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Post by benedictjjones on Nov 4, 2008 12:56:39 GMT
DEM i have a more modern one (although its still a double decker rather than a bendy bus) which i'm trying to get published at present. i'll keep you updated.
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Post by redbrain on Nov 5, 2008 14:36:36 GMT
I don't remember if it was a bendy one or not but I once saw a bloke with a bus on his foot. I hope that he didn't mark the bus with a dirty boot. ;D
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Post by dem bones on Oct 3, 2010 14:53:46 GMT
W. Elwyn Backus - The Phantom Bus ( Weird Tales, Sept. 1930): Cincinnati. Arthur Strite is morbidly obsessed with the dingy, big black bus to Norwood as it is so eerily reminiscent of the one in which his fiancee, Doris Tway, was mangled in a collision with a truck. After a series of nightmares in the course of which he watches Doris's final moments and is confronted by a skull-faced conductor, Strite resolves to board his "phantom bus" and solve the mystery .... Anthony Horowitz - The Night Bus: Nick Hancock, seventeen, and his twelve-year-old brother Jeremy, miss their lift home from a Halloween party in Holborn. At Trafalgar Square they spot an old fashioned red bus heading for Richmond, but there's no driver nor any lights to suggest it's in service. They climb aboard out of the cold and eventually the motor starts. A thin, white faced, long haired conductor with sunken eyes takes their fare and the 227B pulls away. Gradually the bus fills with strange folk in ghoulishly convincing fancy dress. The living dead have been out on the lash and someone has to drive them home to their respective West London cemeteries ....
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Post by dem bones on Feb 1, 2013 14:19:38 GMT
Ray Daley - The Night Bus (Smashworlds, Nov. 2012). "Just remember one thing - nothing you see can hurt you. All you are picking up is passengers. Go by the old rule, it doesn't matter what they look like, as long as they pay the fare and travel in peace - our only job is to get them there safely. Okay?" - Martin Wilson, one of the last remaining old timers on the service. Harry Burton, 58, has served the bus company diligently all his adult life, but when a compulsory eye test is introduced overnight, he fears his days driving the 56 are over. He's blind as a bat. Incredibly, his manager Mr. Green, offers him a stark choice between redundancy or driving the the night bus. But wasn't that service cancelled over thirty years ago? Harry's first night on the late shift. The 56-N looks every inch the transport museum piece it is, likewise the few passengers. After several weeks at it, Harry is on name terms with all four of them. There's the little blonde girl, Megan, who shouldn't be out alone this late; Mrs. "call me Aggie" Thompson, an elderly lady with ever-present shopping trolley and bus pass of a vintage that might interest The Antiques Roadshow; George, a hirsute man mountain, and the surly, very businesslike Mr. Parsons. The quartet are only vaguely discernible to Harry's failing eyesight, which is maybe just as well, because by some strange coincidence, the destination in every case is "the end of the line" ..... Nabbed this while casting an eye over various public domain works on feedbooks. Tagged as 'horror', to these eyes it reads more like something from the Armada Ghost series, which, as you'll know, is far from an uncomplimentary thing to say. Download direct: The Night Bus
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Post by dem bones on Dec 2, 2015 8:25:42 GMT
David Forrest - Wherever You May Be ...: ( The Undertaker's Dozen, 1974). Just when you think you'll never see another supernatural horror on the buses story, one comes along at once, and a jolly decent ju ju tinged romp it is, too. Randy, a West Indian bus driver, whose route takes him from Liverpool Street to Victoria, has the hots for a gorgeous passenger he picks up every day, but she doesn't want to know. His conductor, Bill, a know-all who speaks fluent Jim Davidson (sample dialogue; "I'll bet the Pope would believe in voodoo if he was as black as you. It's just the thing for you fuzzy heads."), persuades him to visit an Obeah woman, because everybody knows Caribbean birds take all that mumbo jumbo seriously. Against his better nature, Randy asks amongst his mates for the name of a powerful sorceress. All roads lead to the sinister Marcia Claw, mistress of doom. Another likely suspect (not seen) 'Pelle Torro's Last Bus To Llangery, Supernatural Stories #16, June, 1958.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 2, 2016 8:44:27 GMT
