The Case of Little Miss Lost

This file was compiled by Alva Keel through witness interviews, research, and observations conducted by SQ.

      During an ordinary afternoon, on an unassuming Boston area city bus, Mr. Paul Callan witnessed a great tragedy. He took the time to glance around at his fellow passengers, indulging in a bit of people watching, before exiting the bus at his stop. Something told him to look up, and so he did. He spotted a little girl of about seven standing in the bus window. The child's skin was pale and bluish, like that of a dead person, and she had sunken eyes. She carried a green balloon. After mouthing an unclear, single word, the girl was carried along with the moving bus, heading on its way to its next stop. Mere seconds later, the bus exploded.
      Mr. Callan suffered a severe concussion, multiple cuts, and bruising from the force of the blast. Everyone on the bus was killed. An investigation showed that there was an underground gas leak that had filled the bus with flammable vapour. A simple spark had caused the explosion. Mr. Callan was lucky to have escaped with his life.
      While in hospital, he saw the little girl again. The television was somehow switched on while Mr. Callan was sleeping. He observed that the San Antonio vs. Boston basketball game finals were on; fatigued, he looked for the remote control to switch it off. During this time, the news report on the game panned over to give the viewers a look at the celebrating fans. Amongst the persons in this crowd stood the child with the green balloon. She again mouthed one word before Mr. Callan was struck with a sharp pain in his head from the concussion, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the girl was gone from the screen.
      After being released from hospital, Mr. Callan went to the morgue to see if he would be allowed to view the body of the child from the bus explosion. If she could be found dead at the Boston morgue, then perhaps this would help him understand with what he was dealing. The little girl's body was indeed at the morgue, unclaimed and unidentified. Strangely, the girl did not die in the same way as the other bus passengers. She had died of blunt force trauma - crushed to death. There were no signs of the typical types of injuries one would find on the victim of an explosion: extensive burns, brain trauma, haemorrhaging, nor even simple cuts from the glass. Her nasal passages did contain soot, as from a fire, but it did not match any of the material from which the bus was made.
      Continuing his investigation, Mr. Callan went to the television station to see if he could view the news report on the basketball game that featured the little girl. He was shown the report, but this time the child was not there.
      The next day, Mr. Callan heard a report on the radio about a collapse at the San Antonio Sports Arena, in San Antonio, Texas, that killed 39 people and injured over 100. Amongst the fatalities was an unclaimed child. As soon as possible, he flew to San Antonio to attempt to also view this unidentified girl. The morgue staff would not allow him see the child in person, but they did take a photograph for him. He was shocked to discover the very same little girl from the bus explosion in the picture.
      Once Ms. Santos and myself had been filled in on Mr. Callan's experiences, we applied the clues we had to known paranormal cases. The unclaimed girl mirrored past phenomena dealing with a "Little Miss Lost." "Little Miss Lost" is the name given to a child who died in a circus fire in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1944. A manifestation of her spirit has been appearing at the scene of many fatal tragedies since then, as her body was never claimed. In each of these instances, the child's body would show up at the scene of these tragedies, deceased, again and again. Scores of people in the original circus fire were trampled to death when the crowd rushed to escape the flames - Little Miss Lost was one of them, and the only one who went unclaimed. This would explain why the child's injuries were inconsistent with the bus explosion; her injuries were consistent with the trampling of the circus fire. The unidentified child from the bus explosion and the stadium tier collapse was Little Miss Lost.
      The fact that the child appeared to be dead when she appeared to Mr. Callan indicated to us that she was not a harbinger spirit, there to warn him of these tragedies, but to cause them. It is doubtful that Little Miss Lost consciously meant to bring about the deaths of innocent people; rather, she was appearing at the sites of potential disasters and tipping the scales of fate in the direction of death in an effort to finally be claimed by her parents. The tragedies were simply a means to an end.
      We headed out to Hartford, where the circus fire took place, to interview survivors. We hoped that this way, we could find the girl's parents. Our theories were further confirmed by a dream Mr. Callan had on the train of Little Miss Lost, in the morgue. The dead child suddenly opened her eyes and asked, "Where's Daddy?"
      A woman at the local newspaper was gracious enough to provide us with a list of people who had died in the fire and those who had survived it. While I went to retrieve this list, Ms. Santos and Mr. Callan traveled to the home of one of the original reporters covering the fire. He informed them whom he thought was the mother of Little Miss Lost.
      We tracked this woman down, only to find that she had died. Staring at her headstone, we found ourselves stymied, but not for long. While still in the cemetery, Mr. Callan saw Little Miss Lost again. No one else could see her, but he interacted with her, and finally heard the word she had been trying to tell him - her last name. Unfortunately, the girl's presence triggered a gang shooting during a funeral taking place in the cemetery. Our own Ms. Santos was shot in the leg while protecting a young mourner. As we expected, Little Miss Lost could be found amongst the shooting victims, dead not from a bullet, but from blunt force trauma.
      While in hospital with her bullet wound, Ms. Santos searched the list of survivors and found a woman with a last name that matched the word Little Miss Lost had said to Mr. Callan. Mr. Callan and I located this woman - Roseanna Wye - and asked her what she remembered of the circus fire. She claimed she had no daughter to lose that day.
      We could not, at that time, persuade Roseanna Wye tell us the truth, so we left to pursue other possible leads. While I headed for New York City on one train, Mr. Callan was to head back to Boston. Little Miss Lost, however, had other plans. She appeared to Mr. Callan on the train bound for New York City. He risked his own life to chase the train down and hop aboard so that he could stop it before the impending disaster happened. Once he had found me, we struggled with the unknowing railway staff to engage the hand brake, forcing the train to a necessary halt.
      The authorities detained us for three hours while they tried to figure out what had happened. Eventually, the local road master informed them that there had been a massive power outage at the main grid and that they had lost control of the tracks for approximately seven minutes. If we had not stopped the train, it would have plowed head-on into another train coming out of Philadelphia. Luckily, we had foiled Little Miss Lost's latest attempt at being claimed.
      It was at this time that Mr. Callan decided we might have to be cruel to be kind, so he used the clues Roseanna Wye had given us to locate the actual hospital where she had given birth to her daughter. He received a copy of the child's birth certificate, which we presented to Mrs. Wye the next day. Faced with this undeniable proof, Mrs. Wye finally admitted she had had a daughter.
      Amelia Wye was with her mother at the circus the day of the fire. Mrs. Wye was driving past all the signs and colorful banners advertising the circus when the little girl awakened from her nap, asking, "Where's Daddy?" (Just as in Mr. Callan's dream.) When the child saw the circus, she grew excited, so her mother took her to it, and bought her a green balloon. The fire started, and Roseanna Wye tried to get out with her daughter, but she and Amelia were separated by the panicked, surging crowd. The child was trampled to death. Ashamed that she had survived when her little girl had not, Mrs. Wye did not claim her body for burial.
      We informed Roseanna Wye about Little Miss Lost, so that she would come to understand how it was possible that she could claim Amelia still. She accompanied us to the morgue, where Amelia still lay from the gang-related shooting incident. Here, the child was finally claimed by her mother.
      Amelia was laid to rest in Hartford, Connecticut, shortly thereafter. No additional tragedies involving Little Miss Lost have been reported since.
      This case is closed.

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