Ghosts in Nursing... and the studio?! Podcasting got real real.

Things got weird. And not just "spooky story time" weird. It was full-on haunted podcast chaos this week as Riva and her daughter hit record, thirty episodes in, and tonight was the first time the tech itself decided to get possessed. Microphones glitching, machines coming alive, random interference everywhere. Is that just October vibes or was something actually in the room with us? You won't believe what we caught in post edit!!!

In this special Halloween-season episode, Riva and her daughter share spine-tingling ghost stories of nursing from around the world, plus a few of their own. From Mexico’s La Planchada and Indonesia’s Crawling Nurse to the restless spirits haunting military hospitals and modern ICUs, this episode travels the haunted halls of global healthcare.

Whether you believe in spirits or think it’s just the night shift getting to you, these stories are part of nursing’s folklore, told and retold across generations of healers who have worked where life and death meet.

And yes, you’ll want to stick around for the “Coffee, Crystals, and Divination” segment, where Riva and her daughter reveal which herbs to brew when you want protection… and which ones to use if you dare to open the door to the other side.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

• The eerie legends of haunted hospitals across Mexico, Indonesia, Australia, and beyond.
• Firsthand ghost stories from nurses around the world.
• End-of-life visions, premonitions, and what science says about them.
• The infamous “Rule of Three” and unexplained happenings nurses still whisper about.
• Riva and her daughter’s own real-life paranormal experiences, recorded live before the Coffee, Crystals, and Divination segment.
• A potential EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) caught during recording.

Featured Segment: Coffee, Crystals & Divination

• Crystal of the Week: Black Tourmaline – for grounding and protection during spooky shifts.
• Coffee/Tea of the Week: Choose your path, The Protector’s Brew (rosemary, sage, bay leaf) or The Medium’s Brew (mugwort). One shields you from spirits, the other invites them in. Choose wisely.
• Divination Moment: A live card pull as usual

Behind the Mic

This episode marks the first time Riva’s daughter has joined her on the podcast. Together they dive into shared family ghost stories, laughter, and a few moments that will have you checking your call lights twice.

And about that EVP, follow The Ritual Nurse Podcast on TikTok and Instagram (@ritualnurse) to see and hear it for yourself.

Do you have your own ghost story from nursin

Chapters

• 0:00 Campfire Of Nursing Ghost Stories
• 2:19 La Planchada: Mexico’s Iron Lady
• 5:35 Indonesia’s Crawling Nurse Legend
• 10:15 Gray Nurses Of Military Hospitals
• 14:46 Premonitions And Death Portents
• 19:36 Mid-Episode Grounding Break
• 22:13 Night-Shift Terrors And Georgie
• 27:40 Cursed Rooms And Shadow Figures
• 31:10 Little Girls In The Hallway
• 33:31 Haunted Hospitals Around Asia-Pacific
• 38:10 End-Of-Life Visions And Lucidity
• 43:30 The House With Footsteps And Lights
• 52:30 Protection Brews, Crystals, And Tarot
• 58:50 Closing Reflections And Listener Stories

Transcript

Speaker: 0:12

Hey there, my nurse besties. Welcome back to the Ritual Nurse Podcast. I am so excited about today's special spooky episode because we're diving into something completely different. Bone chilling, and quite frankly, yet another one of my favorite topics. Today, also, I have one of my favorite self-made humans with me. My daughter. My ride or die. We actually have some real life ghost stories that are wild. So I'm so excited that you agreed to do this with me because I love doing things with you.

Speaker 1: 0:44

Hello.

Speaker: 0:46

My love. Today we are gathering around the metaphorical campfire to share ghost stories of nursing. That's right. We're talking paranormal encounters, unexplained phenomena, and the eerie experiences that nurses from around the world have witnessed in the halls of hospitals, morgues, and ICUs. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, these stories will give you the chills. We've got tales from the United States, Indonesia, Mexico, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Australia, the UK, Ireland, and more. From the crawling nurse of Indonesia to the Iron Lady of Mexico, from children's ghosts in pediatric wards to gray ladies haunting military hospitals. This episode is packed with spine-tangling stories. Perfect for your night shift, your drive home, or just to creep yourself out. So dim the lights, grab your favorite cozy blanket, maybe some protective crystals. You're gonna need them. And let's dive into the shadows where medicine meets the inexplicable. Let's start with some of the most famous nursing ghost legends that have transcended borders and become part of nursing folklore worldwide. La Planchada, the Iron Lady, comes from Mexico, where hospitals across the country, but especially in Mexico City, are reportedly haunted by La Planchada, which translates to the Iron Lady, roughly. Legend says La Planchada was a beautiful, dedicated nurse named Eulalia, who worked in a hospital from the 1930s to 1960s, kind of a huge gap. She was known for her impeccably starched and ironed white uniform and her exceptional care for her patients. Eulalia fell deeply in love with a doctor at the hospital and they became engaged. Here's where the story turns dark. The doctor left for a week-long medical training seminar. And when he returned, Eulalia discovered he had met another woman and married her. Devastated and heartbroken, Eulalia fell into a deep depression. She began neglecting her patients and herself. One patient even died under her care due to her neglect. The guilt consumed her, and she became sick herself and eventually died. Some say from a broken heart, others from mysterious causes. But death wasn't the end for Eulalia. Soon after she passed, hospital staff began reporting sightings of mysterious nurse appearing in the emergency room at night. Oh, that is the last place that you want a ghost. She's described as wearing a perfectly ironed 1930s-era white nurse's uniform, sometimes emitting a gentle glow. Witnesses say she floats down corridors without making a sound or walks normally, but footsteps are never heard. The most remarkable thing about La Planchada is that she appears to patients who have been neglected by living nurses. By morning, those critically ill patients are suddenly stable and recovering. When asked what happened, they say a nurse came in and healed me, but no nurse was on duty, and no one in the hospital matches that description. In terms of no nurse being on duty, I don't know what hospitals don't have nurses at night.

Speaker 1: 4:24

I feel like that's kind of a vital thing of a hospital.

Speaker: 4:26

But I mean, maybe there's like a gap in a schedule. Or just one nurse over a ward. I mean, in the United States, we have staffing challenges. So I don't know what staffing is like in other countries. If you're listening to this and you're in other countries, let us know. Like send me feedback and let me know what your staffing is like. So many hospitals in Mexico, particularly Hospital Juarez in Mexico City, have reported sightings of La Planchada. She's seen as a benevolent spirit, continuing her nursing duties in death, making amends for the patient that she let die in life. Though there's a warning, while she's kind to patients, staff are quietly advised never to challenge or confront her, because the fate of those who cross her remains unknown. So the crawling nurse, this comes from Indonesia. The crawling nurse. It's like a new conjuring horror movie. I'm good. So from Mexico, we travel to Indonesia, where another infamous nursing ghost haunts hospital corridors. I spelled her name and I don't know how to pronounce it, so with all due respect, I don't know how to pronounce it. So the first word that's spelled S-U-S-T-E-R means nurse. The second word, N-G-E-S-O-T, means crawling. So it's not actually her name, but it's that's what she's called. What she's been called, yeah. Right. So no one knows her real name, but the legend goes like this A beautiful young nurse was working the night shift in an old hospital. As she walked to the laboratory, the doctor on duty attacked and raped her. To prevent her from escaping or reporting him, he brutally mutilated her legs so she couldn't walk. She had to crawl using only her hands, dragging what was left of her legs behind her.

Speaker 1: 6:29

That's horrific.

Speaker: 6:30

She died that night from her injuries. Now, this is purported as an urban legend. Do you know what I mean? But there's always that part of you, especially when it comes to violence against women, there's always that part of you that thinks there's urban legends don't come from nothing. You know they don't. You know they don't. Something had to have sparked it. Right. There was a kernel of something. There was a, you know. Since then, she's haunted hospital corridors across Indonesia, especially old hospitals from the Dutch colonial era. Most people believe the hospital was sitto-oh boy. Okay, I tried looking this up and having Google Translate play it for me, and I can't say the word. Mengu Kuzmo? Maybe? Public hospital in Jakarta. The last place that she was allegedly seen alive. But another version claims that she was a Dutch nurse who was gang raped and the injuries caused her feet to be amputated. Witnesses describe seeing her wandering hospital corridors or nearby alleyways covered in blood, dragging her legs behind her as she crawls. People believe that if I wish I could pronounce her name. Maybe it's a good idea, but I'm not invoking it. If the crawling nurse passes by you, your body goes stiff and you lose the ability to speak. Think about what they're actually saying.

