The last passenger on the 1528 night bus (Korean ghost story)

I wasn't going to share this but it's been going around my area for years so whatever.

2018. Small city in Gyeonggi province. A guy named Kim Mincheol worked the night bus route, and what happened to him is basically local legend at this point.

The 1528 route was the worst one. Final stop was in the middle of nowhere, so by late night the bus was almost always empty.

That night was nothing special. Mincheol was finishing his last run, cruising down an empty road. Bus was dead silent. Just streetlights flashing past the windows in that hypnotic way.

One stop left before the terminal. He was already mentally clocked out.

And then. Out of nowhere. Someone comes sprinting up waving their hand.

Baggy black hoodie. Head down. Like really down. He opens the doors and the person just silently taps their transit card and collapses into the very back seat.

But when the card tapped, the speaker said "transfer accepted."

...which was weird. Because there's no transfer on that route at that hour. But Mincheol shrugged it off.

He pulls into Cheongsu-ri terminal. Pitch black out there. No streetlights, nothing, just empty field and his bus sitting alone in the dark.

He checks the rearview. Passenger still hasn't moved. Head still down.

"Sir. Last stop. You gotta get off."

Nothing. He yells it again. Still nothing.

So he gets up and walks to the back himself. And the closer he got, the colder the air got. Like genuinely cold. He reaches out with a shaking hand and taps the guy's shoulder.

The head lifts. Slowly.

And under the hoodie was a face that looked like a lump of charcoal. Completely blackened. Eye sockets caved in so deep you couldn't tell they were eyes. Lips split open. Like someone had just pulled this person out of a bonfire.

Mincheol's heart stopped. And then the thing opened its mouth and said

"the bus... the bus stopped..."

He stumbles backward and that's when he notices the transit card still in its hand. Burnt. Charred black. Unreadable.

And that voice. "transfer accepted." Playing on a loop in his head.

He screamed. Ran out of the bus. Sprinted away from the terminal and didn't stop running for ages.

He quit driving after that night. And among the local bus drivers this story became the one you don't talk about.

But here's where it gets worse.

A few days later he's watching the news and his stomach drops. Breaking news: a bus near Cheongsu-ri had flipped and burned completely. Driver and every passenger dead.

Time of the accident? That same night. Right before he finished his shift.

Location? Right near the stop where he picked up his last passenger.

And he couldn't remember anymore. Did he actually drive the 1528 that night? Did he really pick someone up? He KNEW he'd finished his route and gone home. He knew it.

But the transit card they found in the burnt wreckage? Same exact state as the one his passenger was holding.

He started thinking maybe the bus that tried to pick HIM up that night was the one that had already crashed. That he'd been driving the dead.

He still doesn't know if what he saw was a hallucination or if he really crossed into something he shouldn't have. Sometimes when he's walking home at night he swears he hears it again.

"transfer accepted."

And he knows. He just knows. It's them. Still calling.

Still trying to take him with them.