Case File 15 — May 13, 1938

MISSING CHILDREN CASES SPREAD ACROSS BURBANK
Burbank Tales Times — May 13, 1938

WHAT CAUGHT OUR ATTENTION

By 1938, something has changed.

The strange incidents are no longer occasional stories buried among ordinary local news.

Children are disappearing across Burbank.

Missing notices cover telephone poles, storefronts and roads.

One boy disappears after following a paper boat toward a flooded drain.

Others vanish near orange groves, former cemetery grounds and roads connected to places we've encountered before.

Residents report black balloons.

Children's voices are heard at night.

Strange figures watch from wooded areas.

An unidentified man dressed in black is reportedly seen before some disappearances.

Parents organize searches.

Authorities continue insisting the cases are unrelated.

Looking through the newspapers preserved with A.'s journal, that explanation becomes increasingly difficult to accept.

And there is another pattern we can no longer ignore.

The number 13.

The asylum opened October 13, 1910—a Friday.

Dr. Jekyll deliberately selected the date, calling it “a day marked and embraced for years to come.”

Other significant events in the collection repeatedly occurred on the 13th.

Today, Friday the 13th carries an unmistakable meaning.

But the earliest newspaper doesn't describe people fearing that date.

Quite the opposite.

Jekyll appears to have been giving the date significance.

What if the superstition didn't lead him to choose Friday the 13th?

What if what happened here helped create the superstition that followed?

The smaller article announces that Crystal Lake will receive a new name:

Toluca Lake.

Another familiar place has changed its identity.

The names keep changing.

The places remain.

FROM THE JOURNAL