Speaker 1: 8:04

That's horrible.

Speaker: 8:05

Do you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1: 8:06

To be silenced and unable to do anything.

Speaker: 8:08

To be silenced and unable and powerless to be unable to do anything. So only after she passes does control over your body return. Recently, a janitor named Budai. B-U-D-I claimed he saw the crawling nurse at a hospital in Ban Nung. Working the night shift as a new employee, he was cleaning the morgue when he got the feeling someone was watching him. The electricity suddenly shut off. In the darkness, he heard a woman crying in pain. Trying to distract himself, he played music on his phone and continued his rounds. Who are these people with dark nerves of steel? Is what I want to know. When he entered the operating theater to clean, he opened a dividing curtain, and there, under the bed, was a pale nurse looking straight up at him. He dropped his mop. That would be the least of the things that I would drop. His body froze completely. The nurse moved on, dragging herself across the floor, and only then could they move again. That's terrifying. Absolutely. The with this urban legend, the striking thing about it was there wasn't much deviancy between tales, sightings, effects. Like it was pretty, it was pretty um, what's the word I'm looking for? Consistent. Thank you. Yes. It was it was pretty consistent. So that to me, and I don't know whether this is valid or not when it comes to urban legends and you know, but that to me, when there isn't a lot of widespread differences, but it's pretty consistent throughout, also kind of says something to me.

Speaker 1: 10:02

Yeah.

Speaker: 10:03

Okay. Now we're gonna go to the gray nurses, and these are military hospitals, and there are reports of these uh in the UK, in Australia, and Ireland. Okay. So across the English-speaking world, there's a reoccurring phenomenon known as the gray nurses or gray lady, ghostly nurses in old-fashioned gray uniforms who appear in hospitals, particularly military hospitals. In the UK, the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot was has one of the most famous Grey Lady stories. The hospital treated injured troops from the Boer War all the way through the first Gulf War. The ghost is said to haunt the upper floor between wards 10 and 11, often accompanied by the smell of lavender.

Speaker 1: 10:52

Hmm. A calming scent.

Speaker: 10:54

Right? Interesting. The story goes that she was a member of the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps who accidentally gave a soldier a fatal drug overdose. Yikes. Overcome with guilt, she threw herself off the upper floor walkway. Some believe she continues performing her nursing duties in death, helping dying patients move on to the next life. Sightings of her always seem to coincide with a very ill or dying patient. Witnesses report the corridor being freezing cold. No matter how high the heating is turned up, one policeman said the hairs on the back of his head always stand on end when he patrols that area. So in Australia, the former Royal Adelaide Hospital had its own gray nurse, a benevolent spirit who provided assistance to patients and helped living nurses during night shifts. She was known for pressing call buzzers for patients who couldn't do it themselves. One story tells of a patient named Carol who had complete paralysis from multiple sclerosis from MS and couldn't drink water herself. One particularly busy night, a nurse filled Carol's water jug at 9:30 p.m. and didn't get back until midnight. When she returned, Carol had only half a jug left. Carol said the other nurse had been in several times to help her drink. But the nurse knew this wasn't right. She checked with the only other night nurse on duty, who confirmed she hadn't been in the room. When asked again, Carol described the older agency nurse in the old-fashioned gray dress. When the Royal Adelaide Hospital moved sites in 2017, many wondered what would happen to the gray nurse. A chapel service was reportedly held, and the gray nurse was invited to leave with them.

Speaker 1: 12:58

That's really sweet.

Speaker: 12:59

Nurses always stick together. Okay, so now we're gonna look at premonitions and visitors when death comes calling. So let's move into stories about the strange ways that death announces itself in hospitals through premonitions, ghostly visitors, and patients who just simply know. Can't tell you over the years. I mean, in in critical care and in the ER, that's what we're doing is stopping the unaliving, hopefully reversing the unaliving, that kind of stuff. And I can't tell you how many times personally I had patients that when they looked at you, it was like they were looking through you. They were looking at somewhere past you. And I've had patients see loved ones that passed years before, waiting for them. Um, I've had patients know that they were gonna die, like say, say at night, like, no, I know I'm gonna die. And I've had patients, I've had patients who have been terrified at the moment of death, at what they were seeing. And it was always every patient that I've ever had that was scared at the moment of death. I I, of course, obviously can't imagine. I mean, you know, death comes for us all, but death unexpected or, you know, rapidly approaching unexpectedly is is against your, you know, primitive will to live. Like you're more indeed, you are mortified. Um, but every time that I've had a patient that experienced that, they were terrified of what was coming for them. Like every single patient that has has been on the like terrified in that moment right before they died, every single one of them, and I I I can count on two hands, like the number of patients that I've had over a decade and a half of doing this, that um, and every single one of them could see something that you know the rest of us couldn't, but whatever it was, all of them were terrified of what was coming for them. So I don't I don't know. That's just a again, those consistencies are things that really kind of scratch my neurodivergent brain. Okay, so the rule of three. Many nurses will tell you that death comes in threes. It is one of nursing's most widespread superstitions, and there are countless stories to back it up. One oncology nurse shared this chilling story. Working in adult oncology, where many patients transitioned to hospice care, the nursing team noticed a pattern. Patients died in groups of three. One night after two patients had already passed, a beloved patient in room eight, who was especially dear to the entire team, died as well. The next morning, a new patient was admitted to room eight. The nurse began orientation, starting to explain how the TV remote worked. Before she could finish, the TV turned on by itself and began flickering violently between channels at high volume. Totally spooked, the nurse tried to turn it off, but it wouldn't respond. Finally, she turned it off manually. The new patient didn't even seem to notice. Later that day, another nurse was looking for replacement remote controls. When asked why, she said the remotes and TVs were acting up in rooms X and Y, the exact rooms where the other two patients had also died the night before. The thing that I find weird about that in the tale is that the new patient didn't notice.

Speaker 1: 16:54

Yeah, that's weird.

Speaker: 16:56

Right? Just the staff. So the little old lady and her call light is the next one. This story comes from a nurse working in long-term care. So there was a sweet little old lady with dementia who never understood how to work her call light. Instead, she would tiptoe to her neighbor's room and politely ask the lucid gentleman there to ring his call light for her. He was always willing to help. Unfortunately, the old lady passed away from a pancreatic issue at exactly 1600 one afternoon. Just a few hours later, while her family was saying their goodbyes in her room, the gentleman next door turned on his call light. When nurses arrived at his bedside, he told them, The old lady is ready for bed now. Remember, this man had no cognitive issues. He was only there recovering from a kidney infection. When a CNA asked him to explain, he said, the old woman had just snuck into his room moments before and pressed his call light button herself. He described her wearing a white robe and holding her rosary beads. Here's the truly chilling part. When the old lady's body was moved to the funeral home, the nurses who attended the ceremony saw her lying in her open casket. She was dressed in a white gown, holding rosary beads. So another one is tell that lady to stop staring at me. A CNA working in a progressive care unit had a patient whose heart rate monitor began going off, signaling cardiac arrest. The CNA rushed to the patient's bedside only to find the older patient completely fine. But the patient was upset and said, Can you please tell that lady hiding behind the curtain in my room to quit staring at me? She keeps telling me I'm gonna die when you leave. Okay, so when we have patients that tell us these things, there's usually a different kind of pathology that I'm worried about. Yeah, that's okay. What do you mean? What lady standing behind the curtain? Right now, like right now, she's looking at looking at both of us, right? She's still there. Because some people don't usually just stand behind the curtain like that.

Speaker 1: 19:11

No one else should be in here.

