Case File 14 — September 13, 1935

MYSTERIOUS FIRE DESTROYS BURBANK TOY STORE
Burbank Tales Times — September 13, 1935 

WHAT CAUGHT OUR ATTENTION

Seven years pass before the next surviving page.

Again, we don't know what happened during the missing years.

But by 1935, the unexplained events have spread well beyond the former asylum grounds.

A toy store burns during a violent electrical storm.

Witnesses insist lightning never struck the building.

The flames reportedly burned blue and green.

Mechanical toys continued operating after being severely burned. A newspaper carrier claimed a damaged doll moved and looked directly at him.

Other witnesses reported chanting and children's voices coming from beneath the store before the fire.

There is something familiar about the electrical activity.

Storms and unusual experiments appeared repeatedly in earlier asylum reports. Electrical equipment was later recovered from its ruins.

That doesn't prove a connection.

But after twenty-five years of preserved newspapers, repeated details deserve attention.

The smaller story may connect another much older thread.

Two former Burbank residents are reported murdered in rural Texas by a masked attacker wielding industrial harvesting equipment.

Years earlier, we encountered travelers leaving Burbank for Texas during the asylum escapes.

Perhaps these are unrelated people.

Perhaps not.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that whatever the collector was following is no longer confined to one institution—or even one part of Burbank.

The asylum disappeared ten years ago.

The stories did not.

FROM THE JOURNAL