People Who Spent Time in a Psych Ward Share Their Creepiest Stories
The Singing Patient
"Well, this one night I remember falling asleep rather fast and waking up in the middle of the night to someone singing, it started off faintly then got louder as the person neared my room, I then realized someone was pacing the hall singing. It got much creepier, while he was singing he was running his nails down the walls as he paced back and forth and continued singing, what made it even worse he was singing about death and demons which totally was freaking me out.
"I remember my exact thoughts were, 'Sh*t, I'm going to die.' It was like a scene from a horror movie, it went on for a good 20 minutes and I couldn't figure out why the hell the nurses weren't doing their checks and why this kid was still pacing without being found. I was starting to get more and more nervous by the second when all of a sudden I hear from across the room one of the girls with extreme anger management problems start yelling for this kid to shut up.
"I was relieved that I wasn't the only one hearing this and a second later I hear a loud bang like the door across the hall had [flung] open and then a thud. The girl had somehow flung open her locked door and tackled the kid to the ground. She was angry he was disrupting her sleep and I couldn't [have been] more thrilled. After a couple seconds of listening to them wrestle around on the floor, I finally heard the nurses come running to break it up. Supposedly they had both [gone] to the kitchen to get coffee or something. I'm still not completely sure where they were during all of it. I suppose this story was on more of the funnier side but at the time it really freaked me out."
Hospital Protocol
"During the night, the workers go through rooms every fifteen minutes, shine a flashlight in your goddamn face, and record if you are awake or anything out of the ordinary. It is incredibly unsettling hearing somebody shuffle into your room and scribble on a notepad, especially when you are already a paranoid schizophrenic. This was the worst part of the experience for me."
Straight Out of a Horror Film
"On my second night there, I heard screaming in the halls. The doors had no lock so another girl, probably about my age (early 20s) kicked my door open and stood in the doorway, staring at me with wide eyes and a knife in her hand. I sat there frozen for a few seconds before she was tackled by two security guards. A nurse came in and said to me, all rushed, 'Don't worry, we have everything under control, just stay in your room quietly.' They then locked her in one of the 'quiet rooms,' a padded cell with a circular window, which was right across the hall from me, where she spent the rest of the night kicking at the door and yelling threats."
Sexual Harrassment
"As I was reading, I saw a nurse escorting a boy my age (we shall call him John). We made brief eye contact and I went back to reading. He later approached me and introduced himself.
"We got talking and things seemed normal until he said he saw me when I was admitted the previous night. He then proceeded to tell me that he thought I was very hot and had to masturbate to the thought of me right afterwards and would do the same later.
"I was a bit freaked out, brushed it off with a nervous laugh and changed subjects. We continue talking and suddenly he says, 'You know, those hospital pajamas look really fucking sexy on you. I can totally see myself tearing those off of you.' Again, cue nervous laughter.
"I then went into my room and took a nap, suddenly this other male patient came in. I was terrified. This patient had been staring through my room window repeatedly, would say hi (and run away), and had plucked my hair out during breakfast. He shuffled in and hands me something, says bye, and runs out. I looked down and saw that he had given me my bra back all neatly folded. At this point, I had enough and told the nurses what happened. They laughed and said "Oh he likes the young ones!"
"During lunch, I got repeatedly harassed by the bra thief (to the point where he was not allowed near me) and John would sit across from me licking his utensils while staring at me.
"In the end, before John was sent to another hospital, he cornered me and told me that I was making him so horny. He proceeded to pull his pants down and show me his boner."
She Saw Butterflies
"The second time I was admitted to a psych ward, I had a roommate. She was a lovely woman, kind and smart, when she was stable. However, most of the time I knew her, she was not. She had bi-polar disorder, complicated by periods of schizophrenic manic phases. She saw butterflies on the walls in the middle of the night. She ran naked from room to room. She called me horrible names, told me terrible stories from her youth. Rooming with her was a nightmare.
"When I complained that I wasn't able to sleep, and was a little scared, an orderly filled me in on the details. The middle-aged woman I was sharing a room with was a beloved Spanish teacher at the local high school. She had taught there many years, and every year, about 2 weeks after school ended she would have an episode exactly like the one she was currently having and recover in a few weeks. Up until now, she had never hurt anyone, so I should be fine, and I was left in that room."
Married to a Popstar
"I was held involuntarily for 72 hours once (suicide attempt).
"In this particular ward, you weren't allowed to have any electronic devices (cell phones, music players, etc.), except this one girl in my room always had headphones on and was constantly rocking out... to nothing. There's more.
"I was so miserable, I pretty much slept/stayed in bed the whole time, skipping therapy sessions and only got up when they brought my pills. Ended up passing time just listening to my roommates. I overheard the same girl talking about her 'fiance.' She talked about how he was a famous pop star in Taiwan, how he went to Berklee [College of Music], did contact lens and McDonald's commercials, and proposed to her over YouTube. The other patient she was talking to ate it up. However, also being from Taiwan, I quickly realized she was describing Wang Leehom, and that this girl was indeed batsh*t insane. She was also ecstatic that she was being released that day, after having been in the ward for two weeks."
