One of my hobbies in recent years has been the annotating and expanding of David Paulides' Missing 411 books. Accompanying the cases of missing people in rural areas (and now cities), Paulides notes, are strange coincidences, such as people missing in different areas having nearly identical names and/or appearances, people somehow managing to avoid numerous closed-circuit cameras on their way to their destinies, and people vanishing in areas with "Devil" or other alarming words in their names.
I don't have any personal experience with a missing person case, but I suffered through a bizarre coincidence (if it was a coincidence) many years ago.
It happened in 1979 or '80, probably during the summer vacation from school. I was riding my ten-speed bike through the semi-rural countryside near Bixby, Oklahoma, a small town about ten miles south of Tulsa. The land (back then, at least) consisted mainly of pastures, fields of grain, and patches of forest. Paved roads divided the area into squares one mile on each side.
I pedaled and coasted along one mile-long strip of road and halted at an intersection. As I balanced atop my bike, panting heavily (I don't think I've ever actually been in shape), I noticed the telephone pole next to the STOP sign.
A haze of staples, thumbtacks, and nails covered the lower six feet of the tar-coated pole, all that remained of posters and notices of the past. Several notices still defied the elements and clung to the wood, and one in particular caught my eye.
HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THIS BOY? read two-inch-high letters. Intrigued, I edged my bike onto the shoulder of the road.
A faded photo had been reproduced beneath the heading. The Xerox machines available at Quik-Trip and other convenience stores of that time were less than perfect, but I could make out the features of a young, excited-looking, freckle-faced boy.
"Tommy Bowman," began the next line.
A simple, common-sounding name. It seemed familiar. I sidled my bike off the shoulder onto the grass.
"Tommy Bowman, aged 8."
Then it hit me: Tommy Bowman? The Devil's Gate Reservoir Tommy Bowman?
"Tommy Bowman, aged 8, disappeared March 23, 1957, from near Altadena, California."
I would have let loose a foul oath, but I was gobsmacked. Thomas Eldon Bowman, one of the children who disappeared in the area around Devil's Gate Reservoir in southern California in the late '50s/early '60s -- an area dubbed "The Forest of Disappearing Children" by Brad Steiger and other authors. I was really into historical mysteries, and my favorite subject was mysterious disappearances -- and one of my favorite missing person tales was Devil's Gate Reservoir.
. . . What was a missing person poster for Tommy Bowman, who disappeared in 1957, 1500 miles from Bixby, doing thumbtacked to a telephone pole in Bixby in the summer of 1980? What were the chances that I would have braked beside it and noticed it out of all other phone poles with fliers and posters stuck to them? If the entire population of Bixby, OK, had come marching by that pole, would any of them recognized the name?
I gave what I call a "thousand yard plus three feet" stare. I scanned my surroundings. There was nothing around for a mile but empty roads and fields, but I focused my eyes only a few feet away, as if someone was going to be standing there saying "Ha-ha! Made ya look!" I've done that a few times in my life, when I've run into coincidences so amazing, I was sure someone set it up (even if it had to do with private thoughts I'd never told anyone).
"$1000 will be paid by Mary and Eldon Bowman to the first person with information reuniting Tommy with us." I removed the thumbtacks from the phone pole and snatched the poster. I didn't expect to collect the reward, but this weird little artifact was going into my permanent record. To this day it resides in my file cabinet, in the manila folder marked "Mysterious Disappearances."
Tommy and several other missing people from the Altadena area now form a "cluster" in the book Missing 411: Western United States by David Paulides. In recent years it has been suggested that California serial killer Mack Ray Edwards may have killed Tommy -- or was Edwards an example of The Convenient Madman?
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