I use to be a mechanic for stagecoach busses. My granddad always told me about his job as a mechanic for united tours when he was in his teens and twenties and I wanted to follow in his footsteps. Anyway, I usually worked into the later hours but this one night I will never forget.
I was doing a bit of late work in the work shed because a gasket had bust on the cylinder head. These are an absolute pain to replace. It was around 10:00pm when the last guy left and I was on my own. I went and made myself a cup of tea when the radio switched on. I thought that it was probably only a prank from one of the other mechanics, like a timer at the plug socket or something, but when I went to unplug it, I remembered, its battery operated. It gave me a chill down my spine, but compared to what happened next, that was nothing…
I boarded the bus so I could sit down on one of the seats and enjoy my cup of tea when the neighbouring bus door hissed open. This was strange as the doors were operated manually by b*****s. It hissed shut again, and open, and closed, and opened. Then another bus door started to open and close rapidly. And another bus. And another bus. Until all the bus doors were slamming open and closed. This continued for about a minute then it just stopped. The silence was uncomfortable. I thought to myself, “I wanna get the hell outta here!” I got off the bus through the emergency exit at the side. While walking rapidly over to the way out of the work shed I saw another man in overalls under another bus. He was checking the oil filter I think but what was strange was that he was using an old Tilly lamp, like an oil lamp miners used before electric torches. I said to him, “Hey! Did you see that?” He rolled from under the bus and gave me a strange look.
“See what?”
“The door’s banging!”
“No, I think you’re just imagining things.”
“I thought I was the last man here.”
He just shrugged and went back to what he was doing. I left and went home. When I got back I phoned my boss and told him everything that happened.
“Think you’re funny?” he asked me.
“What are you on about? I swear I’m telling you the truth!”
“Do you know about the stories?”
“What stories?”
“There’s this old story about a worker who was working on a bus using an old oil lamp and there was a fuel leak… you can guess what happened next, his body was never found but a few years later Stagecoach decided to rebuild on the old foundations to save money and some guys claim they saw the ghost of this guy.”
