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Thursday 17 November 2016

Inspired to write about ghosts in hospitals

I always remember my first stint of night duty as a fresh green 1st year nursing student.
It was in the old colonial hospital in Gibraltar, also known as St Bernard's hospital.
It was an ancient building, full of history and stories of ghostly apparitions aplenty.
I was working on the male medical ward., John ward.
It was an acute medical ward taking admissions of all sorts, Cardiac, Respiratory, Gastro etc.
Shirts were from 8pm to 8am and there were only 2 of us on duty on a night shift with the night sister popping around at 10pm and 2am on her rounds.

The shift had been particularly eventful and we'd had two deaths on the ward that night.

8am was approaching and the day shift were trickling in.  Pale and bleary eyed from a nights sleep, we looked pale and bleary eyed from the lack of sleep.
The charge nurse asked how the night had panned out?
I gave him a quick summary,  including the two deaths and what he said after changed me.
'Did you see the Nun? '
' what Nun? ' was my reply... Intrigued.
He continued to tell me the story of the Nun of Death that appeared every time someone passed away on the ward.

I never did get to see her but she inspired me to write Phantasms in the Infirmary decades later.
The story also made me very uneasy on night shifts from then on...  Unsurprisingly!

First book is available in Spanish too.. 

Here is a link to my author page on Amazon

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