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People Who Work With Dead Bodies Share Their Best Ghost Stories

People Who Work With Dead Bodies Share Their Best Ghost Stories
Photo by Sacre Bleu on Unsplash

Working around or alongside dead bodies is not a job everyone can handle.

Indeed, it takes a strong stomach, massive discipline, not to mention bravery.

Of course, most people who are brave enough to work as a doctor, nurse, coroner, or a mortician usually also have a high level of compassion as well, honoring the life of the person they are working for.

Particularly if they are superstitious, and wonder if that very person might still be in the same room with them, just out of their bodies.

An idea easy enough to laugh off, but indeed, many of these people have first hand experiences of haunting, sometimes scary encounters of finding themselves in the presence of spirits.


Redditor 8bitEclipse was curious to hear some first hand ghost stories from those who spend time in the company of dead bodies for a living, leading them to ask:
"Redditors who have worked around death/burial, what’s your best ghost story?

Some Unfinished Business, Maybe?

"I used to be a security guard at a hospital."

"One night, while doing my rounds, I went into the surgery wing and was walking down a hallway when I saw a doctor looking at the whiteboard where all the scheduled surgeries are written down."

"I said 'hello doctor' and kept going."

"The doctor didn’t say anything back, just kept studying the whiteboard."

"When I got back to the security office, I was telling one of the guys that’s been there for years about how I greeted this doctor and he didn’t say anything back, I asked if thats the a**hole they told me to watch out for."

"I was asked where I saw him and I said the surgery ward, and he gave me a smirk."

"He then explained that the surgery ward closes at 9pm and that all patients are moved into the monitoring wards; there should be no one there."

"He then asked me if this doctor was studying the schedule board."

"I said yes and he then told me that I just met Dr. Luisitti."- addictedpunk

A Sign Of Comfort, Or Foreboding?

"I worked within hospice and long-term care."

"The spookiest phenomenon was the man in the corner."

"It happens all the time for people actively dying."

"They see a shadowy man in the corner of their room."- LeftandLeaving9006

Poor Guy. Both Of Them.

"Not me, but a colleague found a dead person in a dark smoke filled burned out building during the mop up of fire fighting operations."

"As unfortunately happens sometimes, you find them by stepping on them."

"If they're still intact you kinda bounce off them."

"If they're fried, you can often crunch them up pretty bad under your heavy boot."

"Well this guy stood right on a badly burned corpse's sternum."

"Crunch, right into the chest cavity."

"When he tried to pull his foot out it got stuck on the ribs and the body came up at him."

"Burned up arms flailing about."

"He needed quite a bit of counseling, poor dude."- demoneyesturbo

All In A Day

"I have several stories from when I worked as a Mortuary Transport Tech."

"The job was basically transporting the deceased from where they were to where they needed to go."

"Turns out dead people can have a lot of appointments."

"One time though I had an experience I’ve never forgotten."

"I was dropping someone off at the Science Donation place."

"This is when you donate your body to science and they take it from there."

"So I wheeled in the deceased, unlocked the freezer, and did all my stuff I had to do in there."

"I placed him on the board, got the lift out, and placed him on the shelf."

"The interesting thing about the freezer was that most everything, once it’s processed, was wrapped in this blue tape type thing."

"And you could definitely tell what was inside."

"Legs, hands, feet, etc."

"Kind of interesting to me at the time."

"Anyway, I shut the freezer and locked it back up, and started wheeling the gurney back over to the garage door."

"The science drop off and processing area was a big L shape, with the freezer off to the larger long portion, and then you turn the corner and there’s desks and filing cabinets and whatnot."

"I about had a heart attack as I turned the corner and there is just this guy standing there examining files in the file cabinet."

"Looked just like you or me."

"Dressed modernly, but out of place for what people normally wear back there."

"I stopped and said that he’d have to forgive me but he almost gave me a heart attack."

"It didn’t look like he heard me at all, or even knew I was there."

"I should mention this was also about 1am, and I’d never seen anyone at the place this late."

"So I said, 'well, sorry if I startled you or anything', and went on about my finishing up stuff."

