200+ Physicians Share What They Witnessed Near Crown, Merrimack

In Crown, Merrimack, New Hampshire, physicians are quietly shouldering a crisis that most patients never see. Behind the white coats and composed faces, an epidemic of burnout is ravaging the medical profession—one that the Medscape National Physician Burnout & Suicide Report has tracked with alarming consistency. Forty-two percent of American physicians report feeling burned out, a figure that has barely budged despite billions spent on wellness initiatives. But numbers alone cannot capture the human toll: the emergency physician who dreads another shift, the surgeon whose hands still perform flawlessly while her spirit fractures. "Physicians' Untold Stories" by Dr. Scott Kolbaba offers something that burnout statistics cannot—a reminder, through extraordinary true accounts, of the mysterious forces that sometimes intervene in medicine. For doctors in Crown, Merrimack who have forgotten why they once ran toward suffering instead of away from it, these stories may be the spark that reignites purpose.

Dr. Scott Kolbaba

About the Author

Dr. Scott J. Kolbaba, MD is an internist at Northwestern Medicine in Wheaton, Illinois. He interviewed more than 200 physicians about their most extraordinary experiences.

Book cover

Physicians' Untold Stories

by Scott J. Kolbaba, MD4.5 stars (1018 reviews)

Miraculous experiences doctors are hesitant to share with their patients, or ANYONE!

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Physicians' Untold Stories — an Amazon bestseller with a 4.5-star rating from over 1,000 readers.

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Medical Fact

Listening to nature sounds reduces sympathetic nervous system activation by 15% compared to silence.

Physician Burnout & Wellness Near Crown, Merrimack

Physicians practicing in Crown, Merrimack, New Hampshire work at the intersection of modern medicine and experiences that resist explanation. In conversations that rarely leave the break room or the on-call suite, doctors in and around Crown, Merrimack have reported encounters with phenomena that their training never prepared them for — from patients who describe verifiable details about events that occurred while they were clinically dead, to deathbed visions shared simultaneously by multiple family members, to recoveries that defy every prognostic model available.

The medical community in Crown, Merrimack includes physicians across every stage of their careers — residents navigating the exhaustion of training, mid-career practitioners balancing clinical demands with family life, and veteran physicians carrying decades of experiences that challenge the boundaries of conventional medicine. Burnout touches all of them differently, but a common thread runs through: the desire to remember why they chose medicine in the first place, and the rare but profound moments that remind them.

Physician Burnout by Specialty

Percentage reporting at least one symptom (Medscape, 2024)

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Medical Fact

A study published in Circulation found that laughter improves endothelial function, which is protective against atherosclerosis.

Faith, Medicine & the Unexplained in Crown, Merrimack, New Hampshire

Portuguese and Brazilian communities near Crown, Merrimack, New Hampshire bring a Catholic tradition rich with folk healing—promessas (healing vows), ex-votos (offering replicas of healed body parts), and devotion to healing saints like São Expedito. These practices, far from being obstacles to care, often increase treatment compliance: a patient who has made a promessa to recover feels divinely obligated to follow the doctor's orders.

Northeast medical schools near Crown, Merrimack, New Hampshire increasingly include coursework on spiritual care, recognizing that a physician who cannot discuss a patient's faith is incompletely trained. This isn't about endorsing any particular belief system—it's about acknowledging that for many patients, their relationship with God is as clinically relevant as their relationship with their medications.

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Medical Fact

A surgeon's hands are so precisely trained that many can tie a suture knot one-handed, blindfolded.

Ghost Stories and the Supernatural Near Crown, Merrimack, New Hampshire

Brownstone hospitals converted from 19th-century townhouses dot the older neighborhoods of Crown, Merrimack, New Hampshire. These buildings remember every patient who ever crossed their thresholds. Night-shift workers describe hearing the creak of a rocking chair in rooms that contain no rocking chair, and the laughter of children in pediatric wards that have been closed for decades.

The Northeast's immigrant communities brought their own ghost traditions into American hospitals near Crown, Merrimack, New Hampshire. Irish banshees, Italian malocchio, and Eastern European dybbuks have all been reported by patients and families in medical settings. What's striking is that these culturally specific hauntings often coincide with actual clinical events—the banshee wail preceding a code blue, the evil eye appearing before a surgical complication.

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Did You Know?

A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that physicians who experience burnout are twice as likely to make medical errors.

Near-Death Experiences Reported by Physicians Near Crown, Merrimack

The Northeast's aging population means that physicians in Crown, Merrimack, New Hampshire are managing more end-of-life cases than ever before. Hospice nurses in the region report that patients who've had prior NDEs approach death with markedly less anxiety—a clinical observation that aligns with Greyson's published data showing reduced death anxiety in NDE experiencers, sometimes persisting for decades after the event.

The Northeast's concentration of Level I trauma centers means that Crown, Merrimack, New Hampshire physicians see the highest-acuity patients—and the most dramatic recoveries. When a patient who was clinically dead for twenty minutes wakes up and describes a coherent, structured experience during that period, the trauma team faces a choice: chart it as 'patient reports unusual experience during arrest' or acknowledge that their understanding of death is incomplete.