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Post by dem bones on Sept 12, 2016 11:11:47 GMT
Otis Cameron - Bus Line For The Dead: ( Startling Mystery Magazine, April 1940). "The horror of that journey with the cadavers had only just begun for Nell Mansfield when the death bus stopped. For it brought her to a picnic where rotting corpses from the grave danced around the fires that would roast her flesh!""There is an incredibly old belief in our tribe that when the queen dies, she may be returned from the shadows of the dead by stuffing her nostrils with the fiery ash of a newly burnt woman. It has never been tried before, but this time ...."A smallpox epidemic lays waste to the gypsies in the mountains overlooking Pine Mills. Dr. Sid Mansfield argues for compulsory vaccination but Dyce, the surly school principle, tries to veto the proposal, arguing that the town should not waste money on worthless degenerates and hill-billies. Dyce is outvoted, but it makes no odds as, inexplicably, the serum fails! Evening outside the railway station. Nell Mansfield waits alone for the bus home. She feels uneasy. For some nights Nell has been aware of prowlers at back of the house, and yesterday a strange wooden ring was thrown through her window. See, here it is in her handbag. She's been unable to throw it away! She supposes she should have told Sam, but he's been so busy recently trying so save lives. The bus arrives two minutes early and almost mows her down. Nell furiously remonstrates with the driver, but he merely stares vacuously ahead. Only when she's taken a seat beside her cold, clammy, 'sleeping' husband does she realise the hideous truth: the Interurban bus has been commandeered by Satan's own bodyguard, sneering, black-shrouded things armed with knives. She alone among the dead-eyed, corpse-like passengers is functioning on full cylinders but what can a mere woman do against these hooded horrors? The bus stops to pick up Conrad Greenaway, the effeminate perfumer, who cringes in terror like the puny excuse for a man he is. If only Sid would revive from his weird paralysis! Where are they taking her? Nell is bundled from the bus and abandoned to the mercy of the festering mountain folk, a masked fiend with a violin at their head. Once introduced to the enthroned rotting corpse of the gypsy queen, Nell is forced before a bonfire to watch the grisly murders of the commuters. The mad violinist has persuaded his people that there's only one thing can cure them. "Blood! Blood of the gentile! Give us more blood!" The town banker dies screaming. Nell is chained to a stake. The bestial slobberers light the pyre! Found this on the extraordinary Pulp Covers: The Best Of The Worst. This must be the least mammaries-obsessed weird menace I ever read, but don't be deterred because it's an absolute stormer. Plenty of horror, mindless sadism, oozing pus & Co, and the plot fair tears along like a runaway ... bus. N.B. Startling Mystery Magazine not to be confused with Robert A. W. Londres' later Health-Knowledge classic, Startling Mystery Stories. SMM was a short-lived attempt to jump the shudder pulp bandwagon, hiring several of the name authors and recycling John Newton Howitt cover artwork. It died with the second issue.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 14, 2016 18:02:15 GMT
.... and then two come along at once Wyatt Blassingame - Satan Drives the Bus: ( Ace Detective Magazine, October 1936). "Death collects the fares." A stormy night in Minneapolis. Allen Sargent is travelling home to Duluth. Sargent doesn't like bus journeys so the last thing he needs is a bearded wild-eyed maniac raving that they are all going to die because one among them has sinned against God. But maybe the madman is on to something, as sure enough, a salesman dies screaming, tearing at his throat, his face all bloated and mauve. Then it is the turn of the world-weary country lady, closely followed by Pete Meadow, the armed bank-robber masquerading as a black man, and the gobby blonde who reeks of hard liquor ... The bus fast fills with corpses! What can it all mean? Now there's just Sargent, potential love interest Jane Brownfield the cute librarian, a mysterious scar-faced man, and a sombre Priest left alive. Each of them dreading their turn to stand before the devil-faced driver who destroys with just the merest hateful glance! C. S. Wallace - Murder Enroute: ( Mammoth Detective, March 1943). Dusty Haven had one passenger on his bus that he didn't want to carry. His name was Death, and funny, he had a ticket, too!
