ghost bus of Beijing
Way, way back in April of 2012 I asked my students to give me examples of mysteries. Two, independently of each other, told me a story about a ghost bus. Here's the story as I reconstructed it on an old, defunct, now-deleted blog:
One night back in 1995, the last bus of the night left Yuanmingyuan bus station bound for Xiangshan. It picked up a few people, including an elderly couple and a young man. It was an unusually quiet night with very few people around. Then three people were seen waiting for the bus, but the elderly couple noticed something odd - these three people had no feet, they were floating there. So they told the young man, "Hey, those are three ghosts waiting for the bus, let's get out of here", and they and the young man got off the bus. The bus went on its way.
The next morning the bus was found in the Miyun Reservoir with three people dead on board. Nobody could figure out how it got from its bus route from Yuanmingyuan to Xiangshan on the northwestern fringe of Beijing to the Miyun Reservoir in the far northeastern rural exurbs.
I could've sworn I'd looked the story up, but there's no links apparent in that old post. So I've just had another search and found this question about the story on Zhihu. This is the top answer, posted 24 May 2018. The following is a loose-ish translation with a few notes thrown in:
It happened on 14 November 1995. It was an exceptionally cold night with a strong wind, and the last bus of the evening on route number 330 from Yuanmingyuan (Old Summer Palace) to Xiangshan (Fragrant Hills). There weren't many people out, just the older driver, a young woman conductor [NB: selling tickets, for those too young to remember a time before elecronic swipe cards and other such magic]. There passengers were a young married couple, an old woman, and a young man. Given how utterly frigid it was on this Beijing November night, there wasn't a lot of chatter amongst the people on the bus.
The bus had just passed Beigongmen (area around the north gate of the Summer Palace) when the conductor saw two shadows waving at the bus stop. The bus stopped and two people wearing robes resembling those of the Qing Dynasty court, carrying between them a man with hair messed up so it covered his face. Everybody got a fright and their faces went pale, but the conductor calmly told them all not to worry, these new passengers were probably filming some kind of costume drama, and had maybe had a bit to drink, and hadn't had time to change their clothes. This was enough to calm the passengers down. But the old woman couldn't stop turning around to look at these three new passengers who had sat at the very back of the bus. Another three or four stops down the line, the young married couple got off the bus. Suddenly, the old woman stood up and started ranting and raving about how the young man had stolen her purse, she wanted him to get off the bus with her and she wanted him to go to the Police Station with her. Everybody stared blankly at the old granny, but the baffled young man got off the bus with her. When he got off the bus, the young man hadn't had a chance to reason with the old woman when she grabbed him tightly and, shaking, told him that she had seen out the bus window the wind blowing the robes of those three new passengers up, revealing that they didn't have any feet!
The young man and the old woman went straight to the Police Station to report this, but the police treated them like they'd gone made and chased them out.
The next day the bus depot reported to the police that the previous night's last bus on route 330 had not arrived at the depot, and the driver and conductor were missing. This got the police's attention, and they immediately sent people out to search the roads between Yuanmingyuan and Xiangshan.
The police realised that they'd received a report from the young man and old woman the night before, but had chased them away, thinking they were mad. The went out to find these two, and had located them within a couple of hours.
On the third day the police found the missing bus 100 kilometres away in the Miyun Reservoir. Three corpses in an advanced state of decay were on board.
Three things about this case that are very difficult to understand are:
1. The bus that was found could not have driven an extra 100 kilometres after a full day's driving. In fact, when they examined the bus, there was no diesel in the fuel tank. The fuel tank was filled with blood.
2. After only two days, the three corpses were in a greater state of decay than you'd expect in the middle of summer. How could they have rotted so badly in the frigid cold of November? In the mountains north of the city?
3. The police could find no trace of the bus on any cameras on the roads leading out to Miyun.
This, of course, is not the only version of the story. Here's another version in which it is route 375, and which has a more detailed conversation between the young man and the old lady, but it's still 14 November 1995, from Yuanmingyuan to Xiangshan, bus discovered in the Miyun Reservoir, fuel tank full of blood, corpses more rotten than you'd expect in mid-summer, and no trace of the bus on any traffic cameras. There's a lot of discussion, including maps of bus routes, and even a possible origin of the story in a radio show on Liaoning Radio. But the characters are tiny and my eyes are not young, so I'm going to leave it at that.