Yahoo Lifestyle "I Killed 22 Men": 35 Shocking Death Bed Confessions From Nurses Who Work With The Dying
Recently, Reddit user Repulsive-Refuse-732 asked, "Nurses of Reddit, what's the most shocking, bizarre, or unexpected confession a patient has ever made to you right before they passed away?" Here are some of the most eerie and shocking.*
NOTE: There are mentions of sexual assault, domestic violence, and murder, including lynchings and infanticide.
*We also used some answers from this Reddit thread.
1."I took care of a WW2 veteran with dementia. He would repeatedly say the number '22', and the family never knew its significance. The number didn't align with any significant events or dates they were aware of. The day before he died, his mental state became incredibly clear, and he started telling the staff, '22 men. I killed 22 men over there.'"
2."My aunt was a hospice nurse, and they had a new patient arrive. No one knew much about him, except he had no family and no one came to visit him. He was in his late 60s, and his medical proxy was a lawyer. My aunt was in the guy's room one night checking on him, and the man bolted upright in bed from a deep sleep and screamed that she needed to protect him 'from the people on the floor' who were going to take him away. She said it was almost like a scene from a horror movie. And just like that, the man collapsed back on the bed and went into cardiac arrest and died. It turned out the guy had been sentenced to life in prison for two homicides."
"He killed his ex-wife and her new boyfriend, and while serving his life sentence, he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and somehow gotten compassionate parole. My aunt was convinced the 'people in the floor' were demons coming to drag him to Hell. No one came to the guy's funeral except for my aunt and the guy's lawyer. His kids abandoned him."
3."I'm a nursing assistant and definitely have some stories. I've had a few senior women who are in different stages of dementia describe the violent sexual assault they experienced as children. Many of the stories were similar in the sense that when they told their parents, they were blamed or not taken seriously. It was really heartbreaking, but I never knew if they were actually true stories."
"I once had a man who was extremely sick, confused, and at the end stages of life. I had only dealt with him on two separate occasions a few days apart, so I wasn't super familiar with him. He confessed on both occasions to beating a woman to death in great detail. The when, the where, and the why. I reported it but never heard anything back. None of the staff who had worked with him previously had heard this. One nurse told me someone had mentioned he may have vaguely mentioned something about it but didn't know the details. I'm not sure if it was true, but the number of details he had and the way he said he was ready to be put away for it was really disturbing."
4."I had this one old man where I used to work who would never talk unless his daughter was in the room. She asked something about her stepmother, who passed away a couple of years before I started working there. Her death was the reason he had to come to the nursing home. One of the days after she left, I was getting him ready for bed, and the last thing he said before passing was, 'I should have finished the job of drowning her and burning down the house.'"
5."I've had a few people casually tell me, 'I'm going to die today.' The first time someone who was awake, alert, and not in distress told me that (then died later that day), I was spooked. Then, I learned to believe them."
6."An old lady told me she had a 22-year-long affair with a bus driver, and all five of her adult children might be his. I didn't pass that along."
7."I'm an RN, male and white, and I worked with many older people. I had one 90-plus-year-old man talk about how he had been a part of the KKK in his youth and how ashamed he was of taking part in several lynchings and other assaults on Black people and even some white Catholics. He'd had several CNAs and Patient Care techs who were either Black or Latino, and he was always so polite and sometimes even loving towards them. I could tell how deeply his past haunted him. He asked me not to share this information with any of the staff. In the last few days, before he became too weak to speak anymore, he asked one of the Black RNs I worked with if she forgave him. She did not know what he was asking forgiveness for but told him she did and helped him 'get right with Jesus.' He passed peacefully a couple of days later."
"I also had a woman who was 100+ tell me she had been badly abused by her first husband but was stuck in the marriage because of the culture at that time. He'd been thrown from a horse (that he'd also been very cruel to) and kicked several times. She ignored his cries for help and let him die. She said she had never told anyone about it, but she felt guilty for it for over 80 years and could still hear him screaming for help. We talked about it for a long time (I was working the night shift, and it gave me a chance to spend extra time with some patients). My experience working with people with PTSD helped me to help her to see that she was acting to protect herself and others from him and responding from a place of natural fear. Before she passed, she told me I had helped her find peace with it."