Speaker: 19:13

The CNA was spooked to the bone. She left the room and told the patient's nurse what had happened. Later that night, the patient coded and died by the end of the CNA shift. The doctor's final rounds. This story comes from a pediatric nurse working in one of the oldest wings of a hundred-plus-year-old hospital. Children began reportedly seeing nah, see, now y'all got me. Okay. This the children ghost stories, like there was very few selected for this thing. Because every time I read them, if you don't know me, working in Cardiac ICU in the ER as a nurse, I actively, when I tell you actively, as in with high engagement, I actively avoided the pick you, the NICU, and PGR, if I could help it. Um, I just adult anything, not a problem. Like I can handle whatever. Throw it at me, no problem. Children? No. Hmm, okay. So children began reporting seeing the doctor around 6 a.m. A tall figure with gray hair, glasses, and always wearing a white coat. The descriptions were strikingly consistent across multiple children who had never met each other. When nurses asked colleagues about this mysterious man, they said nonchalantly, oh, that sounds like Dr. So-and-so. He used to work here, but he passed away some time ago. We still do believe that he makes his rounds checking on the children. One thing I will say about kids is that there's just there's something about them that if paranormal stuff is gonna happen, it does so without hesitancy around kids. It just does. Because because I think kids still look at the world in terms of I'm taking in everything as new. So you don't know.

Speaker 1: 21:19

There's no standards for them to be breaking.

Speaker: 21:21

Exactly. That, you know, like, no, that's not normal. You know, they're still taking in things with that kind of innocence, yeah. Which is incredible. All right, Nurse Bestes. I need you to pause with me for just a moment. We've already covered some seriously spine-tingling stories, some fun ones, some benevolent ones, but from La Planchada haunting Mexican hospitals to patients who predicted their own deaths, and kids being rounded on by their favorite doctor still hanging out in the ward. Trust me, we're only halfway through, though. If you're listening to this on your commute, perfect. If you're about to start your night shift, well, I'm sorry in advance for what's coming next. Because we're about to dive into the really scary stuff. The night shift terror that'll make you want to travel in pairs and never go down to the basement supply room again alone. So take this moment, breathe, get some water, stretch your neck and shoulders, check in with your nervous system, maybe light that protective candle, or grab your black tourmaline if you've got one nearby. And if you're listening to this at work right now, look around, check those empty hallways, make sure all your call lights are in. All right, welcome back. Okay, are you ready? What comes next includes elevator ghosts, cursed rooms, phantom children in pediatric wards, and basement encounters that will absolutely wreck you. These are the stories nurses whisper about on night shift, the ones that make even the skeptics a little nervous. So let's just dive back in. So I do hope that you took the moment to ground yourself because we're diving straight into night shift terrors. And this is what happens when the lights go down, the visitors go home, and it's just you, your patients, and whatever else might be walking those halls. The next stories come from nurses working the graveyard shift. And trust me, some of them will make you understand why we call it that. So let's talk about Georgie. The night shift is when most paranormal activity happens in hospitals. Here are some of the most terrifying encounters nurses have experienced in the dead of night. A nurse working on a neurology ward in an old building said their elevator would come up to their floor at least once a night with no one on it. The doors would open and close rapidly, over and over again, until someone spoke to the elevator. The nursing staff had taken a vote and named their resident ghost Georgie. So when the elevator would come up unannounced, and the doors would spaz and open and close, open and close, as soon as someone said, Hi, Georgie, the elevator shenanigans would stop. Patients sometimes reported seeing strange men in their rooms. There were no male staff on this unit. Call lights occasionally went off in empty rooms, even ones that were unplugged. One patient with complete paralysis from S from MS reported that the other nurse kept coming in to help her drink her water during a busy shift when the living nurses couldn't get to her room. The nurse said it was eerie, but I never got the sense that Georgian friends meant any harm. Now I have to tell you personally, working in a cardiac ICU, we had a particular room at the end of the hall near the entrance. That the call light, and my rationale at the time was that it was electrical, that it was, yeah, something, that the call light would go off. And as busy as we were, you would find yourself responding to it before you realized like what room it was. And you gotta understand, our unit was a really large unit. It's like 37 beds, kind of built like a ladder. And then the crossbars were like nursing station, med area, next nursing station, et cetera. So in the middle of the night, it was really kind of hard to like not feel like you were alone in these empty hospital quarters because they were so long that you know, and you couldn't see except for the narrow like wings of the ladder, if you will. So you'd find yourself responding to this room. And of course, you get there and there's no call light. It's not plugged in, and there's no patient in there. So one time myself, uh, two other nurses that I had gone to nursing school with, and another nurse that you know was already working on the unit when we had um been hired. We're doing our thing, and call light goes off, and we're kind of chuckling about it, like, oh boy, you know, whatever. So I'm like, you know, I'll go down and just see, like maybe somebody, day shift, cleaning staff, somebody, you know, maybe EBS, somebody had plugged the call light back in. I'm gonna go unplug it because I don't want to do this all night. Go in there, I go to unplug it, I look up at the Welch Allen monitor, which looks like a an old-fashioned, you know, TV screen. It's not like a fancy flat screen, but it is a black screen monitor that displays the heart, the O2, the you know, the lines that go across the screen. Right. So I look up at the monitor and it's reading sinus rhythm. The readings in the rooms connected to those monitors are not remote. The wires have to go from the stickers on the patient to the box to show up on the TV in the room. You can't hype in rhythm. It's not a it's not a receiver, like in terms of from another room, or I can see remotely somewhere else, or you know, we may have that fancy technology now, but believe me, we did not then. And I look up and I see normal sinus rhythm. There is not, I am the only human standing in that room. And I'm like, Oh, you look good. No other, yeah, no other readings, no nothing. I'm like, and I walked right out. I didn't touch the monitor, I didn't touch a damn thing, I walked right out of that room. Goodbye. Nope. Room four, the cursed room. So one cardiac, oh, this is not me, but one cardiac ICU nurse swore that room four in their unit was cursed. Most patients assigned to room four were very ill and didn't survive. The nurse said, if I ever get sick and have to be admitted to the CCU, do not put me in room four. Another nurse told the story of a nursing home resident named Sam. So it is weird that we do have these rooms that are like death rooms. Where, like knowing, and there's not, it's what it is, is probably like proximity to something or proximity to a nursing station. But it's just weird the superstitions that nurses take on when they're just constantly around death like that. Yeah, it's hard not to think of something when you're constantly surrounded in that environment. Correct, like to come to come or associate something. Our brains make patterns. Another nurse told the story of a nursing home resident named Sam, rumored to have been a hitman for a crime family who spent years in prison. One night while caring for another patient, a nurse suddenly heard a man screaming. Both she and her patient turned to the hallway and were horrified to see Sam being dragged down the corridor by two shadowy figures dressed in black. She abandoned what she was doing and rushed into the hallway, but it was empty. The exit door at the end remained closed and locked from the outside, and the alarm hadn't gone off. Now, the first thought in your head is did she go check on Sam?

Speaker 1: 30:08

Yeah.

Speaker: 30:08

Yes, Sam had done. Earlier that day.

Speaker 1: 30:13

Okay.

