Haunted Tour Bus:
Whisperin’ Bill Anderson Rides With The Moanin’ Ghost
Tour buses are houses on wheels for country music veterans who use the mobile mansions to perform for fans all over the country. Sometimes, they can be haunted houses on wheels.
Whisperin’ Bill Anderson was a veteran of country music tours. He has been performing for more than fifty years and his performances and songwriting—he’s won several awards for both—were enough to propel him into the Country Music Hall of Fame. A 2010 tour of Canada, however, propelled the singer into the Country Music Haunted Hall of Fame.
Anderson and his band claimed that an unexpected guest climbed aboard their tour bus for a twelve-day trip through the country. By the end of the tour, the group was convinced their tour bus was haunted.
The signs that a paranormal traveler had hopped on their bus began as soon as they embarked on the tour, the hall of famer said. Anderson, as well as his band and crew, heard a moaning noise. The moaning seemed to emanate from the bus’s state room, located in the back of the bus. Despite several attempts, they couldn’t find a rational explanation for it.
But the supernatural tour was just beginning.
Later, the crew heard a scream that was so audible and clear that, believing that a real emergency had taken place, the driver pulled the bus to the side of the road. They were worried they hit someone. The driver checked and found nothing. They also discounted some type of mechanical problem that might cause the squeal.
After that check, the crew realized nothing was wrong—nobody was in pain; nobody seemed to be hurt. The tour mates chalked up the incident to the bus’s ghostly passenger. (Later, Anderson speculated that there may be a few ghostly passengers responsible for the haunting.)
The crew even videotaped the aftermath of the haunted happenings, showing a few very concerned tour mates, along with, what sounds like, a faint, but high-pitched scream.
The investigation into the paranormal seems—by all indications—to have stopped at the end of the tour. The reasons behind the haunted tour bus remained a mystery. There’s no suggestion that, for example, the bus was involved in a fatal accident. Anderson, though, wondered whether some of his old buddies might be pulling a practical joke on him, except that these old buddies were long-dead friends and country music soul brothers, Hank Williams and Faron Young, the country singer best known for his rendition of “Hello Walls.”
“I’m trying to figure out if it’s Hank Williams wanting to cowrite a song or Faron Young just messing with my head,” he told country music journalists.