What happened
The Hospital Juárez in Mexico City, founded in 1847 during the war with the United States as a hospital for the wounded, is one of the oldest in the country. Since the 1930s people there have told of La Planchada – ‘the Ironed One’. Patients said that at night a nurse in an old-fashioned, immaculately pressed uniform came to see them, talked with them for hours, and by morning they felt better. Some noticed that her footsteps made no sound; others saw a faint bluish glow around her. Doctors were said to record inexplicable recoveries. The story comes in two versions: in one she is the ghost of a nurse whose negligence caused a patient's death and who returns to atone by saving others; in the other, an angel who took on a nurse's form. Over time La Planchada ‘moved into’ other Mexican hospitals as well, including one in Culiacán. After the 1985 earthquake the Hospital Juárez moved to new premises in the north of the city, but the legend went with it.
Witnesses
Patients, doctors and nurses of the Hospital Juárez – according to accounts passed on by word of mouth since the 1930s.
Explanations and hypotheses
La Planchada is a hospital urban legend known in many versions and in many hospitals across Mexico. No document points to a particular nurse or event behind the story. Sceptics note that sick people, weakened and often medicated, can easily take a dream or a visit from an ordinary nurse at night for an encounter with a ghost, and the tale of a ‘kind ghost’ comforts patients and staff alike.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.