I thought getting bullied on the school bus in middle school was bad, but these ten stories are just something else.
10.) "I Was The Only One Who Peed"
Of course this happened in Florida. Friend of Jalopnik jbh has the story.
" Greyhound from Ft. Lauderdale to Orlando. I think I was the only one who actually peed in the bathroom as opposed to shooting up/smoking bath salts/drinking mouthwash in it. Plus it took like 6 hours.
I'd say just generally avoid Greyhound travel in Florida. Or just avoid Florida. Fuck the bus."
Suggested By: jbh, Photo Credit: Tom in NYC
9.) Boosh!
You thought there was only going to be room for one Florida Greyhound story on this list? Nope! Here's one from patrick0brien.
" Greyhound bus from Orlando to DeLand after visit to Disney World with my brother.
I think this was 1987-88 or something, too young to drive. So my younger brother and I bussed it to and from Disney. On the way back, there was a passenger who seemed to have a beef with anybody who looked in his general direction.
The guy was snotty, snorty, and in retrospect probably on a really good speedball.
To anybody who caught his eye, he'd reply "What you looking at?" then come over to them, and sit on the hand rail and stare, all the while speaking in low but threatening tones.
Thankfully, he didn't do anything more than that.
In the times before iPods, iPhones, and the like, all I had was my yellow Sony Sports Walkman. So even though this guy did this the whole trip back, I was able to drown him out.
… until the dreaded sloooowwwwing dooown of theeee taaaape to loooow baaaaateries.
Crap.
That word is a little ironic. Because maybe with an hour left to the trip, I gave up the walkman and witnessed Sir Jerkweed take a trip to the bathroom in the back of the bus.
I'm not sure if the bus driver found the bump on purpose or not, but about a minute into this guy's throne pondering, the bus hit a bump of such magnitude I could only describe it as a planet. Launching all of us into negative G's…
… including Captain Speedball, and whatever he was sitting on.
I heard a muffled "BOOOSH" followed by a loud, long, choked wail emanating from the commode. The wail eventually whimpered away, but he didn't come out right away.
Everybody were wearing little "Yeah, eat it" smiles at this point. But that ended when he came out a few minutes later, and Holy Outhouse: What a smell.
Wet, blue/green, covered in used paper, but quiet, the guy sat in his seat, and stared and the back of the seat in front of him, not to move or peep again. I hope they burned that seat later.
About an hour later, we exited the bus at a speed normally reserved for bullets.
I'm pretty sure everybody took a few showers when they got home."
Suggested By: patrick0brien, Photo Credit: H. Michael Miley
8.) Bus Of Ex-Cons
The last place you want to stop is outside a Penitentiary. That's what happened to Kyle Cromer a.k.a XYCromersome.
"Freshman year of college in Tallahassee, and I had to take the bus back home for Christmas in Orlando. While watching some movies on my laptop, we made an early stop outside of Leon County. Well, see, not the actually county, but the county PENITENTIARY.
That's right, I rode 4 1/2 hours back to central Florida on a bus comprised mostly of Ex-Cons. Like JUST RELEASED Ex-Cons.
Now, I wasn't too worried about it because they were being released, so they served their time for whatever reason and most were in good spirits. Just trying to get home. No big deal. However, I was seated in the back,with mostly folks who were not in the orange jumpsuits (that's right, they still had on jumpsuits, which seemed both cruel and unnecessary but ok). It's me and about 5 others in the back, and OF COURSE, I'm the target for a seat swap with anyone who was caught near the front (6'1 black male, medium build, Oh HE'LL be fine!). Sure enough this girl, very small, with tears in her eyes looks back and mouths silently "Can you ppllleeeasseee switch with me?". Everyone in the section is looks on with "You gotta do it, man" judgement eyes, so OF COURSE I do it.
