More ghost stories

The final installment of the ghost stories I was told growing up.  Once again, these are true according to my mother.  She claims these happened to her and her family growing up and as children everything she told us was taken for fact.  You can find the other stories here and here.

Don't go outside

One of the many migrant moves that took my grandparents around the midwest landed them in a mobile home.  This mobile home was near a storm ditch, steep slope and deep.

One night my grandparents decided to go out and leave the kids without a babysitter.  They left my 9 aunts and uncles to care for themselves.  The only instructions they left were "Don't go outside."

As usually happens when there are lots of unsupervised children they became a little rambunctious.  Things got out of hand and they were soon outside wrestling and rolling down the steep embankment of the storm ditch.

After many times of rolling down the ditch my mom looked up and saw something on the roof of their home laughing and jumping.  Mom screamed and everyone ran in the house.

While in the house the creature on the roof tormented them for a long period of time.  The roof and walls trembled and shook under the weight of this thing.  Lights flickered throughout the entire ordeal.

Terrified my aunts and uncles screamed and cried.  The tormenting continued long into the night until my grandparents came home to find the terrified kids crying.

Ghost Bride

Traveling to another location brought my family to an old two story house with an attic.  It was large and spacious, especially for a family of 11.  The landlord gave them one rule, don't go to the attic.

As seemed to always happen my aunts and uncles were having a lot of fun one night and while my grandparents weren't paying attention my uncle dared my mom to open the door.  They were bored and wanted to explore.

Initially my mom refused claiming that was their only rule.  My uncle was very persuasive and eventually convinced my mom to open the door.

As soon as the door opened a crack a loud scream was heard throughout the house.  A gust of wind forced the door open and my mom saw a misty figure of a woman dressed in a wedding gown.

This figure disappeared and screaming could be heard throughout the house.  Doors opened and shut by themselves, lights flickered on and off in every room throughout the house.

The family could only take it so long before they were forced to go outside and wait for the landlord to arrive.  My grandparents demanded an explanation.  It was then that they were told of the bride.  She was dressed in her gown coming down the stairs when she tripped and fell down the rest, breaking her neck and dying.

Baby in the well

Baby in the Well

My grandparents were in a new state looking for a new house to stay while they worked.  They were to meet their new landlords on a piece of property.  This property had a well and after an afternoon of running around my mom and her brothers were thirsty.

They went to the well and started to pull the bucket up.  As they pulled on the rope they started to hear a baby crying.  They were the only ones on the property and no babies were around.  The more they pulled on the rope the louder the crying became.

They finally looked in the well and saw a baby, crying and screaming.  It began reaching out to grab them.  They screamed let go of the rope, dropping the baby back into the well, water splashing everywhere.

The landlord finally arrived to find a bunch of wet, scared kids.  They told the story of what happened.  He explained several years ago a new mother was trying to get water out of the well and the baby slipped out of her hands and drowned in the well.

Little Witch at School

My mom was bullied in school on a regular basis.  One day she was tormented on the playground to the point where she started sobbing and ran away to the bathroom.  The bathroom, according to her, was never used because everyone claimed it was haunted.  She was so upset she didn't care that she ran into the haunted bathroom, she just wanted to get away from everybody.  While she sat sobbing on the toilet she heard a cackle and saw a miniature witch flying around her.

House in the Woods

Most people grew up getting bedtime stories.  These bedtime stories are usually fun, heartwarming stories to help the child feel good before bed.  I didn't get those growing up.  If I got a story they were usually scary stories (maybe that's why I enjoy watching horror movies).  Over the next several posts I'm going to do my best to tell those stories so they don't get lost in time.

First I need to explain some things about my mother's background.  She is the second oldest of eight kids.  Her parents were migrant workers by trade and would travel where the work was.  Sometimes their "houses" were a little run down, in many instances barely livable.

Add this to the fact that us Mexicans are very superstitious, my mother had a lot of very creepy stories for us growing up.  She claims these are true stories and that they happened to her over the course of her childhood in various locations throughout the US, mostly in the south and midwest.

House in the Woods

As migrant workers my grandparents were sometimes given free places to stay to help offset some of the expenses.  One particular house they stayed at was a one bedroom shack in the middle of the woods. This shack, from the descriptions given to me, was essentially boards held together with some form of roofing.  There was no insulation, just a frame and a roof protecting them.  There were many holes in the walls and you could easily peer outside from the room.  The eight children stayed in the room while the adults stayed in the other room.

One particular night my grandparents had some guests over so they sent my mom and her siblings to the room a little early.  The children entertained themselves talking, joking and having a grand old time.  During all the fun and commotion my mom felt someone was watching them.  She looked around the room to find an eye peering through one of the holes in the wall.  She screamed, everyone turned and saw an eye looking at them.

