Psych Ward Hold

Behind the padded walls and flickering lights, not everything is as it seems. Welcome to the psych ward - where the line between treatment and terror gets a little blurry. 

guest audio: Nurse Mali

TikTok handle: @Nursemali11

Have a weird story? We want to hear it! Email me at Letsgetweirdishpod@gmail.com

Transcript

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Welcome to, let's Get Weirdish. I'm your host, Amanda, and tonight we're checking into the psych ward. Don't worry, they said it's only a 48 hour hold. Have you ever been put in the psych ward? Do you work in the psych ward? Tonight, we're gonna dive into all of it just so happens I came across Nurse Malley on TikTok. Him and I exchanged some words he gave me permission to share this video with you, and I'm going to tag him down here in the show notes so you can go give him a follow. Are you ready? What if our psych patients really aren't crazy? Y'all tap in for a hot take. Me and my boy, who's also a nurse, got to talking and we were just reminiscing about a day that we had in the ER one time, and the basis of the conversation was about three psych patients that we had in two days. So the one psych pic, the first psych patient swore up and down that there were roaches and spiders. Crawling all over the room. And he was like, yo, do you see that? And I'm like, you know, we're taught not to entertain the thought. So we, you know, we we're like, no, we don't see that. And we're trying to orient him to what we see. He's like, nah, bro. Nah bro. Get me the fuck outta here, man. There's roaches on my goddamn leg. He starts swatting at his leg and shit. So me and my boy, you know, we're calming him down. We get him medicated to keep him calm. And so like, you know, just what you do for a psych patient in the er, that's what we do. And then after that you hit the charting and you say The patient's having tactile and visual hallucinations, but this is where shit gets weird. This guy was in the room for about fif, nah, like eight hours. The next patient came in after we transferred that guy out to the same room, same room. Now this patient does have a history of psychosis, but, but no hallucinations. I walk in the room just to introduce myself to the patient and get to know what's going on with the patient. This patient looks frightened as hell when I walk in and like. She's balled up and she's like, before we start anything, can you kill all these bugs? And I'm like, what? She's like, you don't see all of these bugs around. So I get to look at, I'm like, uh, you're not this again. No, there's no bugs, right? You can't entertain a patient, so I'm not gonna entertain a patient. She starts going crazy, wild. Has a deathly fear of bugs, and she just can't stand to stay in the room. So we ended up moving her to a different room. The next patient comes in and this girl was in the ER for about 10 hours. I think that's what we said. Uh, the next patient comes in the same goddamn thing. He comes in the room, he's like, no, no, no. Get me the fuck outta here. What the hell is that? And I'm like, what is what? He's like, bro, there's literally a spider crawling towards my bed. So now I'm like. Are you sure? So he goes, quote, yeah man, there's spiders and roaches in this bitch, unquote. So now the only thing going through my head, instead of medicating him immediately for psychosis or just, you know, being high rate, I'm like, hold on bro. Am I the one that needs to be medicated? Three patients all with different diagnosis, see the same thing? Am I the one living in la la land? Like are we the ones not, are we really the psych patients? Are the psych patients really tapped in? Bro. Y'all, y'all let me know. But that's the conversation we had and we was like, Hey bro, maybe they really tapped into something that we not really seeing, bro, and we keep medicating them and suppressing their reality, which might actually be reality and we might be the ones who are not tapped it. Y'all lemme know what you think. Maybe I'm crazy, man. I, I don't know. But there's no way. Okay, nurse Malley, do you know what this reminds me of? Stranger Things. So you have your reality and then you have the upside down reality. Both are very real, right? but you can only see the upside down if you're in that other reality, and it makes you question. Are some, not all, are some psych patients who are having these hallucinations just tapped into a different dimension than we are. It would make sense because you have people who are more highly attuned and they can see spirits or they can hear things, or they can sense things that other people can't, for instance. one of my brothers and I have always been very sensitive. We can go somewhere and we're like, Nope. Don't know why, but that's a nope for me. We are not hanging out here. Okay, maybe that's their, Nope. Maybe they're seeing the upside down version of our reality. Back when I worked, which was quite a long time ago, I worked at a hospital, will not be using any names for reasons obviously, but the sheriff's department called and said that they were bringing in a patient who they had found