"Got the gurney back in the van, closed and locked the large garage door from the inside, all the while this guy is just standing there, staring at an open file in front of him, not paying any attention to me."

"I had to use the bathroom so I told him that’s where I’d be going and I’d be right back."

"Again, no response."

'I thought maybe he’s deaf and couldn’t hear me."

"So I went to the bathroom, and came back to the garage and the guy is gone but the file cabinet is still open."

"I didn’t know where he went, and I hadn’t heard anyone walk down the hallway past the bathroom."

"I checked and made sure everything I was responsible for was still locked, and it was."

"So I just announced that I was going to be leaving and locking up to set the alarm."

"No response."

"And that’s what I did, and left."

"I’m not sure who he was, or is, or what happened."

"But it was definitely an odd experience and one I still remember perfectly."

"I have a few other memories about my time at the job, if anyone else wants to hear."

"Nothing like what happened above though."- OlliverClozzoff

Unsettling Doppleganger

"I was once working at a mortuary and had to go pick up a man from the medical examiner’s office."

"When you do that (at least where I’m from) you get a receipt when they release the body to you."

"The receipt has all of the personal belongings that are with the deceased."

"When I brought the man back to the office I opened up the body bag to make sure all the belongings were there and double checking the receipt."

"When I opened up the bag I was stunned to find this dude looked almost exactly like me."

"He was my age, had similar tattoos In similar spots, had the same long hair I do, even had the same style of jewelry I was wearing."

"It took me so off guard that I stood there in an existential crisis until the embalmer came in and was like 'hey SpartanM00 how’s it goin—ahhh holy sh*t that guy looks like you!'"

"It’s the only case I’ve had nightmares about."

"I’ll be the one in the body bag with the deceased man opening me up."- SpartanM00

The More You Know

"Corpses move when you cremate em."

"People who don't know this get spooked a lot."- rocharox

The Unseen Help

"During my apprenticeship, I worked at a funeral home said to be 'haunted' by an old funeral director assistant who had a heart attack in the building and died."

"All he ever did was mess with the chapel lights and if you called him out, something like 'John the family is coming, please don't' they would return to normal."

"Not really sure if I believe it was really haunted, but saying something always fixed the issue so I kept doing it my entire time there."- _bobbykelso

Nightmare Inducing

"I used to work in a nursing home."

"The residents in certain rooms would complain about a man in their room at night but hallucinations are common in the elderly so it wasn't really noticed."

"One night I was moping the dinning room which had huge windows over looking the garden, it was around 1am so pitch black outside and low lighting inside."

"I had this horrible feeling of being watched so looked up and reflected in the window was a man behind me."

"He had a brown suit in, a bowler hat and the cruelest look on his face, he grinned and his mouth was too big."

"This happened in seconds and when I turned around there was obviously no one there but I'll never forget that look of evil on his face."

"I paid more attention to the residents after that and they'd all seen the same man, he just enjoyed terrorizing people."- mycatiscalledFrodo

Holding Out Hope

"I used to be a driver for a funeral home corporation."

"Like, drive the hearse and pick up the bodies."

"Never had anything creepy happened, a few funny things, a few traumatic things."

"In general it was a chill job."

"However, I did get incredibly uncomfortable one night picking up a man who died at home."

"He still had the defibrillator leads on his chest and his eyes were closed, which is unusual because the eyes are always open."

"He just looked like he was asleep or unconscious."

"Not rigid or pale or anything."

"I just had this sinking feeling for about half an hour in traffic that he was going to suddenly gasp and wake up in the body bag."

"Then it hit me."

"That would be the coolest thing ever."

"I’d take him home and he’d be back with his family."

"So I just kind of drove slowly and turned up some music and sang along and talked to him."

"When I got him to the funeral home I left him out of the cooler for about an hour while I did paperwork and played on my phone."

"When I got another call I checked on him and his limbs had started to stiffen."

"I was kind of bummed."

"I put him in the cooler and went on my next call."- Chemistry-Least

Working alongside the dead is a challenging. poignant, and frequently scary occupation.

As you always have the feeling that someone is watching you.

And more often than not, you may be right.