I sat next to a guy who was in prison for 10 years, because he was carrying marijuana for a local drug dealer and was busted (Once again, Thank you Prison system! You are doing the world a great justice! :-( So stupid..). What he should have gotten locked up for was for talking.
Like he did not stop talking...for 4-5 hours....I even put my headphones in and he continued to talk to me...the whole time...non-stop. I wanted to cut my own ears off by the end. Not only that, most of the ex-cons had not showered before leaving, so the BO was UNBEARABLE.
Long story short, that was my worst/most interesting bus ride. Don't play hero folks."
Suggested By: Kyle Cromer a.k.a XYCromersome, Photo Credit: Babak Farrokhi
7.) The Infamous Fung Wah
No list of bus horror stories would be complete without one about the legendary Fung Wah bus service. How about this one from kasheed?
"A drunk and overworked (although these things did not reveal themselves until I95 in Connecticut) driver took us from Manhattan to South Station in Boston. I say Manhattan because they don't drop you at a bus station. They just drop you/pick you up a couple blocks from Canal St right at the Manhattan Bridge. Anyways, as we were passing through Stamford, a town you should only know if you're a devotee of Maury or Jerry Springer, I noticed we were going fast. I'll be honest, I was a little buzzed (as one is wont to get while they wait for a bus on a street corner in Chinatown) on cheap Chinese beer, but even I could tell something was not right. I was sitting up front so I could see the speedometer between 85 and 90mph. This dude was BLASTING around I95 traffic in the dark, half nodding off and swerving all over. Usually they'd take us up I91 to I84 to the Mass Pike, but I think this guy just forgot because he was so messed up.
I should've probably called the cops, but I didn't feel like being delayed on my way back home, and I also rationalized it by saying if ANYONE had enough experience careening down a freeway in a death trap bus with an quasi-lucid driver, it'd be this Fung Wah guy. After all, they wouldn't want their passengers in harm's way, would they?"
Suggested By: kasheed, Photo Credit: kevin
6.) Toilet Overflow
I get a little sick just reading this story from Chairman Kaga.
"I was in the Baylor marching band my freshman and sophomore years. We'd always go to in-state road games, the furthest being Texas Tech in Lubbock. We always took charter buses, of course. My Freshman year, the chemical toilet was overflowing for the entire 400 miles. Fetid blue water sloshed around under the seats and collected in the front stairwell. Nauseating."
Suggested By: Chairman Kaga, Photo Credit: Boston Public Library
5.) Alcohol Is A Hell Of A Drug
Ash78, Sheik of Al-Abama found out that alcohol and Spanish buses make an interesting equation.
" Summer of 1998, Spain. On a study abroad trip, several of my fellow classmates convinced us to visit the local tourist agency to book an overnight, full-day trip to the World Expo in Lisbon, a mere 7-hour drive away. We'd leave at midnight, arrive around 8am, spend the whole day there visiting all the 200+ national exhibits, then head home about 10-11pm the following night. Needless to say, an ambitious plan.
So a bunch of us (18-22 years old) figured the best way to start the night was with copious amounts of cheap Spanish gin mixed into litre bottle of Sprite. Our fellow non-student travelers absolutely loved us. Families and retirees trying to sleep their way through the trip, while we sat in the back and watched 4 consecutive showings of Men in Black dubbed poorly into Castilian Spanish (except the alien bugs, who inevitable spoke in a Mexican accent. Hmmm.)
The next day at the Expo was fun, but uneventful except for the fact that we discovered that Portugal is rife with beer-dispensing vending machines at a fair price, in addition to $3 bottles of red wine that would put an average $15 bottle at home to shame. So we kept a nice buzz most of the day, then really cranked it up into the evening. After a psychedelic, Pink Floyd-esque daily closing ceremony, we boarded the bus exhausted, with dehydration and hangovers looming. We grabbed our seats and passed out.