The Great Escape
"The most interesting thing I can think of is one time we lit a mattress on fire so that the fire alarms would go off and all the doors would unlock. This took a few days to plan as one person's job was to secure the matches from a visitor. Then someone acted as a distraction, they pulled a mattress into the hallway and shut all the bedroom doors (they didn't shut all the way, though, but we figured if the fire did spread, it would at least help to keep the spread minimal). Then they lit it on fire, doors opened, and we ran. We even had a few kids that stayed back to pull the mattress out the doors when they opened - we had thought of (mostly) everything. We didn't want to cause any damage - we just wanted out. There was a ten-foot fence that surrounded the courtyard, and that's where I got stuck. Some of the boys made it over the fence, and one made it out for good, but the rest were caught in the woods by staff (who simply opened the gate and chased them)."
A Patient Got the Wrong Medication
"35 year old male here, back in 2001 I was arrested for disorderly conduct and the cops thought I was 'suicidal,' so they sent me to a pysch ward for a month. Let me tell you, these places are creepy, especially when you know you are fine. There was one time where one of the local patients called 'Tom' was acting out of rage, like he usually would.
"This time, though, he seemed a little abnormal. Apparently, they had mixed up his medication with someone else's, and he was trying to tell them this. They weren't having it and kept telling him to sit down. Well, about 20 minutes later, while 'Tom' was doing a crossword puzzle, he suddenly flips the entire table over and starts punching every staff member in sight with incredible force, all while reciting the f*cking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. Two of the nurses had pretty bad welts on their face, one with a busted lip. Security came and took him away a few minutes later, and I never saw 'Tom' again for the last week I was there."
Eating Nails
"When I was sixteen, and having attempted suicide, I was handcuffed in the local emergency room and taken to a 72-hour holding psych ward in the neighboring town. I had been there a day when a crazed homeless woman was brought in. After lunch, while we were watching TV, the crazed lady went into the hallway, punched a glass case which held pictures of doctors, ripped out the pictures, and proceeded to eat the nails that held the pictures in place. She was tackled by the staff and given a shot to calm the f down. She did."
Do You Want to See Something Cool?
"My first night, the guy I shared a room with introduced himself to me and we made a bit of small talk. Eventually he asked me if I'd like to see something cool. Of course! So he takes a light bulb out of the ceiling, let's it cool for a bit and breaks it on the table. Right now, I'm thinking this is gonna be awesome, he's gonna do some MacGyver shit right here with the wire on the inside of it. Lo and behold, he broke off a rather large shard of the glass instead. He proceeded to stab it into his arm, I couldn't say how deep, and pulled it down (not out) slowly. Bad experience."
Long-Term Patient
"I was in one once for about 2 weeks after threatening (not attempting) suicide. There was a girl, she was [in her] early 20s, and I was curious as to why she was on the children's floor. Apparently, the girl was seriously messed up in the head and had been there since she was 10. Her parents were either rich or had great insurance because she was there 24/7 for over 10 years. She would flip out the night of any new arrivals (like, she was screaming up and down the halls the night I arrived and then was fine until a few days later when a new girl arrived).
"Anyway, this girl was huge... maybe 5'10 and at least 200 lbs. The floor was getting ready for visitation (the first one since I had been there) and all of a sudden, she came charging out of her room, down the hall to the common room and started flipping tables, tore the TV off the wall, punched 2 orderlies, and broke a few other things until one of the nurses (sweet tiny older woman) chased her down and got her in the ass with a triple dose of thorazine.
"She tried to fight it, and it was like a slow-motion tiger. Eventually they called up 3 burly security guards who basically dragged her to the 'quiet room.' About an hour later, we watched them drag her back to her room and strap her down to the bed. She slept for almost 2 days.
"EDIT: Thought I should clarify, this was not a long-term facility. The longest I heard of anyone staying aside from her was 60 days."
Lockdown
"Scariest was when they locked down our rooms and taped papers to the windows so we couldn't see into the hall one day. I never found out exactly what happened but I think a girl managed to kill herself because I heard a gurney wheeled in and out of the room next to mine and she never came back."
Out of Rooms
"Since they were out of rooms, I had to spend my last couple of days sleeping in the corridor. First, one of the patients from the so-called 'screened' part of the ward barged into the corridor grabbing one of the other corridor-patients and was jabbering on about her parrot. She was then taken back to her room after the nurses finished their coffee. Then the screaming started.
"In the room next to me an elderly psychotic lady started, at first, talking to her dead daughter. Sometimes comforting her, telling her how much she loved her and so on. After a while she got angry and started blaming her dead daughter for anything from burning the porridge to killing her. A lot of it was incoherent crying or babble. After a while I asked the orderlies to have my bed moved. So they did. I got to sleep outside of parrot lady's room the rest of the night."
Writing Under the Bed
"Something else that really bothered me was one day one of the other female patients that was there with me at the time told me she found writings under her bed. They were just old small wooden bed frames with hard mattresses that would make all kinds of noises when you rolled over but I still wondered what exactly she was doing laying under her bed to find these writings.
"When she first told me I thought it was a joke, but sure enough, one day during group we managed to sneak away and she showed me and exactly where she said they were there were stories. After that we had everyone check under their own beds and there were more under every single bed. I don't remember what all was specifically written under the beds but they were stories of patients who had stayed here before or ways they were planning on killing themselves or who the good/bad nurses were. Nonetheless it kind of creeped me out further."