Near-Death Experience Features

Percentage reporting each feature (van Lommel et al., 2001)

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Did You Know?

The placebo effect has been shown to work even when patients know they are receiving a placebo — a phenomenon called "open-label placebo."

Watch Dr. Kolbaba Share These Stories

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Did You Know?

The phrase "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" originated in Wales in 1866 as a Pembrokeshire proverb.

Medical Heritage in New Hampshire

New Hampshire's medical history stretches back to the founding of Dartmouth Medical School in 1797, making it the fourth-oldest medical school in the United States. Located in Hanover, it was established by Dr. Nathan Smith, who envisioned training physicians for rural New England. Smith himself performed one of the first ovarian tumor removals in American history in 1821. Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, the state's only academic medical center, grew from these roots and today serves as the tertiary referral hospital for much of northern New England. Dr. Albert Surgeon General Gallatin, a New Hampshire native, contributed to early public health measures in the state.

The New Hampshire State Hospital in Concord, opened in 1842, was one of the earliest state psychiatric institutions in New England and became known for its progressive approach to mental health care under superintendent Dr. Jesse Bancroft. Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, founded in 1893 through a bequest from Hiram Hitchcock in memory of his wife, became the teaching hospital for Dartmouth Medical School. The state's rural character has driven innovations in community health; the Ammonoosuc Community Health Services, founded in 1975 in the White Mountains, became a model for federally qualified health centers serving isolated mountain communities.

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About the Book

The physicians in the book represent diverse backgrounds — men and women, young and old, from multiple ethnic and religious backgrounds.

Supernatural Folklore and Ghost Traditions in New Hampshire

New Hampshire's supernatural legends are woven into its colonial history and rugged mountain landscape. The tale of "Ocean Born Mary" is one of the state's most enduring ghost stories: Mary Wallace, born aboard a ship off the coast of New England in 1720, allegedly grew up to live in a grand house in Henniker, New Hampshire, built for her by a reformed pirate named Don Pedro. Her ghost is said to haunt the house, appearing as a tall red-haired woman in colonial dress, and the legend has drawn curiosity seekers to Henniker for generations.

Mount Washington, the highest peak in the Northeast at 6,288 feet, has a long history of fatal weather events and ghostly encounters. Hikers have reported seeing the apparition of Lizzie Bourne, a young woman who died of exposure near the summit in 1855—she was one of the first recorded hiking fatalities on the mountain. The Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, site of the 1944 international monetary conference, is famously haunted by the ghost of its builder, Joseph Stickney, whose wife Caroline remarried a French prince after his death. Staff report seeing Stickney's ghost in the dining room and hearing piano music from empty ballrooms.

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About the Book

Many of the physicians in the book have since connected with each other, forming an informal network of shared experience.

Haunted Hospitals and Medical Landmarks in New Hampshire

Laconia State School (Laconia): The Laconia State School, which operated from 1903 to 1991 as an institution for people with intellectual disabilities, was the subject of abuse investigations and documented mistreatment. The abandoned campus has become a site for paranormal investigations, with visitors reporting shadowy figures, children's laughter in empty buildings, and an overwhelming sense of sadness in the dormitory halls.

New Hampshire State Hospital (Concord): Operating since 1842, the New Hampshire State Hospital has a troubled history that includes overcrowding and patient deaths. The older buildings on campus are said to be haunted by former patients, with staff reporting unexplained screaming from empty rooms, doors that lock and unlock themselves, and the figure of a woman in a white hospital gown seen staring from upper-story windows at night.

Types of Phenomena in the Book

Distribution across 26 physician accounts

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Research Finding

Tai chi practice reduces fall risk in elderly adults by 43% and improves balance and coordination.

How This Book Can Help You

Physicians' Untold Stories by Dr. Scott Kolbaba speaks to the kind of intimate medicine still practiced in New Hampshire's rural communities, where Dartmouth-trained physicians serve patients across generations in small towns from the White Mountains to the Connecticut River valley. The state's medical tradition, rooted in Nathan Smith's vision of training doctors for underserved areas, produces the kind of deep clinical relationships where physicians witness the full arc of life and death—the same setting in which Dr. Kolbaba, working at Northwestern Medicine after his Mayo Clinic training, encountered the unexplained deathbed phenomena he documents in his book.

The Northeast's journalism tradition near Crown, Merrimack, New Hampshire—investigative, skeptical, demanding of evidence—provides a useful lens for reading this book. These accounts should be approached the way a good reporter approaches any extraordinary claim: with open-minded skepticism, a demand for specificity, and a willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Physicians' Untold Stories book cover — by Dr. Scott J. Kolbaba, MD
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Research Finding

Healthcare workers who practice self-compassion report 30% lower rates of secondary traumatic stress.

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Physicians' Untold Stories by Scott J. Kolbaba, MD4.5 stars from 1018 readers.

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Physicians' Untold Stories by Dr. Scott Kolbaba

Amazon Bestseller

The Stories Medicine Never Told You

Over 200 physicians interviewed. 26 true stories of ghost encounters, near-death experiences, and miraculous recoveries that will change the way you think about life, death, and what lies beyond.

By Dr. Scott J. Kolbaba, MD — 4.5★ from 1,018 ratings on Goodreads