3am, my friend Dan wakes me up. His green skin was not due to fluorescent lighting, but to the 2 bottles of wine he had polished off just before boarding. "Tell the driver to stop the bus." Seriously? He wanted me to walk all the way to the front of the bus and stop? After insisting a couple more times, and faced with the thought of a vomit-filled bus for the next 5 hours, I quietly yelled something like "Para el autobus! Tan pronto que posible. Mi amigo no se siente bien. Parate!"
Very, very reluctantly, the driver stopped the bus and killed the engine as Dan went around the side. Just as all my fellow passengers awoke, the sounds of projectile vomiting began and continued for nearly 10 minutes. Dan got back on the bus with a wave and a "sorry, sorry" and we were on our way.
Except we weren't. The bus wouldn't start.
The next 9 hours were a blur, sitting in a bus, sitting on the side of the road in a rural Portuguese town in 90-degree temps and high humidity, getting increasingly angry that the local gas station staff didn't even speak Spanish, despite being fully surrounded by a Spanish country. I faded in and out of delirium, being fed lame answers by the driver about when the mechanic would arrive, whether we'd get a replacement bus, or if there was any food or water to be had. And no working bathrooms, of course. Shitter was full.
Eventually, after 2 failed mechanics' attempts to get us moving again, the tour company delivered another bus. To date, this is still my worst travel experience of all time and was an eye-opening difference between the logistics and customer service levels we take for granted in the US…and those of virtually anywhere else in the world, especially Southern Europe."
Suggested By: , Photo Credit: Sherpa_536
4.) You Don't See This Every Day
Reader BZiel has quite the story from a bus he took in Peru.
" A woman carrying a chicken in a bamboo(?) crate got loose on the bus and flew around shitting on and pecking at everyone for about 10 minutes before it was finally captured. As the woman exited the bus, she grabbed the chicken from the cage by the feet, drew a knife from somewhere on her person, and then cut its head off and bled it out AT THE BUS STOP.
You don't see that every day."
I also have to give an honorable mention to A+E=AE's horror story which somehow also involves a chicken getting it's head cut off. Yes, we had two submissions which involved chickens getting killed.
"I am standing in the aisle behind the driver as at this point there were already no seats available. The driver pulls up to a particular stop where there is a little teeny old Chinese woman who was of course dressed in her mismatched finest polyester holding the ubiquitous pink shopping bag, and also in her arms was a LIVE, I repeat LIVE chicken that ostensibly was not her pet, but most likely her dinner.
She attempted to board the bus with this chicken and the driver told her that she could not board the bus with a live chicken. She started arguing with him in language that my very basic Cantonese would not understand. They went back and forth for probably 45-60 seconds (about the limit for a Muni driver) until finally he said: "YOU CANNOT BRING A LIVE CHICKEN ON MY BUS!" Everyone is either chuckling at this point or just thinking: "Can we gtfo out of here please, let her catch the next one." She smiles with an "Ah-ha!" look, takes the chicken, and snaps its neck right there. Everyone on the bus that saw this pretty much shouted holy shit and I was thinking, "Did she really just do that?! Did I just see a live chicken get killed on Stockton Street in the middle of San Francisco?!" The long and short answer is YES I DID.
The driver saw this happen, looked at the chicken, looked at her as she smiled as if she is about to board now, saying in very broken English: "Chicken dead now!" He closed the bus doors and drove off as quick as he could while she was still at the stop yelling and screaming."
Suggested By: BZiel/A+E=AE, Photo Credit: david pearcy
3.) What Happens On The Back Of The Bus...
Reader leveedog learned the hard way to always sit near the front.
"I was 14 years old. The bus was maybe 1/4 full when I got on, but as we made what felt like 2,000 stops on the way home it filled to maybe half capacity. I had snagged a window seat in the back half of the bus and plopped my suitcase in the aisle seat to discourage anyone from joining me.