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Post by dem bones on Sept 2, 2018 18:12:14 GMT
Margaret Potter - The Boy On The Bus: (James Hale [ed.] The Thirteenth Ghost Book, 1977: The Second Bumper Book of Ghost Stories, 1978). "The picture was a very simple drawing in black and white, of the kind which is found in colouring books. It showed a single-decker bus whose driver sat at the wheel, staring stolidly ahead. Two passengers were sitting on the back seat: a man who wore a motor-cycling helmet and a woman with a bulging shopping basket. Just stepping onto the platform was a football supporter, a young man in a striped woollen hat and with a rosette pinned to his anorak. An elderly gentleman with his scarf flying was hurrying towards the bus, waving his hand to stop it. It was a perfectly ordinary scene ...."But not to Andrew Stirling , a seven-year-old maths prodigy who is inexplicably overcome with terror when tasked with writing a story based on the above. Kindly Mr. Smith helps him through the ordeal, but it is several years before Andrew realises just why the illustration frightened him so.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 13, 2018 6:57:48 GMT
Rodney M. Ruth J. N. Williamson - The Bus People: ( Weird Tales, Winter 1985). Obese woman on bus confirms narrator's belied that Inside every fat person there really is a thin one trying to get out .... evidently into a paper bag. E. F. Benson - The Passenger: ( Pearsons, March 1917: The Flint Knife). The Conductor's guilty past catches up with him. Alvin Schwartz - The Bus Stop; ( Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones, HarperTrophy, 1991). Fatal accident at bus stop spawns another phantom hitch-hiker. Ed Cox has been dating her for months before he learns the truth.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 30, 2019 17:58:23 GMT
Ian Miller J. M. Johnson-Smith - The Last Bus: ( Short Stories, Aug. 1981: Dennis Pepper [ed.], The Young Oxford Book of Ghost Stories, 1994). After a night in the pub, he boards the last bus to Bolter's farm ... which was cancelled several years ago, the route having been discontinued when a driver, conductor and passenger were mangled in a crash. In terms of plot these late/ last bus stories are much of a muchness - unless authored by Franklin Marsh, master of the macabre, of course! - but it doesn't prevent their being great ghastly fun.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 24, 2019 13:01:58 GMT
Mary Williams - No Ticket: (Peter C. Smith [ed.], The Phantom Coach, 1979: 65 Great Spine Chillers, 1985). Following a nervous breakdown, Rogers, a London-based journalist, is advised by his GP to take a walking tour of Cornwall, recharge his batteries. The break seems to be doing the trick until the night he gets lost on the moors and boards the rickety old bus, destination ' Tumba'. Usual set up - skeletal driver, hostile, dumb passengers, etc - but nicely told. Rogers might have passed off the horror journey as an hallucination had it not been for a report in the following day's newspaper.
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Post by Swampirella on Jan 30, 2020 17:45:43 GMT
The Little Man's Diary - John Ludlow (London Mystery Magazine #26 Sept. 1955)
Effie notices a man on the late bus looking worried and scribbling in a little book. Tonight he got off the bus before she could return the book he'd dropped. Later on at home with her husband out for the night & for want of something to do, she starts to read it. She grows alarmed at entries like "He will not let me rest" and "I like her but he hates and says follow and kill". No prizes for guessing who the diary is referring to. Nice and tidy at only 3 pages.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 15, 2020 19:38:53 GMT
The Last Day of Trolley Bus 666 Edgware (1961) Vault screen grab library. Ghost Bus of KensingtonSource and date: Morning Post, I6 June 1934 During an inquest at Paddington yesterday, the junction of St Mark’s Road and Cambridge Gardens, North Kensington was stated to be the place where local people had reported that a ghost bus was seen. The inquest was on Ian James Beaton, aged twenty-five, metallurgical engineer, of Hamilton Road, Dollis Hill, who died following a collision between the car he was driving and another driven by Mr George Pink, the chauffeur of the Hon Samuel Vestey of Manchester Square. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death and exonerated Mr Pink. Frederick Robinson of Chesterton Road, Kensington, a witness, said the junction was noted for accidents and it was claimed to be where a ghost bus had been seen. A woman resident in Cambridge Gardens said, “The legend of the phantom bus has been going strong for years. 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 careering 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.” Another version is that the bus, which a woman has been told by a conductor to board, “vanished into thin air" when she approached it. [This legend is believed to have been the inspiration for E F Benson’s famous ghost short story “The Bus Conductor” ’ which was later adapted into an episode in the classic British horror film, Dead Of Night (1945).] From Peter Haining's Mammoth Book of True Haunting, 2008.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 17, 2022 9:52:01 GMT
Illustrated Police News, 25 May 1916. A. P. Sessler - Red Eye to Nighfolk: (Marc Damian Lawler [ed.] Before You Blow The Candle Out: Book One, 2019). A Monster Club tribute act commandeer a night bus for their Halloween outing.
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