North Carolina boater claims he found an abandoned school bus near a remote lake. Viewers link it to a decades-old kidnapping case

A North Carolina boater’s discovery of an old school bus in the woods drew an unexpected comparison to one of the most infamous kidnapping cases in U.S. history. TikTok creator Chandler Todd (@chandlertoddfishing) shared a video in August, 2026, showing himself boating near what he described as a remote area. The video’s caption reads, “Look what I found in the middle of the woods in North Carolina.”

Todd begins the video by telling viewers, “Wanna see something creepy?” before turning the camera toward the surrounding woods and an old school bus. The bus appears abandoned and sits away from any visible developed area.

One commenter wrote, “Not me googling the Chowchilla school bus and freaking out.” Another simply posted, “1976 Chowchilla kidnapping.”

The Chowchilla case happened in California.

The North Carolina bus and the Chowchilla kidnapping, however, are not connected. The Chowchilla case happened in California on July 15, 1976. Three men abducted 26 children and their school bus driver, Frank Edward “Ed” Ray, after stopping the bus on a country road in Madera County.

The children ranged in age from 5 to 14. The city says the group had been returning from a swimming outing at the Chowchilla fairgrounds when the abduction occurred.

The kidnappers eventually took the victims to a rock quarry near Livermore, California, where they placed them inside a moving van and buried it underground. The children and Ray remained trapped for about 16 hours before Ray and two of the older children managed to escape, according to the city.

The victims then reached safety, and the children and Ray returned to Chowchilla on July 17, 1976. The City of Chowchilla maintains a historical account of the case, including the investigation and subsequent convictions.

The connection viewers made to the TikTok largely appears to stem from one visual detail: Both situations involve an old school bus in an isolated setting. The historical Chowchilla bus, however, was found in a drainage ditch in California after the kidnappers removed the children and driver. The City of Chowchilla says the bus was located about nine miles west of town.

Other pop-culture references appeared in the comments. Another viewer wrote, “Dude have you not seen that one American Horror Story with the clown and the bus get out of there,” one commenter said.

The commenter appears to be referring to Twisty the Clown from American Horror Story: Freak Show, the show’s fourth season. In the series, Twisty, played by John Carroll Lynch, uses an abandoned school bus as a hideout and abducts children.