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The coachman's warning legend has been kicking around since 1906 when it was told in Pall Mall Magazine as the E.F. Benson short story The Bus-Conductor. In that long-ago version, a man has the presaging encounter that saves his life through a disturbing late-night exchange with the driver of a hearse that pulls up to the home where he is staying as a houseguest. The hearse driver (who is puzzlingly dressed as a bus conductor) locks eyes with the man, gestures at his empty conveyance, and announces, Just room for one inside, sir. A month later, that same unsettling man attempts to gesture the former houseguest into a bus he'd been planning to take, once again with Just room for one inside, sir. The terrified man backs away then runs off. Moments later, the bus is struck from the side by a car traveling too fast, the automobile burrowing into it as a gimlet burrows into a board, making matchwood and — other things of it. A well-known version of the yarn surfaces in Bennett Cerf's 1944 Famous Ghost Stories. More modern tellings present the narrowly-avoided fatal accident as the falling of an elevator car and the person so warned (and thus saved) as a woman. No matter the mode whereby others perish or the sex of the person spared, the eerie coachman remains a constant element of the tale. Sometimes the forewarned recognizes the vehicle the midnight coachman shows up in as a hearse, but sometimes sees only an unremarkable coach and is left puzzled by why the driver's appearance and invitation are so unsettling. Sightings: The plot of the 1945 film Dead of Night was based on this legend, as was an episode of the television anthology series The Twilight Zone (Twenty-Two, original air date 10 February 1961).
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