This unusual "ghost" story appeared in the "Birmingham Gazette," June 16, 1934:
A brilliantly-lighted motor-bus roaring through the streets of Kensington without driver or passengers; a bus which stops for passengers and suddenly vanishes when one tries to board it. Residents in the North Kensington district were excitedly discussing these remarkable "phenomena" last night following a reference to a ghost bus at a London inquest on lan James Steven Beaton, metallurgical engineer, of Dollis Hilt, who died following a collision at the corner of St. Mark's-road and Cambridge-gardens.Local authorities eventually had the road repaired and straightened, after which the "ghost bus" was seen no more.
Replying to a question whether this was a place where a ghost bus was stated to have been seen, one of the witnesses replied, "So some of them say."
A Birmingham Gazelle representative discovered last night that the legend of the phantom bus is well-established in the neighbourhood.
"The legend of the phantom bus has been going strong for years," said a woman resident in Cambridge-gardens. "I have never seen it and I have never met anybody who has, but the version I heard was that on certain nights, long after the regular bus service has stopped. people have been awakened by the roar of a bus coming down the street.
"When they have gone to their windows they have seen a brilliantly. lighted double-decker bus approaching with neither driver nor passengers.
"According to this story, the bus goes careening to the corner of Cambridge-gardens and St. Mark's-road, and then vanishes.
A number of accidents have happened at this corner, and it has been suggested that the phantom bus has been the cause."
Quite another version was told by Mr. William Hampton, a motor mechanic, of St. Mark's road.
"The story of a ghost bus," he said, "seems to have originated in an experience related by a woman more than two years ago.
"According to her account she was alighting from a bus at the corner of the road, intending to catch another bus to her destination. She asked the conductor which bus she ought to take and he pointed to a bus which was standing a few yards away.
"She approached the bus and was about to board it when it vanished into thin air.
"Ever since then, this story of a ghost bus has been prevalent in the neighbourhood."
"The legend of the phantom bus has been going strong for years,"
ReplyDelete""The story of a ghost bus," he said, "seems to have originated in an experience related by a woman more than two years ago."
One of those at least has to be wrong unless two years was a lot longer then than now.
It seems like a good example of an urban legend: something many have heard about but no one has experienced first-hand. And it's suspicious that, though "well-established in the neighbourhood", the story is reported in a Birmingham newspaper, rather than a London journal.
ReplyDeleteMind you, a bus that vanishes just when you try to catch it sounds like pretty much every transit service...