Aaron Mahnke

And this one bore the number 7 on its side, along with the word General, which was odd, given that the London General Omnibus Company had folded a year prior, in 1933.

Oh, and also, this bus happened to be charging right for him.

The man swerved to avoid it, running off the road and smashed into the wall of a building.

Just as he did, the bus vanished into thin air.

Now, the story branches in two different directions from here.

Some say that the man died on impact and that it was a pedestrian witness who ran to the police to report the strange encounter.

Others say that the man miraculously survived the crash, living to tell the tale himself.

Either way, a legend was born.

Ladbroke Grove had a ghost bus.

Word spread like wildfire, and so did the sightings.

In the summer of 1934, talk of the number seven was on everyone's lips.

And the summer of 35, for that matter, and 36, and 37.

In the words of one modern witness, I saw this bus in November 1967.

It was number seven and was parked halfway between the station and the bend at the other end.

Two minutes past the bus, I joked, let's go a ride in the bus.

We turned around, it was gone, disappeared.

It was only 20 years later, visiting London from Canada, that I heard of this phantom bus on the radio.

It seems that the phantom bus of Ladbroke Grove had become a full-blown urban legend.

Now, maybe it's a flaw of mine, but I just can't take a story at face value.

I'm always hungry to dig deeper, especially when it comes to something like this, where so much hearsay is involved.