The October Records - A Month-Long Halloween Nightmare (Episode 10) - "The School Bus"

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Margaret reminds us why she must play only one recording per day—attempting two caused her to exist in multiple Octobers simultaneously, nearly drowning her in air turned to water. Bus 47 departs with twenty-three children but arrives empty, though parents see their children through the windows, waving from seats they never leave. Driver Janet Foster reveals the horrifying truth: every October's children from 1824 onward occupy the same seats, stacked across time, while the bus drives both on Route 9 and along the bottom of Miller's Lake simultaneously. The children are attending the deep school, learning to breathe water and speak in currents. The ninth point is marked as the school bus becomes a transport between states of being, delivering children to lessons in drowning from teachers that were never human.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Calarugus Shark Media. Welcome to ghost Scary Stories and the
October Records, a month long Halloween nightmare.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
This is episode ten.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
The school Bus.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
October tenth, nineteen seventy four Silas Crane Bus forty seven
left Blackwood Elementary at three point fifteen pm with twenty
three children aboard. It arrived at the first stop at
three twenty two pm, empty, driver still at the wheel,
still driving. The children were gone, but not gone. Parents

(00:50):
waiting at each stop saw them through the windows, their
children sitting in their usual seats, backpacks on their laps,
faces pressed against the glass, waving, smiling. But when the
door's opened, no one got off. The driver, mister Foster,
won't speak, can't speak, His hands are locked on the wheel.

(01:11):
He drives the route over and over, has been for
six hours now. The police can't stop the bus. It
passes through their roadblocks like their mist Parents follow in
their cars, watching their children through the windows, children who
aren't there when the bus is finally forced to stop.
But the strangest thing the children did come home. They

(01:32):
walked through their front doors at their usual times, dry,
despite the rain, silent, despite their parents questions, they went
to their rooms and drew the same picture. All twenty
three drew the same thing. A bus under water, still
driving its route along the bottom of Miller's Lake, and

(01:53):
in the windows children, hundreds of them from every October,
when the pattern has manifested, all still riding, all still
going to school, all still learning lessons that were never
meant for human minds.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Before I continue, I should remind you why I'm doing this,
Why I play one recording each day, never more, despite
the desperate need to understand what's coming. On October first,
I found these thirty vinyl records in the library's sealed basement,
left by Silas Crane, who vanished in nineteen seventy four.

(02:38):
The note was clear, play one per day, never more.
The dead grow stronger when rushed. I tried to play
two on the first day. The moment the second record started,
I collapsed. My vision fractured. I saw myself in multiple
Octobers simultaneously, nineteen seventy four, nineteen twenty four, eighteen seventy four,

(03:03):
all versions of me dying from the same cause, drowning
in air that had turned to water. The warning is real.
These recordings are more than sound. Their releases each one
lets something out too many at once and the barrier
breaks completely. So I continue one day one recording one

(03:27):
more piece of horror. Revealed Bus forty seven still runs
the same route fifty one years later, same number, same
driver's seat, though the drivers change. Today October tenth, twenty
twenty five, that driver is Janet Foster, mister Foster's granddaughter.

(03:53):
I was waiting at the school when the bus pulled
up at three point fifteen pm. Twenty three children born.
Did I counted them? I knew them. Sarah Henderson from
the Pharmacy family, the Patterson twins, little Marcus Holloway, whose
family was being consumed by the apartment building. Twenty three

(04:16):
children with backpacks and lunch boxes, and absolutely no awareness
that anything was wrong. Janet Foster looked at me through
the driver's window. Her eyes were already clouding at the edges.
My grandfather's journal warned me. She said, as I climbed aboard,
every Foster drives the bus. Eventually, it's our point in

(04:40):
the pattern. Were the wheels that keep everything moving even
when we shouldn't move, even when we should stop. The
children sat perfectly still, perfectly quiet, no chaos, no chatter,
just twenty three small figures staring straight ahead. This is wrong,

