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The Creepy Bus

paganfrog

paganfrog

Junior Acolyte
Joined
Jun 4, 2003
Messages
51
Today i discovered the creepy bus, and the creepy bus returns stories. i enjoyed the stories but my urban legend radar kicked in and just thought, wow no kid could be that stupid, for both stories.

i just want to know how long these tall tales have been running about the internet and how people are beleiving them to be true?
 
paganfrog said:
Today i discovered the creepy bus, and the creepy bus returns stories. i enjoyed the stories but my urban legend radar kicked in and just thought, wow no kid could be that stupid, for both stories.

i just want to know how long these tall tales have been running about the internet and how people are beleiving them to be true?
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I've never heard of these stories--are they published or word-of-mouth tales?

Could you give us the theme in short?
 
ok. the quick version is

theres 2 girls friends and they are text chatting, while in school. one gets an after school detention and ends up missing her regular bus. the other friend warns her about a creepy bus and not to get on it. next text tells that shes already on this creepy bus and the friend freaks out and gets her dad to go looking for the bus after they say to text the streets she sees.
the last few texts tell of a tunnel and a big space full of other buses with a kid on each.
the story ends. and then you get told there are thousands of kids go missing in america each year never to be seen again.

the second story is 2 boys talking about the missing girl and talking all big like boys do saying lets go looking for the bus. then we can find the girl


same stupid sort of dialogue. and it just stinks of urban legend and creepy pasta website. but these videos are being shared like wild fire on farcebook and everyones beleiving them to be true.
 
I remember that! Yes, some terrifying similarities.
 
it seems to me the best creepy/scary movies were made in the 70's some of my favourite horror or sci-fi movies are from the 70's. its an era that didnt have special effects but instead had to rely on atmospherics and a well thought out story plot to freak you out.
 
I can only count a few SF films from the '70s that I like. I'm not big on horror unless it is Sci-Fi horror, generally.
Name a few to see if any rings a bell with me.
 
I immediately thought The Devil Rides Out, but it seems that that was from 1968--as was Witchfinder General.

How about The Wicker Man (1973)?
 
A great horror movie from the seventies is Persecution* (1974) starring Ralph bates and Lana Turner. It is a psychological thriller really, so probably wouldn't appeal to a die hard S.F fan.

It is somewhat reminiscent of American flicks like `Whatever Happened to Bany Jane?` A mother's boy is brought up by a demented cat loving mother who loves her cats far more than him. He vows revenge.... The film has one of the most effectively chilling endings I can think of.

I'd love to know more about this creepy bus story thing though. In what format is it circulating in, and among whom?

* I think the American title was `The queen of Sheba`.
 
paganfrog said:
ok. the quick version is

theres 2 girls friends and they are text chatting, while in school. one gets an after school detention and ends up missing her regular bus. the other friend warns her about a creepy bus and not to get on it. next text tells that shes already on this creepy bus and the friend freaks out and gets her dad to go looking for the bus after they say to text the streets she sees.
the last few texts tell of a tunnel and a big space full of other buses with a kid on each.
the story ends. and then you get told there are thousands of kids go missing in america each year never to be seen again.

the second story is 2 boys talking about the missing girl and talking all big like boys do saying lets go looking for the bus. then we can find the girl


same stupid sort of dialogue. and it just stinks of urban legend and creepy pasta website. but these videos are being shared like wild fire on farcebook and everyones beleiving them to be true.
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This reminds me of something I'd seen on Reddit within the last few years. Two apparently separate stories (that I've seen, perhaps there are more) among those "what's the scariest thing that ever happened to you" type posts. These were scary because they were simple and had the ring of truth about them.

The writer describes how, when they were young, the school bus came to pick them up, but something was off - it was too early, the bus came directly to their house and not to the bus stop - that kind of thing. When the writer approached, they could see it was not the usual bus and not the usual driver. The driver assures them that it was okay, there was some problem with the regular bus, so this driver had been sent instead. The child, knowing that something is wrong, refuses to board. In one case, (IIRC, my memory is fuzzy) the parents call the school and are told to report this to the police, which they do. In the other case (again, IIRC) the usual bus shows up on schedule.

