Besides being heroes of our time, nurses are also great witnesses to the supernatural — standing as they do on that line that separates the here from the hereafter.

As a nursing website we quoted many years ago (for its extensive accounts) puts it, “Nursing is a profession that often involves long lonely night shifts in eerie hospital wards. It’s a perfect breeding ground for ghost stories. These stories often involve sightings of apparitions, strange noises, and unexplained events that are said to have taken place in hospitals, hospices, and other healthcare settings. Some of these stories are believed to be based on true events, while others are purely fictional. Regardless, they continue to captivate and intrigue both nurses and non-nurses alike — providing a spooky glimpse into the world of healthcare after dark.”

“Spooky” – or uplifting, because they so clearly show, in many cases, that the soul lives forever (and must be properly prepared, at all times, for the inevitability of death, something Lent, in its call to prayer, meditation, and fasting, accomplishes when we treat this season the way we should).

“I got called to a code in the hallway,” recalled one nurse on the blog. “A patient was being transferred from the ER to the floor. She passed away in the hall. According to the tech, they were carrying on a conversation, the lady looked up, said ‘Oh, here comes God, I think I will go with Him.’ She passed away right then.”

“Every hospital I’ve ever worked in has at least one ghost,” recalled another. “I’ve never worked in a nursing home, but I hear from a friend who has that they have their ghosts as well. Years ago — and this will age me — I worked at the old Peter Bent Brigham Hospital [1911–1980]. We’d just moved into our brand-new tower, and the old hospital was scheduled for demolition. Several coworkers wanted to walk through the old unit one last time . . . .

“As we walked past what had once been the large men’s ward, we saw a couple of figures in what should have been a completely empty ward. One of my coworkers peeked in to investigate and immediately backed out, face as white as a blank order sheet. Of course, I was curious then, so looked in myself. All I saw was two older men sitting on an old bed, chatting. My coworker explained: that was Billy and Larry (or Moe and Joe — I’ve forgotten the names); they were ‘frequent fliers’ in the ward. Both were royal pains in the patoot when they were alive — which they weren’t anymore. She said they’d been rumored to still be hanging around, but no one had actually seen them before!”

We’ll take it all under advisement!

While Lent is not Halloween, it reminds us of the intermingling of the spiritual with the physical, in the same way the devil appeared to Jesus on that desert.

With Easter comes proof of resurrection.

But some spirits, often through lack of preparation, don’t make an easy transition — don’t rise right away.

Said a nurse who works in an ICU and reminds us of that spiritual battle, “One night I was caring for a dying male patient. He was scared and I spent quite some time with him, trying to calm and reassure him. Eventually, he calmed and I left the bedside and went over to the nurses station which was about fifteen feet away. As I sat down I glanced over to him and there was a black shape standing over the bed, looking down at the patient. I was terrified, and am sure it was something evil.”

Recalls one, who is now a grandmother, “I used to work in and old labor and delivery unit. It was a small hospital, so oftentimes I was back there by myself. I liked to keep the lights low and things quiet back there, so naturally I heard a lot of creaks and groans.

“There was a whole back hall that was unused; there was no access to it except by passing me. But I could hear metal objects clanging and doors shutting like somebody was getting ready for a c-section. I could always sense something there with me it seemed.

“There was also a back room on the ‘med-surg’ floor that was never used. It was a patient room converted to a storage room. That room was strange: call light always going off, and nobody near it. Whole hospital had a creepy aura. Maybe it was the cemetery next door, if that in itself is not strange…”

Strange it is — reminding us that in the season of self-sacrifice and almsgiving, it is an act of charity and generosity to give the deceased special prayers.

Passing a graveyard should be a reminder to do this. And to make sure — through things like prayer, fasting, and self-sacrifice — that we ourselves are ready to transcend the shackles of this world when our own time for passage arrives.

On the first Sunday of Lent, Pope Francis focused his Angelus address on the temptation of Jesus in the desert to highlight that it is an invitation for us to enter the proverbial desert to come “in contact with the truth.”

Observing that during the forty days in the desert, Christ was in the company of both “wild beasts and angels,” the Pope reflected that when we enter this symbolic “inner wildness,” we too “encounter wild beasts and angels.”

[resources: Lenten books]