Nurse reveals possible haunting in Dorset hospital

Nurse reveals possible haunting at Dorset Hospital

Over the past few years, nurses at a Dorset hospital have been spooked by incidents, which can’t be explained. Sadly we cannot identify the name of the hospital, but it is situated opposite the site of an old workhouse. Could there be tales of earlier suffering, tormenting hospital staff? One of the night staff nurses stated 

“We are all very open minded, because the majority of us have experienced something and not one of us working nights, are sceptic.”

The workhouse was built in 1836-37 and was the main workhouse for the population of Dorset, housing 103 residents in 1881 alone. As with most workhouses, conditions were severe. Many inmates were made to do Oakum-Picking as a form of employment, which was known to make their hands raw and bleed. Later this changed to Bone-Crushing of animals bones, even though it was known to be hazardous to health. Luckily conditions improved and by 1929 this workhouse became a Public Assistance Institution, and was known for even organising day trips to the seaside. From 1948 onwards it was used as a hospital, until the building was converted into residential housing in the 90’s. During this time, a care home opposite, which was built on the grounds of the workhouse, was converted into a modern community hospital.

Not only have residents in the residential housing experienced strange happenings, but nurses working in the adjacent hospital have been experiencing possible paranormal activity. Night staff are reputedly seeing ghostly apparitions, hearing shuffling footsteps and encountering potential poltergeist activity, such as lights switching on an off, knocking on the doors and a never ending operating lift, which should only function when someone is using it.

A night nurse kindly reveals her chilling encounters

“In the years I have worked in the hospital I have experienced a number of chilling incidents, which I just couldn’t explain in a logical way. The first of which happened many years ago. During my tea break, I was sat relaxing when I heard slow shuffling footsteps walk past the door. Thinking it was a patient who may have wandered and got lost, I immediately opened the door to find nobody was there. A few months later I told one of my colleagues what had happened, and she told me she had experienced exactly the same thing. On another occasion I was having my tea break in the same room and somebody knocked at the door. Thinking it would be a colleague who needed my help, I immediately answered the door to find nobody there.

Opposite this sitting room is a single bedded patient’s room where a number of incidents have happened. One night one of my colleagues walked past the room and the door was open. She quickly checked on the patient in the next room and then turned around to head back, to find the door was now closed. There wasn’t a patient in the room at the time and there wasn’t a member of staff around in that area of the hospital. Recently another colleague was stood in this room talking to a patient. She was facing the window with the door behind her, when she saw the reflection of a small white figure in the window, which appeared to walk past the door. One time when I was in that room, the bathroom door suddenly slammed shut for no reason.

Recently, a patient, who was in the same room, rang her call bell to ask for assistance and my colleague and I were busy with another patient at the other end of the ward, so we couldn’t answer the bell immediately. The bell suddenly stopped, but we obviously still went to see what the patient wanted. We found out that the reason the patient turned off her call bell was because the lights in the corridor came on and she thought we were on our way. These lights only come on when someone walks past the sensor. 

The staff toilet is in that same corridor and one night I was in there. Suddenly the light switched itself off. Thinking I had knocked it, I checked the switch and it was still on. The light then mysteriously came back on.

If there are any spirits, I believe one is particularly helpful. One night, a colleague heard a women’s scream. We immediately checked all the patients to find the ladies were all asleep. What we did find, was a poorly gentlemen who had, had a respiratory arrest. On this occasion, if it was a spirit, they had saved the gentlemen’s life.

The strangest experience I have ever encountered was some years ago. Two colleagues and I were checking on a very poorly man, who was near the end of his life. We witnessed a bat circling around the gentlemen’s head. We stood watching in amazement, wondering what to do. One of my colleagues volunteered to catch it and try and  put it outside. We closed the door of the room for a moment, so the bat couldn’t get out, whilst my colleague found something to catch it with. We opened the door, to find the bat had disappeared. Even though the window was open a tiny bit, the curtains were drawn and we searched the room. We couldn’t find it anywhere and it was unlikely the bat would have found its own way out.

We now take our tea breaks in another room, by the office rather than along the foreboding corridor and we tend to walk around in pairs.”

Sadly paranormal investigators haven’t been allowed to investigate, due to ethical reasons and it being a fully functional hospital. Hopefully the nurses will find answers in the future, on what or whom, likes to make themselves known to them.