Speaker: 30:13

Oh, sorry, Sam. Right. The running water. A nurse working in a long-term care facility was walking down the hall speaking to a CNA when suddenly they heard the loud sound of water running in the bathroom. All the patients were in bed and the bathroom required a key to enter. They unlocked the door and turned on the lights. The tub water was running full blast. No one was there. The nurse turned the faucet all the way until the water stopped. The CNA said strange stuff happens in that bathroom all the time. Lights turning on and off, things moving around or turning on. What's weird is the nurse heard the water turn on while standing near the bathroom, knew that no one had walked in, and the handle had to be turned all the way to the right to turn it off. So it's not like it was a like leaky or exactly like the handle had. And those are the things when people can cut like they identify those weird, tangible pieces that just makes it different for me. Yeah. You know, like I think some of our own ghosty experiences have been stuff where it was like, no, no, no, no. We noticed this piece for sure about XYZ. Yeah. And like it wasn't. I could think of excuses if it hadn't been for, you know. Just weird. Okay, the little girl in the basement. This one was, I'm yikes. This story is absolutely terrifying. A Piku nurse went to the basement storage unit at 0300 to grab a new gurney after a violent patient destroyed theirs. The hospital was on lockdown for the night, no visitors allowed. The basement was packed with equipment, dimly lit and aerily quiet. When the nurse felt their shirt get pulled, they assumed that it got caught on an object. Then it happened again. This time they heard a little girl's voice, crystal clear, say, I'm lost. Their heart was pounding, all the hairs on their body stood up, and they immediately called their partner down to help with the gurney. They never went down to the basement alone again. No. Multiple nurses, CNAs, and even physicians at that hospital reported weird experiences, especially in the ICU and hospice areas. Obviously, areas where you would have a high amount of death. I can't imagine, though, being like so focused on your task at hand. You know what I'm saying? Like grabbing the gurney. I gotta haul it all the way back upstairs. They took the one from our floor. You know, now I gotta find another one. I gotta go down here. Exactly. Only to like, and then your brain registers like that your scrub top got caught on something. Like, ah, goddamn it. Right. Move, let go of me. You know, and you're still, but then it happened. This okay, let me tell the second that that happened again. I'm gone. I'm out of late. I would have with my track record. We know your, we know your response. Lay down. It's like it's like a sleeping goat syndrome. Like immediately lay down and uh to sleep. Um, no, the second that my scrub top was grabbed again, the way my nervous system would have immediately done that like ice cold pause for a second, while my brain suddenly clicked into gear and was like, excuse me. Goodbye time. Like, what is pulling on my scrub top? The second I heard the voice, though, would have been like, okay, all other processes except for central nervous system movement and fight or flight is is on go. Like, absolutely on lock. This one's called Two Little Girls, and this one was a nurse working on a night shift on a hospital unit that had previously been a pediatric ward, received a call from a dementia patient at 2 a.m. Those are always fun. The patient said there were little girls playing in her room and asked the nurse to come get them. Totally reasonable request from a dementia patient. Get them out place kind of common, yes. The nurse played along, opening the door and said, Come on, girls, you can't play in here. Let's go. The patient thanked her. Absolutely, as we do. Okay. The nurse was barely out of the room when her phone rang. It was a completely lucid, oriented patient on the opposite side of the unit, screaming for help because two little girls just ran into her room. The nurse says her heart was in her ass. Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 35:07

I just told you you couldn't play in here.

Speaker: 35:09

But this is a totally different patient on the other side of the hospital. That is calling because now two little girls have run into their room. No time. Later that same week, two more patients on different parts of the unit who had never met each other both complained about a little girl running and yelling in the hallway late at night. One asked if the nurse could please ask her to keep it down. Multiple patients sharing the exact same experience with zero contact is what is so deeply unsettling. Alright, so let's travel around the world and we're gonna focus on some more of the most haunted hospitals and the spirits that inhabit them. We are gonna take a look at a hospital in Singapore. So built in 1892, old, I think C-H-A-N-G I Changi Hospital was captured by Japanese forces during World War II and used as a healthcare facility for prisoners of war. It's regarded as one of the most haunted places in Singapore. Known as the High Street Ghost House. Visitors report hearing a woman crying, loud booming sounds emanating from the building, mysterious footsteps, and recurring sightings of a devilish figure in traditional Chinese costume bursting into flames. I wonder what that symbolizes. Like I wonder what I don't know enough culturally to be able to connect that with either a religious symbol or a cultural symbol. Do you know what I mean? Like I just wonder, I wonder what that relates to. Specifically on the second floor, um, many visitors say the terrifying encounters followed them home. Okay. Now we're gonna go to South Korea. Ganjam Psychiatric Hospital. Probably also didn't say that correctly. This abandoned hospital was named by CNN as one of the freakiest places in the world. While rumors claim it closed in the 1990s due to murderous patients and mad doctors, the truth is it closed because of economic downturns leading to unsanitary conditions and sewage problems. The owner simply fled, and the fate of the patients isn't clear. Even though it's closed to the public, roughly a thousand people break in every year. The building stand complete with rusted machines, filthy mattresses, and trash scattered everywhere. The hospital was demolished in 2018, but not before it became the subject of a horror film. I tried to look up what horror film it was, and I couldn't find it.

Speaker 1: 38:10

Might be named something not in English.

Speaker: 38:12

Fact. Fact, fact. Now we're at the Philippines. So Clark Air Base Hospital in the Philippines, so many of these are military related. You think about the horror, yeah, the horror of war. Ghost Hunters International declared this one of the most haunted places in the world. The base has a violent and bloody history, serving as an evacuation point for wounded American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Paranormal activity is rampant, headless apparitions, mysterious voices, and violent spirits that have rendered the area off limits. It's one of the few locations ghost hunters examined that was deemed truly disturbed. One particularly disturbing story involves Dr. Morris, who worked at a tuberculosis hospital unit connected to the base. Dr. Morris could predict the exact day his patients would die. These patients, many with no loved ones, were placed in a separate building called Mount Kitanglad, about a kilometer from the main hospital. They would be found dead on the exact day that Dr. Morris predicted. Rumors circulated that Dr. Morris was murdering his patients. After he died, investigations found equipment in his office suggesting unethical medical practices. Let me translate for you experimentation, all that kind of stuff. Since then, cries and whispers are heard from Mount Kittingglad at night. And locals catch glimpses of shadowy figures believed to be the ghost of Dr. Morris and his patients. And in some of these places, these maniacs would have been unchecked. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like the patients in their vulnerability were just the perfect sitting duck. Now we are at Cho Rei Hospital in Saigon. And this is Dr. Than and shared multiple paranormal encounters. The ICU has two eight-sign charms secured to the walls because, according to belief, the spirits of those who die inside the hospital cannot leave because of these charms guarding power. So one night at 1.20 a.m., a girl with long hair wearing a white shirt approached Dr. Than from behind. She told him that she had a terrible headache. He took her down, he took down her information. Win I don't know how to pronounce N G-O-C in Vietnamese. And he pointed her to bed number four to rest. A few minutes later, he went to give her a medical checkup. When he reached bed number four, no one was there. She'd vanished. Another story involved a pregnant woman who died due to a doctor's negligence. He had been drunk and gave the wrong evaluation of her health. Both the mother and baby died. Since then, her spirit has been lingering in Block C. Many people have encountered her, and the hospital invited ghost masters to perform worshiping and ghost busting rituals, but to no avail. No exorcisms, no appeasement. Apparently, uh her resentment was too great. Yeah, I would piss too. Yeah, no kidding. I really I couldn't find any images of like the charms that are Why would they want to stop people who died from leaving? I you don't know. I don't know. I don't know if that's a I don't know. I don't know if that's a thing. That that didn't make sense to me either in terms of like trapping them in there. But I think I don't know why the charms are there. I think what they're saying is that like the result of the charms being there is that the spirits are trapped.

Speaker 1: 42:18

Oh, not that they were put there for the intent.

