Her Grandmother Was A Nurse And Had A Coworker Who Loved Filling Up A Bird Feeder For Residents To Enjoy, But After Her Coworker Passed Away In A Car Accident, The Bird Feeder Mysteriously Remained Full Despite No One Else Refilling It
During World War II, this woman’s grandmother dove into her nursing career while part of the Cadet Nurse Corps. Once the war ended in 1945, her grandma officially became a registered nurse and worked in a hospital in her hometown for 12 years. She spent most of her career working the cardiac floor but moved around to areas where she was needed.
Even though her grandmother adored her job, she felt like she had no other option but to find work somewhere else after an incident involving one of the doctors she worked for. So, her grandma started a new job at a nursing home, where she continued working until she eventually retired many years later.
Her grandfather passed away before she was born, so she hadn’t had the opportunity to get to know him in person, instead learning about him through photos and stories that her mother relayed to her. While her grandma didn’t talk about her late husband much, she didn’t mind her daughter passing down stories about him.
Several years after her grandfather’s death, her grandmother met a waitress named Clovie at her favorite local restaurant. The two women lived together for the remainder of her grandmother’s life. Her family lived in the South, where most of the citizens in the area were devout Baptists, and society wasn’t as accepting during this time. Even though everyone knew that her grandmother and Clovie were romantically involved, everyone still spoke of them as just “‘roommates.'”
Years ago, her grandma and grandpa purchased a farm, and her grandma and Clovie continued with its upkeep and were incredibly successful with it. They had enough money to eventually hire farmhands, so they had more time to spend on their jobs outside the farm.
Over the course of her grandmother’s nursing career, she had some odd experiences. When her grandma was in her 30s, she was working at the nursing home where a resident named Thomas was living. Thomas was able to speak but often didn’t choose to. He moved slowly and enjoyed wheeling himself around the facility, choosing to arrive over an hour early for meals or activities. Thomas was unable to get dressed on his own, and he couldn’t alert a nurse if he needed to use the bathroom.
He had two children who put two bird feeders outside his window. Nearly every visit, they brought a seven-pound bag of birdseed with them, regardless of how much leftover birdseed Thomas still had stored in his closet. In the beginning, maintenance agreed to be responsible for filling the bird feeders. Several months later, though, they said they didn’t have enough time in their day to continuously refill the feeders and refused to keep up with the task.
A nurse’s aide named Nellie, who worked directly with her grandmother, chose to take on the responsibility of filling the bird feeders. Whenever the birds were almost out of food, she would fill the feeders, which it seemed like Thomas was grateful for. Everybody noticed that Thomas seemed sad when his birds stopped coming around, so after Nellie began filling the feeders regularly and the birds returned, everyone was thrilled to see him in high spirits again.
Nellie was dedicated to keeping the bird feeders full. Nellie was kind and young and cared deeply about bringing joy to her residents’ lives. She was a dependable employee, always arriving several minutes early for her shifts, and her co-workers and residents could always count on her to lend a hand.
Hajakely – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual bird
“As my Memaw always pointed out in this part of the story, the good die young. Nellie was only 23 when a drunk driver hit her head-on as she was on her way home, having stopped off at the grocery store after her shift. It was bad enough to be a closed-casket funeral. But according to Memaw, Nellie wasn’t really gone,” she said.
About a week after Nellie passed away, a nurse mentioned that they should refill the bird feeders, pointing out that since no one had done so in over a week, they were most likely empty. Nellie had been replaced by a nurse’s aide named JoAnn, who was instructed to check the feeders.
When JoAnn peered outside Thomas’s window, she informed the nurse that the feeders were still full. From then on, anytime someone looked out the window, the feeders were full, despite no one admitting to filling them.
The nurses checked with employees who worked the night shift, as well as administrative employees, and no one had filled them. They even asked the maintenance employees who had earlier given up on refilling the feeders, and they hadn’t taken up the responsibility, either.
“Eventually, they all started to joke that it must be Nellie’s spirit taking care of Thomas’s bird feeders,” she explained.
Eight months after Nellie’s passing, Thomas passed away at 99. His children donated his bird feeders to the nursing home, so the feeders remained where they had always been, as well as the birdseed in Thomas’s closet. As time passed, the feeders were still continuously full, and no one admitted to filling them.
A new resident started living in his room shortly after Thomas’s death. The woman who moved in loved the bird feeders outside the window. However, since Thomas’s children were no longer bringing more birdseed, the food in the closet ran out over time, and strange, inexplicable things began happening with the closet.
“The new resident would often complain that her closet door must be broken because it would open and close on its own, sometimes really hard. The staff had no trouble believing it because it was a loud slamming. Then, a couple of housekeepers complained that anytime they hung the new resident’s laundry in the closet, the door would slam shut again before they could close it,” she shared.
One of the housekeeping staff told other employees that while she was mopping the floor on the opposite side of the resident’s room, the closet door, which had been closed, flung itself open and then closed again. In time, nearly everyone who worked with this resident saw the door open and close on its own.
At the beginning of this odd situation, all of the employees thought it was fascinating and unique, but they quickly grew tired of it. Her grandmother told her that several nursing home staff members walked into the resident’s room and spoke out loud, requesting Thomas or Nellie to stop messing with the closet door. In response, the closet door would open or close, at times over and over.
They later brought a preacher into the nursing home to pray in the resident’s room. However, the preacher saw the closet door slamming open and shut for himself, and nothing he did seemed to drive away the paranormal entity. Unfortunately, the issues with the door never stopped, and it disrupted the resident’s sleep, so they had to move her to a different room.
During a shift one day, her grandmother and another nurse were eating lunch and discussing the mystery of the closet door.
They both realized that the door began opening and closing on its own after the birdseed ran out. After her grandma’s shift, she purchased a bag of birdseed and put it in the closet the following day.
After that, the closet door stopped swinging open or slamming shut on its own, and the bird feeders were once again full at the time.
To test the theory, they allowed the birdseed to run out without buying a new one, and the closet door started opening and closing on its own again. Once they put a new bag of birdseed in the closet, everything was calm.
Her grandmother and the other nurses all rotated the responsibility for maintaining the birdseed, and the closet door never swung open or slammed shut again.
No one understood how the bird feeders remained full when no one at the nursing home was filling them, but all the future residents of that room enjoyed watching the birds outside their window.
Have you ever had a paranormal experience like this?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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