I'm a hospital nurse. I found out why no one can ever sleep in room 14..

I couldn’t understand why the charge nurse gave me such a strange look when I said I was going into room 14 to take a nap on my break. It wasn’t unusual for us to occasionally roll a stretcher in to one of the rooms to sleep for an hour or so during break on a night shift. We work 12 hours straight and just take one long break in the middle so we can actually get a decent nap in.

“I guess.. If you want to,” she said, her brow furrowed.

“Oh, Sharon! He’s new. He doesn’t know about it,” Jodie, another nurse said cryptically.

Sharon, the charge nurse turned and looked at her, “Ha! You’re right! I guess nobody’s told you yet,” she said, turning back to me.

“What? What’s the deal with room 14?” Now I was curious. It was the only room on the floor we had available, everybody else was already sound asleep in their assigned sleeping cubbies (conference rooms, storage rooms, you name it, we’d roll a stretcher in there and nap our brains out).

“Well, everybody who works here knows it’s haunted,” Sharon said. I thought she was kidding, obviously. Serious people don’t believe in ghosts. People like Sharon, who was as sensible as they come, definitely didn’t believe in ghosts.

“Seriously,” I chuckled. I didn’t believe in ghosts at all. I knew everything that people claimed had some rational explanation. I had seen a documentary about it once, it was fascinating how people came up with things in their minds and would remember them later and elaborate on them, making them more fantastic, adding characters like ghosts to make them seem more exciting. All a bunch of pathological liars, like the people who claim to be abducted by UFOs, or so I thought.

“You guys believe in that stuff?”

They both looked at each other, sending psychic messages back and forth. I had only been working there for a bit so I hadn’t developed that particular talent yet. Also I didn’t know the one thing all new nurses should know – listen to the people who have been doing it longer than you. They almost always know better than you do. Especially when you’re really new, which I was.

“I mean, if you don’t believe us, you can give it a shot..”

“Guys! No! Seriously, that’s not okay.” The voice in the corner chimed in, Liang, a guy who had also worked there for a while. “You really should not sleep in there, Jason. It’s not good place to sleep.”

I usually trusted Liang, so I was a bit disappointed he was joining in on this apparent prank on the newbie to the floor. Maybe they just wanted to sleep in there themselves, so they were just psyching me out, I thought.

“Okay, guys, I get it, I’m the new guy. But seriously, I think I’ll be okay. I’m really not worried.”

Liang tried again to convince me but I blew him off, thinking he was taking the joke too far. Sharon and Jodie had given up and were sitting there silently, waiting to see what would happen.

I laughed self-consciously and went to the clean supply room to grab some blankets and brought them into the room. It was a semi-private room with two beds. They were both clean, so I figured I would just change the sheets when I was done and forget about rearranging the room to pull in a stretcher, this would be easier, and I was dead tired.

I turned off the lights and lay down in the bed closest to the door. The room was silent and dark. I let my mind drift off to sleep.

I had a terrible dream. I dreamt that someone was standing over me, watching me sleep. I knew exactly where I was and felt awake but really I was still asleep. I tried to lift my arms but found they wouldn’t move. I felt paralyzed and filled with dread as I tried to look up but couldn’t. I could only see a dark vague outline of something large and malevolent. I heard the thing speaking angrily, and it began to shout, but I couldn’t understand its words. My heart began to race as I realized this thing wanted me out!

I tried to stand up but found I couldn’t. I began to panic and thrash about in the bed, finally, mercifully waking up.

I realized I had been asleep and had dreamt the whole thing. The whole thing had been a product of my overworked, overstressed mind.

But why, then, did I still feel such panic and utter dread? It felt as if I could die at any moment.

The room was silent and dark for a few more moments. Then I heard someone clear their throat next to me in the pitch black room. I felt a chill run down my spine and goosebumps spread across my entire body.

The curtain beside me had been pulled across while I was asleep, separating me from the bed next to me. I wanted to believe it was another nurse that had come in and closed the curtain so they could sleep in the other bed, but I knew that wasn’t it. I could already tell something was wrong.

I had to see. I pulled out my flashlight and looked beside me, terrified. Nothing at first, and then.. I saw a hand, gnarled and bleeding, green and black and rotten, pull back the curtain from beside me. The face that stared back at me from the second bed was not human. It was something evil, something which had gotten in here which was not supposed to be here at all. It was an abomination, a terrible, wrong thing in a place that should be meant for peace and healing.

I screamed so loud I woke up the entire floor of sleeping patients. I ran from the room, falling over and bruising my hip badly in the process, getting tangled up in the laundry bin near the doorway. I fled and left the hospital entirely. I’ve never gone back. I can’t bear to be in the same building with that thing. Now that I know it’s there, I can never be in that hospital again. I could certainly never be a patient there.

The patients would always tell us they had trouble sleeping in that room. I would call up the doctor and ask for some melatonin or some zopiclone, maybe a lorazepam if it came down to it. But now I understand the real reason why no one could ever sleep in room 14.

JG