mortem care on the baby, retrieved the proper transport container and walked the baby down to the morgue. It was the middle of the night, I’m in an elevator alone. I hear a baby start wailing. I absolutely lose my s**t and rip open the cover, and just as I go to zip down the bag, I hear a calming male voice say, “hush little one, I’ve got you, no need to cry.” The crying stopped immediately. Shaking, I opened the bag and saw exactly what I expected to see, a deceased 29 week only baby. I am a big bearded 40 year old ICU nurse and that was the scariest s**t I’ve ever experienced. No one believes me to this day. I don’t even want to speculate what the crying or the voice was. God. Even typing that out I felt my chest tightening."

#4

Image source: missymaypen, Mathias Reding "When my cousin was eighteen he was in a bad wreck and him, his girlfriend and her sister were all pronounced dead at the scene. The police arrived to inform my aunt(his mom) and she asked that he be sent to a specific funeral home. While they were preparing to embalm him he raised up and asked "where the hell am i?" The funeral director said it was the first time he ever had to go home and change pants. I should add that the top of his head was open and his brain was exposed. He was sent to the hospital. The same police officer came to my aunt's to tell her he was not dead but in the hospital. They thought he'd be in a vegetative state. But a few weeks later he walked out of the hospital. My aunt said it was the worst and best day of her life."

#5

Image source: MC_NME, Presidencia de la República Mexicana "Junior doctor on the wards, doing a night shift, called to verify a death. Enter the private bay, its all a bit grim, slightly gloomy room. Patient is lying there, old man, looks peaceful. Start my checks, stethoscope out, no signs of active respiration. No heart sounds. Rub the sternum for a response. None. Time to get closer and check the CNS for any signs of life. I lift the eyelids up, reach for my pen torch, balancing closer to the patient. That's when it happens. The patient lurches forward, his face now inches away from mine. I scream. Nurses rush in and ask what's happened, what was that noise, why so pale. You look like you've seen a ghost. That's when I realise. I leant in too close and my leg brushed against the bed controls raising the bed. Nurses couldn't stop laughing as they offered to make me a cup of tea."

#6

Image source: a_burdie_from_hell, Burak The Weekende "I work in a Cardiac ICU, we have quite a lot of death around here. That being said, we had one patient that comes to mind... I'll call him Greg G. (fake name) Greg was on the unit for months. He fought very hard to stay alive every day, and to his credit he was getting better for a good space of time. Greg was fairly old. Late 70's or early 80's. The thing is, he (initially) looked very young, and acted very hip. He became a meme around the unit and everyone loved him because he was an old white dude who loved rap (2pac and biggie) and would throw gang signs sarcastically as a non-verbal que that he was feeling okay (he had a trach in so he couldn't talk). He also had his family bring mood lights into his room that synced with his music. I kid you not, his room was playing rap in rave mode sometimes. We called him "DJ Greggie G." and he loved it. Unfortunately, he took a turn for the worse. His condition deteriorated rapidly and ultimately he died. We were devastated as a unit. His family let us keep his mood lights and too this day we keep them plugged in at the nurses station. However. One day the mood lights turned off. We were saddened. Nobody could get them working. But then, they turned on. We were happy. And then they started flashing super irrationally. Then we heard the patient that was in Gregs old room start screaming. We went in to check on her. She was a confused old lady who would say some pretty wild things, but this one was weird. She said that she was watching the flashing lights in the hall (she could see them from her room to be fair), then she said that she saw a silhouette of a man casted into the wall from the lights. Then, she started spasticity yelling "tell Greg to leave! It's not his room anymore! Tell Greg to go!" There is no way she knew it was Gregs room. And with her memory being the way it was, there is also no way she would remember even if she did get told. Kinda spooky..."

#7

Image source: SpartanM00, Fredrik Rubensson "I have a million that are more grotesque and gory than this one, but it stands out to me. I was once working at a mortuary and had to go pick up a man from the medical examiner’s office. When you do that (at least where I’m from) you get a receipt when they release the body to you. The receipt has all of the personal belongings that are with the deceased. When I brought the man back to the office I opened up the body bag to make sure all the belongings were there and double checking the receipt. When I opened up the bag I was stunned to find this dude looked almost exactly like me. He was my age, had similar tattoos In similar spots, had the same long hair I do, even had the same style of jewelry I was wearing. It took me so off guard that I stood there in an existential crisis until the embalmer came in and was like “hey SpartanM00 how’s it goin—ahhh holy s**t that guy looks like you!” It’s the only case I’ve had nightmares about. I’ll be the one in the body bag with the deceased man opening me up."

#8

Image source: shhhhhiiim562, RODNAE Productions "Not me, but my mom's ex's story. My grandpa was the mortician for a small town in the late 60's. The morgue was attached to the house that my mom lived in. That's just how it was and it didn't bother her. One day her boyfriend, Tom came over to the house and no one was home. They had been dating for a while and he was comfortable going inside and waiting for my mom to come home. On the way into the house Tom noticed that the door and windows into the morgue were open, so he checked it out, found it empty, closed everything and went into the house. A few minutes later he heard a loud slamming noise come from the morgue, so he ran to see what was wrong and found that the doors and windows had been thrown fully open again. He got got out of there real quick. When he told my grandpa about what happened, my grandpa just calmly explained that they had picked up Mrs...... that morning and the spirits were there welcoming her and visiting with her. Next time Tom should just leave the doors and windows open."

