41. The Tall Cowboy
My mom used to be a RN at a hospital in a small western town. This hospital was connected to a senior living home and at night, the RN over-watched both sides of the building (hospital and living home). She was usually the overnight RN and would have either one or two CNAs working as well. She has experienced this apparition about 6 or 7 times during her 10 year stint there and everyone has referred to the apparition as “The Man in Black”. Each experience was identical except for the location in the building.
Frequently throughout the night, she would have to do her rounds (checking vitals, etc.) and would have to walk around a corner from the nurses’ station/ER towards the (6) beds in the hospital and towards the senior home. She would see the apparition either right after rounding the corner or right after walking out of a room and walking to the next. Outside of the next room, she would see the same apparition. The apparition was of a person in a black, old (old west type) suit with worn black cowboy boots and worn black cowboy hat to match. The creepiest thing about this man (assuming) is that his face was not very distinct. She would describe it as though a man’s face was drawn with charcoal and slightly smeared making it slightly blurred. He was about 6’5″ and would tower over her 5’5″. But when ever she would see him (whether its 10 feet or 3 feet away), he would stand there looking at her and then turn and walk into the room he was outside of. When she would walk into that room, there would not be any other person in there or anything out of place. The first few times scared her to a panic but she slowly just went on without letting it freak her out. But with this man came some extra attention to the patient.
The kicker was that, in about 90% of all the experiences seen by other RNs as well, the patient’s health would deteriorate in the next few days and the patient most often passed away shortly after. So, whenever the over night RN saw “The Man in Black”, extra precautions would be taken with that patient. Another weird thing about the apparition is that it is always seen by just the RN. Not a single CNA has personally seen the apparition. My mom always said that he knew who would be able to help the most at the time. I, on the other hand, took it as the completely opposite. I always thought that it was almost to mock the RNs because he would let them know that something was going to happen but they could not do anything about it. Even though I am not an RN to see him, it still creeps me out every time I walk down the halls and she points out where she has seen him.
