Saigon hospital ghost stories 


For those who love the thrill of horror and mysteries, we don’t need to wait until Halloween to immerse ourselves in the spooky world of eerie beings and puzzling incidents.

In this article, we’ll continue with the paranormal tales shared by Dr Lê Công Thành, a practicing physician in Saigon at the time of his reports.

For more hospital ghost stories from this doctor who obviously loved to write, check out part 1 and part 2.


Story no. 9: a spirit foretelling a death


hospital ghost stories
Image credit: Brandon Holmes

In my last year as a medical student, my classmates and I were assigned to do internships at medical institutions of our choice for four weeks and complete theses before we could sit for graduation exams. 

I went to a small town in the west and applied for an internship at a small clinic in a village.

The clinic had one director, three physicians, and several nurses. It was large enough to accommodate 10 beds.

Because I didn’t have a stable income at that moment, the management allowed me to stay at the clinic so I could save money on my internship-period expenses.

At 11PM one evening, I was reading in the hall when I felt a cool breeze coming through the window.

Almost instantly, a young lady dressed like a nurse showed up at the door and told me that there was a dead patient in bed no. 4. I had never met this lady before and thought that she was a new staff member. She had fair skin, a pretty face, and looked as if she was in her 20s. 

After she walked away, I closed my book, rushed to inform the chief doctor, and walked with him towards the patients’ ward.

A heavy gloom permeated the room where the family members of the dead were mourning.

I jotted down the report, “Nguyễn Lệ Q., age 20. Cause of death: consumption of a bottle of pesticide.”

According to my knowledge, this young girl decided to commit suicide by drinking pesticide after finding out that her college boyfriend had been cheating on her.

I came to her bed and pulled the white cloth covering her aside to identify her face.

The moment I flipped the cloth away, I was so shocked that I dropped my pen.

Before my very eyes was the young nurse who appeared at the hall and informed me about a patient’s recent death.

Shaken up by the harrowing event, I moved out of the clinic and rented a room in town the next day.


Story no. 10: I got possessed


hospital ghost stories
A table of food offerings. Picture for illustration purposes only.
Image credit: Báo Tin Tức

This story happened two days ago, when my team was worshipping the ghosts on the 16th day of the lunar calendar.

All the food offerings were laid on the table and every staff member was burning incense.

A few minutes later, an incense stick was burning strongly and the fire spread to the plastic cups and newspapers nearby. We hurried to snuff out the burning incense to stop the fire from spreading. 

After that, we laid out the table and had lunch. Everything went smoothly until I felt an excruciatingly strong gust of air running from my back to my neck. As it felt cold and painful at the same time, I tried to shake and stretch my neck.

Before I knew it, I felt dizzy and lost consciousness.

When I regained consciousness, I saw myself lying on a bed and sweating profusely. My limbs were numb and my bed was surrounded with my colleagues who stared at me in fear.

I had no idea what had happened.

According to a medical worker, I had suddenly become a different person while lunching with them and even my voice became strange. 

“Out of the blue, you asked everyone, ‘How dare you eat the offerings before the incense burned out?’ and you started yelling at us,” she said. “You don’t remember anything?”

Of course I didn’t remember anything, but it started to dawn on me that I must have been possessed. 

It must have been because I had put out the burning incense and unintentionally offended the supernatural beings who were present. 


Story no. 11: a haunting crime scene


hospital ghost stories
Image credit: Piron Guillaume

When I was a medical student, I couldn’t afford to go on a summer holiday like my friends could so I asked a forensics teacher to let me tag along with him at work so I could learn new things.

Working in forensic science enhances your understanding to no end, but also offers you tons of terrifying experiences that you’d never imagine were possible. 

One night when I was doing my night shift, my teacher asked me to accompany him to a crime scene for investigation. I was very excited.

The crime scene was on the bank of a river surrounded with trees and bushes. All that was left was a human arm.

Because I was just a student, I was not allowed to enter the scene when everyone else was searching for the body of the victim. 

As I watched them work, I looked around and caught sight of a shadowy figure with long hair standing at a tree nearby. I was startled but told myself that it must have been someone from the forensic team. 

The team couldn’t find the body, so we cleared up the scene and brought the arm to the lab for analysis. My teacher said that the person, whose body had yet to be found, must have been dead for 26 hours.

After lying down to sleep, I could vaguely hear the sounds of a girl sobbing. I saw myself returning to the crime scene, walking slowly to the tree that I saw that night. This time, I met the girl with long hair again, and she told me that she had been robbed and murdered there.

The next morning, I told my teacher what happened but he just laughed it off, saying that I was thinking too much.  