jumping on cars and he proceeded to eat, PCP while they were trying to get him, you know, cuffed. So he was already on something, continues to eat something. They get him there and they handcuff him to the bed, and you know what a hospital bed looks like. You've got the railing, right? So they've got his feet handcuffed and his hands handcuffed to this railing and not because he was necessarily in trouble. I mean, obviously the guy was jumping on people's vehicles, but mainly to protect himself because he was fighting and we did not want him to get hurt all of a sudden. He starts screaming, I'm about to transform. Okay. And he's like, I'm about to transform. he starts yanking the handcuffs and the rails and we all thought that it was gonna break. We're trying to charcoal this man because obviously we do not want him to od. so, myself and nurse are laying across his legs. We've got other people laying across his arms. We're trying to keep him from hurting himself and he's, he's steady screaming, I'm about to transform, then he starts going get my shield, and then something like, shield come to me. I thought this man was about to turn into Captain America and I thought we were all going to be screwed. Not even kidding, for a full seven seconds. He believed it so much. I believed it too, I thought he was gonna transform right there. So. On one hand, you've got people who are obviously hallucinating. Even though I believed it for a few minutes, y'all, I really thought this man was about to Captain America meet or right in the throat. But then you've got these other people. You've got three different patients who come into the same room. There are clearly no bugs on the walls, on the beds, and they are all three seeing the same thing. And even though they all did not have the same diagnosis, it makes you wonder if that room maybe could have been what, I don't know, a portal type. And you've got people who already are in a state and they can see these things. What do you think? What are your thoughts? Let's take a deep dive into Reddit. So this is from Bass Assassin 13 under the Reddit thread. What is the scariest thing a patient has ever done. not a doctor but a nurse. Once a psychotic schizophrenic patient got me, and it was because of how quote unquote normal, she said it screaming, threatening to kill me, and then sitting on the commode and calmly looking at me and says, in the most normal monotone voice, I'm sorry, I know I'm not well, and I'm being mean to you. I'm in hell and I don't know how to get out. Okay. That freaks me out and kind of gives me the chills because it's like, are you feeling that way? Because you know you're schizophrenic and if you know anything about a schizophrenic person, they have multiple personalities or you know, or in and out of realities. And sometimes they don't remember the other reality. Take ED game, for instance. Okay. Same type of thing or. Are they really witnessing some type of hell in that other version of themself that may be more in tune to another plane of existence? here's a good one by Lar hx. Under the same thread. Not a doctor or a medical professional, but I was a patient at an old psych ward. A regular, you'd say basically just a teenager with parents who didn't know how to deal with my teenage angst. So I spent one of my vacations up in the hospital. This time I wasn't in the new adolescence ward as it was having renovations done. Instead, we were on the adult floor. Now let it be known. I have been thoroughly tested for psychosis and have never shown any signs of it in any sort of way, nor hallucinations. And at the time I was not on any medication, but I digress during this stay, the adults who were on the floor were kept at one end of the unit and the teens on the other side. The staff was really good about it, and we never had any encounters. But I will say that Flora gave me the creeps at night from the get go. I had my own room, which normally I'm grateful for, and still had a nurse to come and check in on all of us every 15 minutes. But I remember one night just laying there in bed, so uncomfortable I couldn't sleep or honestly close my eyes. I don't know why, but for some reason I was really scared That night. I actually asked the nurse if I could come sit out at the nurse's station and was firmly told no. Well after said encounter with a nurse, I just laid there and in these rooms you're never in complete darkness. The walls had little LED lights in what looked like microwaves size windows that kept the room lit enough that a nurse could clearly see in. Well, the light in my room went out, not flickered. Not. I closed my eyes, not I fell asleep for a minute. It went out. Needless to say, I was freaked out and I just laid there too scared to move. When I started hearing what sounded like humming, it's not totally uncommon. The halls aren't quiet. Nurses chatting, moving around other patients. So I relaxed telling myself that the nurse would notice my light out and come in and hopefully fix it. Or better yet, come get me out of this room. I laid there and the humming turned into singing a woman's voice soft, like she was