8."[My patient] told me that she liked Hitler because she was poor as a child, and she would only get new shoes when she went to the train station to see the Jews off to the concentration camps."
9."I brought a pediatric patient (about 14 years old) back for emergency heart surgery. He was very nervous. The outlook looked grim. I held his hand as they began to induce anesthesia. He looked like he was about to cry. I told him there was nothing to worry about — he was gonna be just fine. He gripped my hand super tight as the propofol took hold, looked me in the eye, and said, 'I'm going to die, aren't I?' I told him I would be there in PACU when he woke up. He died on the table. I was the last thing he ever saw."
"Eight years later, I still think about that kid. I still see his face. The fear in his eyes. I still feel guilty that I lied right to his face...
I am in a much better place now. I'm still in pediatrics, but I have regular therapy and am in a strong place mentally. The guilt I feel doesn't weigh on me like it did all those years ago, thankfully. Hug your kids and tell them you love them."
10."Working in oncology at the time, we had an older gentleman with liver cancer that had spread everywhere, including his brain. This made him very vague and often nonsensical. He was in and out of consciousness and never really answered questions appropriately — his answers were very random. Anyways, one day, I was taking his vitals, and he grabbed my hand, looked me straight in the eyes, and just said to me, 'You know, I have killed so many people.' I kind of just froze and didn't know what to say, but he let go and went back to sleep."
"Often people have a moment of clarity/make sense for a brief episode right before they pass. I didn't take it as a threat or anything; it just freaked me out. He passed away that evening after my shift was over, so I always wondered if this was a deathbed confession of sorts."
11."We had an older woman who had gone downhill and was on her deathbed for about a week. She kept asking me to read the Bible to her, and as soon as I would start, she would scream that he was coming to get her and that he was waiting right behind me. It was very unnerving at 3 a.m. Finally, I asked her who was coming to get her, and she replied with, 'The devil's coming for me because I let my husband rape our kids and did nothing.'"
12."I work with dementia clients. I have had so many pre-death confessions. Sometimes, it's as if the dementia leaves them just before they pass away. A mind-blowing confession I always think about was a veteran who confessed to all the war crimes he committed and how he felt so terrible for all the things he did. He said this was the reason he had no relationship with his family, and, to be honest, I don't blame his family for not having anything to do with him."
13."A young man with AIDS who didn't believe in treatment said he hopes in his next reincarnation that he takes better care of himself and that he wished he would have taken the meds."
14."I've had a couple of people tell me they committed murder. Neither was 100% in control of their mental facilities, so I can't know if it was factual. However, one woman was so detailed that my feeling is she did it (she said she smothered her newborn because she believed it would prevent her and older kids from escaping an abusive relationship, saying, 'He would have killed me if I tried to take his child away...going to be with God was better than having that man as a father'). She died soon after. I was a very young nurse and honestly would much rather have not heard about it."
15."[My patient confessed] that none of her adult kids were her husband's. There were four of them, and none of them knew."
16."The first death I witnessed was in a dementia ward. The patient had been sad and depressed as long as I'd known her. No matter what we did to cheer her up, it just didn't stick. One morning I went in to her room to get her out of bed and make her ready for the day, she sat up in her bed with her feet straight out. She somehow looked like a little child, and she was smiling. Delighted that she looked happy, I exclaimed: 'Are you already up, friend?' She answered, so happy and so smiley: 'Yes, I'm going home today.' I took her to the bathroom, and right there in my arms, she went home."
"I was young, and it scared me back then, but now I cherish that memory. We should all be so lucky to leave the world happy and content."
17."I mostly work with pediatric patients but sometimes see adult patients on call for other nurses. Most recently, Jim (in his eighties) told me his grandpa was sitting in the chair in the corner of his room. He said, 'I know he's dead. But he's there.' I asked if it was scaring him, and he said, 'No, but he's telling me not to take my medications.' I asked him what he thought would happen if he stopped his meds, and he said, 'You know.' We stopped his medications, and Jim died a week later."
"I've had a couple of affairs mentioned to me by patients, and one guy who wanted me to find his second family he'd abandoned who wanted nothing to do with him (they declined). There were lots of estranged children/estranged parents. Usually, people pull it together for the patients. Sometimes it's a mess."
