Sue St.Clair and Matthew Didier's Paranormal Blog

From the desk of Matthew Double Decker Bus Guy Didier...

Leave it to me to find a neat way to tie one blog to another...

Most folks have heard tales of "ghost ships"... The Flying Dutchman being the obvious and most famous.

There are also many tales of ghost cars, spectral motorcycles, and even ethereal airplanes...

...but what about my favourite things... double-decker buses?

Well, as luck would have it, YES, there are reports of phantom double-deckers... and some more recent than one might expect!

In London, North Kensington to be precise, there's a rather... um... yeah, I'd qualify it as frightening ghostly double-decker. It's said to zoom between the Cambridge Gardens and Chesterson Road junctions on St. Mark's Road although it hasn't been seen for some time now... but when it was, it's sighting was been blamed for a death.

In June of 1934, a young motorist suddenly, and with no "seeming" reason, veered off the road and struck a lamp post. His car burst into flames and he perished.

At the inquiry into the crash, several witnesses came forward to say he was avoiding a collision with bus that was roaring down the centre of the road. In fact, this bus had been "avoided" several times by various drivers without too many consequences except the jangled nerves of the drivers...

Trouble is, the bus they all saw was an old #7 bus... The #7 was operated by the London General Omnibus Company and carried the word 'General' on its side: The LGOC became London Passenger Transport Board in 1933, and by June 1934 nearly all of its fleet bore the 'London Transport' lettering... yet witnesses swore it was an old "General" and had the distinct "square top" of the old LT class of buses... no longer in mass use.... and certainly not with the "General" logo.

The bus was also almost on a cryptic schedule... it would appear around 1:15am... and odd time for the bus regardless...

The stories all went that the drivers would have to swerve out of the way... and then, when they'd glance back to see the old bus, it had vanished.

Sadly, the one fellow was not able to "confirm" the disappearance of the old General... and during the inquest, despite many motorists claiming their own experience, the "official" reasons came down to either a rushing late-night staff bus, odd reflections, and the old stand by... disoriented (read: Drunk) drivers.

The phantom #7... The "General"... hasn't been seen since the outbreak of WWII...

Another phantom bus is one that I found through an obscure newsgroup posting... in the late 1940's and early 1950's, in a section of London again, on a few occasions, many students from a particular school were "tricked" into running for what appeared to be an early-arriving bus to their stop. The children would all see the bus, start charging towards it... and it would vanish before they got too close.

Not drive away, but simply disappear.

The stories and reports became so numerous of this "mystery bus" that complaints were made about the driver (who was assumed to have "shot off" to avoid taking the children) which ended up with the parents of the kids being told that no such bus was at that stop at the reported time.

An enterprising young student did a quick check and, indeed, an old London ST model bus had been flattened near the stop during The Blitz of WWII. The bus model matched the students description...

Could it have been the old ST waiting for them?

Another story involves a first-hand report sent to me by a group in England that runs restored buses...

To those not-in-the-know, older double-deckers had "open platforms" at the back and you'd hop in that way, not beside the driver with a ticket/cash box, so a uniformed conductor would go from person to person to selling tickets and taking money.

One of these reports if from the driver, who, while driving noticed in his mirror that an older lady is still in his bus despite heading back to his garage. He pulled the bus over to ask the woman (on the lower deck) to leave the bus, he found no one there. This wouldn't be too remarkable, except it's happened more than once... to more than one driver he found out later. All describing the same woman. One of the drivers noticed her after hearing the stories, and assuming she was "jumping off" before a driver could get to her, he drove it straight into the garage... only to find the bus empty once he got there.

Next, with the same bus, they were asked by a group who saw the bus go by (it was making a turn to come into a platform/stop) who they'd hired to act as a "conductor"... despite the bus no longer having a conductor as it was strictly for charters and tours (tickets sold at a kiosk or by phone or rides done at fairs and the like) and they don't hire "historical interpreters" or folks like that... and the bus, apparently, was empty. All this, yet apparently, two men and two women "saw" a London Transport(?) uniformed conductor standing on the rear platform "as normal" while the bus passed on it's circuit... but he vanished before it pulled up for them.

What stuck out for this fellow who wrote me was that neither of these "phantoms" were frightening or "odd looking" in the least and certainly weren't "misty" or "see-through". I got to be the poor sod that told him that this description of "ghosts" was more normal than the one's with transparent or translucent entities. Most "ghosts" appear to the witness as a "normal" person... but are dressed or do something "extraordinary" before being "detected" as ghosts.

After a few months, the driver wrote back to me to tell me that the two spectres were now quite welcome and that him and the other drivers had grown accustomed to them... even naming them "Delores and Stan"... and simply mention, now and again, that they saw Delores or Stan on runs... and blaming them for weird occurrences in the garage or on their bus.

The driver who wrote to me asked for privacy and secrecy in the matter, so for now, this is all I can tell anyone...

My last double-decker ghost might be a phantom driver!

A while back, both Sue and myself were speaking to a restorationist/museum staffer who restored old buses. Apparently, one of their buses was almost a wreck when it was brought in... they did manage to refurbish it, and it is a running vehicle, but it had been badly damaged in a fatal accident with a small car in which the driver of the car lost their life.

After the work was completed on the bus and all was ready for her first trip out, late that evening, her engine started by itself and she drove out of her garage, rather deftly turning to miss a fence, to plunge into a nearby gully.

No one was hurt and the bus only sustained only cosmetic damage, but the police were certain that no one had "driven" the bus (the collision would have injured them) and that, indeed, the engine had been running...

The people at the museum feel that the "driver" had been a ghost... and that the bus is haunted.

Oddly enough, because of the rarity of the model of the bus and the job that was done "putting it together", none of the museum staff hesitate to drive her... and other than her one, odd, nocturnal drive and crash, no other events have been told to us.

Of course, before exiting this post, I could mention all the "weird things" that seem to parallel me and the bus we're trying to save/own here in North America, RLH 3, which does qualify in my eyes as "odd"... in fact, it is making me "re-think" my views on reincarnation, but hey, that's another story... and I do invite you to click here (opens a new browser) to learn more about that.

One LAST thing... if we are to believe that ghosts are the spirits of the dead... the "souls", if you will... do these vehicles... these ships... these "things" have a soul?

As someone in love with double-deckers and has an almost "spiritual connection" (if you will) with them, I'd say sure... why not!