1. her hands reach up and grasp my wrists

“ER Nurse here. Was doing CPR on a lady whose heart had stopped. They initially rolled her into the room unconscious and not breathing. This lady is pretty much dead. However, in the middle of doing chest compressions, her hands reach up and grasp my wrists and then fall back to hanging off the table. We never got her back.”

2. a man just jumped off the building

“I was having a patient signing her admissions paperwork. Everything was going normally and she seemed coherent until she looked out her window and asked me, ‘Did you see that?’ I hadn’t seen anything and she said, ‘A man just jumped off the building.’ Then she shook her head and mumbled to herself how her mind isn’t right anymore. Freaked me the fuck out. Now I’m terrified of getting old and having dementia.”

3. She kept talking about the man in black in the corner

“People turn batshit crazy and creepy as hell when they get really sick. There’s even a term called ICU psychosis…and trust me, it’s real. Anyway, the creepiest that takes the cake for me is this (am an ICU nurse, btw): Had a patient who was admitted for overdose. Very long history of mental health problems. She was thrashing around in bed, very combative, kicking people’s asses for days, totally incoherent. Well the night I had her, she started making decent sense, but still not oriented at all. She was extremely paranoid and kept talking about the man in black in the corner. I’d hear her talking to him and screaming, all night long. So I’d go in there and try to calm her down, but you could see the fear in her eyes. she was talking other nonsense about how she was in space and shit, and with certain patients, you try to redirect their ‘reality,’ but what I did didn’t help. She said ‘that man in black! Don’t you see him!’ and pointed to the corner. I said ‘there’s nobody here.’ I stepped in the corner she was pointing to and waved my hands around. While I’m waving my hands around in the air, she had the most horrifically terrified look on her face that actually scared the shit out of me, like I had just assaulted the man in black. I said ‘see, there’s nobody here’ and she said in a matter-of-factly, you-stupid-dumb-bitch way: ‘that’s what you think.’ I promptly got the fuck out of there.”

4. Basically just a couple of bloody, rasping holes instead of a face

“Not a doctor, but both of my parents were, so here’s a couple of the weirder stories I remember: Mom was an ER doc, one night a guy came in who had tried to commit suicide. He had used a shotgun, but had stuck it under his chin instead of in his mouth and had angled it wrong so that he just blew most of his face off instead. Apparently he only lived about a block from the hospital so he just walked over with no jaw or nose and only one eye. Basically just a couple of bloody, rasping holes instead of a face. He was in such a state of shock that he just calmly walked in and sat down in the waiting area. The other is much less gory, and mostly just weird. After ‘retiring’ Dad worked in geriatric care for a few of the nursing homes around town. One guy had this really weird affliction that I can’t remember the name of, but it caused him to have really weird hallucinations, like snakes coming out of his nose and mouth. The strange part was that he was completely lucid and actually really intelligent, and my dad would talk to him frequently. They would be discussing films or philosophy, and the guy would occasionally calmly say, ‘Hang on a second,’ and then proceed to pull a two-foot invisible snake out of his nose. He’d lay ‘it’ on the ground, and then it apparently would slither away. He could talk about them and describe them in complete detail.”

5. The creepiest laugh I’ve ever heard

“Medical student. While on my Psych rotation, came across an individual who was a chemistry graduate student. Apparently he had been taking astronomical amounts of ketamine, and he was just continuously disassociated. For the entire time I was on this portion of the rotation (3 weeks) I never heard him speak a word. 95% of the time we was wrapped up in his sheets like a mummy and he would just periodically laugh, a crazy soft chuckle, from under his covers if you tried to talk to him. The creepiest laugh I’ve ever heard, I’ll never forget that.”

