The Ghost Bus of Highway 93
A haunted Arizona road trip.
Encounters with ghosts or phantom vehicles on isolated roads are a staple of modern folklore. These campfire tales are found in every part of the world where automobiles are a prevalent mode of transportation.
Many stories of phantom vehicles or roadside ghosts follow a similar basic template:
Travelers see a mysterious person or vehicle while traveling at night on an isolated road.
Travelers interact with them in some fashion only for said person or vehicle to unexpectedly vanish without a trace, thus revealing their ghostly nature.
One notable urban legend falling into the phantom vehicle category is The Ghost Bus of Highway 93.
Highway to the Danger Zone
Stories concerning The Ghost Bus of Highway 93 — also known as The Ghost Bus of Union Pass — began circulating on the internet in the early 2000s. Encounters with the phantom bus are said to occur on a stretch of Highway 93 running between Phoenix, Arizona and Laughlin, Nevada.
According to the legend, Bus 777 disappeared along this stretch of highway while transporting 48 passengers on a gambling excursion to some Nevada casinos. Some retellings place the incident in the early 1990s. Others claim it happened in the early 2000s. The story goes that Bus 777 overheated as they neared Union Pass. The bus driver wanted to stop and wait for another bus to take the travel party into Nevada. Passengers vetoed that plan and urged the bus driver to keep going. The bus finally broke down before climbing the summit at Union Pass. The bus driver refused to go any further. Angry passengers stole his shoes and kicked him off his own bus. They pushed Bus 777 up and over and climbed aboard again before it started down the hill. Nobody saw the bus passengers alive again and the bus never reached its destination. The driver was later found wandering along the highway shoulder without shoes, in an incoherent state.
In the years since Bus 777 disappeared, eyewitnesses claim to have seen a phantom bus wandering that stretch of Highway 93. It will suddenly emerge from the darkness and tailgate the motorist who sees the bus. When the bus draws close enough, it reveals silver chrome tears dripping from its headlights. Then the bus passes over or through the other vehicle and quickly melts into a silvery pool on the road ahead. The pool soon vanishes, but the motorist is left with an unshakable eerie sensation that bus passengers are now riding in their vehicle.
Origins of the Bus
The legend of the Ghost Bus of Highway 93 is a relatively modern tale compared to many urban legends. It can be traced back to a October 2003 article published by Jim Cook, a former journalist who once worked for the Arizona Republic.
Cook earned a reputation for spinning tall tales after retiring from journalism. He wrote a newsletter called The Journal of Prevarication as a vehicle for these colorful stories and posted it at a now-defunct website. His original article on The Ghost Bus of Highway 93 has been reproduced and circulated numerous times since 2003 until earning urban legend status.
If you’re an author, isn’t that the dream — to see a story you create transform into a part of popular folklore?
Did you enjoy this latest Folklore Friday article? Be sure to check out past Folklore Friday articles in the archives. If you want to see a specific urban legend or myth covered in a later article, feel free to nominate it in the comments.
Had a friend who encountered a ghost driving on I-10 between Baton Rouge and New Orleans around 3 am. That part of the highway is swamp, no exit or entrance ramps. The car followed her for a few miles before vanishing.
I enjoyed this so much! Having grown up Mormon, my favorite genre of this folklore trope is what I call the spooky-religious and especially in Utah and Idaho usually involve the mythical Three Nephites.