When a police officer dropped by to discuss the case, my teacher joked that I dreamed of the dead victim standing at the tree. 

Interestingly, the officers decided to give my dream a shot. They dug up the area near the tree that afternoon and quickly spotted an arm. They continued digging and found the body, which had been decomposing and was stinking immensely. 


Story no. 12: the spirit of a pregnant woman


hospital ghost stories
Image credit: NeONBRAND

One evening, I visited my friend who was working at an international general hospital in Saigon. 

After we had been talking for a while, our food ran out and I decided to go to the hospital canteen to get some more food.

“Don’t go through Block C,” he said before I walked out the door. 

I was a bit surprised because Block C was closer to the canteen. Besides, it was not a morgue and I was too lazy to take a longer route. Therefore, I took the route that cuts through Block C.

After walking for a while, I felt chills down my spine and knew in my bones that something was not right there. As I was walking, I heard a woman weeping bitterly. 

That was strange. The section where I was strolling down was a surgery hall and nobody was in that area at that moment. I couldn’t help but turn my head and look at the passage, where I saw a woman crying alone. 

As I was about to approach the lady and asked her what was going on, I realized that it was 11.30PM and my intuition told me to not come near her.

All of a sudden, she looked up and turned to me with a pair of eyes so resentful and ferocious that my heart started to beat very fast. 

I took to my heels and made it to the canteen feeling out of breath. After buying some items, I returned to my friend’s room but took another route this time.

I told him what happened and he yelled at me, calling me foolhardy.

According to him, a serious accident happened in Block C one year ago. 

A pregnant lady was due to give birth that day and had been admitted into the hospital. The doctor in charge of giving her an ultrasound check had been slightly drunk and gave a wrong evaluation of her health conditions, which were graver than he had thought. She had to wait until the next day to be transferred into the emergency department and it was too late. Both the lady and her baby died. 

That doctor was fired for negligence and made compensations to the lady’s family, while the hospital management also made their apologies. However, the spirit of the lady was still lingering in Block C and many people had come across her. 

The hospital had invited ghost masters over to do some worshipping and ghostbusting but to no avail, probably because her resentment was too great.

I felt so terribly sorry for the lady in the story, who lost her life because of a doctor’s alcohol abuse and impaired judgement while working.


Story no. 13: a ride in a coroner’s van


hospital ghost stories
Image credit: Arron Choi

After I graduated, I applied for a job at a hospital. Because it was understaffed, I was very busy and always weary.

Our hospital had only two vans at the time. One was a real ambulance that carried people who were still alive, while the other, which looked like an ambulance, was actually a coroner’s van that carried dead people. 

Once, I saw the light on the coroner’s van flashing by itself even though nobody was using it.

A few days after that incident, I had an emergency shift late at night. However, my hospital didn’t have the capacity to treat the patient, so we had to transfer the case to a bigger hospital in town. 

When I stepped into a van that would be used to bring the critical patient to another hospital, I was stunned when I realized that it was the coroner’s van. 

“The ambulance is not working so we have to use this one,” the driver explained.

I felt that this was a bad omen but we didn’t have a choice. 

After reaching the intended hospital, the patient was sent into the ICU immediately while I and another nurse waited outside. Within a short time, I received news that the patient had passed away and would be handed back to us to bring to his home.

“I had a foreboding about this right in the beginning. How can you stay alive when you’re carried in a coroner’s van?” I thought to myself. 

On my way back, I was so tired that I dozed off. Suddenly, I heard the driver jamming the brakes as if we had crashed onto something.

I jumped out of my seat and asked the driver what was going on.

“Doctor! I think I just ran over someone,” he whispered to me with a bloodless face.

He and I rushed out of the van to see what was under the van.

There was nothing there.

The road where we were was a sequestered, rugged part of a rubber forest. We searched everywhere, from under the van to the roadside bushes, to see if the crashed object had been hurled anywhere nearby.  

Since we couldn’t find anything or anyone, I told the driver that maybe he was too weary and had thus made a mistake. 

We got back in the van and I fell asleep again. This time, I saw two or three people who looked lifeless sitting next to the dead patient. I was so scared that I kept my eyes shut for the rest of the journey. 

After going home and taking a bath, I reflected on what happened during the ride and wondered if the driver had run into any ghosts.


Hospital ghost stories from Dr Lê Công Thành


Fascinating and insightful, these 13 stories tell Dr Thành’s encounters with the paranormal world, from his time as a medical student until he had become a practicing physician. At this point, we can tell that even people who have been trained in science can believe in spiritual stuff.

Hopefully, these eerie tales can give you a more insightful glimpse into the paranormal world in medical settings.

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Cover image adapted from: NeONBRAND
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