About Hospitals and Ghosts

Many of you know I was Physician back in Mexico and that I stopped because I didn't want to miss my kids' childhood. I dedicated my time solely to my two girls for four years and once they were a bit more independent, I started this trip of becoming an author three years ago. Still, I spent most of my youth between the white walls of hospitals and I remember those years fondly. It all felt like an adventure to me. I mean, learning insurmountably big books was not, as it wasn't dealing with somebody else's pain. But there was a lot of fooling around, too, because when you are twenty and sleep-deprived, trapping your friends inside the morgue's freezer sounds like a great idea.

Anyway, when we weren't hiding around to scare one another, we were talking. Most of it was about boys, girls, or sex, but sometimes we would tell ghost stories we had heard. And sometimes ghost stories happened to us.

The way it worked in my school, every six months or so the university would put us in a different hospital. In each one, we would do a rotation through every service during the day, but we would only work the night shift in the services that were the period's main subject like OBGYN, Surgery, ER. You get my drift. This story happened when I was about half-way through my surgery rotation.

Now, hospitals are inherently creepy. People suffer and die in them, so there's never a shortage of scary stories among the staff. Besides, what can be more fun that scare the crap out of the new student, right? So, anyway. In this particular hospital rumor said Basement 1, where all the surgery rooms were located, was haunted. The identity of the ghost varied greatly from a patient who had died thanks to the incompetence of his doctor, to Death itself who came looking for the souls of the recently deceased patients (the morgue was in Basement 2, beneath the surgery floor).

And like idiots that we were, we wanted to see. So, one night that work was low we decided to go into one of the surgery rooms, sit there, and chat until something happened or morning came. Something happened alright, and it wasn't the morning.

I was sitting on a chair, my boyfriend at the time next to me, and on top of the surgical table were my best friend and her boyfriend. We had been sitting there for quite a while and the conversation drifted to the plans for a weekend getaway, so no ghosts were in our mind at this particular hour. My friends sitting on the table were facing the only entrance which was closed (it's impossible to keep a surgery room open because the swinging doors are designed to always close). Each of the folding doors had a square window on top through which they could see the empty hall. It was then that, out of the blue, a person passed by. He did not walk along the hallway toward our room but side to side. Only problem was, our room was the last one of the hall. To our sides were only walls.

Needless to say, my friends cried bloody murder and we all jumped to our feet, confused and scared. Then, to my left, the Mayo Table (an aluminum table used to set the surgical instruments) spun on its little plastic wheels with force.

We all yelled and I didn't stop running until I saw the night sky out of the ER. We talked about it many times, trying to find a logical explanation but there wasn't one. It couldn't have been a joke because no one could get to our room without being seen walking down the hall, because no one--living, that is--can walk through walls, and because none of us moved that table. It was one of the scariest things ever and the following three months I spent in that hospital, I avoided the surgical floor like the plague.

Funnily enough, two years ago I found a video taken in the same hospital where something similar happened a couple of students. In the video they are on the hallway, talking and making jokes. The boy filming with his phone is facing the doors to the last surgery room, where we were that night. I don't know the people in the video and I don't know if they faked it, but it resounds so much with my own experience that I decided to add it to the post. Hope you enjoy being scared =)

Have an awesome weekend!