#9

Image source: PurpleCow88, Ryutaro Tsukata "While I was in nursing school, I worked as a night shift tech on a general hospital floor. Our "sister floor" became the COVID floor during the pandemic. One night we got a call from upstairs that a patient had passed away and they were out of body bags, so a nurse and I went upstairs to bring them one. On our way back to our floor, the elevator doors closed like normal but the elevator didn't go anywhere. All of a sudden the doors opened back up and then closed again, and we were moving. We looked at each other and the nurse said out loud, "it's ok, we'll show you the way out". Hospital windows don't open like the old days, so I guess souls have to take the elevator."

#10

Image source: chut2906, cottonbro studio "I work in long-term enhanced care, people don't get better but we keep them comfortable. A couple stories I can think of: 1. A husband and wife both with severe, almost non-verbal dementia in the same room but different beds. I have my back to the husband as I'm turning the wife who is facing him. Suddenly her eyes get wide and she looks terrified. She says, "He doesn't look very good with his face blue like that." I'm like oh s**t did he die? But when I turned around he was alive and sleeping. I don't know what that woman saw. 2. A tall shadow man on one specific unit. Multiple people have seen it, some even following it into rooms thinking it's a patient, but then no one's there. 3. There was a man who had a cardiac event while sitting on the toilet. He fell forward and put a hole in the bathroom wall. He died. Soon after, a new woman moves into the room after everything is fixed. She comes out to the nurses station one night pissed off. She says, "Who's going to tell that man to get out of my room? And when are they fixing the giant hole in the bathroom?" 4. A very nice family was sitting with a resident while he died. The man had been basically comatose for two days already. The sister comes out and asks for a Bible. This was not a religious family. She said he had sat straight up, eyes bugged out and started screaming, then flopped back down. I was like, say no more and found her a Bible."

#11

Image source: TheLonelyScientist, Avinash Bhat "Mom told me stories when I was growing up. Her first job out of nursing school was an RN in the ER of an old hospital in Virginia in the mid-1980s. There was the "man in the hat" and "patient 1". Most of the nurses had stories about them. The "man in the hat" would show up and stand outside of rooms after visiting hours. The patients often died soon after. "Patient 1" was a woman in a very old hospital gown. She'd walk in the halls before entering random rooms. Those patients usually coded. They took the man to be an omen of death and the woman to be a heads-up to grab the crash cart."

#12

Image source: NnyIsSpooky, Steve "I work overnights in an assisted living facility (ALF) that mostly deals with dementia and Alzheimer's. When someone who's lived there for a while starts actively dying, it's like the rest of the residents get restless. Like they know Death is pacing the halls. Often, the restless residents will, one by one, start talking while in their rooms. I used to go in and check on them, ask what they're saying, who they're talking to. They all respond, "the girl in the closet." I have closed closets. I have left small lights on for them. I have gotten one up and taken her to the living room with me and, still, she stared at the door-less linen closet in the hall and chattered away (not always comprehensible). It only stops after the actively dying patient finally passes. A few residents who have passed started talking to The Girl In The Closet just *days before* they sharply decline and start dying. One of the most recent was in October. I'd go in at night to change her diaper, and she'd be propped up on an arm in her bed, chatting away to the Girl. She smiled at me, one time, and pointed at the closet and said, "Oh, haven't you met her? She's such a lovely girl. See this is my nephew, I told you about." I said I'd be back later and didn't go back for almost an hour when she was asleep again."

#13

Image source: Hefty_Peanut, Shannon "I worked in ward nursing for 10 years. The spookiest thing that happened was a doctor hiding under the bed when I cleaned my first body and scaring the s**t out of me. That definitely helped me get over the fear factor of working with the dead. Bodies groan and leak when you roll them to clean them but that's normal. You just talk to them nicely as if they were alive (e.g. "We're just going to put you in your nicest pajamas for your son to come and say goodbye. I'll give your face a clean. I'll paint your nails fresh as I know you liked them this way.") On most wards there was a "haunted" room that staff members would avoid. They all said it was haunted because the buzzer would mysteriously off by itself. Funnily enough, it would always stop buzzing randomly after maintenance came to fix it."

#14

Image source: Deathly_Drained, Ellie Burgin "I had a buddy who worked in forensics and s**t, figuring out how people died. He had a body come in from the city, and the corpse was covered in scratch marks. Like deep, horrid scratches as well as bite marks around the collarbone. It obviously came from an animal, but they couldn't figure out what it was. The more wild thing is that the guy died in an apartment in the middle of a city."