18."Lots from COVID stick with me. ICU nurse here. Many passed due to vaccine misinformation. I can think of patients who told me that they wanted the vaccine after they were so sick. I remember one in particular — his wife had recently passed from COVID, and he wanted to watch her funeral but had no way of watching it. He was an older man without much technological experience. I was able to pull up the live stream using my phone and let him watch. After the funeral was over, he called me in the room to tell me he was ready to pass. He was extremely sick but still conscious and wanted all oxygen and meds to be turned off. We gave him morphine and versed, and he passed in less than ten minutes."
"I frequently flash back to all the patients that we gave iPads so they could FaceTime their family one last time before being intubated (a death sentence). Some patients would get to that point at 2 a.m., and they would call their families multiple times without anyone picking up. It still breaks my heart.
I also had a patient close to discharge tell me about dreams they had where the reaper followed them everywhere they went. While waiting for his ride to come pick him up, he went into cardiac arrest, and we never got him back.
This isn't a confession per se, but the eeriest story I've ever encountered.
We had a patient in the ICU for months who was sick with liver failure, perforated bowels, CRRT...the works. He was so yellow (from the liver failure) he almost looked like he was glowing. He eventually went into cardiac arrest and passed away, so we sent him to the morgue and cleaned the room. A few hours later, we admitted an older, confused man with dementia for a fall. I was moving him over to his bed, and the first thing he asked was, 'Why is there a yellow man standing in the corner of my room?!' I was shaking."
19."In a geriatric psych ward, we had a patient who would scream and be desolate, stating he had hurt 'those girls' by touching them inappropriately. We couldn't make heads or tails of it but tried everything to calm him. He always needed chemical sedation during these events, which was sometimes two times a day."
"We talked to his son: he had no female family members or such (the patient was the only child of only children who had two sons), but we let him know his father's words.
The patient ended up dying. I'm sure he molested some girls somewhere in history, just none who could be identified. He tortured himself over it in his last few weeks, so I hope it wasn't a delusion."
20."My aunt was a nurse and had some pretty strange stories about it. I think the worst of all was about another nurse who was brought after a car crash. She was terrified about someone 'speeding up her pass' because of her injuries. She told my aunt that was a common practice and admitted doing it herself several times."
21."I'm a community nurse. The local vicar had a heart attack and was resuscitated by his wife and ambulance staff. He was brought into the hospital for a bypass. He arrested and resuscitated on the table. He was back home, and I was seeing him for dressing changes, etc. He and I were chatting, and he said, 'God obviously wanted him by his side'…we chuckled. He went out with his wife in the car for the first time since his discharge that lunchtime and was killed by a tractor as they pulled out of the driveway. His wife was fine."
22."I worked in a nursing home for about a decade doing hospice, rehab, and all kinds of long-term care stuff. Anyway, I had a fellow who had worked at the Army Film Unit in LA during the war. As he was dying, when it looked like he wasn't going to make it through the night, I sat with him and just talked. He was remarkably lucid the entire time. He told me that he'd been present at the 'Zoot Suit Riots' and had stabbed a man to death and was never prosecuted. I never could find any evidence of anyone having been killed during those five days in LA when the riots took place. Maybe he killed someone not related to the fray at all."
"Anyway...he also told me about getting a blowjob from Rosemary Clooney in a bar on Sunset, so, who knows."
23."Doctor here — working in the deep south, I've heard a lot of patients regret disowning their gay/lesbian children and the relationship they could've had. Unfortunately, rigid religious/political dogma tears apart more families than most people realize. Life is short. Accept people, especially the ones you love, for who they are and not who you would like them to be. That's always been my takeaway lesson from hearing these stories."
24."This just so happened to be the first death I experienced in the hospital as a tech. This palliative care patient was circling the drain. When I was Q2 turning (turning the patient over in bed to prevent bed sores), she woke up, grabbed my arm, and said, 'I'm sorry I killed you, son,' then went. I still can't get that look of horror out of my head, and that was years ago."
25."My father told me and my mother he had stolen my mother's wedding jewelry a couple of years earlier and sold it to invest in stocks; he thought it was a sure thing. He lost all the money, and everybody in the family blamed my oldest brother because he had a bad gambling addiction and he stole from everyone multiple times before. We never told anyone about this. Even 11 years later, everyone still thinks it was my brother."
