Name changed in case I ever tell anyone this in person.
Before I begin, I have to say: I don’t realllly believe in ‘woo’, spirits, ghosts, anything like that. I can think of a (very few) things I’ve seen, heard or felt over the years but nothing which can’t be explained, as far as I’m concerned. I say all this, not to dismiss anything on this thread, as I do enjoy reading all the contributions, but to emphasise that I really can’t explain this one story I will tell here. It’s not a ghost story, it’s an I-can’t-explain-it-story. A WTF (to me, at least) story. It’s actually laughable in its banality!
This happened a couple of months ago. In Sheffield city centre, on a double decker bus.
We (me, DP, two kids) were off on a mini break, had gotten the train and then crossed over to get the bus which would take us directly to our destination. Anyway, waited at the stand for a bit, bus pulls in, we get on. Bus is quite empty and we head upstairs, which is empty bar two other people. Kids immediately see the front of the bus is free so of course they head straight for those seats, with DP sat opposite them also along the front(they are on the left side, DP on the right side). I sit behind the stairwell on the right hand side of the bus, so behind DP but with the stairs separating us. I’m probably explaining the seating to just paint the picture that they’re at the front and I’m set back a bit. Anyway.
As I was going to take my seat, I registered a man and a woman on the right side of the deck, one set of seats back from the spot I’d chosen to sit at. So they were across from me and one set behind. No one else upstairs bus us.
The man in the couple was on the aisle seat. And he had bright red eyes. Now, I don’t know how else to explain it other than the guy had…red eyes. I was obviously thinking, ‘wtf’. My mind was ticking off, horror contact lenses? No. Those are obvious. And anyway the man wasn’t some young goth, or dressed in any way to suggest he was off to a party of any kind, like an early Halloween party if those are even a thing. It was lunchtime, in the summer, he’s wearing normal clothes, the woman next to him was similarly dressed. Very ordinary, inconspicuous every day clothing. The woman was looking out the window as it happens, they don’t seem very ‘together’ as in acknowledging each other but in any case they are sat together on an otherwise empty bus, so I assume they were.
Nothing to hint at the man wackily deciding to just don a pair of red contacts. Anyway, brief as it was, we’d met eyes and I could just tell the irises of his eyes weren’t obscured by the blocky colour contacts give. They were a normal pair of eyes other than being a quite vivid…red colour. So not the whites of the eyes, just the middle bits which encircle the pupils. Then I was thinking oh well maybe he’s had laser eye surgery and his eyes are bleeding? or something? What do I know. Trying to come up in my mind with a reason for a human being casually sat on a bus in Yorkshire with red coloured eyes. I was literally sat there looking out the window wondering, maybe some people have a really rare eye colour or something. Thinking like, bloody hell, people must be really taken aback by this guy sometimes unless they know him, how unusual etc
After a couple of minutes I thought, snack time. I’ll get a cereal bar out my bag and while I’m at it I’ll discreetly turn and sneak a look at his man again in case my own eyes had been deceiving me before.
I did so, to find that this man, was looking straight at me, with his RED eyes. Head slightly turned outwards, to look straight at me. Now I was a bit like, oh wow that’s a lot bit creepy! I sent a WhatsApp to DP saying something like, ‘don’t turn around to make it obvious but the dude behind us seems to have bright red eyes lol’. He replied with a 😂 and indeed, did not turn around to see.
Anyway the bus journey is picking up a bit, passengers are coming up and sitting down here and there and I even I glanced up the first few times to see if anyone visibly, did a sort of double-take going by these two behind me, but nothing to no one did, that I noticed.
The bus journey was quite a long one and I start to register that his couple who had not said a word to each other until now, were suddenly being quite chatty and were having a good old chinwag.
About a half hour after that I sense they are about to get off at their stop but as they walk past and descend the stairs, I realised I’d wrongly assumed the chatty couple were this original (distinctive red eyes and woman next to him) couple, and were different people who must’ve got on at some point, whatever. It was at this moment I briefly turned my head to look out the opposite window, expecting to see original couple still sat in stony silence. They were not there. I hadn’t seen them get off. I’m not sure how I missed them getting off as they were on my radar already, and would’ve had to have walked past me, and then faced me directly by going down the stairs. I’m willing to write that part off as odd, but maybe I’d somehow managed to blank out them getting off the bus even though one of them had caught my attention enough to give me the biggest ‘What the hell’ of my life. I’m not trying to claim they were both ghosts. But what I definitely can’t account for is the eyes themselves. It doesn’t make sense to me. People don’t have red eyes. But that man did.