singing a lullaby that I really couldn't make out, but I just laid there trying not to think about how dark and cold it was, or how the voice was getting louder, but no one had noticed my light had gone out when it stopped. Now, I can't say it wasn't a nurse, but I know for a fact that I was alone in my room in the dark. When the light came back on, I was fully awake and I swear to God, I saw someone standing in front of my bed, a tall shadow standing there looking down on me. I couldn't make out the face. It was just all black. I screamed in my mind, I believed it was an adult who had gotten into my room from the other side of the floor. How I didn't know, I didn't care. But I will say without a shadow of a doubt, I saw someone. So I did what any 15-year-old teenager would do when faced with a possible insane adult alone in a room. I screamed, not just, ah, you surprised me. Scream. No, this was full blown help. I'm being torn apart by the hounds of hell. Screen. I got up, pressed my back into the bed, facing this person still completely in the shadows. The nurse, a male in his thirties came rushing in, nearly knocking open my door and off the hinges, and of course he flicked the lights on, which were LED and I was momentarily blinded when I could finally open my eyes. I was facing six nurses ready to strap me down to a gurney and light my rear up with a heavy dose of chill the F out. That's not funny, but it's funny. Naturally, they asked me what was going on, why I was screaming, what happened. I was so dazed. I could hear the sounds of other patients waking up, some yelling, crying, flipping out Naturally. I was too stunned to answer, and I was put into the little padded room for some quote unquote quiet time. I spent the whole night in there, much happier to be in a fully lit room with a constant video surveillance. The next day I had to talk to my therapist, and of course, he brought up the incident. I was an idiot and told him what happened, and he assured me that there was a no way that someone could have gotten into my room in the middle of the night. And we went through the whole PTSD theory, which he soon realized wasn't the case. Well, long story short, they checked the video of my room and they did admit that the lights had gone out, but that was it. They never told me what they saw afterwards. I guess they wouldn't want to set off a crazy person. So I understand that They moved me out of that room the next day and into a room with a girl around my age, and we never spoke, ever. She was weird but nice, and I would've gladly spent the rest of my time there in the quiet room if it meant staying out of the other room. Now again, can I honestly say it wasn't a person? No, but I will say I never felt right on the adult floor. And after I moved out of that room, I never heard the hum again or the singing or saw anything like that. Was it a ghost or something other Worldly? I haven't a clue, but whatever it was, it really freaked me out. And I'll never go to the ninth floor again. Yo, friend. I don't blame you. I wouldn't either. I would do whatever it took to not go back to that floor. This one is from Sensical, and this is a comment from 10 years ago. Psychiatric RN here, the place I used to work for five years was a small hospital that used to be a surgical center where they did some type of surgeries. I'm people died. I worked the night shift and would often get calls from the police saying there was 9 1 1 calls being made from the extension in the arts and crafts room. I assured them that nobody was in there making calls because nobody goes in there ever, especially at night. The caller would supposedly identify herself as satana, and would simply request help and hang up. It was the voice of a female, though I never heard it myself. 100%. True story. Believe me, when I say it was not a patient or staff. I knew where my staff was at all times and there were cameras everywhere. It got to the point where administration would get complaints from the police and send out mass emails ensuring that we don't let patients in there at night. We assured them that was not the case. Also, the PA system would often turn on by itself at night. Well, after the time we weren't supposed to use it, which was around 8:00 PM it would often turn on after 10 and into odd hours of the night. This would happen roughly two to three times a month. One time it turned on and the voice of what seemed like a child came on, we couldn't make out what was being said, and it was brief, only a couple of seconds long, then it stopped and came back on. This time we heard a dial tone, then an outgoing call, a phone was ringing. Um, I do not like that. That is a note for me. No, no, no. It was the same sound you'd hear as if trying to call someone, which was technically impossible for any of us to do since we'd have to dial seven. Seven to get the PA system on in the first place, which would prevent you from making a call once activated. Yeah, that's a nope, a nope. So the ringing phone continued to play through our system for hours and the patients became upset. We had no idea how to turn it off and there weren't