La Planchada
In a Mexico City hospital, patients have told of a nurse in a crisp, perfectly ironed uniform who tended them at night. No one on the staff matched her.
What was reported
La Planchada, 'the ironed one', is a ghost said to haunt hospitals in Mexico, above all the old Hospital Juárez in Mexico City. She appears at night in an old-fashioned, immaculately pressed white uniform.
In the legend she was a nurse, often called Eulalia, who was abandoned by the doctor she loved and neglected her patients in her grief. Now she makes up for it: patients wake to find she has given them their medicine or tucked them in, and say they felt better afterwards.
Explanations offered
Stories like this are told in many hospitals, and may grow from the confusion of patients waking at night, from real nurses on their rounds, and from tales passed between staff. La Planchada is one of Mexico's best-known modern legends.
- When
- Told since the 20th century
- Where
- Hospital Juárez, Mexico City, Mexico
- Witnesses
- Hospital staff and patients
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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