Right about a third of the way home a rather large mid 20ish white woman got on at a stop in a fly speck town. As she walked down the aisle she looked me over top to bottom, smiled and slowed. I did my best "I'm looking out the window and never looking away, EVER" stare and she plopped in the seat directly behind me. She tried to start up a conversation a couple of times, but I pretended to be asleep and she eventually gave up. Several stops later a short, thin, wiry mid 30ish black man got on and sat in the pair of seats across from her. I didn't think much about it and thankfully did fall off to sleep.
Greyhound busses aren't exactly the smoothest rides around so I tried to stay asleep when the road became more rough and my seat started rocking. Um, wait, it was rocking steadily. With a rhythm. Not in tune with the pavement. Even in my groggy state I knew something was strange. I turned and looked back between the seats to have an image seared in my brain forever. Huge mounds of bright white naked flesh encasing a skinny deep black frame pounding away. In one especially horrific moment her eyes locked with mine and she smiled. She was holding a dish towel sized cloth over them in some ridiculous attempt to cover up, I think. I swiveled back forward and tried to become approximately 2 inches tall. What to do?? I was 14 and so confused. Strangers fucking behind me. In the open. WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO?
I wanted to move, to leave, but where? Would the bus driver yell at me? It didn't even occur to me that the bus driver might kick them off. I froze and got to hear, ugh and feel, every motion, sound and bit of conversation. They went at it twice. Then they discussed her return trip where he was going to get all his friends together and gang bang her. He got off at the next stop. I finally screwed up the courage to stand and run to the front of the bus. I always sat up front near the driver from then on. What happens in the back of the bus stays in the back of the bus."
Suggested By: leveedog, Photo Credit: David, Bergin, Emmett and Elliott
2.) "He Has A Gun!"
Four words you probably don't want to hear someone yell when you're on a bus. It happened to reader bobbee17 and they have the story to tell here.
" We signed up for our day trip through our tourist group to go on a river boat trip, visit the second largest waterfalls on the island, and go on a rum tour. There were eleven of us, a tour guide, and the bus driver on the small tour bus. We went on the river boat trip and grabbed lunch, then headed to YS Waterfalls.
After enjoying the waterfalls, we left on some tight twisty back roads through inland Jamaica heading to the rum factory. A white sedan passed us and I thought nothing of it since we were getting passed all the time. We came up on a hairpin turn to the right and the white car was in the middle of the road and a couple of guys were getting out telling us to pull over. At this point I thought there must be something up ahead and they're telling us we need to get out of the way. Then a girl at the front of the bus yelled "Oh my God, he has a gun!" At which point everyone, including myself, started freaking out.
The tour guide, a very nice 40ish year old Jamaican woman, spoke with one of the two gunmen at the door and said we'd cooperate and to please not hurt anyone. She then turned to us and said "This man is going to come on the bus, take your money, and leave. He will not hurt you." One guy came on the bus and said to get out our money, cell phones, jewelry, and metals (whatever the hell he meant by that). My wife and I being relatively intelligent, left all of our jewelry, money, wallets, and my cell phone at our hotel and only brought her cell phone and $60, $50 of which was already spent. The guy came around and took everything that people gave him, but never took the gun out of his waistband. We stupidly hid my wife's phone and the men never searched because they were in too much of a rush to get everything and get off the bus. They were probably in and out of the bus in under two minutes even though it felt like forever, got about $800 and four smartphones total. All they got from us was $10.
We then went to a small police station to report the incident. They gave us a police escort which was the most intimidating car ever... a Suzuki Samurai. Our tour guide insisted that we should enjoy our vacation so we went on the rum tour as planned. They greeted us with pineapple-rum drinks at the bus, then gave us a tour with the head of customer relations. As we were leaving they gave us bags with a bottle of rum, a hat, and a t-shirt. We then had to go to the central parish police station to give statements (after we all drank a large quantity of rum on the tour). We were there for about 3 hours sitting in their briefing room waiting for everyone to finish up. Once we finished, we still had a two hour bus ride back to the hotels. My wife gets car sick easily, hadn't eaten anything for about 10 hours, drank on the rum tour, and the road was bumpy and the driver was a late braker/fast accelerator. She threw up 4 times.
