This happened about 7 or 8 years ago, I can't really recall the exact time but it has been a very long time already.
I was working on this Nursing Home back when I still live in Baltimore, Maryland. I was a new Nurse back then and I was stationed at this skilled unit they called the Vent Unit. Now the patients or residents that stays here looked like they are in critical condition with their ventilators attached to their trachea and Peg tubes attached to their feeding pumps but they are actually on stable condition enough for them to be placed on our unit.
Our unit is like a cross road, I don't know how to describe it well but I'll try. The nurse's station is in the middle and shaped like circular where you can see the north, south, east, and west hallways leading to other units. The north hallway has a dead end that leads to a wall at the far end and nowhere else to go. That side of the hallway always creeps me out especially during the night shift where I always work.
One night, it was past midnight already and the lights were dimmed but the north hallway was particularly darker than the rest probably because it is a dead end. I was doing my chart checks when at the corner of my eye I saw a very tall shadow that just glided towards a resident's room. I was facing the East wing that time because I didn't want to be facing on the dark hallway and still that didn't spare me from witnessing something unusual.
I shrugged it off as my imagination but I can really feel something different that time. Anyway since it is my duty to do rounds to make sure my patients are ok, I went to the North hallway and checked on my patients and nope I didn't see anything unusual or any tall shadows, so I went to do what my duties needed me to do that night.
Fast forward the next day, as I come in for my shift that night and I was getting report, I was surprised that the endorsing nurse told me that the patient in room such and so passed away that morning. I immediately recalled the tall shadowy figure that I saw out of the corner of my eye that went through that side of the hallway rooms at the far end. I wasn't particularly sure which room but I knew it was near the resident that passed away. Again I passed it off as a coincidence.
A few months after something happened that scared the crap out of me while working there. As I was passing meds past midnight for some scheduled meds on my patients. I was again on the North Hallway and it was pretty dim and everything is quiet except for some occasional dings and alarms of some vents but nothing unusual.
As I entered on this particular room, it was pretty dark since the lights are off in the room but there are dim lights on the hallway behind me. Now the rooms have these wide windows and usually they are covered at night by curtains or blinds but on this particular room it was wide open. I can't see what's outside since it's pitch black outside but the window served as a mirror since I can see my reflection, and the reflection of the hallway behind me when I enter the room.
This gives me the creeps until today and I remember when I entered the room I felt like there was something behind me. You know that feeling like when you are being watched and you feel your hairs behind your neck standing up with that prickly sensation all over your body as your heart starts to raise and pound faster. That's what I felt and what made it worse was when I was trying to search for the room's light switch, I roamed my eyes all over the room while feeling with my hand on the wall for the switch when my eyes landed on the reflection of the window where I saw a tall shadowy figure standing just behind me. My heart literally skipped a beat and as soon as I felt the switch I turned it on and the figure is gone from the reflection on the window.
I was so freaked out that I never said a word that shift and just did my work to occupy my mind. Even my coworker asked if I was ok but I just showed them I was even if inside my mind I wasn't.
The next day as I come back for work, I heard the terrible news that the patient died that morning, where I saw the shadowy figure.
I don't know for sure if they were grim reapers or death but that was one of my unforgettable moments that I'll remember when I was working on that place. Thank you for reading.
I am also confused with what I have experienced. I don't dismiss the idea that it might not be a grim reaper at all. Who know's it might have been a ghost of a love one.
In some cultures they believe that when people die, they see their deceased loved ones as if they were fetching them. I don't see apparitions well sometimes but one thing is for certain, it was indeed an entity or something that I have witnessed, be it a ghost or a reaper that I do not know.