Speaker: 42:20

To trap them. They are there, and for some reason that is trapping the spirits, and so that's why that's normal. Yeah. So Aradale Asylum. The asylum ones are always creepy to me. So this is Australia. Once known as the Arrat Lunatic Asylum, Aradale housed over a thousand patients across 70 plus buildings. During its 130 years of operation, over 13,000 inmates, patients, and staff members died there. It's considered by many to be the single most haunted location in all of Australia. Visitors walking past the former superintendent's office report a sudden bitter taste in their mouth. The superintendent became distraught and committed suicide in his office after swallowing cyanide in 1912. The woman's ward is haunted by a ghost named Nurse Carrie, who watches over tour guides. Her apparition and others have been seen wearing old-time nurse uniforms and disappearing through stone walls. In Jay Ward, visitors report feeling ill and suddenly afraid. Some slip into a trance only released when they exit the building. Others have been bitten or pushed while walking through. The ward is haunted by three prisoners who were hanged and buried on the property. They're said to be restless because they weren't given proper burials. Their graves are only marked with three scratches on the prison wall. The Veil Between Worlds, end-of-life visions. So some of our final stories explore some of the most profound and comforting aspects of nursing ghost stories, the visions patients experience at the end of life. Hospice nurses report that 50 to 60% of conscious dying patients report visitations by someone who is not there while they dream or are awake. These are actually known as end-of-life dreams and visions, ELDVs. So it is a scientific phenomenon that we chart. Patients report seeing deceased loved ones, pets, spiritual figures, beautiful gardens, or meaningful places like their childhood homes. The theme of traveling and packing frequently appears. While some visions can be distressing, like I was talking about earlier, most patients report that these experiences reassure them and make them feel connected to the figures they encounter. McMillan palliative care nurses at Royal Stoke University Hospital shared that many patients can predict when they will die. One nurse said, We've had people say, I'm 80 in a couple of weeks and I'll have my 80th birthday. Do you understand? No. Do you understand in all the time that I have been recording this podcast the sheer amount of technological interruptions that we have had, most of which listeners I probably have cut out, but I'm gonna leave this rant in because the second of the two printers in this multimedia studio just randomly decided to make a whole bunch of noise and shut itself off. Previous to that, you know, the Discord is going off and shouldn't be making any sounds. Previous to that, the other printer on the floor was making a ridiculous racket. Literally had to unplug it from the wall. Shuffling things. Shuffling, I don't know what it's shuffling over there. This is the only, this is a singular only episode that we have had. Oh my gosh. I don't want to be included. Okay, so back to these visions that patients are having. One nurse said, We've had people say, I'm 80 in a couple of weeks, and I'll have my 80th birthday, I'll have my party, and then I'll go. And very strangely, we do see when that happens. Is there another printer somewhere? Do you hear that? I didn't. What the heck? Okay. Another nurse recalled a patient who said they had a glimpse of heaven and it was wonderful, and they weren't frightened to die. There's another phenomenon called terminal lucidity. Some patients experience what's called terminal lucidity, a sudden return of mental clarity and energy just in the moments before impending death. Patients with dementia or who have been semi-conscious suddenly become alert, recognize family members, and have meaningful conversations. And this, we've seen this, I personally witness this with patients minutes before they die, an hour before they die, a few hours before they die. Um we know when we have a patient who has been in a coma, has been um, you know, on hospice, and we've been giving them pain medication, you know, they've just been basically unresponsive and in repose, leading up to their end of life. And we know when those patients suddenly become more active and suddenly are alert or awake, even, or, you know, just a sudden return of energy like that. We know, uh, any nurse will tell you, like, oh yeah, it's gonna happen soon.

Speaker 1: 47:47

I think pets have that too.

Speaker: 47:49

I I think so. I I I it's obviously not like meaningful conversation by eye as I stutter. We don't have a reason for it in terms of like evidence-based research as to why the body suddenly like kicks on all systems. Many nurses also describe patients reaching upward with their arms in their final moments as if reaching for someone or something the living cannot see. This phenomenon, known as the death reach, is commonly observed and deeply moving for those who witness it. Again, many times myself have seen patients reaching towards the foot of the bed, towards their side, or up. And okay, so you know when you look at someone and they're looking at something and you can see the difference between disassociation, their, you know, that glassy-eyed kind of like not connected look, and someone who is actually like their pupils are focused on an object. Yeah. Every time I've seen a patient do this, they are actively looking at something that we're not looking at. I can't tell you the amount of times that I've seen it.

Speaker 1: 48:52

That's really cool.

Speaker: 48:54

One particularly profound story comes from the Journal of Clinical Oncology. A patient who had been discharged home suddenly told her care team, I'm ready to go now. When they explained that they were preparing her discharge paper, she said, No, home, I'm going to the other place. The team thought she might be experiencing mild delirium, but she was fully oriented. She emphasized that she did not want her family around at the time of her death. After a few hours, she asked for a priest who administered the anointing of the sick. Twenty minutes later, arms crossed on her chest, she stopped breathing and passed. The care team was stunned. None of the typical signs of imminent death were present. She was comfortable, fully alert, showed no physical or spiritual distress, and was in full control until she took her last breath and stopped. To have cardiac death and brain death happen simultaneously like that is also a little bit medically incomprehensible on the face of it, just because that's rare for it to just, you know, a patient like this with this presentation. So these experiences, like, we can't prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. We can look at things from neurology, from psychology. They do think that when the brain uh or when the body is dying, that the brain experiences significant changes. Uh, there's decreased oxygen, there's a release of endorphins and DMT-like compounds and altered neurotransmitter levels. And they think that that can create a level of lucidity in hallucinations that is unmatched by any other experiences that we have. You know how people say like their life flashes before their eyes. You know, like that's like a phrase that people think happens when you die. I think that's kind of where that sentiment comes from in terms of these extremely lucid um hallucinations. And our brains are wired to recognize patterns. Most of these stories follow cultural folklore and patterns. And I think it's because of the environment. Because when you think about the typical spooky experiences that people have, like, I think we should talk about the lights in our house.

Speaker 1: 51:06

Oh, yeah.

Speaker: 51:07

Right? So when my kids and I moved into our house, so super excited. It was just us three, and this house, just gorgeous, gorgeous little backyard, just precious. It was just amazing. My I got the key, and my son was in second grade, third grade. I forget what grade he was in. I'd have to think about the year and then I'd have to do math. But my daughter and I, um, I got the key from the lockbox on the door, took my daughter in the house. We'd just gotten it. Like, just just gotten it. Not a stick of furniture in the building. Brand new. Brand new. We walk in, and when you walk in the front door, there was a huge open floor plan living room to the right. The ceiling went all the way up, arched, you know, to the top. It was a two-story house, but kind of an interior split level. Because in the middle was a staircase that went up, had a little landing, went up to the left, and then the second floor started with my bedroom on the right, bathroom at the end of the hall, and the two kids' rooms to the left. If you went to the left of the stairway, you walked in between the bathroom, the hall to the garage, the laundry room area, and then finally into the kitchen and den, which was off to the left. And then there was nothing but the back slider and the backyard. So we walked in the front door, booing and awing over everything. Oh my gosh, we were so excited. And I don't know. Did we walk around it all downstairs first? Or did we go straight from like the front door, like straight? Because it was a straight shot from the front door to the back slider. Yeah, you could see it from the door. Yeah, you could easily see it, you know. Um, it was it was way down there, but it was a straight shot, you know what I'm saying? Um, I mean, it was what, 1,892 square feet, 1800 square foot house.

Speaker 1: 53:05

Um, and I don't remember if we walked around at all. I think we walked a little bit to the right in what was eventually our living room, just because it was so open. Correct. And then, like, did we go from there into the kitchen that way? Or did we go I think we went under the stairs, so left, not up them. I think because we were we had like the ceiling above us. Correct.

Speaker: 53:27

And then we walked into the kitchen, and I remember standing with the island to my right. You were closer to the slider than I was, but you were kind of like in the more towards the den. I was still standing on a tile.

Speaker 1: 53:42

Yeah.

Speaker: 53:44

And overhead, and I think we looked at each other, we heard it at the same time. And I just remember looking at you, and immediately as a mom, my first thoughts were like, and and I think I realized it all at the same time. Like, someone's in the house, that's a man. The door was locked, the sliders like sliders locked in the direction. There was no way to get in. So that means that this person was in here, and we unlocked the door and came in. Yeah. And I had to use the code in the realtor's box to get the key out to even unlock the doors. And it wasn't like it had been touched when we got there, like all of it was just nothing. Everything was locked up. There was no cars, there was no nothing. It was none of the windows were smashed, it was nothing. It was absolutely perfect. And all of those realizations hit me in two seconds. And my first thought was that stairway comes down and empties out in between me and the front door. And when we heard them walk, it was from over your head. Which is where your bathroom was upstairs. Uh-huh. And this was something that we didn't piece together until later, because this isn't the first time this happened. We heard footsteps start, and it was like one, two, three. And I we hadn't been upstairs, so I didn't know the anatomy of the upstairs. I had no idea if this person was on the hallway or top of the stairs. On the way down. On the way down. Like I had no idea. We had, you know, we'd yes, we looked at the house before I rented it, but I don't remember. We didn't familiarize ourselves with it. Yeah. And I just remember you looking at me with this question on your face, like, oh, like, who was in this house? Yeah. And I think you were, well, you were little, let's just say that. Not too little. I think you were middle school. Like 12, 11.

