Sitting Tenants and Other Stories

The Grey Lady

Now that the nights are drawing in and the weather outside is cold, it is a good time of year to sit indoors by a roaring fire and listen to a tale or two, share a poem or tap your feet to a Ceilidh band while enjoying a pint of real ale, a glass of full bodied red or a 'cheeky wee dram' of something stronger. So friend, sit down and take the weight off your feet and I'll share a tale that is true as can be.

Twenty-one years ago, I had just finished basic training and was posted to a large military hospital in a famous Garrison town in the south of England. After ten weeks of training in fieldcraft, PT, weapon handling and drill and was ready to take on the world. I was ready for war, but instead I got a ward. Ward 10 to be precise. This was a male surgical ward that primarily dealt with soldiers undergoing elective surgery. Tonsillectomies, hernia repairs and dental extractions were our bread and butter. There were emergency cases as well, but these were few and far between.

The hospital itself was a classic example of 'red brick' mid-Victorian architecture with a main corridor that stretched for a quarter of a mile from which the various wards and departments ran at right angles like so many ribs attached to a backbone. The centre of the hospital was dominated by a large rectangular block that housed the administrative offices, a library and a chapel above which stood a most impressive clock tower. The layout of the upper floor was similar to the ground floor, with a long corridor and the wards sitting directly above those on the ground floor. The upper floor was chicaned in places access was restricted at certain points as a result of locked doors barring the way. Each of the upstairs wards could be accessed from the entrance to the ground floor wards via a staircase.

On my first ever shift, the night staff mentioned in their handover, that their shift had been disturbed by a loud crash. When they left the office to investigate, they found one of their patients, a frail, elderly gentleman, sitting on the edge of his bed. This patient was very breathless and was usually too weak to move around his bed unaided. When the nurses asked him what had happened, the patient replied that he had fallen out of bed, but that the 'other nurse' had lifted him back into bed. Assuming that their patient was a confused or dreaming, the nursing staff did not think any more of it and thought that the 'other nurse', might have been the 'Night Superintendent' (a Nursing Officer) or the 'Night Extra' (a supernumerary nurse who could provide extra help to hard-pressed ward staff if needed). The next time 'Night Super' and 'Night Extra' made their rounds, the ward nurses asked them if they had been to Ward 10 since their earlier visit.

When this matter was discussed in handover, the general consensus was that the patient in question must have seen 'The Grey Lady'. Over the years, I have heard similar stories in many hospitals, so please excuse me if you have heard such a tale before. According to legend, the Grey Lady was the ghost of a young nurse who had fallen in love with a patient, an officer who had been wounded in the Boer War. The story was that this young lady had accidentally administered a fatal dose of laudanum to her beloved, which led to his death. Stricken with grief, the young lady apparently committed suicide by throwing herself from the top of the hospital. There were two versions, one that she had leapt from the clock tower, the other that she had done so from the walkways that ran between the upstairs wards, which in those days were not enclosed. The Grey Lady was thought to visit patients in need of care as they approached their last hours, had allegedly been known to help patients sit on commodes and on one occasion had supposedly conjured up a cup of tea for an overworked male nurse. If rumour was to be believed, whenever the Grey Lady was near, one could smell the scent of lavender.

As with any tales of the supernatural, of everyone who knew the story, some were open-minded while others were dismissive, regarding is as nonsense. However, I can tell you this much; even the most rational and unimaginative souls were often reluctant to make the walk between the wards along the unlit upstairs corridor at night. This was not without reason; I know of at least one junior Doctor who fell victim to an amusing prank that saw him paged by the night staff on Ward 10, led by 'Night Super' along the upstairs corridor (which had been sprayed by lavender water), to be greeted by the sight of one of the nurses dressed in her grey outdoor cape, silhouetted by the light from a shaded angle-pose lamp and kneeling on a chair to give the impression of floating in mid-air. Apparently the poor Doctor was scared out of his wits.

For my part, I sat in the open-minded camp. I have always been fascinated by the supernatural and having been a nurse for four years at that time, was no stranger to death and had witnessed some inexplicable behaviour among dying patients and had heard many nurses claim to have been visited by patients shortly after their passing.

As I settled into the routine of working at the hospital, I found that night shifts could be spooky at times and although I never saw anything untoward, my colleagues and I noticed that certain areas of the ward were often cold and on several occasions, we answered 'nurse-call' buzzers that sounded from unoccupied beds. The hospital was a forbidding place and on dark autumn nights when the wind whistled through the trees and the fallen leaves skittered along the asphalt, the walk back to my accommodation in an adjoining Barracks was not always a pleasant experience. More than once, I made that walk convinced that someone was behind me, only to discover that I was alone.

In those days, Irish Republican terrorist organisations posed a substantial threat and, like all members of staff, I had to take my turn on fire and security duties, during which we had to conduct patrols of the leafy hospital grounds and internal areas. I always half-expected to bump into some sort of grisly phantom during the course of these stints.

Strange then, that I should have had my encounter with the 'Grey Lady' on a day shift and in the presence of two other witnesses. It was a Sunday afternoon in February and the ward was virtually empty. I was on shift with 'P' a no-nonsense male Nursing Officer, who had previously served as a Police Officer in one of Britain's toughest cities and 'F' a young Healthcare Assistant. Having let the morning staff go home early, we had spent the first half of our shift finishing the 'weekend cleaning' before settling down in the office to play a board game.

As the afternoon wore on, we were disturbed by a figure walking on to the ward. This person was walking at a sharp pace and passed both windows of the ward office before promptly disappearing at the point at which she would have passed the open door to which my chair was adjacent. I say 'she' because I had a full view of the apparition. Female in form, the 'Grey Lady' was a solid mass, dark grey in appearance, with no discernible facial features, but the outline of someone wearing old fashioned ward dress and a cape.

No sooner had our visitor vanished, 'P', 'F' and I looked at each other with incredulity; all of us had seen the apparition. Without hesitation, I stepped out of the office and looked up and down the ward before checking the ward kitchen, the corridor and stairs. There was no sign of anybody. On returning to the ward, I was suddenly hit by a feeling that I can only describe as complete unease and nervous excitement. Because it was now approaching dusk, I switched on the lights and we carried on with the latter half of our shift.

Discussing the event afterwards, I was convinced that we had witnessed an appearance of the famous Grey Lady, whilst 'P' admitted to having seen 'something', but would not be drawn on his opinion as to what it was. 'F' thought she may have imagined it. Opening the sash window in the office and changing the angle of the swing doors, I remained convinced that the spectral visitation was not a trick of the light or optical illusion. I know what I saw, and what I saw was the faceless shape of a woman in nurse's uniform who vanished into thin air.

So, my friend. That is that – my ghost story, such as it is. The hospital closed two years later, the victim of Defence cuts. I visited it some years later, finding it boarded up, but still guarded by the Ministry of Defence Guard Service. One of them told me that the Grey Lady could still be seen making her rounds of the hospital and that in certain parts of the building, the guard dogs would be difficult to control; snarling and barking at the empty spaces. I could not help but think how lonely this late member of my profession must have become with no patients, or staff to care for.