any phones actually ringing anywhere in the hospital. It was a small hospital, so checking all of the phones didn't take us long.. We ended up calling maintenance to check it out, and he thought we were pranking him. It finally turned off on its own several hours later at around 6:00 AM Those are the two incidents that stand out the most to me. Yeah, no. First off, who is your ghost trying to call? They, I mean, are we making prank calls? I need to know, besides calling the police department, and I'm sure they did not appreciate that. I cannot pronounce this one. This one's name. But here we go. I was working an overnight shift at a nursing home on an Alzheimer's ward. It was about 2:30 AM and I was making rounds where I just peek into the rooms and make sure patients are where they should be. I go into one of the rooms and this 83-year-old woman is sitting straight up in her bed, staring at the wall. I slowly walk into the room and calmly ask her if she wants to lay back down. She turns her head slowly and looks me right in the eye and says they're coming for you dear. Then she starts laughing and I'm talking about full on hysterical, insane cackling. I almost pissed myself right there. I probably would have pissed myself. There would not have been an almost. She finally calmed down and I got her to lay back down when she was just about to go back to sleep. She looks at me again and says. I am going to miss you when they take you. That's not funny, but that is so funny, and goes right back to sleep. I was terrified the rest of the night. Yeah, I would've probably been terrified the rest of my actual life, not just the night. I probably would've never slept again, so no thank you. Here we go. This one is from Never Got Challenger. My mom told me this story from her time at a neuropsychiatric ward while she was in grad school. She was making her routine room checks and happened upon the most horrific scene I've ever heard of as far as happening to someone that I actually know in real life. This was during the night shift, and generally all the patient's bedroom doors should be closed, so she turns a corner and is heading down another hallway of rooms and notices down the hall. A door is open. She sees a staff member lying face down with their legs out of the door and their upper half into the room. Okay, let's just take a pause. I literally would have ran the other way. That is how scary movies start. If anybody hasn't seen one with that, like at the beginning, then you're not watching the right. Scary movies. You always go the other way. But I can guarantee you before we even finish this, that, that she's gonna go, she's gonna go in that direction and that's how people get Right. Okay. When she looks into the room. Yep. So she went. She sees the patient, a woman with severe postpartum psychiatric disorder who had gouged both of her eyes out of the socket with her bare hands, and was sitting cross-legged on the floor holding her eyes. Nope. No, no, no. Mm. Couldn't pay me enough. You could not, you could not pay me enough. The first staff member to witness the scene who was now lying face down on the floor, had had a heart attack when he first witnessed the woman while he was making his rounds. Yeah, I'm sure I would have two. So here's my mom screaming for any form of assistance while she's frantically trying to perform CPR on the initial staff member as a woman is sitting there rather calmly holding her own eyes. Mm. No. Mm-hmm. I can guarantee you that, um, if I had come upon the scene that I also would've had a heart attack, I would have. And just think like gouging your own eyes out how painful that had to be. You would think that that person would've been literally screaming as they did this to themself. I, I, I don't even know. I don't, there's, I have no words for that. What did you think, guys? What did you think about these stories? On one hand, we know that a lot of these hospitals have activity. A lot of these facilities have activity because when you go to places like this, not only psychiatric hospitals, but regular hospitals. Traumatic things happen. There are deaths, there are births, there are all kinds of things that happen. And this energy, you've gotta leave some of that right when you pass, or even if you're still alive. You know a lot of people say that when, major things happen in your life, you leave some of that energy behind when you leave, wherever you are, whether it's a hospital or a home. So I believe that these things do happen. But I also believe that there are people who have these psychotic breaks and then the veil is just so thin, whether it's from mental instability or just them being sensitive in nature in general. That allows them to see things that we can't see and experience things that we can't. But that's just my opinion. And that wraps up another episode of Let's Get Weirdish. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you did leave me a rating and review, I would appreciate it. And if you have your own weird story, please email me at Let's get weirdish pod@gmail.com. I hope to hear from you soon so until next time, stay weird. Okay.