(05:00):
I said, It's been wrong all day, Janet replied, pulling
away from the school. They're not really here. Look closer.
I looked, really looked. The children were transparent at the edges,
like water colors running in rain. Through Sarah Henderson's face,
I could see another face, an older face, a child

(05:23):
from nineteen seventy four, occupying the same seat, the same space,
the same moment. They're stacked, Janet said, every October's children,
all riding at once, eighteen twenty four, eighteen seventy four,
nineteen twenty four, nineteen seventy four, twenty twenty five, all

(05:44):
twenty three seats occupied by multiple children across time. We
reached the first stop. Parents waited on the sidewalk. The
doors opened. No one got off, but I saw the
parents' faces change. They saw their children, saw them wave,

(06:06):
saw them mouth I love you through the glass. But
the children didn't move. Where are they really, I asked.
Janet turned onto Route nine, but through the windshield I
saw not the road but water. We were driving along
the bottom of something vast and dark. The buses headlights

(06:26):
cut through murky depths, illuminating things that shouldn't exist. Other buses,
dozens of them, all numbered forty seven, all still running
their routes underwater Miller's Lake. Janet said, every bus forty
seven that's ever run this route, they're all down there,

(06:49):
still driving, still delivering children to lessons. They never come
back from. A hand touched my shoulder. I turned to
see one of the children, Marcus Holloway, standing in the aisle.
His eyes were completely white. We're learning, he said, in
a voice, like bubbles breaking down below in the deep school,

(07:13):
learning to breathe water, learning to speak in currents, learning
the old lessons from before the land was dry. Through
the windows, I saw the real world and the underwater
world simultaneously. In one suburban Millbrook rolled past. In the other,

(07:34):
a drowned city, buildings covered in algae, streets filled with
slow moving things that might have once been human. This
is the ninth point, Janet said. The school bus. We
don't just transport children. We transport them between states, between
air and water, between living and drowned. Every day this

(07:59):
October we take them deeper. By Halloween, they won't come
back up. The bus stopped at another corner. More parents,
more waving to children who weren't really there. But now
I noticed something else. The parents eyes were clouding too,

(08:19):
just from looking at their children through the glass. The
barrier was thinning. What happens when it breaks completely, I asked,
Janet laughed, bitter and hollow. Then the roots merge, the
underwater buses rise, the dry buses sink, and everyone rides

(08:40):
to the deep school. Everyone learns the old lessons. We
completed the route. As we pulled back into the school,
the children stood in neson. They filed off the bus

(09:02):
in perfect order. But I watched where they went, not home,
not to waiting parents. They walked toward the school through
the locked doors, through the solid brick walls, twenty three
children entering a building that was closed, dark, empty, except

(09:23):
it wasn't empty. Through the windows, I could see lights,
classes in session, teachers at boards, But the teachers weren't
human anymore. They were tall, thin, made of moving water,
and on the blackboards lessons in drowning, always lessons in drowning.

(09:43):
They'll go home eventually, Janet said, Their bodies will, but
something else will be wearing them, something that learned different
lessons in the deep School. When I returned to the library,
I found twenty three wet footprints in the children section,
small feet, child sized. They led to the picture books,

(10:07):
where twenty three drawings had been inserted between pages, all
the same image. A bus underwater, still driving, filled with
children who were learning to become something else. The ninth
point is marked the school bus that never stops running,
even at the bottom of the lake. Tomorrow, I'll play

(10:30):
October eleventh. Tomorrow, I'll learn about the substitute teacher. Tonight,
I'm watching the security footage from the library. Every hour.
On the hour, twenty three children walk through my walls.
They sit in the reading circle, They listen to someone
I can't see. They're learning. We're halfway through October, now,

(10:55):
halfway through the pattern, and I'm beginning to understand that
we're not trying to stop something from happening. It's already
happened in nineteen seventy four, in nineteen twenty four, in
eighteen seventy four. We're just catching up to a drowning
that occurred before any of us were born.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Ghost Scary Stories is a production of Calaoga Shark Media.
Some elements of AI may have been used in this production,
but It was written, edited, mixed, and produced by Real
Live People executive producers Mark Francis and John McDermott.