6. imagine someone is continuously dumping buckets of cockroaches on your head

“Nothing I can say can possibly describe the year I worked in Psychiatric Intensive Care. There was a woman that came in and sat down across the table from me for her admission interview. She had bandages all over her arms and Scotch tape over her mouth and ears. She looked very uncomfortable and wouldn’t really sit still. When the nurse would ask her a question, she would peel the corner of the tape back and answer, then stick the tape back on really fast. We eventually found out that she saw and felt bugs crawling all over her, and they were trying to get inside her body. The tape was to keep the bugs out. The bandages were because some bugs got in and she had to dig them out. She couldn’t sit still because she felt the bugs all over her even while we sat and talked. The worst part was, she had some idea that it was her mind playing tricks on her. Can you imagine going through your life, feeling like someone is continuously dumping buckets of cockroaches on your head, feeling like they’re all over you and getting inside of you to the point that you’re digging chunks out of your flesh in a panic, all while knowing intellectually that none of it is real? Another story: A girl spent my entire 8-hour-shift fist-fighting the same ghost. She would throw a few punches, and obviously landed knockout blows, so she’d bend over and twist her hand around like she was wrapping some long hair around her wrist. She’d drag her opponent down the hallway, give a few good kicks, then set up for a curb stomp. Starts off kinda funny, then gets a little disturbing when you think about the graphic things going on in her mind, then just sad after you watch this replay for hours on end.”

7. Both mom and baby died

“Paramedic checking in—a few years ago I responded to a call for a pregnant female who shot herself. The 911 caller hung up before any more information could be gathered by dispatch. We arrived to find a girl in her early to mid 20s sitting on the bathroom floor, leaning against the front of the bathtub slumped over. She was obviously pregnant, looked to be third trimester to me. She was unresponsive and barely breathing with a rapid carotid pulse. A small revolver was on the floor next to her. We found a single gunshot wound to the center of her very pregnant abdomen. The patient’s mother and 4-year-old son were on scene. The mother told us that the patient invited her over for dinner for some company as she had been fighting with the father of her fetus all day long. The mother stated that in the middle of dinner the patient excused herself from the table to use the bathroom. That’s when the mother heard a single gunshot. Anyway, the mother told us that the patient was 23 and was almost full term (I can’t remember how many weeks, but it was >34) with her second pregnancy. To make a long story short, we intubate the patient, establish 2 IVs, carry her down from the second floor to the truck, and haul ass to the trauma center. The patient went into cardiac arrest as we were wheeling her into the hospital. CPR was started and an emergency C-section was performed in the ER. Both mom and baby died. The bullet went through the baby and through mom’s abdominal aorta. Her belly was full of blood. Fucked-up call.”

8. I believe I met a 7-year-old psychopath

“As a tech in psych years ago, there was a 7-year-old kid sent to the floor because the mom didn’t know what to do with him. Sadly common thing to happen, even if the kids don’t have psych issues. Anyway, the mom was shaking and crying, and they had to take the kid into another room. She was genuinely afraid of her own son. She had suspected something was wrong when she kept finding mutilated animals in the back yard, but never heard or saw coyotes or anything around. The neighbors’ smaller pets started disappearing. The boy had an obsession with knives, hiding them around the house. Denying anything when the mom confronted him. Then when the two started getting into arguments, he would get really violent and hit her, push her down and kick her, threaten to kill her. On multiple occasions she woke up in the middle of the night with him standing beside her bed, staring her in the face. She put extra locks on her bedroom door to feel safe while she slept. The last straw was when she lifted up his mattress and found 50+ knives of all shapes and sizes under there. So she brought him to us. I remember talking to him, treating him like he was just any other kid that came through. He seemed remarkably normal, until you spoke directly to him. He had this way of looking right through you, or maybe like he didn’t see you at all while you were speaking. He would respond like a robot, like he was just saying words because thats what we wanted to hear. And be would always put on this creepy, dead-looking smile. Like all mouth and no eye involvement in the smile. Especially when he would get away with something, like taking another kid’s markers and they couldn’t figure it out. Still gives me chills laying here thinking about him. I had to get up and close my bedroom door. I believe I met a 7-year-old psychopath.”

