Lingering Hospital Morgue Spirit

Full transcript of the My True Ghost Stories episode “Lingering Hospital Morgue Spirit.” Listen to this episode.

Hello and welcome to episode 91 of my true ghost stories. If you've been listening to this podcast, you know that I recently got married and I recently got to be a real wife and a company, my husband, to the hospital where he had some planned surgery. Well, I actually didn't accompany him. He went by himself because it was like he had to leave at four o'clock in the morning, which is not really an option for me. So he took a cab there at four o'clock in the morning and then I joined him later around 9.30.

Well, I went to the hospital and sat in the waiting room waiting for his surgery to be over. And that's where this story takes place is in the waiting room of that hospital. So I was sitting there on this comfortable bench and there was a nice, it was right next to the water cooler. So I was drinking lots of water while I was waiting. It was pretty nervous and sitting down right next to me was a family of about, there was about five people in this family.

And there was really nothing to listen to. The televisions were on with the local 24 hour new station, but they did not have the sound on just the closed captions. So it was very relatively quiet, except for the conversations going on around you in this waiting room. And so I, you know, couldn't help but over here, their conversation. So they were speaking in English with New York City accents and also some of them were speaking in Italian and they looked like the people who spoke English understood the Italian, but the Italians did not understand the English.

So I was listening and they were just chatting about some travel that they had just done and as I'm sitting there, I see this man come up to them and approach them and he started to talk to them in a very kind voice, a softer voice, but I could still hear what he was saying. And I realized that someone from their family had passed away. They did not seem that upset. So I definitely got the impression that this was not a tragic passing. And the travel that they had been discussing was them trying to get to this hospital before he passed and how they had failed to do so.

So they were telling this guy who I think was a mortician or someone from the morgue. They were telling him how they had gotten here seven hours too late and they had been traveling from Toronto and Italy and they had gotten there too late. And then you know, I had nothing else to listen to and I didn't want to watch the closed caption news anymore because the stories just kept repeating themselves. So I was just going to listen to this conversation. So I was listening and I realized one of the younger women pointed to an older gentleman next to her and she said it was his brother and she said it's my uncle.

So I started to kind of get what the family relationships were to this person that had passed. And this I'm going to call her the niece because it was her uncle that passed. The niece asked the man from the morgue if when they go to identify the body or see the body, can he have the sheet up over her uncle's face and that they said that they were going to sort of just go with what they're feeling and were they allowed to take the sheet and lower it down to see the face. And I think he said yes, I'm not sure but I don't remember what the answer was to that question. But it sounded like he was going to leave the sheet over the face.

So while this is going on, I'm listening to this whole interaction and they seemed really nice. So it didn't seem like they would be offended that I was listening in on their conversation. They just seemed like really nice people. So I'm sitting there and that conversation was sort of wrapping up. And so I stopped, I was even kind of facing them.

I was listening so intently. I stopped facing them and I just sat and I faced forward. I wasn't looking at the television screen. I wasn't listening to the family anymore. I was just sitting there looking forward.

And it had been a nice distraction from worrying about my husband who was in surgery. So I'm sitting there on this waiting room bench couch thing and I'm looking straight ahead and I see the security guard approaching me. And this is not the story about the ghost. This was another thing that happened in this waiting room besides the interaction with the ghost that I'm going to tell you about in a minute. But I see the security guard walking towards me and it's the security guard who checked me in, took my ID.

So he knew who I was and who I was there to wait for. And he walks over to me and he says, okay. Someone from the morgue will be up to see you to bring you to identify the body. Now thank God I had been listening to the conversation of the people next to me because I was waiting for my husband to get out of surgery and I was like, I think that if my husband had died in surgery, they would tell me. They wouldn't just tell me this way.

So luckily I didn't panic and I just said, oh no, I think that you want this family that's next to me and he said, oh I'm so sorry. And he went and spoke to them. Well I breathed a sigh of relief and resumed listening in on the conversation. He talked to that family and he said, you know, someone from the, what he had just said to me, someone from the morgue will be up in a minute to take you to identify the body and they said, someone from the morgue already spoke to us and he said, no, someone's coming to get you and bring you. So they said great.