Speaker 1: 55:55

Because I started high school in that place. So I had to at least have been year 13. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker: 56:02

Because then I dyed my hair, and that's when I dyed your toes blue. And that was that bad. Yes, you're right. That's right. Okay. So you're looking at me, and I told you, get out the backslider. Yeah. Move. Run. Get out the backslider. Because I couldn't think it was so viscerally real. It was so real. And I was like one, two, three, four, five steps and stopped. And at the time, we didn't know, like I said, you know, we'd been through it, we looked, loved it, whatever. We didn't know the anatomy of the house. And so she bolts out the backslider. And I'm standing there and I'm like, I'm not going to run out the backslider because I need to know whoever is coming down the stairway. I need to know what direction they're going. Because if they're coming towards me, I'm going to keep them from going out where she went. But if I go out the backslider and whoever this is comes down the steps and goes to the front door, they are now in between me and you, or they're faster to you to get to the door. They can round that corner and get to me quicker. Exactly. So I was standing right there. I hear nothing. The house is you could have heard an ant fart. It was so I go upstairs. That's really good. I'm serious. It was so nervous quiet. You've never heard that? No, really? I heard like a pin drop, an ant fart? Okay, I don't I don't know where that came from, but it's a thing. So I go upstairs. I'm clearing the upstairs. Like clearing it. Who was I mean? I have a CCW. I'm not stupid enough to wander around unarmed. So I'm upstairs, and there's only one way up. There's no other way down. And I was looking. There, there was, unless they vaulted over the side of the landing, which I would have heard the crash. You would have heard somebody do that.

Speaker 1: 57:54

That was awful.

Speaker: 57:55

There was nowhere to go. There was nowhere to go. So I'm going through, looking. There is not a soul in this house. I go back outside. I lock the slider. Like I go back outside. I get her. We're sitting in the car, and I'm like, okay. Like it is midday. I still have pictures of that day. It was it was like two in the afternoon. Like two in the afternoon. Bright, beautiful day. The windows were opening. It was in spring. It was, yeah, it was it was amazing. I'm like, okay. That I don't have an explanation for. I don't. So fast forward, we've moved in. At the time, you spent more time in my room than your own.

Speaker 1: 58:42

My own, yeah.

Speaker: 58:44

Yeah, yeah, totally. So this just still absolutely cracks me up. All the rooms had, or my room had a ceiling fan. We put ceiling fans in your guys later. But my room had a ceiling fan. Yours, your two did not that I know of.

Speaker 1: 59:01

No, it had a ceiling fan. Mine, it was we had to replace them. Oh, that's right. That's right. Mine replaced them.

Speaker: 59:08

It got scary. Oh my god, that's right. I was afraid to the moment. That's right. It was gonna win me along. But old ones. So I think they're replacing the part was the part where I was like, I don't think they had them, but we're gonna be able to get it. We did get different ones. Yeah. But my ceiling fan was huge. Gorgeous ceiling fan. Yeah, fantastic. Yeah. So consistently on where the bed was, is it was over the end of the bed at the foot of the bed. Yeah. A little over half the bed, I think, like from the foot of it. Because the fan blades were so big. Yeah. So we're laying there. And I think the first time it happened, it was sudden. Because I remember being jolted awake and like, what the fuck?

Speaker 1: 59:49

Yeah.

Speaker: 59:50

Yeah. All of a sudden it comes on. Flash. It was like an interrogation light hits you. It was so bright when it wanted to be. Shit. Yeah. When it wanted to be. And I'm like, you and I are both immediately awake. I'm like, what the fuck? Yeah, turn that shit right off. Go to turn it off. The switch is on. Yeah. And we're like, how does that work? Okay. So it had a remote, so we turned it off. Didn't think of the other one. Chalked it up so it being an old house. Because it was an old house. Or just like it's a remote. The needs new batteries. It's shorting. It's something stupid. It was blue, and now it's on. Like, I don't know. We've just fallen asleep. Like 30 minutes, 45 minutes, something. Bang! It's on again. And I'm like, motherfucker. Are you so sorry? I'm serious right now. So turn it off with the remote, take the batteries out. Yeah. Not again. Yeah. We didn't use the remote. It stopped. Didn't do anything for a while. So I don't remember how long it had been. I mean, it was happening pretty regularly. I want to say, like, I like at least every other week. Yeah. Like it would come on. We're laying there, and I'm awoken, not by bright light. And we both woke up at the same time. And you and I talked about it because we were like, what woke us up? Yeah, what's going on? There wasn't a sound, and it wasn't what the light was doing wouldn't have woke woken us, really. You know? Um, we wake up and it is super dim. I think that's how we found out it could dim. Because we hadn't been told that there was no dimmer switch. Oh, that's right. It was just a remote, huh? Exactly. There was no dimmer switch. I think that was us figuring out that it for some reason can. It chose to. Right. Well, because remember what happened. It I woke, I woke up and like you're waking up at the same time, and we're looking around, and then suddenly I realized it's like it's like a dying campfire. Like it's such a like it was so red. Yeah. And I was like, what the fuck? Because my brain is trying to form sense words out of, you know, my solitary brain cell. And nonsensically, I'm like, oh my god, fire. And then I'm like, there's no smoke. And then the light got brighter. Yeah. It turned out. And it slowly increased and then immediately went back down. Slowly increased and then immediately went back down. And then a third time it slowly increased and went back down and turned off. And we were laying there violently awake. Violently awake is the best way to put it. I was like, there's no way that just happened. Singular fuck. Like, is this for whom the bell tolls? What is happening? For whom the dimmer activates? Like, what is going on here? Yeah, I had no idea. I was like, what the fuck? And then we went, we went, you know, in the morning time when we got up. And I'm like, there's no fucking dimmer switch here. Because again, it's just a singular switch to turn on off. Electrical. There's no fucking batteries in the remote. So I know it's not that. It's not my cell phone triggering the remote and it's being dumb or whatever. But then it didn't even have the technology to do that at the time. Well, so we go to look at the wall, and I'm like, okay, if there's some dimmer switch in here, maybe there's moisture and it slid down. And then like the electrical it kept shorter. If anybody electrically engineeringly like is listening to this, know I'm talking to you. Don't make fun of me. I'm trying to, I was trying to think of it. I'm just trying to make sense of the nonsense here. So I'm thinking maybe the dimmer switch is like bouncing back and forth or you know, vibrations in trucks going by on the freeway that's a way down there, not next to the house, really, but kind of uh is doing stuff. Whatever. There's not a dimmer switch. It was just a paddle switch. Yeah, it was just to turn on and off. Right. Um, we used to be downstairs, and where our living room was, you could look up the stairway and just see the top of the landing, and you could see my door. Yeah. And from the dining room, you could see your guys' just just the very edge of your door. Yeah. And we would be sitting and I don't know various times of day, people over, not people over, and you'd look up and the light would slowly come on. Or you'd look over and it was on and it wasn't a couple minutes ago. Exactly. And then you'd look at like seconds later, whatever, and it would be back off. Back off. It coming on slowly, though, was the weird part. Now, the other thing about this house is we would be downstairs. I don't know how many times I did this to you. And Kyson, not just you. But because it was a man, the heaviness of it was a man. Um, her brother is a giant. I think at the end when we lived there, he he grew from like six foot to like he's like six foot five now. But he was a giant and he was a young kid when we lived there. And we'd be downstairs, I'd be cooking, doing something, whatever, and be like, hey, you know, go tell your brother blah blah blah. And she's looking at me like, what when he gets home, you mean? Yeah. There's no one upstairs. And what we realized is that the footsteps had the same pattern over and over again. And it was so real that it would catch you off guard, and you'd literally like go to talk to, you know, like, oh, hey, you know, my now husband, before uh we got married, uh, you know, we'd be doing stuff and and just innately, because it was such a heavy man step, you know, like, oh, hey, go tell Joe Dennis Radio. Like, he's not even here yet. Like, yeah, huh? What are you talking about? Um, and it would just happen over and over again.

