I used to work 3rd shift at a small 44 bed nursing home. We were supposed to be an assisted living facility for people who were cognizant yet unable to live on their own and a rehabilitation center for those recovering from surgery or stroke. In reality we were mainly taking care of elderly residents with alzheimer's and dementia. Needless to say people passed away there.
My duties were fairly simple: come in, see to any residents who weren't already in bed, check the ones who were in bed and then make rounds every two hours to make sure everyone was clean and still breathing.
It's almost been seven years since I worked there so I don't remember the order in which these events happened so I'm just going to list them by order of 'severity':
Every so often I would come into work super tired from staying up too late, so after each of my rounds I would set my phone alarm for an hour and a half and take a nap in one of the recliners. Next thing I knew there's a loud *WHAP!*, like someone dropping a heavy, hardback book on the floor, but right next to my ear causing me to jump up awake. I would look around and see that no-one was there before rushing down the hall to check to see if my residents were alright, which they were. After that I'd start my round. This happened at least two times that I remember and always woke me up 1-2 minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off.
The second wasn't really an event, per se, it was just something one of the residents said to me that kind of creeped me out:
One night when I put of my residents, a sweet old lady named Mrs. Lindsey, to bed she looked at me with a smile and said "you have the most beautiful angel watching over you (or behind you, I can't really remember exactly)." Mrs. Lindsey did have dementia but she was cognizant enough to recognize people and sometimes circumstances that happen around her, so hearing her say something like that was more than a little creepy.
Lastly is one that still gives me chills and makes me a little paranoid just thinking about it even today:
Most of the rooms were just rectangles with one bed on each end, a wardrobe at the foot of each bed for resident's clothing and a small end table beside the bed for smaller effects and our gloves and wipes. There are windows on the wall opposite the door from the hall. I was in the middle of one of my rounds when I entered one of the rooms to check on the residents and as I was digging through the end table looking for gloves I started to feel the muscles in my neck, shoulders and back start to tense up. It felt like a weight had just settled across my shoulders. What's more it felt like there was something huge directly behind me. By huge I mean *at least* 8' because I'm 6' and whatever this was felt like it was standing over me looking down. I couldn't move, I could hardly blink, all I could do was stare straight ahead at the windows. The only thing I could think was "ohcrapohcrapohcrap". Then, as suddenly as it had started, it was gone and I could move again. When I turned around all that was behind me was a geri-chair and wheelchair. I don't know how long the feeling lasted and didn't think to check the time. It felt like an hour, but couldn't have been more than a few minutes.
I don't remember if there were any sounds or anything like that, just a huge, imposing pressure right behind me. As for my policy on determining what I was thinking about beforehand: I was essentially on "autopilot mode", my body was working while my brain was basically off, so I wasn't thinking about anything. When this happened it snapped me fully alert and aware. This is the reason I never keep my back to any opening for longer than I have to as I don't like the idea of something like that coming up behind me again.
The funny thing is is that the room I was in at the time was Mrs. Lindsey's. For some reason I didn't realize that until just a few months ago, though I'm pretty sure it doesn't correlate with what she said. Nothing about that encounter seemed very 'angelic' to me.
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