And now I was worried that they were going to call me that my husband's surgery had ended and I was going to have to go to the bathroom. So I said, all right, I'm going to run to the bathroom real quick, but I didn't want to miss them calling me. So I went over to the family, the family who had just lost their uncle brother and I said, okay, I'm running to the bathroom. And if you hear this name and I said our last name, if you hear this name, just tell them that I'll be right out of the bathroom and they agreed and I ran to the bathroom and then I got back into the waiting room as fast as I could and as I was walking towards them, they just gave me the thumbs up meaning that they had not called my name. So I said, that's great.

I thanked them and I said, I'm so sorry for your loss because it wasn't strange that I would have overheard what had happened because I was sitting right next to them and they said, thank you so much. It was my uncle said the niece and then she pointed to her father. She said it was his brother and then she told me that someone from the morgue was coming up to bring them to see the body, which I already knew because I had been listening and plus the security guard had accidentally told me that part. So she said, someone's coming from the morgue to bring us down to identify the body. She says, we're not sure if we want to see the face right away.

I just listened to that part. I didn't act like I knew any of it already. And I said, well, you know, just play it by ear, see how you feel when you get down there. She said, okay, we will. I said, again, I'm so sorry for your loss.

And then I went and I sat back down. I looked up at the TV screen and I could see that my husband was still in surgery and then I got a message. I'm sitting there on the bench looking straight ahead, not looking at the news, not listening to anybody, not looking at the screen to see if my husband was still in surgery. I was looking straight ahead and I got a message in the form of a vision and the vision was of a man standing next to a body with the sheet covering the whole body. And I knew that that was the spirit of the brother, uncle of the family next to me.

And I knew that this message meant that he was waiting there for them. And part of the things I had overheard them talking about was how the brother wanted to say goodbye. And that's why they might lower the sheet to see the face. And he might want to say goodbye and he might want to talk to him and that's what they wanted to do. That's why they were trying to get here before the man passed away and they weren't able to and they wanted to talk to him.

And so I got this image of this spirit standing next to his body and I realized, oh, they can still talk to him. He's lingering there. He's right there. And I realized I have to tell them. Well, I decided I had to tell them.

I meditated for a second about it before I got up to tell them, but I so I decided I'm not going to tell that to them like a message. I'm going to tell it to them like something that I read someplace or something like that. And so I got up and I went back over to them and I said, listen, I said, you know, I've heard that the spirits usually linger near their body for a while. So that's probably going on with your brother, with your uncle. So you can talk to him like you should definitely just talk to him as if you'd gotten here before he passed because he's still there.

That's what I've heard. And then the main lady, the one who had been doing all the talking, she said to me, I hope that that's true. I really want to believe that. And then I just decided to get a little bit like I was a professional medium and I said, no, no, it's true. He's definitely there.

And I then refrained from going that next step and saying, you know, I'm a medium and I know these things. I just didn't do it. And I'm so proud of myself restraint that I just said this thing to them as if I had read it someplace and then I just gave it a little oomph and said, no, no, it's true. He's definitely there. You should talk to him as if he was still there.

They said, okay, we will. And I believed them. And I went and I sat back down. But when I looked up at the screen, I saw that my husband was out of surgery and in recovery. So that was very exciting.

And when I looked away from the screen and I looked back towards the bench where that family had been sitting, I just saw them disappearing through the main exit inside the hospital towards the elevators where I can only imagine they were headed towards the morgue as they were led by a man in a hospital uniform. So it was pretty obvious that that was what was going on. Literally a minute and a half later, somebody came out and called the name, the thing that I had been waiting for, they called the name. I went with that person. I met my husband in the recovery room.

The surgery had been a complete success. So that part was great. And I, for the most part, forgot about that English and Italian family that had been sitting next to me waiting to see their brother, uncle in the morgue while I focused on my husband and his recovery and what he needed. But a few hours later, I went upstairs to where my husband had been admitted. And I said a little prayer that they had taken my message.

And talked to the lingering spirit of their brother, uncle so that they could communicate that one less time and get some closure. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of My True Ghost Stories. If you enjoy my storytelling style, you can subscribe to the Patreon. In the Patreon, I tell interesting stories of my life in New York City and beyond. And if you have enjoyed this episode of My True Ghost Stories, please take a second to subscribe, review, and share it with a friend to help this show grow. Until next time.