At this point all the children began screaming in terror.  Their dad, my grandpa, became extremely pissed off at them.  He came storming into the room and started yelling at them.  When they explained what they saw my grandpa grabbed a gun and ran outside the house to look for the peeping tom.  The guests there also helped him search.  

After looking around the house and surrounding woods, they found nothing.  No footprints leading towards the house or away from the house.  The only thing they found were two hoof prints in the moist ground where the children had seen the eye.

To this day my mom firmly believes the devil was watching them that night.

Want a diddly-deal with me?

Venting session

Tonight was a slow night in the ER considering it's a Sunday night.  Usually we are busting at the seams with wait times up to 1.5 hours to get a room and 2 hours to be seen.  There were several occasions where There was nobody in the waiting room.  All night we had empty rooms, which is good.  I was able to enjoy watching a few football games which made for nice.

My shift is from 11am to 11pm.  The person in charge closes 4 rooms by 11pm because lack of nursing staff to keep them open.  Depending on the doctor and patient flow they start closing these rooms between 9 and 9:30.

My assignment tonight was the section that gets closed off early.  I discharged my last patient at 9:30.  We have 15 open beds in the ER, 11 if you claim my four rooms closed.  With my shift ending, I assumed I would be sent home because you can't justify the staffing (we had 2 float nurses after 7pm).  The coworkers next to me had a total of 3 patients to 2 nurses.

I wait around for 15 minutes for the "you can go home" from the charge nurse.  I finally decide to walk around to see if anybody needed help (nobody did, we had 2 other nurses helping out).

After another few minutes I'm told I will be getting an ambulance.  I know I look dumbfounded.  As I said above, my section should have been closed by this point, even with a fast doctor.  Because I am who I am instead of asking why not send that ambulance to one of the other nurses and send me home, I say OK and go wait for them.

By the time the ambulance arrives I had zero patients for more than half an hour.  Every nurse in the ER had only 2 patients to care for.  I do my job, take care of the patient, and less than 10 minutes later we are just waiting on CT results.  I'm done documenting on this patient by 1015, 45 minutes until the end of my shift.

Still waiting to get sent home.  Nothing.  I go kill time elsewhere.  By 1030pm I'm completely pissed off.  There are no ambulances out, no patients in the lobby, and every nurse has 2 patients to care for (except me, remember, I have one patient and 3 closed rooms at this time).

I decide to make myself scarce so the charge nurse doesn't find me.  Why bother going home?  My shift is over in less than 30 minutes and I'm not allowed to refuse being sent home early (that I know of).

By the time 11pm rolls around I'm beyond frustrated.  I could have gone home early and spent some time with my wife before she fell asleep, even if it was just watching TV.  That's better than not seeing her until she gets home from work tomorrow (we work opposite schedules, I sometimes go for several days without seeing her).

I give report on my patient to the nurse relieving me and I make my way to the break room.  I am very passive aggressive.  I would rather avoid confrontation and not make a scene.  The only thing I can do to be spiteful is get paid to sit.

We work 12 hour shifts.  If you take a 30 minute lunch break you need to stay until 30 minutes after your shift is over in order to get a paid lunch break.  For me I have to clock out at 11:30 to get that paid lunch.  Most of the time I would rather clock out and head home.  I'm too awake and pissed off to want to go home.

My passive aggressive self sat for 30 minutes in our break room so I could get a paid lunch break.  All in the name of spite.  No it didn't make me feel any better but at least I got paid to play on my phone for 30 minutes.

Speaking of taking a break, the overnight crew works from 7p-7a.  Typical in our line of work.  They regularly have potluck dinners because that's what they do.  They have recently started waiting to bring out their potluck food until after 11pm, when all the day shift people are gone.  No big deal, I'm leaving anyway.

During my spiteful sitting tonight one of the night shifters comes into the break room and notices all the food in the crockpot is gone.  This is just barely after 11pm.  She commented "See, this is why we don't bring the food out until after day shift is gone, they eat all the food."

Talk about rubbing me the wrong way after already being in a pissy mood.  I was the only "day" shift staff in the ER at this point.  The others left at 7pm and the one who came in at 11am with me went home sick.  The night shift had eaten all the food.  I hadn't been in the break room for more than 5 minutes when this was said and most of the food was already gone before I even came in.

All I wanted to say was "Fuck you, your overnight people ate all the food."  But what good would that do?  I decided to keep my mouth shut and stare at the phone.  Only 15 minutes until I could leave with my passive aggressive boycott for not getting sent home early.

I survived the night without saying too much.  It took a lot out of me.