9. I remember her coming home some nights and just pouring wine immediately

“My mother was a NICU nurse for 30 years and one time she showed me a picture of a baby maybe a centimeter or two smaller than a dollar bill placed next to it. She told me it didn’t survive too much longer. That job wrecked her, I remember her coming home some nights and just pouring wine immediately. I’m also never going to forget when she told me with tears in her eyes, ‘if you are very unlucky you will lose a child in your life. I lose one every month.’”

10. THIRD DEGREE BURNS

“Motorcycle driver, accident, 3rd degree burns, arrived DOA. Had to transfer him from ambulance gurney to ER bed. As we were moving him with a transfer sheet, the liquefied/cooked subcutaneous fat caused the charred skin on his back to separate and his body slipped onto the floor (despite several of us trying to ‘catch’ him).”

11. her eyes rolled back and she was gone

“Not a MD, but I do work at a hospital. I was sitting a patient up at the edge of the bed is in ICU when she started getting all squirrelly. She didn’t speak much English but kept saying “stand, stand” so I helped her stand up. After standing for a few seconds something told me to lay her back down. Before her head ever hit the pillow her eyes rolled back and she was gone. She had a massive stroke and was gone on the spot. She all but died in my arms. But I like to think I honored her last wish of wanting to stand.”

12. What if this wasn’t really their child, and actually some kid they kidnapped?

“I’m not a doctor, but I am in the health are field as a dental hygienist. the creepiest/most confusing thing I’ve seen is as follows: We had a new patient come in for a cleaning. he was around 3 or 4, and mom said he had never been to the dentist before. not uncommon for what I see on a daily basis, so at first I didn’t think anything of it. I did his cleaning, and then went to take his routine X-rays. This is where the shit got weird. After looking at the X-rays I could see that the child had already had a large amount of dental work done. He had around 6 or 7 composite (tooth color) fillings. When I sat back down at my chair I asked the parents again if he had ever been to the dentist. They were both adamant that he hadn’t, and also said there was no way a relative could have taken the without them knowing. What the fuck? How did this happen? Who took him? Where were the parents? Had they possibly been in jail for a long time and not known he was taken to the dentist by someone else and had work performed? What if this wasn’t really their child, and actually some kid they kidnapped? His insurance had no record of him having previous dental work, so that was a dead end, too. I think about it often but know that ultimately, I’ll never get an answer. It sucks.”

13. Nothing prepares you for the smell of rotting corpse

“Paramedic here. We got a call to go out to a scene for an elderly woman with chest pains. Arrive at the house, front door is open. We knock, hear the old woman calling out from the back, ‘I’m in the back room’ in a very monotone and calm voice. My partner and I go to the back of the house looking for this woman, and that’s when we smelled it. Nothing prepares you for the smell of rotting corpse. I’ve smelled it a dozen times, and it never gets any less disturbing. We radio for police and ALS backup as we move through the house. We opened the door to the master bedroom, and there is our patient. She is approximately 80, and she is staring at the master bathroom with these cold, dead eyes. She never once looked at us as we approached her and began talking to her. I got to the bedside and got in front of her gaze, and she just looked right through me. I turned around to see what she could possibly be looking at, and there was the source of my smell. A man, about the same age as my patient, is on the floor with very little left of his head still attached to his body. A shotgun lay on the floor next to him, and most of his head was strewn about the walls and bathroom counter. He shot himself. We loaded the woman up in the ambulance, and our police backup pulled up. I don’t think that woman blinked once the entire time she was in our care. I think she couldn’t even grasp what was going on. Totally fucked me up.”

14. Some days, your faith in humanity is tested

“I worked in an ER and the creepiest thing I can remember wasn’t so much an event as a look. A 4-month-old child was brought in because it had basically suffocated in its crib due to neglect. The mother was there, watching her baby die and maybe it was the drugs still coursing through her system, maybe it was the shock, but watching as one of our priests tells her outside the trauma bay ‘Heaven has claimed your daughter,’ the glassy, thousand-mile stare she gave as she asked if there were police going to her house and if she could go home. Something that utterly wrecked everyone in our ER and she had this otherworldly, totally distant look because she was thinking about how she’s going to get busted. Some days, your faith in humanity is tested.”