All in all, we only lost $10, got the free stuff from the rum tour, champagne and a fruit plate sent to our room, a free taxi to the airport a few days later when we left, and had the day trip refunded. We came out well ahead."
Suggested By: bobbee17, Photo Credit: Jason Lawrence
1.) There's A Riot Going On
Reader thebigbossyboss had the misfortune of happening upon an anti-Nigerian riot, while he was in a bus with a Nigerian flag painted on the side. Yikes.
" We left Lagos for Accra Ghana early in the morning in what turned out to be one the downright scariest rides of my whole life. The trip is only 500 kms, but it involves 3 border crossings. Apparently these were the least of our worries though.
Firstly when we got to Seme,(Nigerian-Benin border) there is always, something....
At Seme, the Nigerian border guard was happy to see us once we told him we were coming from Bauchi, which happened to be his home town, he sent us off in less than 5 minutes no problem.
Entering Benin was another program altogether…they said because our papers were in order we should just pay them 10,000 CFA (west African francs) and we could go, our driver wouldn't have that, and we didn't even have 10,000 CFA anyways (Nigeria uses Naira, Ghana uses Cedis), so after about 2 hours, they finally let us go, the good thing about the border guards is that if they act stupid you can always call the commander who will generally set them straight (but only if they are acting really stupid).
We crossed through Benin and into Togo, no problem and crossed into Ghana less than an hour later.
It looked like we were home free, however little did we know, we had another obstacle waiting....
After we had crossed the Volta River bridge we were just about 30 kms from Tema, and about 60 kms from Accra, almost home, and we came across a line of stopped vehicles.
All the drivers were outside of their cars, so we knew something wasn't right. The driver got down, and after talking to the drivers in front we found out that a car had run over two peasants in the next town and in retaliation the towns people had blocked the road, stopping all traffic.
Anyways our bus driver decided screw this, and went on the wrong side of the road to get closer to the front of the line.
As we approached the front of the line we stopped, now 3 cars from the barricade and waited, and waited, and the police eventually came, but we still waited.
About 2 hours passed and it started to get dark…This is when problems started.The townsmen brought out tires and random crap and started to make the roadblock, now a huge flaming road block. The fire went on for about 45 minutes, then the police started to make their move. They fired their guns into the air and used some smoke screens.
This was bad news and caused several events simultaneously.
Firstly all the car drivers started to turn around try to get the hell out of there, meanwhile the townsfolk started to grab 2x4's and rocks and smash the car windows, and of course ours being right at the front of the line, started to receive blows. Also turns out...it had been a Nigerian car that had run over and killed the villagers. Our car, had a giant flag of Nigeria painted on it, which made it a bit of a target.
All the car drivers realizing if they remained their cars would be torched, or rolled or lord knows what, started to U turn in a panic and just floor it back towards Keta and Togo, meanwhile, because of the rocks cars were losing windows, lights, mirrors, it was crazy, and damn scary, our van had a huge hole in it's back windshield as a huge rock was thrown at it, girls were screaming, the police were shooting, flash bangs were going off it was truly nuts.
As cars from the front of the line started to race back, at breakneck speed other cars further back in the line got the hint from the panic and tried anything to get further back, as the townsfolk went on a rampage.
As for what actually the outcome was I don't know, we didn't wait around to find out, as we gunned it for safety.
Everyone holed up behind a police roadblock further back.Cars were arriving all dented up, huge cracks in all the glass
After about 2 hours, the police convoyed people up and got us through; the one side of the road where the cars were parked was covered with glass from windows and lights.
Truly one of the scariest incidents I have encountered."
Suggested By: thebigbossyboss, Photo Credit: satanoid
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