#15

Image source: addictedpunk, Flex Point Security "I used to be a security guard at a hospital. One night, while doing my rounds, I went into the surgery wing and was walking down a hallway when I saw a doctor looking at the whiteboard where all the scheduled surgeries are written down. I said “hello doctor” and kept going. The doctor didn’t say anything back, just kept studying the whiteboard. When I got back to the security office, I was telling one of the guys that’s been there for years about how I greeted this doctor and he didn’t say anything back, I asked if thats the a*****e they told me to watch out for. I was asked where I saw him and I said the surgery ward, and he gave me a smirk. He then explained that the surgery ward closes at 9pm and that all patients are moved into the monitoring wards; there should be no one there. He then asked me if this doctor was studying the schedule board. I said yes and he then told me that I just met Dr. Luisitti. Apparently, some many years ago, one of the surgeons went up to the helipad and jumped off the building. Seems like he never stopped working though."

#16

Image source: _bobbykelso, Boudewijn "During my apprenticeship, I worked at a funeral home said to be "haunted" by an old funeral director assistant who had a heart attack in the building and died. All he ever did was mess with the chapel lights and if you called him out, something like "John the family is coming, please don't" they would return to normal. Not really sure if I believe it was really haunted, but saying something always fixed the issue so I kept doing it my entire time there."

#17

Image source: deviousdiesel2500, Puriri deVry "I worked in a morgue, one time one of the bodies sat up, looked at me and then died again. I don’t know what happened that day, but I quit and now do construction."

#18

Image source: hamsolo19, Serena Koi "When I was a kid I had a great uncle who was the caretaker for a local cemetery. Sometimes my dad would go work with him just to make some extra dough. One time, my pops was unavailable so he gave the job to me. Had to bury a guy. Nothing ghostly happened. It is a strange dichotomy though. On one hand here's a family on one of the worst days of their lives and on the other there's me and old Uncle Pete waiting to fill the grave. It had rained all that week. Graves fill up with a lot of water when that happens. As the lift was lowering the vault (in case peeps don't know, a burial requires the coffin to be sealed in a huge concrete vault) into the grave, my uncle looked at me and said, "S**t, I hope he's got his swimming trunks on!" And that was the day that I learned you can inject humor in a dark situation. For about a year I delivered in-home medical equipment to Hospice patients. Saw some people in really bad shape. The kinda shape where if it were me I'd be saying, "Y'all need to end me, show me some goddamn mercy here." I also learned that cancer has a very distinct aroma. The stronger the aroma the sooner that person would be passing on. I'd be in the middle of a hospital bed setup with an oxygen concentrator and everything else and I'd be like, "Me or one of the other guys will be back here tomorrow or the day after." And usually that's what would happen. There was a time I pulled up to a residence just to deliver some backup oxygen tanks. A guy probably in his 40s meets me in the driveway and says he's not sure if they're gonna need it. Then he hears his name called from inside followed by, "He's gone, he's gone!" Dude went back inside and I just said call your nurse right away and I got in my truck and left. The denial some people fall into is tough sometimes. We would have families that'd be like, "Can you park your truck really far away so nobody in the neighborhood knows we have Hospice in here?" Sorry it's a s****y time but no, I sure can't do that. The worst were the children cases. Ugh. I remember one kid, he was maybe 11? His room was just plastered with photos all him with nearly every player on the local NFL team. He had been gifted so many things from that team his room looked like a storefront. I set up his equipment on a Tuesday and an aide was telling me, "Obviously they know it's terminal but they're just looking forward to getting him out of the hospital so he can at least be at home for his last few months." I was back by Friday clearing everything out because the little fella was home a grand total of like 36 hours before he left. F****n dagger in the heart. His mother was a complete disaster, walking around the house clutching his framed school photo she had taken off the wall. No ghostly stuff, tho. No weird occurrences, no weird noises or anything. Also worked in a hospital when I was younger and would mop and buff the floors in the morgue. The orderlies told me they used to prank new guys by having one of them lay on the table and then jump up at them. Thankfully they never did that to me haha. Wow I just rambled way too long. Sorry errybody. Ain't nobody give a good goddamn about yo stories, foo! And now you talking to yoself, people gonna think ya nuts!"

#19

Image source: Sleepwalks, Rebecca Siegel "My roomie/best bud is a mortician, and I'm around the funeral home a fair amount myself and know the staff pretty well. I've spent the night there before. Nothing weird happens there. I have had some experiences I can't explain, so I was a little surprised none of the staff ever had an odd experience, especially since some of them do believe in ghosts and whatnot. But they told me, if ghosts were real, why in the world would they linger at a funeral home? It's just a transition space, like an airport. No one wants to just stay in the damn airport. Haunt the place you died, or the people you love, or the home you never want to leave, or however it works, if it works. Who would want to linger in a funeral home they have no attachment to, that their body only visited after they already were gone?"

#20

Image source: Doumtabarnack, Aleksandr Zykov "Back when I worked in cardiology. We had this one single room at the a*s end or the floor. We'd put palliative patients or patients that needed isolation in there. I swear three different patients in the years I worked there told me they had woken in the middle of the night and seen an old man and a little girl holding hands, both standing at the foot of the bed, doing nothing."