26."My friend told me that one of her patients, hours from death, told her, 'The only thing I regret in life is not telling my baby boy (who I found out was 20 at the time) that I accept him.' It didn't hit her hard until she was told that his son was a transgender man; this choked her up a lot and even choked me up a bit. Sadly, he died a few hours later, before he could tell his son (the man was roughly 50 and had terminal cancer)."
27."I had a patient who was a COVID/vaccine-denier despite being in an ICU with COVID. His last words were, 'I didn't think it was real.'"
28."I'm not a nurse, but when my great-grandma was dying, she was convinced my mom was having a baby and wanted to know if it was a girl or boy. My mom replied by telling her she was not pregnant, and after asking the same of my aunt, my great-grandma went, 'Oh, guess I was wrong.' Exactly nine months later, I was born."
29."I had an older lady in for shortness of breath. She was a very petite but otherwise healthy 90-year-old who lived independently at home. She had been with us for about five hours at this point. She was ready for imaging, so her husband went to get her an overnight bag, and we headed to imaging. She was fully lucid and had stable blood pressure and sinus rhythm. She asked me to tell her husband when he came back that she loved him very much and had enjoyed her life with him. Fifteen minutes later, we returned to the room. I plugged her monitor back into the podium, and she arrested."
"She didn't get to tell him she loved him that one last time, as I reassured her she would. I often think about that man. I think he would have shortly passed from a broken heart, the way he looked at her after 70+ years of marriage."
30."This is one of my favorites. This 98-year-old guy had heart failure and decided to go for comfort care only. He was on a lot of meds to keep him comfortable until his room was ready. I was one-on-one with him in the ED, basically keeping him well so he could pass in peace when his family and friends arrived. I asked him, 'So, 98 yrs. What have you learned?" His response was awesome. He said, 'Sex. If I knew the last time I had it was going to be the last time, I would not have been such a gentleman.' I don't know why, but these words in his halting gasps always make me laugh. Approach everything with gusto, ladies and gentlemen, like it might be your last time."
31."Back when I was a CNA at a nursing home about six years ago, our scrub color was either teal, purple, or medium blue, and that day, I happened to wear my new light blue scrubs that were a little brighter than technically allowed. I only add this detail because I think it might have played a role here. There was this one resident who was in really rough physical and mental shape due to severe liver failure and other compounding issues over the years. She never spoke more than a moan and couldn’t really maintain eye contact or do much. She would just need to be turned and cleaned up often. The day I was wearing those new scrubs and in there cleaning her like normal, she suddenly looked right at me and, in a very soft, clear voice, said, 'You look like an angel.'"
"I remember being pretty shocked that she spoke out loud and kinda just said, 'Isn't this a pretty color??' She went back to being nonverbal for the rest of the shift, and I remember thinking about it a lot until I went home. When I got back in two days later, I found out she had died in her sleep that night. I never told anyone she spoke because I started to doubt myself and felt really weird."
32."Nurse here. An older lady gave me some questionable advice. She was this 90-something Italian nonna, all dressed in black skirts and dripping with rosary beads and crucifixes, very Catholic. She told me, 'To be happy in life, you need three men. One for the money, one for the love, one for the boom-boom-boom' (sex). Can't say I agree with her, but it's certainly memorable."
33."I wasn't a nurse, but a CNA working in dementia care. I was helping a resident with a bath, having a typical conversation with him about his day, my day, etc. Regarding his dementia, it was considered a 'great' day. Near the end, he thanked me for the help, but then he quickly grabbed my hand, saying, 'Thank you for being here [daughter's name].' She hadn't visited him in a long time."
"He dozed off as I was cleaning up supplies, and when I patted his hand as a goodbye gesture not to wake him, I realized he had passed. It really shaped my perception of both death and love."
34."A patient once told me he wished he had worked less and spent more time traveling and being with friends and family. He died the next day, not on my shift. It stuck in my head. A few years later, I retired, and this was one of the reasons. It changed my perspective."
35.And finally..."He didn't die, BUT…we had a patient come into the ER who had a partial airway obstruction. He thought he was a goner. He told his wife on the way in that he'd been having a decadeslong affair. Annnnd, of course, he ended up being okay. The wife left his room and did NOT come back."
Have you ever witnessed a deathbed confession or any other freaky things people said on their deathbed? Let us know in the comments or via this anonymous form, and you could be featured in an upcoming BuzzFeed Community post.
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
