Drops Of Blood (Short Horror Stories Compilation)/Gotas de Sangre

"La Planchada"

This is one of the most famous legends of XX century from all over Mexico but I guess where it all began was in Mexico City, precisely in Hospital Juarez and it's also known as "the visiting nurse" (la enfermera visitante). Legend has it that in the halls of the hospital a nurse in an immaculate white uniform and neat appearance walks amidst the living to take care of patients, and when they receive attention they claim they have been attended by a kind nurse before, a beautiful woman with short blonde hair wearing an impeccable starched uniform.

This is the ghost of a woman named Eulalia, as a penalty for her neglect of not taking care of her patients while she was alive she takes care of them in death. There are times when night shift nurses fall asleep and wake up after receiving a lightly poke just to see the whiteness walking away from them. A version of the story tells that this girl was devoted to her vocation, loved by her patients and very kind fell in love with a doctor, he was very different from her. Proud and conceited, they started dating and she gave all her love to him, unlike him, he used to flirt with other nurses. After a year he told her he will marry her after a seminar of two weeks out of the country.

A week passed and she missed him already and she received the invitation of a colleague to assist a party which she rejected, for she was engaged with the doctor, her friend, confused, told her that the doctor was in his honeymoon and he had just quitted because he was leaving the city. Eulalia fell into the arms of grief and depression, she began being late at work, neglecting patients (which some of them died). Subsequently she fell ill and died in the same hospital she used to work.

Thereafter the apparition of the woman began being reported by the patients, she had the same description as Eulalia so the nurses start calling her "La planchada" (the ironed) due to her impeccable appearance.