“GHOST BUS” ON CROSSING

Taranaki Daily News, 13 September 1934, Page 3

“GHOST BUS” ON CROSSING

APPARITION OF MODERN TIMES. BLAMED FOR MANY CRASHES. A phantom omnibus, blazing with powerful lights, dashing across a dangerous North Kensington road junction at terrific speed—with no driver and no passengers! The strange rumour of this apparition of modern times has persisted in North Kensington, London, for several years. Hundreds of people have gathered at the crossing late at night within the last two years to see it. Many are sceptical, but some still maintain that the “ghost” really exists. Whenever there a collision, local residents blame it, and motor accidents are frequently happening there.

In the most recent crash a young engineer, lan James Steven Beaton, aged 25, of Hamilton Road, Dollis Hill, N.W., was fatally injured. At the inquest at Paddington a witness, Frederick Robinson, of Chesterton Road, Kensington, when asked whether the junction was a place where a “ghost ’bus” was stated to have been seen, replied, “So some of them say.” I visited the “haunted” crossing at night to probe the mystery (writes a Daily Mail reporter). This is the story I was told, vouched for by four local residents: — Between two and three years ago a woman travelling in an omnibus crossing the junction asked for a ticket to Marble Arch.

Pointing to an approaching omnibus, the conductor said: “You’ve come the wrong way, madam; that is your ’bus.” When the woman turned to look the vehicle was out of sight. “It isn't there,” she said. “Must have been a ‘ghost ’bus’,” was the conductor's dry reply. Several other people in the omnibus heard him, and that was how the junction came to be known as “Ghost’bus Corner.”

Mr. S. W. Dingle, foreman of a garage nearby, said to me: “Ever since this incident hundreds of people have waited about at the crossing to see the 'ghost ’bus.’ I have talked to people who say they are sure they have seen it,”