Seems like these "creepy bus" tales might have been an embroidered, creepypasta version inspired by this.
 
It may surprise you to know that - in the UK at least - there is absolutely nothing to stop anyone buying an old bus for a few hundred quid and driving it around picking up and dropping off whomsoever you wish, as long as you are not doing it for 'hire and reward' as the legislation puts it. You can drive any bus over 30 years old on a normal category B driving licence providing you don't carry more than 8 passengers, though you'll need a full cat D licence for anything newer, and you can tax your bus as a Private Light Goods vehicle which effectively means it is viewed by the government as being just the same as a large campervan. There are firms who will happily offer you cheap insurance. You don't need to register yourself with anyone and there is no official regulation. You can even trundle round to a route and timetable of your own devising (and many preservation groups, special events and museums do so every year) though once you become a commerical 'Operator' things get very heavily regulated very quickly but doing it as a hobby is remarkably accessible.

So if you wanted to get yourself a creepy bus and start spiriting people away like the Childcatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang it would be very easy to do so, although generally owning old buses is strictly the domain of eccentric enthusiasts such as myself* and that's what would be your undoing. Nothing goes under the radar with bus geeks and someone somewhere would certainly spot and carefully note your activities, as well as the registration number of the vehicle involved.


*For the the record I've got two; though they could in no way be described as 'creepy'.
 
I remember a similar sort of scenario on an afternoon TV short film years ago, only with a train instead of a bus. There are 2 young kids travelling on a train. The carriage is full of passengers. The train enters a tunnel and everything goes dark for a while. When the train re-emerges at the other end, only the 2 kids are left in the carriage. All the other passengers have vanished. I can't remember the whole thing but that particular scene has always stuck with me.

Creepy bus wise, as a kid, I used to see a Go Whittle! Duple Dominant driving through my town. What made it a bit creepy was the fact it had small, parallelogram shaped windows which were tinted. You couldn't see inside and it seemed so out of place in a land of smokey old Leyland Nationals and Bristol VR double deckers.

This might have been the bus-
4160997359_73df150797_z.jpg
 
That's a nice motor. Not many Duple products survive today, mostly because they were made of tinfoil and rotten wood.

Anyway you've just reminded me of a particular fear from my childhood when I was around 9 or 10. We'd sometimes get the train to visit relatives and at one point on the journey the train would go slowly through a reasonably long tunnel. It went on for just long enough that I would be convinced that we would never emerge from it, that the blackness would just carry on forever. I'd start thinking about how it would feel if we were still in the tunnel after 15 minutes... or an hour... what would it be like if we were still travelling slowly through the tunnel after a week? A month? A year? I'd look around and wonder how the other passengers would react. What would we eat? What would my parents do? It terrified and intrigued me in equal measure. And then we'd emerge into the daylight and I'd forget about it again until the next trip. Your post brought it right back into my head!
 
There was an episode of Luther which involved someone buying a bus and using it to abduct a load of children from a school in plain sight. He'd also bought several industrial drums of acid to dispose of them - that's gotta beat any 'creepypasta' by a mile surely?
 
Carse said:
Nothing goes under the radar with bus geeks and someone somewhere would certainly spot and carefully note your activities, as well as the registration number of the vehicle involved.

*For the the record I've got two; though they could in no way be described as 'creepy'.
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Spotted this on way to work yesterday. I bet you know who it is!

bus.jpg
 
paganfrog - thank you for enlightening me that the film is called La Cabina. I recall watching it as a kid and loving it and until this i didn't know what it was called. :)
 
Mythopoeika said:
It's amazing how quickly 'fake news' spreads, isn't it?
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Yes. From creepypasta, to widely spread forum myth, to social media, to god given FACT in a surprisingly speedy timescale.

It's scary as all hell how quickly misinformation spreads online. And how a story can become distorted via that online trail of 'chinese whispers'.

