Photo via Flickr user heliosphan
Greyhound’s public image in the 90s and much of the early 2000s—from their quasi-low fares and Ameripass nationwide offers to their strategically placed bus stops in the worst districts of America’s inner cities—attracted a staff and clientele who straight up could not give less of a rolling fuck about anything.
Videos by VICE
Much of that has been changing since a Scottish company acquired them in 2007, altering the logo and offering things like Wi-Fi to compete with Megabus and other competitors, but those crazy Greyhound stories are still out there. So let’s dive into the schizoid cesspool of cheap long-distance travel and take a look at the worst things that have ever happened on Greyhound, rated from 1 (Relatively Inconvenient) to 10 (Nightmarish Catastrophe).
Just this Thursday, Los Angeles resident and meth user Maquel Donyel Morris began hallucinating and acting erratically on the Greyhound bus from California to Tennessee, which prompted his fellow passengers to notify the driver. Imagine a bus full of Ted Bundys asking Luis Garavito to chill the fuck out. Unimpressed with the lecture he and his girlfriend received from the bus driver, Maquel ran down the aisle yelling, “Everybody’s going to die now,” kicked open the partition separating him from the driver, and grabbed the wheel in an attempt to flip the bus, causing it to careen into oncoming traffic and then off the road. Passengers were flung out of their seats, half of them reportedly suffering (potentially fat settlement check) injuries, while Maquel and his girl ran off into the desert, then came back about a half hour later—possibly because he left a sweater, but probably because, well, meth. 4/10
In March of last year, riders on a Greyhound “Lucky Streak” bus from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to New York City reported an infestation of cockroaches swarming out of the vents. The post-apocalyptic scene included roaches falling from the ceiling and scurrying up passengers’ clothes and into their belongings during the half-hour tribulation, prompting Greyhound to send out a new bus, refund the passengers’ tickets, and call Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. (Or would this be funnier as the “Men in Black”?) 8/10
A veteran Greyhound driver, tired of driving a human sewage truck for the past seven years, became so heated during an argument with a 65-year-old passenger en route to St. Louis, Missouri, from Memphis, Tennessee, that halfway through the trip she pulled the bus over, stepped out, and locked the door behind her. Incredulous passengers called the police, who ordered the driver to get back in the goddamn bus and finish the trip. She only drove for another 35 miles before stopping in Charleston, Missouri, around midnight and leaving the bus—this time permanently. Greyhound quickly sent out another driver, but passengers had to wait inside the dirty, stuffy, unheated bus for nearly ten hours before arriving in St. Louis around noon the following day. Greyhound officials promised to discipline the driver, although I cannot imagine any punishment could be worse than driving a Greyhound bus for seven years. 7/10
In 2008, Tim McLean, a 22-year-old carnie, was asleep on the Canadian Greyhound from Edmonton to Winnipeg, when his seatmate, 40-year-old crazy person, Vince Weiguang Li, pulled out a “big Rambo knife” and started casually stabbing Tim in the neck and chest while the other passengers flipped a shit and fled the bus. Li then sawed off McLean’s head and held it up for the crowd outside, before cutting him up more and eating some of the flesh. When the Canadian police finally subdued the knife-wielding Li with a taser, they found McLean’s ear, nose, and tongue distributed among the maniac’s pockets. The subsequent trial found Li to be mentally unstable (quelle surprise) believing that God had told him to kill McLean, because he was an evil alien. 10/10
A Greyhound bus travelling through Nashville, Tennessee, accidentally lost a few canisters of frozen bull semen along the side of the road. They were discovered as the bull semen melted and leaked out of the canisters, producing a foul odor. Why would anyone transport frozen bull cum on a bus? How does something like that accidentally fall out of a bus? Are there not better ways to transport such an item? What does bull semen smell like? So many questions, and so few answers. 1/10