Speaker 1: 1:05:21

Uh and once you memorized the house, you could hear it go from your bathroom to your room to out in the hallway.

Speaker: 1:05:26

And it's it would never end right anywhere but the hallway. We Kyson walked it one time because I was like, my little legs, I'm only five five. My little legs, you're a little taller than me, but you gotta be stomping to make those sounds. That part, I mean, I'm a pretty big girl, but that part, but also one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. You know, I have these like all these little steps or whatever, you know. And Kyson, it was like one, and it was weird because it started on the footfall. Yeah. You didn't hear somebody pick up a foot or no, it was just suddenly you're the footfall, footfall, footfall. You know what I mean? And it was like one, two, like you're out of the bathroom, three, four, you're you're to my bedroom door almost. Yeah. And five, when you stepped out of my bedroom door, you your feet were literally at the top stair of the landing. Yeah. And you could hear all of it. Because that floor was creaky as hell. Right. And it would stop. And you couldn't walk up and down the stairs without hearing it or back down the wall towards the bathroom. Like effort. Right. The floor was consistently just creaky and it was the house was built in '95. Yeah. There wasn't a straight line in that house. No. And it just got worse. It did. It the well, the lines and the house. But um, one afternoon, the three of us were sitting downstairs. Somebody else was there with us. It was one of your guys' friends, and I don't remember who. And it was midday again, like afternoon, and the way our couches were set up, they were parallel, like facing each other. And the right side of the couch, like where the wall is with the window, had a the glass shelving in the corner. And on top of it, leaning back into the wall, was a rectangular picture of Santorini Grease. Because we couldn't hang, it didn't fit anywhere. Right, it didn't fit anywhere. And I just I loved it, wanted it. Kyson was sitting on the couch in front of those the shelves, which were just off to the corner. Yeah. We were sitting on the other couch. I don't know what the hell we were doing. I assume wash. Yeah, doing whatever. Out of nowhere, the picture comes crashing down. It hits the floor, what, two feet in front of Kyson? Like it missed him completely. Yeah, it didn't hit him. No, it didn't hit him, and it didn't bounce off the couch. Like it went from leaning back into the wall, back into the wall, not straight up, not forward. No, we didn't want it to fall, so we leaned against the wall. Over the top of him, like over. I mean, it was it must have been a distance of about 10 to 12 feet and landed in between the couches on the floor, having not touched anything. Like the gained like a nasty rip from it. Yeah, it got a nasty rip from it out of nowhere. There weren't cars driving by, nobody was touching door, nobody.

Speaker 1: 1:08:10

Even if it had been like an earthquake, it would have just shuffled off of it.

Speaker: 1:08:13

If it had fallen. It was leaning back. It was canted back so much, it wouldn't have been able to clear any distance. It would have just tumbled. Right. It would have hit Kison, or it would have it would have hit the arm of the couch and like bounced into Kison. Yeah. It wouldn't have been. It would not have vaulted in an arc over him to land in front of us, having not touched anything, anybody. It actually would have gotten more damage had it fallen naturally than had it been thrown. Right. Because it came up and over and landed straight on one of its edges. Yeah. Instead of sliding and ripping and whatever. Wild. Abs that house was absolutely wild. Insane. Yeah. The new house that we have has had nothing. I think that's the first house that we've ever lived in that has had nothing. Yeah. Dead silence. However, we're the first people to ever live in it. That's true. There's no mystery. No, none. The very first people to live in.

Speaker 1: 1:09:05

That old house had a creepy like crossways too. The old house had what? A creepy crossways that we covered with a very heavy. Oh, no.

Speaker: 1:09:12

Yeah, not. Because we didn't want to be down there. Not doing this. Not doing that. No, not at all. Now that we've shared, you know, ghost stories and like truly creeping people out, we are gonna start off with coffee, crystals, and divination to wrap up our spooky episode. In terms of coffee tea of the week, there's two of them that I kind of wanted to talk about. So, which is choice to protect or invite? So I did some digging into historical folklore, and let me tell you, our ancestors had some strong opinions about which herbs kept spirits away and which ones invited them in. The best part, these are all safe, common culinary herbs you probably already have in your kitchen. No toxic plants, no sketchy preparations, just good old-fashioned kitchen witchcraft making tea. So, do you want to ward them off or do you want to see what they have to say? So, if you want to ward them off, the protector's brew is rosemary sage and bay leaf tea. If you're working a night shift in the hospital that gives you the creeps, brew yourself a protector's brew before your shift. This is basically a drinkable shield made from the holy trinity of protection herbs. Rosemary has been used since ancient times to ward off evil spirits and negative energy. The Romans actually believed it strengthened travelers and protected them from harm. In medieval medieval Europe, it was burned in sick rooms to purify the air and keep demons away, which, let's be honest, is what we're doing in hospitals today, just with different methods. Ancient Greeks wore rosemary crowns to enhance memory and mental clarity, and it was hung over doorways to present prevent witches from entering. In European folklore, rosemary was burned with rue on May Day to cleanse homes of ghosts and malevolent entities. So sage is probably the most well-known herb for spiritual protection. The Latin name salvia literally means to heal or to save. So in Greek mythology, sage was revered as a powerful protector cherished by the gods themselves. The ancient practice of burning sage in smoke cleansing is used today everywhere. You can find it, you can find smoke clearing in Catholic churches in mass. You can find it in everyday homes, secular practices, agnostic practices, pagan practices everywhere to cleanse spaces of negative energy and evil spirits using incense. But consuming sage daily, medieval folklore claimed that it would grant immortality, especially if eaten in May for some reason. And bay leaves are just absolute magic. It was used by the Oracle Adelphi to enhance prophetic visions. So you're going to steep a teaspoon of dried rosemary, a teaspoon of dried sage, and two bay leaves in hot water for seven to ten minutes, strain and add honey to taste. Drink before your shift or carry a small satchet of the dried herbs in your scrub pocket for portable protection. And another folklore tip: as you brew this tea, stir it clockwise three times while visualizing a protective white light surrounding you. This amplifies the intention. The other one. So this is if you want to hear what they have to say. The mediums brew the mugwort dream tea. Now, if you're the type who wants to see what's on the other side of the veil, maybe you're curious, maybe you want to honor the spirits, or maybe you just like spooky experiences, then you want mugwort tea. So mugwort is Artemisia vulgaris, and it's been called the mother of herbs and the witch's herb for centuries. It's revered across cultures for enhancing dreams, lucid dreaming, psychic abilities, and spirit communication. The ancient Celts used to use it to connect with the spirit world and aid in divination. In shamanic cultures, it was drunk as a tea or placed under pillows to induce prophetic dreams and facilitate communication with ancestors. Interestingly, the Germans wore girdles of mugwort on St. John's Eve to ward off ghosts, but here's the twist: it doesn't keep all spirits away. It creates a protective boundary while simultaneously opening your third eye and intuition. So it allows communication with benevolent spirits while keeping harmful ones at bay. It's kind of like a spiritual bouncer at the door of your consciousness. So mugwort was associated with the Greek goddess Artemis, who governed the moon, women's health, and the hunt, as well as the Anatolian goddess Hecate, who governs the moon, magic, crossroads, and the liminal space. All thresholds beyond the veil. If you're working night shift in a hospital where death and life dance together constantly, this is your vibe. So steep one mugwort tea bag in hot water for 10 minutes. Strain and drink plain or with a touch of honey. Now, fair warning: mugwort should never be consumed during pregnancy or if you might be pregnant, as it is a uterine stimulant. It's also in the Artemisia family, same as ragweed, celery, and sunflower. So avoid it if you have allergies to those plants. Thhujone is a chemical also found in mugwort, which can be dangerous in high concentrations like essential oils and tinctures. So don't use those. Get an already prepared commercial bag of tea of mugwort tea and use the bag version. Start with a small amount to test your tolerance and make sure you don't have allergies. So according to medieval herbalists, if you inhaled the scent of lavender while holding mugwort, you could see ghosts. So if you really want the full experience, brew mugwort tea, light a lavender candle, and see what happens. I take no responsibility for what you encounter. My choice this week? Honestly, I'm going with the Protectors Brew. I've heard enough ghost stories for one episode. I've experienced enough ghost stories in real life for many episodes, and I'd like to sleep without any spectral visitors. Thank you very much. But I'm keeping some mugwort on hand for when I'm feeling brave or when I need to connect with something bigger than myself. So the choice is yours. Now, let's start with our crystal prescription for the week. I've already talked about Black Tourmaline and Obsidian. We know those are absolutely phenomenal on deck, but I'm gonna have you pull some crystal cards from our Oracle deck while I also simultaneously shuffle the tarot, and you'll do the crystal prescription and pull one, and then I will pull divination. And we'll see on this week leading up to Soin, Halloween, all Halloween, however it is that you refer to it. Are they like exploding in your hand? Not trying to shuffle them. Oh, and that's not really no, those are huge cards. Huge shuffle. I'm trying. I have to do it this way. And the shuffling sounds the podcast crew is used to hearing because I always do live draw. We've had so many like haunted experiences. And it's funny when you try to think of them, it's like it's kind of hard to, but at the same time, not really.

