A bus driver told a story so scary it sent one boy into a coma and the others passed out. A survivor shared the story with me…

When I was 12 years old, a bus driver asked during a field trip if we wanted him to tell the scariest story ever. The story he told was so terrifying it made everyone faint. No one would say what it was about later. Just that it was the scariest thing that any of them had ever heard. Kids spoke of it in whispers. In rumors. But nobody would ever repeat it to me, no matter how I begged or pleaded.

I was the only kid on the bus wearing headphones, so I didn’t hear it.

I had a brand new Walkman (yes I’m old). And when all the other kids were telling each other scary stories, I put my headphones on. I can’t even remember where the field trip was going—science museum?—anyway it was a long drive for a dozen kids.

What I do remember is seeing the bus driver (not our regular driver but a substitute for the field trip) looking up at us in the rearview and asking if we wanted to hear “the scariest story in the world.” Everyone chorused “YES!!!” really loudly. And the driver kept insisting it was too scary for us. I think I rolled my eyes, and I remember him saying, “This story starts on a county road…”

Then I tuned him out and turned up the volume on my Walkman, and when the tape got to the end I realized that the bus around me was silent. I looked up. Every kid sat slack-jawed and wide-eyed. I turned around in my seat to my best friend, Isaiah, sitting in the row behind me, and I asked, “Hey, what’s going on?”

His eyes flicked up to meet mine. He closed his jaw but didn’t say anything.

“You OK? Why’d it get so quiet?”

Somewhere on the bus, a whisper. A few kids up front talked in nervous undertones. I think they said, “Don’t tell him.”

Isaiah said, his voice monotone: “He told us a scary story.”

“What was it about?” I asked, turning my attention to the driver, who was also silent now, hands on the wheel, saying nothing, though he had a strange expression on his face. His eyes sort of glazed.

“Can’t tell you,” said Isaiah.

“Why not?”

He didn’t answer. Neither did anyone else. It was like whatever they’d heard had so terrified them that they were locked into trauma. Just frozen there by this shared, collective, horrifying experience that I’d somehow missed. I don’t know if you’ve ever ridden a bus full of schoolchildren, but it is never quiet. There is always chatter. But right then, other than the rumble of the engine, you could’ve heard a pin drop.

“What was it about?” I repeated louder.

At that moment a horn sounded. Everyone clutched the seats as a truck barreled toward us. Later I was told the bus drifted into opposing traffic. The truck driver’s quick reflexes and veering saved us from a worse accident, but the impact still killed the bus driver, left one student in a coma, spun the bus and knocked a bunch of us out. Later the rumor would spread that the bus driver and students all fainted from the story and that’s what caused the crash. Anyway, I remember coming back to myself in my seat, sitting up, and seeing the blue sky outside. Seeing the day look so normal except for the steam, or smoke, from the bus and the truck. I heard sobbing from my classmates.

Some of us were sent to the hospital. The rest of us were sent home.

Days later, after everyone was back in classes except the kid who fell in a coma, I asked a classmate, “Hey, Maria, you heard the story on the bus, right?”

She was doodling on a notebook for our math class, but her pen stopped. She said softly, “Yeah…”

“Was it really scary?”

She nodded.

“The scariest story you ever heard?”

She closed the notebook and moved to a different desk, saying loudly, “I don’t want to talk to you, Joshua.”

Several other kids tittered. I think my cheeks went red. I wasn’t a social reject, not exactly, but I wasn’t one of the popular kids, either. I tried with other kids who’d been on the field trip, but none of them would talk to me about it, not even my best friend Isaiah. He just kept saying “Nah, man, it’s too scary.”

I snapped, “Dude, just like summarize it if it’s too scary! What was it even about?”

“I’ll tell you when I’m fifty-five.”

“FIFTY-FIVE?”

“I don’t wanna have to think about it! Bro, just let it go!”

His refusal almost broke apart our friendship. But eventually, I accepted that nobody was going to tell me whatever had traumatized them so badly.

It’s a mystery I have agonized over for decades.

Just last year, I found a note in my Google calendar that I apparently made as a reminder to myself, telling me “Isaiah’s birthday—fifty-five.”

I reached out, partly to wish him a happy birthday but also to ask if we could catch up. We hadn’t seen each other since our high school reunion, and we arranged to meet for coffee.

When I arrived, I was surprised to see his glassy and yellowed eyes. He looked much older than 55. I tried to hide my shock, but he just smiled and said, “Pancreatic cancer. I’ve got a few months, probably.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh. Shit, I’m sorry—”

“You look good though.” He raised his coffee cup to me. “Look like you’re still forty years old. How’s life treating you?”

I pulled up a chair and told him how I’d married and divorced (“Same,” he said), how I was an electrician and occasionally a freelance writer. He talked about recycling and community gardens and about his two grandchildren and how he’d founded a non-profit because he wanted a better world for them. And as I began to reminisce about our school years, he raised a hand.

“Before you ask, I’m not gonna tell you that bus story.”

“But—”

He shook his head. Told me that the students who heard all wished they hadn’t—every single one.

“Trust me when I tell you—I say this with love—don’t ask. If you hear it, you’ll wish you hadn’t. Brother, let it go.”

In spite of my disappointment, it was good to see him and catch up. It was also one of the saddest good-byes I ever said because I knew just by looking at him that it would be the last one.

After that conversation, I finally accepted that the mystery would go unsolved.

Until yesterday…

Yesterday, it happened by pure accident.

I finally heard it.

The story the bus driver told.

I was at a local bar, and I overheard from a nearby table a woman say, “… all telling scary stories, and the driver said, ‘Do you want me to tell the scariest story ever?’”

I immediately broke off from my own conversation and craned my neck to see who was speaking. It was a middle-aged woman, and I didn’t recognize her at first in the low lighting but as she kept talking I realized—Maria! This was little Maria. Last I’d seen her, she’d been 12 years old. She’d gone to a different junior high and high school than Isaiah and I. But in her brown curly hair and the sideways quirk of her mouth when she talked—it was definitely her. Either she’d moved back to our hometown or else, like me, had never left. Small world!

The chatter was loud in the bar. I missed her next few words.

“—are you serious?” gasped a girl at her table.

“It’s all true. Shinji fell into a coma. Devon’s stepfather stabbed him. Mitsuko died at her wedding when the cake was smashed into her face, and one of the dowels went through her eye—”

More gasps.

“—all of them happened like the driver said. Isaiah was fifty-five when the cancer got him, and he and I were the last two. Oh, but the craziest thing, there was one other kid on the bus who wasn’t listening.” Her voice got lower, and I had to move closer, walking near her table. “The driver saved him for last and said, ‘Joshua dies three days after he hears this story.’ And then the truck hit, just like the driver had told us it would right at the beginning. And poor Shinji fell into his coma. And that poor kid, Joshua… Joshua never stopped asking. He asked ALL THE TIME. What was the story? What was the story? We used to joke how if we never told him, maybe he’d never die—”

A strangled sound escaped my throat. And Maria looked up and I hurried away and I think she said my name.

Isaiah, may he rest in peace, was right. He and the others protected me all these years.

Dammit, brother, you were right!

I wish I’d never heard…