Just look at how many variations there are now of The Slender Man meme.
 
We had a similar story at our school, with the slight adjustment that we didn't have a specific 'school bus'. There were two alternate versions just starring a generic public transport bus.

Version 1: the bus arrives at the stop but there are no other passengers. Kid gets on, and they are never seen again.

Version 2: the bus arrives and all the passengers look slightly odd, like they are imperfect facsimiles of people. No-one moves, speaks, or makes eye contact. Kid gets on the bus, and they are never seen again.

I think it taps into a basic fear that kids have about getting lost. The trip to and from school is a kind of liminal zone where they are outside the protection of two very safe and familiar spaces (home and school). For many kids, this journey is their first taste of independence. It may also contain real threats such as bullies, traffic, or - as I experienced - the first time I was flashed at by an adult male. All of this gets condensed and displaced into the creepy bus image.
 
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Ah! Here's the thread I've been waiting for! Twenty-five years ago I started a fantasy trilogy with several fortean themes . . . but the more I wrote the fewer fortean references I had (I love to mention "real" fortean events in stories). And when I finished -- it just sort of sat there. Never seemed to have the time or patience to revise it.

Then, circa 1996, I stumbled onto something called the "Dulce Base," a supposed secret installation beneath Dulce, NM. A supposed map of the place showed tunnels and sub-bases all across the USA, including Southeastern Oklahoma and my hometown Tulsa. "Huh," I said, "that looks amazingly like the secret base from my story" (hey, you write what you know, and I knew eastern OK). Then the Dogman/Dog-Headed Men phenomenon revved up (there are werewolf-type critters in my story, but in 1994 all I found in "real life" were the Bray Road Beast of Wisconsin and a couple other obscurities). That also matched my trilogy perfectly.

And it kept happening. Other things that fit my book uncannily have been the Skinwalker Ranch, Jenny Randles' "Time Storms," almost everything about the Missing 411 series by David Paulides, "hooded"/monk-like/ Grim Reaper-ish entities, the Search and Rescue/Stairs in the woods stories from Reddit (admitted to be fiction now), and various minor things. Made me think it was time to dig out the endless trilogy and review it again.

What does this have to do with creepy buses? Well, I've revised my way up to the last hundred or so pages, and this happens:

As the phone in Tahlequah rang, a schoolbus edged off the highway onto the gravel lot in front of the brownstone hulk. The bus had been painted green, with huge yellow and white flower designs on the sides.
Looks like something hippies drove in the ‘sixties, I thought. A hippy Happy Bus.
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The protagonists call them Hippy Buses, rolling out to collect unsuspecting children, not Creepy Buses, but that's close enough for me. It's -- a Sign! Come on, Buses! Don't disappoint me! It's time to bring this puppy to a close!

(Waits to hear new weird bus stories . . .):poet:
 
Got my own copy of Why Have They Taken Our Children? by Jack Baugh and Jefferson Morgan, about the Chowchilla kidnapping. May be too scary for me to read, judging by the photo section! It's bad enough kidnapping people but burying them alive too?! :Givingup:

I read 83 Hours Till Dawn, about a young woman kidnapped and buried in a coffin-like box in the woods, at an impressionable age, and for weeks I imagined myself in the same predicament. And I could imagine my father's reaction to the kidnappers' demands: "Hmmm . . . One hundred and fifty thousand dollars? I'll think about it." Then he'd hang up the phone and have a good chuckle.:(
 
One of my mates got on a creepy bus in 1974 and he was never seen again.

And the bus was never seen again and the town was never seen again and the county was never seen again and everyone who has ever told or heard or read this tale was never seen again.

True story.
 
Psychology students are told a story of a bus driver who gets bored and drops off his passengers at a mental health facility, who are then admitted as patients and have the devil of a job regaining their freedom. Nobody believes their story of being kidnapped and dumped.

Can't be true, but the idea is to illustrate the problem of stereotyping people with mental health problems; basically, they are seen as unreliable witnesses.
 
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