PRENEETA SHARMA
As the most prominent government hospital in Himachal Pradesh, the Indira Gandhi Medical College (IGMC) is tucked away in Shimla’s foggy hills. Beyond the emergency sirens and white coats, however, is a darker folklore that makes any employee who has ever worked a night shift shudder.
This is the tale of the fourth floor, an abandoned wing that was sealed off following an unexplained fire and is thought to be haunted. Ghost sightings, odd noises, and paranormal events are whispered about by locals, students, and medical staff; these tales have established folklore. In 2019, one such instance rocked the medical community and rekindled long-standing anxieties.
The Horrifying Experience of a Final Year Student
Ritika, a brilliant and hardworking final-year MBBS student, had been assigned to night duty in the emergency ward during the winter of 2019. Like most sane people, she dismissed the stories she had heard about “the fourth floor” from nurses and other students as superstitious.
That night was exceptionally quiet; there were no noises or emergencies, just the icy solitude that characterizes winter nights in Shimla. Ritika went into the hallway to grab some tea at about three in the morning. At that moment, she noticed something out of the ordinary: a nurse in the elevator wearing the outdated outfit, which was phased out more than a decade ago. It consisted of a white apron and a sharp cap.
Ritika offered assistance, but the nurse remained silent and simply gestured toward the elevator. She was uneasy, but she had to follow out of worry about a patient or emergency. She was shocked when the elevator, which everyone assumed had been broken for months, creaked open and started to go up to the fourth floor. Ritika sensed a problem as soon as the doors opened. There was a weird, almost chemical stench in the air, broken gurneys pushed into corners, paint peeling from the walls, and the hallway was completely dark. It had the sense of being both alive and abandoned.
The same nurse was standing outside a partially open room at the end of the hallway. The air became colder as Ritika got closer, so chilly that her breath was visible. Behind her, she started to hear whispers. She halted when she turned around and saw that the hallway was crowded with individuals wearing hospital gowns, their features contorted and emaciated in silent pain, their eyes staring at her. “You’re not supposed to be here,” the nurse said, her face pallid and hideous, her eyes sunken, and her voice rasping as she slowly drifted off the ground before she could run. When nothing else moved, the shadows were moved by the madly flickering lights above. Before she lost consciousness, that was the last thing Ritika could recall.
Ritika was discovered asleep on the first floor by a janitor the following morning. The doctors said it was fatigue, but she never recovered. She declined to work at night. Other than cautioning juniors not to go to the fourth floor, she didn’t talk about it much.
“She’s lucky,” said the ward boys, orderlies, and elderly nurses in whispers. She was released by the nurse. They refused to elaborate.
That section of the structure is still sealed after dark in 2025. Nobody is brave enough to travel alone. The fourth-floor elevator never operates, and when it does, it’s for mysterious reasons.
The narrative begins with a terrible fire that occurred in the late 1980s. Unknown causes caused a portion of the fourth level to catch fire. According to reports, a senior nurse and several patients passed away. According to some rumors, the fire was caused by a failing oxygen tank, but others claim that something darker was at play.
Security personnel have since reported hearing whispers, shouts, and the rustle of sheets coming from the sealed unit.
There is no doubting that the fourth level of IGMC exudes a sense of dread, regardless of your belief in the paranormal. It is now included in Shimla’s expanding collection of frightening folklore, along with the Peterhoff tunnels and the spooky Chharabra forests.
Even if science doesn’t believe in ghosts, anyone who has spent time in the shadowy hallways of IGMC at night will tell you that some things are better left unopened.