Speaker 1: 1:15:54

What is this?

Speaker: 1:15:56

Uh the book, which we'll need to read from in a minute. Well, I dropped a card on there. Oh, on purpose? What wait, what card was it? Do you know?

Speaker 1: 1:16:05

Okay, keep that one out. It might have been on accident because I didn't realize that was on there. Okay.

Speaker: 1:16:14

Okay, eight people. How many am I pulling? Well, three jumped out at me. So however many decide to jump out at you. Okay, so let's see the crystal. Uh, give me the book and tell me what yours are. Go ahead and turn them over in the or you hold them out.

Speaker 1: 1:16:36

The first one I ended up shoving in there was smoky quartz. My favorite crystal.

Speaker: 1:16:41

It is your favorite crystal, and it is such a protection crystal. That is you have a massive smoky or my gosh, she has a massive smoky orb. That is wild. Okay. Smoky quartz. So smoky quartz, stabilization, grounding, resilience, and purification. You can weather the storm. Smoky quartz serves as an anchor that helps keep you steady in the midst of life's chaotic storms. When the thunder starts rolling in, envision Smoky Quartz is your anchor, gently calming fear, stress, and anger, dispelling the clouds of depression and fatigue, acting as a protective shield against negativity. This crystal nurtures your emotional stability and encourages a shift towards positive thoughts. This card is urging you to embrace all the empowering energy of Smoky Quartz, allowing it to infuse you with courage and resilience. Let this crystal be your anchor in life's unpredictable storms. All right. That's wild that that was your first one. That's crazy. I people listening to the podcast, um, I can't explain to you. It's as if she drew a card and it had her name spelled on it. Like that's how pertinent or or relevant. I own a lot of that crystal. Yes. Smoky quartz is her specific kryptonite. It's so beautiful. So for her to draw that, in all 30 episodes that I've been doing this, not once have I ever drawn smoky quartz. And I didn't even draw it, it got stuck in the thing. That's why I was telling you, wait, wait, wait, what is it? Because that wanted to that you had to have that one. That's wild. Okay, what's the next one? Sapphire. Reflection. Oh.

Speaker 1: 1:18:21

Okay. I wonder if the mic just picked up me running over my own foot.

Speaker: 1:18:25

Maybe, I don't know. So reflection, sapphire, truth, wisdom, and spiritual enlightenment. This card invites you to look within and reveal the wisdom that resides in you. Just like a mirror, sapphire reveals hidden truths beneath the surface, empowering you to utilize this newfound knowledge. If you're an overthinker or an over-analyzer, Sapphire brings clarity and order to any scattered thoughts. Reflect inwardly and allow the energy of sapphire to clear your mind of any misconceptions and unwanted thoughts, leading you to a crystal clear vision of how to express your truth confidently. Like it. Yeah, lots of quartz happening here. The card for this one's pretty. Aren't these stunning? Aren't these just absolutely beautiful? I love the colors. So aqua aura quartz invigorate, soothing confidence, auric cleansing. The presence of an aqua aura quartz signifies a powerful moment of revitalization and inner peace. As the soothing and calming energy of this crystal washes over you, this card invites you to invigorate your spirit and renew your sense of calmness. Just be still in this moment to revitalize your energy, release stress, and connect with a deeper sense of peace within. Allow the gentle energy of aqua or a quartz to cleanse your spirit, uplift your emotions, and guide you towards a renewed sense of vitality and serenity. So these together, I'm getting a lot of nervous system protection, a lot of structure, calm. A lot of clarity. Tons of clarity, but not like not like a nullifying or sleepy or like dulling kind of calm. It's like an invigorating, energizing clarity. You know what I mean? Like that's an incredible set. Okay, so the first card that I turned over that came out of my hand was the hermit. And it's sapphire. Oh, wrong.

Speaker 1: 1:20:36

Wrong book.

Speaker: 1:20:37

Sorry, I just hit the mic. So the hermit. Did we both pull sapphire? Yes. We did indeed. These are so pretty. I'll pass these over to you in a second to see this one. Okay, so the hermit is introspection, contemplation, and solitude. Sapphire, your inner guidance, wisdom, spiritual insight. This is your cue to reflect and look within yourself to find the answers you seek. You may need to disconnect from the crowds to gain a better perspective by looking within. We're sitting like six feet apart, five feet apart. I don't know how big these tables are. How wide are these tables? Oh, yeah, six feet apart. And the fact that we're right on theme, simultaneously, like live drawing cards is amazing. Okay, the next one that I drew was the Ten of Pentacles, which is Parado. Ten of Pentacles, wealth, family, security. Parado is joy, abundance, and renewal. Spread the love. This card comes to bring you wonderful news about wealth, abundance, and connection to family. And you're on the podcast with me. Things are falling into place. Share the wealth and abundance with those closest to you. Be proud of everything you achieved that got you here.

Speaker 1: 1:22:05

That's a very sweet card.

Speaker: 1:22:06

I know. That's amazing. It's like a little moon picture. Sorry. You're gonna hear a lot of shuffling because I'm tossing cards back and forth at her.

Speaker 1: 1:22:16

Pentacles reminds me of Red Dead.

Speaker: 1:22:20

The tarot cards in Red Dead.

Speaker 1: 1:22:22

Because you can collect the sets and then sell them for a bunch of money.

Speaker: 1:22:25

Oh, were Pentacles a big deal?

Speaker 1: 1:22:28

Pentacles of swords.

Speaker: 1:22:30

Um mage? Hmm. Something else. Okay. The last one was the Three of Wands, Serpentine. Vision, Expansion, and Travel is the Three of Wands. Serpentine is expansion, transition, and exploration. Broaden your horizons. This card indicates there are many opportunities available to you right now. So it's time to think big. This card is also assigned to explore your adventurous side to discover more about yourself. Um, hello, amazing. So inner clarity, wealth and abundance, and the unity of family, and go on a trip. Is there a snake on it? No. You said serpentine. I did, but that's just the stone. It's their really pretty ones. Okay. No snakes, I promise. So I am arachnophobic, legitimately. And while not snake phobic or whatever that phobia is called, uh. I prefer not to look. She prefers definitely not to be exposed to them at all. So that was a hell of a ride. I hope these stories gave you the chills in the best way possible. Whether you believe in ghosts or think that there's a logical explanation for everything, these stories are part of our nursing culture, passed down through generations, whispered on night shifts, and shared over coffee and break rooms around the world. They remind us that hospitals are places where the veil between life and death is thin, where miracles happen, where we witness the best and worst of humanity, where we hold space for the dying and welcome new life. Is it any wonder that these places might hold more than just the living? If you have your own nursing ghost story, I would love to hear it. We absolutely geek out on this stuff. So send it to me and maybe we'll do a part two of this episode featuring listener stories specifically. So let's be honest, we literally could talk about this stuff all night. Until next time, remember you're not just surviving, you're thriving. Keep crafting those rituals to heal the healer, and maybe keep a light on tonight. Sweet or spooky dreams, my friends. I love your faces.