Having stumbled across this Chinese urban legend on my Internet travels, I couldn’t resist but put it here, because there is nothing creepier than a ghost bus.
I mean, yeah okay, there’s a lot of stuff that might be creepier than a ghost bus, but let’s face it – it’s late at night, you’re coming home from work or play, you’ve had a few drinks so you couldn’t possibly drive and you’re too skint (or cheap) to pay for a taxi. So of course you get the bus.
Now, in the grand scheme of things, there are an awful lot of scary things that can get on a bus that are well and truly out of the realm of the paranormal; drunks, drug addicts, chavs, clowns after a late shift at the circus. You know the types. So they probably make the ghosts seem pretty tame in comparison. However, this particular urban legend has been making the rounds in China for a long while now and I can’t help but think that I might be looking to the chavs for protection if I ever got on this bus. Here’s the story (and it’s supposed to be true) – although there are many variations, the basis is all the same.
In November 1995 Beijing, around midnight, Bus 375 was on its last route to Fragrant Hills. An elderly woman and a man got on board at the Yuan-ming-huan stop and were the only passengers on board alongside the driver and ticket collector.
During the journey, the bus driver noticed two figures attempting to wave the bus down. The driver was reluctant to stop as they were not at a designated bus stop, but did so anyway.
To his surprise, three individuals not two, got on the bus. The two people the driver had originally seen were supporting a long haired, dishevelled man in the middle. All three were oddly dressed in Qing Dynasty clothing.
The passengers began to get nervous and the female conductor tried to calm everyone down by saying, “Don’t be afraid. They could be just actors shooting a costume drama in the vicinity. Maybe they got drunk after work and forgot to change clothes.”
Shortly afterwards, the elderly woman began to accuse the man who had gotten on the bus at the same stop as her, of stealing from her. She demanded they both get off the bus and go to the police station, which he agreed to.
Upon exiting the bus, the woman informed the man that she had gotten them off the bus to save their lives as she had noticed that the three individuals who were oddly dressed, had no feet and were floating. They reported this to the local police who, unsurprisingly, did not believe them.
The next day it was announced that Bus 375 had vanished along with its driver and ticket collector.
It wasn’t until the third day that the bus was found 100km away from its destination (despite not having enough petrol to make it that far), along with the badly decomposed bodies of the driver, the ticket collector and a long haired man.
How could the bodies be so decomposed after only three days? Why was the bus not shown on any CCTV footage?
The mystery remains to this day.
Spooky huh? Course, I do have some issues with this. Firstly, I probably wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at a group of people getting on a bus in period costume at midnight. We’ve all seen how it goes down at Comicon.
Secondly, how rude was that ticket collector to outright call those guys out? She doesn’t know them, she doesn’t eat their cereal, maybe they just like dressing traditionally!
Thirdly, if some bitch-ass old lady just randomly started accusing me of stealing from her on a bus where I wasn’t sat anywhere near her, you can bet your bottom dollar that I most certainly will not be getting off that bus with her so she can march me down to the police station (at midnight when I’m already late home) to accuse me of doing something I very clearly haven’t done. I would have told her to pipe down and sit down. And then I would have put my headphones back on and continued my journey home. If indeed, I ever made it home. And didn’t end up as some badly decomposed corpse after two days. Which brings me onto my final complaint.
It’s not unheard of for bodies to decompose quickly. We don’t know how these people died or what the environment was like after they died. It might have been hot, humid, dry, damp – any of these things could have sped up the decay process. Were the bus doors open when bodies were found? We don’t know do we? Animals could have gotten in and started to feed on the bodies.
Of course, this is all pure conjecture because there’s no evidence that it ever actually happened or if it continues its late night legacy, picking up unsuspecting passengers to join its spectral manifest.
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